Now? You want to do this now?
I have a right to know! I'm getting married in four hundred and thirty years!
Tuesday, February 28
4.2!
Eight years late, but finally here: A mainstream microprocessor that
runs at more than 4GHz.
At its launch in November 2000, the Pentium 4 ran at 1.5GHz, but it did less per cycle than the Pentium III or Athlon, and wasn't all that great. Particularly since Intel initially tied it to the overpriced and underwhelming Rambus memory.
In 2001 Intel reached 2GHz, in 2002 2.8GHz, and by 2004 3.8Ghz.
And there they got stuck. Unable to increase clock speeds, they went back to the drawing board, abandoning the Pentium 4 for the Pentium III-derived Pentium M, Core, Core 2, and now the i3/i5/i7 family.
And eight years later, neither Intel nor AMD had reached the 4GHz barrier at stock speeds (not overclocked or turbo mode). My new systems can reach 4.2GHz in turbo mode, but standard speed is only 3.6GHz.
IBM will happily sell you a 5GHz server if you have the money, but for mainstream systems, the AMD FX-4170 has the fastest clocks around.
Unfortunately for AMD, a slower clocked Intel i5 2500 will run faster for most applications, but I've been waiting a long time for this, so let me enjoy it for a little while.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
11:46 PM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
| Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 199 words, total size 1 kb.
Saturday, February 25
Deviated
I've wanted for some time to have better logos and logotypes, and if possible, mascots, for the mee.nuniverse. Ideally I'd like to get a co-ordinated set of logos and mascots for each of the domains and system components.
I don't know if I can afford to hire a serious professional artist, but I can afford some commissions on deviantArt. The problem there is finding the right artist, because there are a lot of them, and a lot of them are good.
I like
this for mascot characters. It's not exactly a chibi, but I think it strikes a perfect balance of simplicity and clean lines, wholesome cuteness, personality, and just a touch of sexiness.
For logotypes,
this guy seems to have it together - clean, clear, and simple.
I don't know if any of my readers follow deviantArt, but if you do and know of artists you think would suit, and who are open for commissions, please let me know.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
02:55 PM
| Comments (3)
| Add Comment
| Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 161 words, total size 1 kb.
1
One of my favorite artists goes by the name Teru-chan. She has a DA gallery here.
Also Sheezy Art, Hentai-Foundry, and her home page. Plus she's got four collections for sale on DLSite.
I know she does commissions, but it may be tough communicating with her because her English is pretty poor, and you don't speak Japanese.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Saturday, February 25 2012 04:17 PM (+rSRq)
2
She's definitely talented, but her work tends to be a bit more risqué than what I'm looking for.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, February 25 2012 05:48 PM (PiXy!)
Posted by: Wonderduck at Saturday, February 25 2012 10:08 PM (O9XO8)
Hide Comments
| Add Comment
Wednesday, February 22
Farewellaria
Development of awesome 2D mining engineer training system
Terraria has apparently ceased after the very welcome expansion late last year. Two of the original three developers left to pursue other dreams and I can just imagine the feelings of the remaining developer, trying to meet the demands of a million (literally) fans.
Fear not, though, because there's a new game coming from one of the Terraria developers that is basically Terraria in space. Terraria in space with penguins.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
09:15 PM
| Comments (3)
| Add Comment
| Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 83 words, total size 1 kb.
1
You killed it:
Site Temporarily UnavailableWe apologize for the inconvenience. Please contact the webmaster/ tech support immediately to have them rectify this.
error id: "bad_httpd_conf"
Posted by: RickC at Friday, February 24 2012 10:32 AM (/5bLf)
2
Pixynator, did you get the email I sentcha?
Posted by: Wonderduck at Friday, February 24 2012 12:24 PM (ZNgWw)
3
Wonderduck - yep, thanks!
RickC - not my fault, I tells ya!
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, February 24 2012 02:31 PM (PiXy!)
Hide Comments
| Add Comment
My Kittens Just Had Kittens
So, Double Fine, the game company headed by Tim Schafer (
Day of the Tentacle,
Grim Fandango,
Psychonauts) has raised over $2 million on Kickstarter for a new old-school adventure game - five times their original goal, and still going strong.
This has not escaped the attention of other developers of classic games. Brian Fargo (founder of Interplay, creator of
Bard's Tale and
Wasteland)
plans to launch a Kickstarter drive very soon to develop a sequel to
Wasteland.
If you're not familiar with Wasteland, it's the predecessor to Fallout. Fargo didn't have the rights for a direct sequel, so the Black Isle division of Interplay developed Fallout as the next best thing. Possibly the next better thing, because Fallout is a gem.
And Obsidian, the present incarnation of the aforementioned Black Isle, are
also looking into the idea. As Black Isle the team created both the original
Fallout games, both
Icewind Dale games, and
Planescape: Torment, possibly the best computer role-playing game ever. They're currently busy with a couple of projects - they do a lot of work-for-hire - but they have a lot of projects they never got to complete in the
Black Isle days.
It's unlikely that we'll ever see the original vision for Fallout 3 or Baldur's Gate III due to licensing issues, and Torment was a massive project, with 800,000 words of text (about twice as much as Lord of the Rings), but a just-plain-fun party-based isometric dungeon crawler like Icewind Dale is something that likely could and would be funded through Kickstarter.
I loved the Infinity Engine games (Baldur's Gate I & II, Icewind Dale I & II, and Planescape: Torment) and if they were still making them today I'd still be buying them. So if and when those projects show up on Kickstarter, I will leap on them, cash in hand.
Brian and Chris (Avellone, of Obsidian), you hear me? However many of these projects you think you can deliver, me and my money are ready and waiting.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
01:02 AM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
| Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 338 words, total size 3 kb.
Sunday, February 19
It's Not An Addiction!
I was browsing around Kickstarter yesterday, looking for cool projects to throw money at, and there aren't actually all that many that excite me, having already tossed cashbombs in the direction of Rich Burlew's
Order of the Stick reprint drive and Rob Balder's
Efrworld motion comic project.
One that did catch my eye, though, is
The Adventures of the Salamander. It's a series of children's books based on a story the guy wrote when he was five, and recently found while going through stuff his mum had kept (as mums are wont to do). He's now a freelance artist and has illustrated a number of books, but this is the first time he's both written and illustrated something.
Unlike Rich and Rob, I don't know this guy and can't vouch for him, but if you scroll down you can see that he can sure draw some nice salamanders. I thought it worth a few bucks for a PDF set.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
09:25 AM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
| Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 163 words, total size 1 kb.
Tuesday, February 14
Bits
All the parts for
Shana and Lina have now shipped, except for the black Lian-Li drive bay adaptors (convert one 5.25" bay to four 2.5" bays) which are expected late this month, and the Sapphire 7950, which is now in stock at the distributor and should arrive this week. (Update: Shipped!)
I also added a Lian Li EX-503 to the mix - a little (7x9.5x10.5 inches) USB3/eSATA RAID array which nicely complements my existing Lian Li cases and gives me somewhere to put all my spare disks.
So Shana will be configured with a 4TB C drive, a 4TB D drive, and an 8TB E drive, all RAID-5 - something of a step up from the 1.5TB C and E it now has (with E mostly set aside for the daily backups).
All that remains is to cart it all home from the office and put it together.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
11:48 AM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
| Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 149 words, total size 1 kb.
Monday, February 13
I Liked It So Much, I Bought The Source Code
I mentioned in my
recent post on InnovaStudio's Live Editor that while it was a great improvement on the already good Innova Editor, it no longer came with source code, which was now an extra fifteen hundred smackers. In fact, that was the only thing I didn't like about it.
I think they may have been listening, because they just cut the price for the source license from $1500 to $600 - and then offered a 50% introductory discount on top of that. Since that also includes another year of support and updates for the editor itself (which I was due to pay pretty soon), that's not too bad a price, and I paid it.
Another piece of software I was looking to license for mee.nu costs $24 for a single-site non-commercial license, $199 for a 100-site commercial license.... And $75,000 for an OEM license that would allow me to integrate it into Minx. Nice though it is, we won't be seeing that one any time soon.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
10:54 PM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
| Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 177 words, total size 1 kb.
Saturday, February 11
Luvin' It
Luvit is
Node.js for a language that doesn't suck.
Unless you carefully pronounce it as loo-vit, though, the name is pure cheese.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
12:20 AM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
| Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 24 words, total size 1 kb.
Friday, February 10
Kickstartled
Given the runaway success of the Double Fine Adventure Kickstarter drive, I wonder what it would cost to produce new games like the original
X-Com,
Master of Orion II, or
Master of Magic, with exactly the same gameplay but higher resolution graphics.
Or Syndicate, or Populous, or... Ooh, Cannon Fodder.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
10:50 PM
| Comments (1)
| Add Comment
| Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 51 words, total size 1 kb.
1
A good example is
OpenTTD, an open-source version of the classic
Transport Tycoon Deluxe. (All the "
X Tycoon" games came about because of TTD's success.) OpenTTD has quite a few improvements over the original, but you can turn them off and play it just like the classic TTD if you choose.
Posted by: Boviate at Sunday, February 19 2012 08:53 AM (63JPq)
Hide Comments
| Add Comment
Tuesday, February 07
All I Want For Christmas...
Is a database with the structure support and low latency of Redis, the document support of MongoDB, the indexing of Lucene, the robust persistence and map/reduce views of CouchDB, the compact on-disk representation of Kyoto Cabinet, the datatype support of PostgreSQL, and the scalability of Riak.*
Just put a stamp on it and mail it to me, you don't even need to wrap it.
* I've been testing Riak for a new project. Scaling from 1 to 10 threads, throughput grows by a factor of 12.5. I can't explain it, but I'm not going to complain.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
02:59 PM
| Comments (2)
| Add Comment
| Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 101 words, total size 1 kb.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Thursday, February 09 2012 06:02 AM (+rSRq)
2
Yes, I gave up wishing and am writing my own.
PS: after the Preview the form lost the Name/Mail contents, so had to re-enter them in order to Post.
Posted by: ad at Thursday, February 16 2012 10:08 AM (hGCqM)
Hide Comments
| Add Comment
67kb generated in CPU 0.0183, elapsed 0.1631 seconds.
54 queries taking 0.1493 seconds, 362 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.