CAN I BE OF ASSISTANCE?
Tuesday, April 18
Sunday, April 16
360 Nits
It's a noisy little bugger.
And it's region-locked. Retards. It's hard to even find a region-locked DVD player in Australia, except for the Playstation and the Xbox. And now, of course, the 360.
Graphics are pretty darn good; games are pretty bad so far. I should probably have got Kameo instead of Oblivion.
It really is noisy, isn't it? I said, it really is... Never mind.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
08:59 AM
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Theres apparently a region unlock disk for the PS2. So that just leaves the various incarnations of the Xbox.
Have to say I'm jonesing for the Nintendo Revolution. So far the DS games have been excellent. Prying it away from my kids is another matter.
Posted by: Andrew at Sunday, April 16 2006 09:55 AM (0585Z)
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Too Many Thingies
Okay, so I have three main computers at home (there's another one, my older Linux box, which is currently switched off but which I really should plug in again). And the Windows PCs (notebook and desktop) both have VMWare Player and Virtual PC installed. And I've also set up Remote Desktop. So although there are only three physical machines, there are seven logical machines.
Since four of those are running Windows XP, I keep getting them mixed up. I'm posting this from my desktop PC, but I'm typing it on my notebook. I didn't mean to do that; it just happened. Maybe it would be a good idea to change the theme...
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
08:52 AM
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Pixi,
I am working on getting that troll off The Jawa Report. Saw you had taken commets down. He uses a script and IP thingy. I can ban his IP but last time it took 5. Sorry to be such a bother and sorry we did not get to him earlier. I'll try and discourage him for now. Vinne shold have copies of comments.
Howie
Paduan beotch to Dr. Rusty Shackleford.
Posted by: Howie at Monday, April 17 2006 08:45 PM (D3+20)
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Oblivion, Part Two
Okay, reversing the Y-axis control helps with the motion sickness. Too much time spent flying starships, I guess.
Still a pretty crappy opening to the game.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
08:50 AM
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One, Two, Five!
Three, sir!
Three!
I'll need to take a break for a bit - other things I have to attend to - but I'll have some more episodes for you next week.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
02:42 AM
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Pixy, you're the
ginchiest!!!
Posted by: Wonderduck at Sunday, April 16 2006 04:44 PM (7+BNY)
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Maybe so, but you still can't borrow my comb.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, April 16 2006 08:49 PM (M3S6k)
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"Kookie, Kookie, lend me your comb..."
Wow, man, I haven't thought of that song in YEARS...
Posted by: Wonderduck at Monday, April 17 2006 02:15 AM (7+BNY)
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Saturday, April 15
Kei And Yuri, You Don't Know?
You've never heard of the Dirty Pair, the hottest -
Scariest -
Trouble consultants in the history of history itself?
Episode Two.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
12:03 PM
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Oblivion
Sucks.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
06:08 AM
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That was quick. The game is
purportedly immense. Does it really suck that bad, that quick. Or maybe it just starts poorly?
(I've been waiting for this game for a long time. I'm still a graphics card upgrade away at this point, and I'm wondering if it's worth it.)
Posted by: Shamus at Saturday, April 15 2006 10:02 AM (GDT1x)
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It's probably just the beginning. Plus the combination of the controls and the graphics gives me motion sickness. Bah.
I suspect this one may be better suited to playing on a PC.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, April 15 2006 10:04 AM (nimvq)
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Don't forget, there is a 'hidden' options screen too: alt-F-something-or-other. It has the switch for stand-alone DivX player compatability (which I use) and some other gadgets.
Posted by: ct at Saturday, April 15 2006 11:39 AM (iH6Wf)
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Alt-F8 and Alt-F9, yep. I needed to use those to force a consistent frame rate so I could reassemble the AVI files afterwards.
Not sure what that has to do with Oblivion, though. ;)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, April 15 2006 11:47 AM (nimvq)
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I've heard that Bethesda ported the PC version from the Xbox version. So the controls are roughly the same.
Apparently there are mods for the PC to fix that though. If I do get it. It'll be on the PC where you aren't locked into buying mods from Live only.
Posted by: Andrew at Sunday, April 16 2006 09:58 AM (0585Z)
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I can't believe it, my co-worker just bought a car for $53528. Isn't that crazy!
Posted by: Betsy Markum at Thursday, May 25 2006 12:03 AM (2ALWj)
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From The Ship. Sun. Boom! Wonderful! Dept.
Episode One. No, not that Episode One.
This Episode One.
Forums here. Or comment here. I'll be interested to know what the more polyglot of my readership think of the translation, which is not mine, but one I found several years ago.* I tidied it up, fixed the grammatical errors and some inconsistencies (the spelling wasn't too bad), and retimed everything, because the timing was kind of poopy. A tenth of a second makes a big difference, and some of the titles were off by a second or more. Um, anyway, the translation, from my limited Japanese, seems reasonable except for the opening song, which doesn't sound right to me. I have an alternate translation of the song - actually, two alternate translations - and also the transliterated Japanese lyrics, so I'll post those over at the Language Lab tomorrow.
Ooh, And It Makes Me Wonder...
One thing of interest - I'm not sure quite what to make of it - between 1997 and 1998, fifteen groups set out to fansub the original Dirty Pair TV series. Only one (Fuzzy Productions) completed the job, and they have vanished from the face of the net.** Makes me wonder if there is some kind of curse on Dirty Pair fansubs.
If you suddenly find one day that the whole of mu.nu has disappeared leaving nothing but a smoking crater and a mile-high stack of damage claims, at least you'll know why.
*Here, as it turns out.
** I actually found a copy of the Fuzzy Production version. It's a completely different translation to the one I'm using, which might be useful for cross-checking. Unfortunately, it looks like a sixth-generation tape run through a budget 1998-era video-capture card and then later transcoded from MPEG-1 to DIVX with the quality slider set to "crap". In fact, it probably is a sixth-generation tape etc etc.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
02:52 AM
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Friday, April 14
From The Hug Him And Squeeze Him And Call Him George Dept.
Xbox 360. Mine mine mine mine mine!
more...
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
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But Pixy, I thought you poo pooed the Xbox 360 ?
Sure Oblivion is good but its available on the PC as well ?
Ah how quickly the worm turns. :)
So I guess we won't hear from you for quite awhile. I've heard that Oblivion has been swallowing even the hardcore WoW players.
Shouldn't that be call him "Bill" ?
Posted by: Andrew at Friday, April 14 2006 07:22 AM (0585Z)
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Well, DOA 4 only came out today, and Oblivion seems to be getting universally favourable reviews. My problem wasn't with the 360 hardware (which is pretty nice), but with the games available for the Australian launch. They're getting some more titles out now, so I decided to snaffle one.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, April 14 2006 07:59 AM (oyvZL)
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Oh, and my PC only has a 6600GT in it. The 360 has a lot more graphics power than that, and it sounds like Oblivion needs it.
And since my motherboard is Socket 478/AGP/DDR, there's no good upgrade path; I have to replace everything at once.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, April 14 2006 08:04 AM (oyvZL)
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We're in the exact same boat on that front, but based on the test I ran
here (may have to install a browser plugin or two), I'm squeeking in just under the "recommended" line. It still looks ok. I've only run into real trouble once in the high grass east of Anvil. My frame rate dropped to near 1, but I think that's more to do with a bug than a genuinne slowdown.
Posted by: Will at Friday, April 14 2006 09:50 AM (Yx471)
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The 360 looks a darn sight better. Certainly.
Except for the ginormous mega huge power supply !
I'm tempted to get Oblivion but I only just gave up a massive timesink. Not sure I want to replace it with another. But then its a one off cost as opposed to a monthly fee.
An upgrade would cost about as much as a 360, wouldn't it ? But then you wouldn't be able to play polygon enhanced action figures. :)
Ah. I remember the good old days when a 6600GT was a decent video card. Sigh.
Posted by: Andrew at Friday, April 14 2006 11:16 AM (0585Z)
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The power supply really is a brick, isn't it?
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, April 14 2006 08:09 PM (nimvq)
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Consider the XB360's power supply in comparison to the one that's in your computer.
Not QUITE as big anymore, eh?
Posted by: Wonderduck at Friday, April 14 2006 11:44 PM (7+BNY)
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It's nearly as big, and my PC's power supply is rated at 480W vs. just 203W for the 360. (The 360 doesn't have do run ten disk drives, after all.)
Actually, I suspect that the real difference is that my PC's power supply has two fans in it, and the 360 unit just has a great big heatsink.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, April 14 2006 11:57 PM (nimvq)
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I have to keep my husband very busy to keep his mind off of 360. In my opinion, we haven't used our regular xbox often enough to warrant the purchase of 360. We've been busy with our other obsessions.
Posted by: Linda at Saturday, April 15 2006 10:15 AM (4gch1)
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I'm holding out for PS3 and the Cell. Some people are claiming it'll have near movie-CGI-quality graphics -- during
play.
Really though, I tend to like everything better on PC.
Andrew: WOW? Everquest? Realms of Despair (lol)? Or did a kid leave for college?
Posted by: TallDave at Sunday, April 16 2006 03:51 AM (H8Wgl)
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Dave: The timesink was WoW. I'd taken a three month break but went back to it on a two month game card as I enticed a friend into giving it a go.
Altho I was happy to see it expire so I could attend to the real life grind instead.
Unfortunately my kids are nowhere near leaving for college yet. :)
Posted by: Andrew at Sunday, April 16 2006 09:52 AM (0585Z)
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Thursday, April 13
More! More! I'm Still Not Satisfied!
Need... Faster... Notebook...
Video editing on a Celeron M 1.4 is not a lot of fun.
Unfortunately, my choices are basically (a) a Pentium 4 notebook which weighs twice as much and has a 15-minute battery life, (b) a Pentium M or Core notebook which is 50% faster, tops, or (c) wait until there's a low-power version of Conroe.
Or (d), of course: Wait 'til I get home and run the job there. A Northwood Pentium 4 2.6 may be a long way from the latest and greatest, but it does chew through the video at a healthy pace.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
04:14 AM
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I can attest that the Pentium Ms rip through video very nicely. Thats rendering times of Vegas for my home projects. Not had to crank up virtualdub much.
Core Duos have been crashing through the $2K mark if your not too fussy about video card and screen res.
I'm waiting for Conroe as it handles virtualisation and alot of nifty other stuff.
Posted by: Andrew at Thursday, April 13 2006 08:10 PM (RWEVY)
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Pixy,
Have you figured out the trick to getting subtitles burned into the avi? I've been following the instructions given with AutoGK, but the preview refuses to show the subs no matter what combination of settings I use.
Posted by: Will at Thursday, April 13 2006 09:08 PM (Yx471)
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I haven't tried it with AutoGK, since the DVDs I'm working with don't have subtitles. I'm using VirtualDub with the subtitle plugin for mine.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, April 13 2006 10:04 PM (2wIOr)
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Andrew, the big thing about Conroe (for video editing) is that it has a full 128-bit FPU, where every previous Intel chip (and AMD too) has only a 64-bit FPU. Instant doubled performance on SSE2 code.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, April 13 2006 10:05 PM (2wIOr)
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I figured it out. When you grab a single PGC from within a VTS, it indexes the subtitles from the beginning of the VTS independent of the PGC. So the subtitles that need to start a couple seconds into the short video clip were being delayed by a full three minutes. My 3 minutes 26 second clip thought the subs started 3 minutes 7 seconds into the file. I manually tweaked the subtitle file with a negative delay and everything is golden.
Now I have useful avi's of the Pretty Sammy TV
omake *wink wink*
(Well only one so far, but I'm going to crunch the rest as time permits.)
Posted by: Will at Saturday, April 15 2006 12:00 AM (Yx471)
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