GODJonez
Summoning of Spirits
2009-03-07 6:42 AM PST
Who doesn't like music? Who doesn't like music you can download for free? Who doesn't like the idea that video game fans that can produce music make awesome remixes of video game music and put them for free download? The answer should be nobody.
Now the OverClocked ReMix community has made their largest album arrangement yet, Summoning of Spirits
Show your support for free music and get something to enjoy at the same time and download it now!
Now the OverClocked ReMix community has made their largest album arrangement yet, Summoning of Spirits
Show your support for free music and get something to enjoy at the same time and download it now!
Season start
2009-02-20 6:07 AM PST
It was a beautiful winter day, sun shining, -4.0°C outside, calm wind and I am out of shampoo. That obviously means that I take out my bike to snowy roads and try to catch the advertised special deal to get some cheap shampoo.
Well, as I guessed, the tires hadn't held their pressure very well. It was so and so that the rims didn't break the inner layer, I guess the snow on road softened the ride enough to prevent that from happening. It was not very pleasurable though, since one needs to apply more force to beat the extra friction caused by empty tires.
Well, once I got to a service station where was an air pump I could actually use, I could check the pressure levels, they were something in between 1 and 2 for both front and rear, while they should be somewhere around 5 or 6 usually. So, refilling them up and then it was nice to go on.
Surprisingly there weren't any other problems, breaks worked, gears worked and nothing seemed broken.
After the trip I had caught quite a sweat, even though I even used the thinner jacket. And, well, I ended up not using the special deal for shampoo after all. The reason was quite simple, there was even better deal there, bigger bottle of some lesser known brand for the same price.
Well, as I guessed, the tires hadn't held their pressure very well. It was so and so that the rims didn't break the inner layer, I guess the snow on road softened the ride enough to prevent that from happening. It was not very pleasurable though, since one needs to apply more force to beat the extra friction caused by empty tires.
Well, once I got to a service station where was an air pump I could actually use, I could check the pressure levels, they were something in between 1 and 2 for both front and rear, while they should be somewhere around 5 or 6 usually. So, refilling them up and then it was nice to go on.
Surprisingly there weren't any other problems, breaks worked, gears worked and nothing seemed broken.
After the trip I had caught quite a sweat, even though I even used the thinner jacket. And, well, I ended up not using the special deal for shampoo after all. The reason was quite simple, there was even better deal there, bigger bottle of some lesser known brand for the same price.
Really, the community is surprising.
2009-02-10 12:53 PM PST
I have before said sometimes that "the Xfire community never ceases to surprise me" and it seems this is still correct.
When I tried out Xfire 1.104 beta and saw how the new sounds were used, I thought that it was a really brilliant idea since:
But... It seems the community thinks differently. I am very surprised that so many people came to complain of the change. I predicted there would be two kinds of responses to the update:
I completely missed the impossible group, people who actually liked the Xfire sounds. I still cannot understand how someone could like those sounds or would even want sound to be played on those events. Great minds think alike, so I guess I don't have such a great mind after all...
I can't wait for the next April fools joke.
When I tried out Xfire 1.104 beta and saw how the new sounds were used, I thought that it was a really brilliant idea since:
- No one in their right mind would have the sounds enabled anyway, they are just so horrible, now there are new ones
- It makes no sense to receive feedback on sending messages (hey, you just pressed Enter, congratulations!)
- It makes little sense to receive a sound when you also see the message appear on screen at the same time. If you have the chat window open in foreground then you are obviously expecting a message very soon and are looking at it.
But... It seems the community thinks differently. I am very surprised that so many people came to complain of the change. I predicted there would be two kinds of responses to the update:
- People welcoming new sounds, even though they are not so much better than old ones
- People who just ignore because they don't use sounds anyway
I completely missed the impossible group, people who actually liked the Xfire sounds. I still cannot understand how someone could like those sounds or would even want sound to be played on those events. Great minds think alike, so I guess I don't have such a great mind after all...
I can't wait for the next April fools joke.
regshx - Registry editing shell tool
2009-01-22 2:22 PM PST
I made a tool that is used to edit Windows registry. It differs from regedit that you use it from command line and it has some options the regular Registry Editor is missing (such as search&replace).
For more info and downloads, go here: http://my.opera.com/godjonez/blog/2009/01/22/regshx-registry-editing-shell-tool
For more info and downloads, go here: http://my.opera.com/godjonez/blog/2009/01/22/regshx-registry-editing-shell-tool
Free Audigy
2008-12-11 5:18 PM PST
In some previous blog posts I have shown a classic CD-ROM drive and Compaq Armada with missing parts among other things found from the University, free to take. This time I got Sound Blaster Audigy 2 PCI card. It had a glue tape on it saying "Broken?" (here translated to English for your understanding, the original text was in Finnish). That question mark really brought my interest level up; what if the card still works...
First as a precaution I tried the sound card in older Linux server computer. Sure enough it detected the sound card and even the firewire and game ports on it. So at least the card was not that badly broken, it could at least identify itself.
Next step was to move the card to my main computer to compare if the sound quality in a PCI sound card from 2002 is better than the quality of integrated Realtek HD Audio codec AC883 from 2006.
There wasn't a free place for the card in my computer case. Two out of three PCI slots were free (one is taken by AGEIA PhysX 100), but the back panel already had extra USB stuff at their place, so some re-ordering had to be done. While doing that, I also removed the fan speed controller of my Zalman cooler for Radeon X1900 and connected the fan directly to motherboard. Or at least I tried to connect it...
Unlike the old Linux installation, Windows XP couldn't find drivers to the card out of the box. However, as I allowed the driver wizard to access Windows Update, it did eventually find some kind of drivers for all of the components. And to my surprise and delight, I did get sound out of it and even in 4 channel mode (it supports more but I only have 4 speakers).
Of course I wanted to test if Xfire's video capture with sound would work with this card. I started up Portal, only to find out I had old settings on it, so I started adjusting the graphics settings for my new widescreen monitor. Just when I was about to start up the game, my monitor suddenly lost signal and it appeared as if my computer just died.
The first thought was...
First as a precaution I tried the sound card in older Linux server computer. Sure enough it detected the sound card and even the firewire and game ports on it. So at least the card was not that badly broken, it could at least identify itself.
Next step was to move the card to my main computer to compare if the sound quality in a PCI sound card from 2002 is better than the quality of integrated Realtek HD Audio codec AC883 from 2006.
There wasn't a free place for the card in my computer case. Two out of three PCI slots were free (one is taken by AGEIA PhysX 100), but the back panel already had extra USB stuff at their place, so some re-ordering had to be done. While doing that, I also removed the fan speed controller of my Zalman cooler for Radeon X1900 and connected the fan directly to motherboard. Or at least I tried to connect it...
Unlike the old Linux installation, Windows XP couldn't find drivers to the card out of the box. However, as I allowed the driver wizard to access Windows Update, it did eventually find some kind of drivers for all of the components. And to my surprise and delight, I did get sound out of it and even in 4 channel mode (it supports more but I only have 4 speakers).
Of course I wanted to test if Xfire's video capture with sound would work with this card. I started up Portal, only to find out I had old settings on it, so I started adjusting the graphics settings for my new widescreen monitor. Just when I was about to start up the game, my monitor suddenly lost signal and it appeared as if my computer just died.
The first thought was...
Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix
2008-12-01 8:31 AM PST
As you should know already, I am a fan of OverClocked ReMix community arranged remixes of video game music. While normally they just create remixes of video game music for us to enjoy and do not get any bad word from the game companies, this time it has gone beyond expectations...
The new game from Capcom, Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, contains an official soundtrack composed by OverClocked ReMix community!
Not only is the music officially in the game, the best part is that -- like with all OC ReMix releases -- you can download the whole soundtrack for free from the Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix Official Soundtrack page. You even get the soundtrack in two formats; high quality MP3 files for your portable players and another version encoded using lossless FLAC compression for the best possible sound quality one can get.
I know I like to get quality production for free in a completely legal way. If you like it too, show your support and spread the news; the more people to know about OC ReMix and their awesome work, the better! An easy way to show your support is to Digg the article
I hope you enjoy OC ReMix as much as I do.
The new game from Capcom, Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, contains an official soundtrack composed by OverClocked ReMix community!
Not only is the music officially in the game, the best part is that -- like with all OC ReMix releases -- you can download the whole soundtrack for free from the Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix Official Soundtrack page. You even get the soundtrack in two formats; high quality MP3 files for your portable players and another version encoded using lossless FLAC compression for the best possible sound quality one can get.
I know I like to get quality production for free in a completely legal way. If you like it too, show your support and spread the news; the more people to know about OC ReMix and their awesome work, the better! An easy way to show your support is to Digg the article
I hope you enjoy OC ReMix as much as I do.
This was a WEIRD conversation
2008-11-21 2:31 PM PST
So some person, I don't know who, I don't know why he was on my friends list and when had I added him, messaged me just now. The only thing I know about this guy is that he was banned from Xfire's forums 2 weeks after he created his Xfire account. Here's the chat log for your amusement:
wut?
wut?
Operation resurrection - part 2
2008-10-16 12:59 PM PDT
It's alive! Well, sort of.
Compaq Armada 1130 running memtest, click image for larger version
After trying with various different power sources, finally one power adaptor, 24 V, 1.5 A, managed to get the batterlyless notebook computer to start up. Of course the actual power plug did not fit the connector, so some hacking was in order to make it work.
The power connector that used to be in the computer
The power cord does not go to the back of the case, where it should have been, but goes in through the PCMCIA slot...
And then it goes inside the computer to where the power connector used to be. You can also see the markers we did for where the Hard Disk and such should be. Note that due to the width restrictions in Xfire Blogs, you do not see the whole image. Scroll this area right to see the rest.
Close up shot on the power connection, the wires were soldered to the motherboard in place where the power connector was soldered in.
Naturally, since the big battery is missing and the on-board battery is pretty much dead, none of the system settings - such as date and time - are saved when the computer is powered off. And since there is no hard drive installed, all it can do is run FreeDOS from a floppy now.
PS. It was my friend who did the hacking mostly. After all, it was also his idea to try to fix that up in the first place. More information at his blog.
Compaq Armada 1130 running memtest, click image for larger version
After trying with various different power sources, finally one power adaptor, 24 V, 1.5 A, managed to get the batterlyless notebook computer to start up. Of course the actual power plug did not fit the connector, so some hacking was in order to make it work.
The power connector that used to be in the computer
The power cord does not go to the back of the case, where it should have been, but goes in through the PCMCIA slot...
And then it goes inside the computer to where the power connector used to be. You can also see the markers we did for where the Hard Disk and such should be. Note that due to the width restrictions in Xfire Blogs, you do not see the whole image. Scroll this area right to see the rest.
Close up shot on the power connection, the wires were soldered to the motherboard in place where the power connector was soldered in.
Naturally, since the big battery is missing and the on-board battery is pretty much dead, none of the system settings - such as date and time - are saved when the computer is powered off. And since there is no hard drive installed, all it can do is run FreeDOS from a floppy now.
PS. It was my friend who did the hacking mostly. After all, it was also his idea to try to fix that up in the first place. More information at his blog.
Google Chrome beta
2008-09-02 1:47 PM PDT
Today Google released their own web browser, named Chrome.
This is what the new browser from the search engine giant looks like.
Even though Google claims this browser was built completely from ground up, it surely looks like it was based on Mozilla Firefox. If not based on code, at least many ideas and functionality guidelines are clearly the same.
Even if the browser is built completely from scratch, the rendering engine is not. Google Chrome seems to use the WebKit engine, the same that is used by Apple's Safari browser.
The browser itself is very simple and -- thanks for the simplicity -- quite fast, especially on JavaScript and AJAX execution. Indeed, the browser does use a fast V8 engine not used in other major browsers currently for scripting.
With very little features, I was surprised to find that it has quite nice inspector built-in. You can click on the page elemnts to see them highlighted in the HTML structure and likewise.
The inspector screen
However, it seems like this inspector is quite a CPU hog. If you just keep it open a while, it will start consuming all it can drain from a single CPU core. Especially the second tab which lists different loaded elements seems to start lagging pretty bad.
The browser is currently only available for Windows XP and Windows Vista, but Google promised they would soon have Linux and other OS versions available.
Annoyingly enough, for me the browser has been made too simple. You cannot choose where to install it, it goes to your local user profile, under Local Settings. Not only that, it also installs Google updater that periodically checks for updates for the browser and other Google products you have installed, I guess. Naturally, it is also added to automatically start up when you log in to Windows. The installer gave virtually no options, well, at least it did ask if I would like to have a desktop and Quick launch icons.
If you wish to try it yourself, head on to the homepage: http://www.google.com/chrome
This is what the new browser from the search engine giant looks like.
Even though Google claims this browser was built completely from ground up, it surely looks like it was based on Mozilla Firefox. If not based on code, at least many ideas and functionality guidelines are clearly the same.
Even if the browser is built completely from scratch, the rendering engine is not. Google Chrome seems to use the WebKit engine, the same that is used by Apple's Safari browser.
The browser itself is very simple and -- thanks for the simplicity -- quite fast, especially on JavaScript and AJAX execution. Indeed, the browser does use a fast V8 engine not used in other major browsers currently for scripting.
With very little features, I was surprised to find that it has quite nice inspector built-in. You can click on the page elemnts to see them highlighted in the HTML structure and likewise.
The inspector screen
However, it seems like this inspector is quite a CPU hog. If you just keep it open a while, it will start consuming all it can drain from a single CPU core. Especially the second tab which lists different loaded elements seems to start lagging pretty bad.
The browser is currently only available for Windows XP and Windows Vista, but Google promised they would soon have Linux and other OS versions available.
Annoyingly enough, for me the browser has been made too simple. You cannot choose where to install it, it goes to your local user profile, under Local Settings. Not only that, it also installs Google updater that periodically checks for updates for the browser and other Google products you have installed, I guess. Naturally, it is also added to automatically start up when you log in to Windows. The installer gave virtually no options, well, at least it did ask if I would like to have a desktop and Quick launch icons.
If you wish to try it yourself, head on to the homepage: http://www.google.com/chrome
Operation resurrection - part 1
2008-08-27 5:13 PM PDT
Late night with Compaq Armada 1130, episode name Resurrection.
You may have read from my previous blog posts that I can get some weird computer or electronics stuff free from the University.
It's about that again, this time an old half-portable Compaq Armada 1130.
It seems to be missing the hard drive, RAM modules, the battery and a compatible power adaptor.
Oh, and one key from the keyboard
Some photos: (phear my image effects!)
So the ambitious project is to resurrect this ancient beauty. Now if the replacement parts were anywhere available, for cheap or even better for free... If they are available anywhere at all.
If anything nice happnes with this little one, more blog entries will follow.
You may have read from my previous blog posts that I can get some weird computer or electronics stuff free from the University.
It's about that again, this time an old half-portable Compaq Armada 1130.
It seems to be missing the hard drive, RAM modules, the battery and a compatible power adaptor.
Oh, and one key from the keyboard
Some photos: (phear my image effects!)
So the ambitious project is to resurrect this ancient beauty. Now if the replacement parts were anywhere available, for cheap or even better for free... If they are available anywhere at all.
If anything nice happnes with this little one, more blog entries will follow.
