sullust.org

God damn I want to play Guitar Hero so much I can’t stand it. Why did I have to break my PS2?!

This is to all the World of Warcraft folks out there, I’m getting close to burning out for like the 4th time on WoW if I don’t find some people to play with, so I’m appealing to you (yes YOU!) to convince Mr. Lara to at least give WoW a shot. Her nice boyfriend will buy it for her and everything.

Lara and I both got a computer at virtually the same time. She got a Dell with a Pentium D (the badge says that VIIV thing that nobody can figure out what is) and a 20″ widescreen monitor. I got a 20″ iMac with the Intel chip. Our computers are identical in pretty much every way including price. I’m going to be bouncing back and forth between the two for a while I’m sure. What interests me about this is the comparison at the price point. For the money we got the same monitor (effectively) and dual core processors. The only real difference (aside from the obvious operating system) is the the form factor. Her monitor alone takes up more space than the iMac. Mine is ultimately a bit more expensive, but not enough to really skew this in my mind.

The thing that’s stood out the most to me at this point is the display and the way context matters. I originally used Windows 95 on a 15″ monitor set to 640×480, the most real estate I’ve ever had was two 17″ monitors at 1280×1024 each. The point is that I have a lot of context in what real estate means with Windows. Her monitor is a 20″ widescreen set to 1680×1050 and it feels mighty spacious. I can say for certain now that I’d rather have 2/3 the horizontal space if it means I can have it on a continuous screen. With OS X I have no context at all, I’ve used a 15″ iMac for maybe two or three hours tops. 1680×1050 on a 20″ widescreen is my starting point, it’s the basis of my context and it just feels adequate. I can’t really imagine trying to use OS X on a screen that wasn’t that big.

The other thing that stands out right now is aesthetics. Obviously the iMac looks better (or at least it’s obvious to me), but I’m surprised at how satisfying it is to just have a simple slot in the side of the machine that sucks dvds in. Having a tray jut out just seems primitive now. I like that there are no visible buttons on the machine, that all the wires stick into the back of the monitor, and the whole thing is pretty much self contained. I just better hope to hell that I can live with a 250GB hard drive for the life of this machine.

In the end it will obviously come down to the operating system and performance. I’m still in the honeymoon phase with OS X while still being a novice so I can’t make a really fair comparison on OS usefulness yet. Performance may also be an issue of context. The only time I put any strain on a Windows computer is at work and it’s a piece of shit, so when I try to do the same things on Lara’s computer and they fly it really stands out. On the iMac however I’m not really doing much to push the machine so I don’t really know if this is dramatically faster than anything else.

I bought the mac assuming that most everything I would do on it would be normal home user stuff and that any high performance activities would be done on my laptop and I think that’s pretty much how it’s going to work out. I was and am hoping that in the end, OS X will be much more enjoyable to use for those tasks but wasn’t expecting to have the oportunity to do this kind of side by side comparison. I look forward to seeing how my opinion of the two platforms changes over time.

p.s. Considering it’s running at the (to me) insane resolution of 1680×1050 WoW is running surprisingly well. The graphics quality sliders are (in agregate) set to medium-high and it seems to clip along nicely. Also, props to Blizzard for putting both Windows and os-x versions of the game in one box and for getting an intel build out in less than a month.

Via Candy Addict, a game where there are 12 chocolate straws shaped like bullets. 11 are filled with delicious goodness, 1 is filled with a hot chillie (with an “e”). This game sounds pretty fun, the site selling it is british and the game itself is 5GBP, don’t know if it’s available in the US or what it would cost to ship it across the ocean…

Russian Roulette Chocolate

Here’s a question to my Mac friends out there (and I know you’re out there). I’ve got a mac with 10.latest on it and I want to have a folder (say on my desktop) that points to a remote folder on a server (say cornbreadtree) that I can browse and update in real time. Obviously Apple has that .mac crap with something called iFolder, but I don’t want to pay them money and I don’t want to be locked down on their servers.

I see Novell/Ximian also has a product called iFolder that has an os-x version and I’m assuming it at least includes a client. I can’t test it just now. Assuming our benevolent sys-admin would allow the iFolder server to be run, does anyone know if it works well? Is it even a little bit secure?

Looks like I’ve found the mother-load of good restaurants close(ish) to Chapel Hill. Mind you they’re not in Chapel Hill, but Durham isn’t too far. Giorgios looks to be some restaurant conglomerate, but at least it’s a local one, and they’ve got everything from a simple(ish) dinner spot to a $50+ a plate steak house plus a couple more lounge like places.

In honor of new LJ theme, I give you: cuteoverload.com

It’s been a while since this has happened. When I was in school I used to get in this rhythm where I would stay up 24-36 hours and then crash out of sheer exhaustion. It wasn’t that I had any particular form of insomnia, it’s just that I didn’t want to sleep. It’s been a couple of years, but that’s sort of come back the last week or so, and it’s getting stronger. It’s not that I absolutely can’t sleep, if I get in the bed and lay there for an hour or so I’ll go to sleep, but more that my body isn’t telling my brain that it needs sleep and I don’t want to go to sleep. I’m about to go to bed now, but I’ll be making myself because I know, intellectually, that it’s good for me. Right now I feel like I could cruise on until bedtime tomorrow. What’s strange is that I probably could. Sunrise and late afternoons are my worst time, if I can make it until 10 am and 7 pm I’m good until whenever.

The bright side of this is that my mind doesn’t (seem) to wear down when it starts to get really late which means I can actually work on projects and such, in that way it’s great, but at the same time I’m sure it’s doing awful things to my body. Anyway, time for bed.

Okay, so here’s what they don’t tell you about the self cleaning cycle. It’s basically the same as starting a fire in your oven. My eyes are watering and it smells like I just torched half a loaf of bread. Seriously, I can feel the resale value of this place collapsing.

Holy God I don’t think you can really imagine this. You know that smell that comes off a candle right after you blow it out? Really smoky and charred and not pleasant at all? Magnify that by about 1000. Why does anybody want to do this? I swear it would be more pleasant to just take a family sized bottle of degreaser (now with more toxins!) and get shoulder deep in the oven.

Man alive this is awful. I’m sure Lara will post about it later. Next time I do this I’m going out of town first. They should put this up there with bug bombs. Need to put a tarp around this place.

What’s extra crazy about it is that it’s a new stove! I’ve only used the oven two or three times!

So here’s a little tip for all my friends out there. Do not start a self cleaning cycle on your oven immediately before guests come over. That shit be stinkin’!