Gaming is fun but my trusty equipment has come past its best days. Keys are not as responsive as they used to be and sometimes even get stuck. My mousepad has started falling apart months ago and even the seasoned Diamondback seems as if it has become tired. Time to get some fresh air onto my desktop with some nice Razer hardware:
Jul
08
Zur Zeit läuft eine Petition im deutschen Bundestag gegen das Computerspieleverbot. Lass dir nicht vom Aktionismus unserer Regierung so ans Bein pissen! Tu was gegen die Staatswillkür!
Jun
23
Bis zum 28.07.2009 läuft auf der Website des dt. Bundestages eine Onlinepetition gegen das geplante Verbote von Paintball, Laserdome, Airsoft und ähnlichen Spielen.
Wenn Du eines dieser Spiele schonmal gespielt hast oder es in der Zukunft mal ausprobieren möchtest, dann gib deine Stimme für diese Petition!
May
03
What is this about? Start reading at the beginning!
Stephen stared into the whiskey glass. Sunken in thoughts he listened to the soft hum of the lamp above him and the dampened noise of the bar outside the back room. He retrieved a small device from the inside of his coat, held it in front of his face and examined it thoughtfully.
He pressed a small button on the device andthe discussion which just had taken place filled the room. Stephen had been into this kind of business for too long to not have an insurance up his sleeve for this kind of job.
Stephen did not care for who the suit really was. All these Mr. Smiths or Blacks or Andrews or whatever stupid alias they gave themselves. They all had their skeleton in the closet. And they wanted Stephen to get rid of it.
With a deep breath he got up from the chair and gave the suitcase on the table a last suspicious look. Without a word, Stephen left through the door and dove into the noise on the other side.
Mar
24
What is this about? Start reading at the beginning!
People think the filth of the city is in the poor districts. The bummer. The whore. The cutpurse. The drug dealer at the corner. I have been the filth. Now I am even less than them. I don’t exist. I am the shadow between the worlds. I do the work no one wants to do or talk about. A ghost. No one cares about me.
At least they are filth.
In front of Stephen however sat the scum. He couldn’t tell which one is worse. The dealer who sells Red Ice to teens or the father who sells his daughter to a mega corp. This guy with his expensive Armani suit, accurate necktie and clean shave. He smelled of wealth. He radiated this sense of arrogance which only the scum of the city can possess.
“So we have an agreement then?”
The suit’s slick voice sounded damp in the dimly lit back room. Stephen took a deep breath. The air smelled of cold smoke and dried sweat. The sweat of fear.
“Fifty grand now. And another fifty on delivery. It’s a lot of money for that kind of job. You must be loving her badly.”
Stephen’s rough voice cut through the silence like a hacksaw. The suit’s slim smile faded.
The scum does not like being pointed at their sins. They never do. It shows them, they’re no way better than the filth they so much despise.
They shaked hands. The suit left. Stephen opened the suitcase. Fifty grand.
He emptied his whiskey glass.
Mar
23
A word from the author: This is the first part of my serial story, which is supposed to grow into a short story or maybe even small novel. I’ll be posting a few paragraphs about once a day. Nothing is pre-planned in this story, I will write everything as it comes to my mind. Let’s see where this will lead to …
All she felt was cold when she woke up. It felt wet and damp. Thick rain drops splashed in her face. The pain in her head blurred vision and hearing.
Where was she?
She struggled to sit upright and gazed at her surroundings. A gutter. A back alley. She was sitting in a dirty pool of water. Her head almost burst of the pain when she looked up. She didn’t know what happened to her nor who she was.
But for some reason she knew she had to go on.
The young dark haired woman pulled herself up. She reached inside her red leather jacket and touched her rib cage. A flash of pain hushed about her face.
Then, step by step she went down the back alley.
Mar
20
Wolfram Alpha. What does it sound like ? It sounds like technology to me. It may be a new beginning. A new way of understanding. The next Big Thing in the web.
Have you ever typed in a question in natural language in Google? Probably. Have you ever got a useful answer? Probably not. Wolfram Alpha is going to change that. It might even change the way we retrieve factual knowledge from the web. It will make us think about how we will use computers in 20 or 30 years from now.
Stephen Wolfram is the mind working behind Wolfram Alpha. He is known for developing the renowned computational software Matematica and his book A new Kind of Science.
In his latest blog post, Stephen talks about Wolfram|Alpha, where it came from and where it will go to. A very interesting read.
Fifty years ago, when computers were young, people assumed that they’d quickly be able to handle all these kinds of things.
And that one would be able to ask a computer any factual question, and have it compute the answer.
He also invited Nova Spivack to his labs to have a thourough look on the system. Nova reported his findings in a blog post over at TechCrunch.
Wolfram Alpha is like plugging into a vast electronic brain. It provides extremely impressive and thorough answers to a wide range of questions asked in many different ways[...]
One can hardly imagine where this will lead to if the technology turns out to actually working. I can only say, that I am excited!
Mar
19
Lenovo Thinkpad X300
A few weks ago I got to chose a company sponsored notebook. My boss said ‘Get a Thinkpad, and take a light one, you’re going to carry it around all day!’ And so I did! Being a novice on portable computing I browsed the web for Thinkpads and soon found the X-series. After a week of mind boggling I decided for the X300. It sported all the technical features I want from a notebook, namely small, lightweight, durable, touchpad and optical drive / burner. I would rather have chosen its successor for its added speed and storage capacity, but it somewhat busted my boss’ price limited.
When it arrived I was stunned by its simplistic but sophisticated design. True, an Apple cultist wouldn’t drool over its design, but the firm understatement radiated from this machine really appealed to me. I couldn’t believe how sturdy it was compared to its 1.5 kg of weight. The display was as expected mediocre but it would be sufficient since I won’t do any graphics related work on it.
I won’t give a thorough review here, you can find plenty of those scattered throughout the web if you’re interested, and rather concentrate on the little details which appeared to me an put this notebook a few levels above the Joe Average notebook.
The Keyboard
I just have to give it credit here. It is super crisp and very well laid out. Some reviews complained about it being “overloaded” but I couldn’t disagree more. Yeah, many keys are mapped with 2 or 3 functions, but so what? I like having all important functions accessible at a keypress and after a small accustomization time the keyboard is just a dream come true to type on.
Battery
The battery has lots of stamina, powering the ‘book for about 5 hours in energy saving mode. You can change batteries easily and they are pretty lightweight. Battery time is greatly reduced when changing to balanced mode or performance mode, however even then it provides more than 2 hours of battery power while playing a DVD from its built-in DVD burner.
ThinkVantage
Every important functionality can be accessed via the ThinkVantage Productivity Center. Online help, system updates, connectivity configuration or beamer display output – everything can be easily and quickly accessed from there. I wish I had something similar on my desktop PC!
The Dark Side
One thing that is really a downside is the mediocre display. Viewing angles are very limited and even though it has no glare panel, you have a hard time reading the display if there’s a window in your back and you’re not running the display on 100% brightness (which you probably always want when running on battery power). Maybe I am a bit picky here since I have a HP L2275w for my desktop PC. Guess I am going to get used to it sooner or later.
Conclusion
I love it. Despite its faulty display. It is the best piece of hardware I got in years and should I need a notebook for private use, I’d always shoot for a Thinkpad first. They’re well built, intelligently engineered, have averything you could want from a notebook built in and are just plain cool!
Feb
10
Blender 3D
So … I got myself into something deep. I have tinkered with making or modding games every now and then, but never really got anything even semi-serious done. A heavily modded Doom 2 (!!) map was probably the most advanced thing I always did.
However, I never lost interest in making games. Having played video games for the past twentiesomething years and participating in a few beta tests, I at least got some insight of good (and bad) game mechanics.
A friend of mine, a few others and myself have been discussing for quite some time now about a game that we would like to create and all the discussion now slowly come to fruit. We’re really going to start developing in early 2010!
So… I got myself Blender and will start learning 3D-biz, and will put all my earlier tries with Maya and 3DSMax to fruit.
My first project will be a simple character. Simplistic geometry, clean and simplistic but complete texture maps and a few animations will probably be more than enough for starters. I’ll keep you up to date.
