Is that Tiberium in this product?
I came across this originally walking around Town, and thought “WTF is that Tiberium!?” and thought that maybe people here would be interested to see what looks like Tiberium in the real world. If you don’t know what Tiberium is, then I’m guessing you haven’t played any of the main Command & Conquer games.
Is this Tiberium at the bottom of the image?
Note: Sorry to the people at Sure, I don’t mean to pull your products apart 
Edit: Here’s a link about Tiberium on Wikipedia for those who don’t know. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiberium
Some Fun with A Telephoto Lens…
As promised in my previous thread… I was going to upload some pictures that I took with my dads SLR with its telephoto lens on. On here are only 800px resizes, but I think you can view bigger versions on my Flickr feed, or at the very least when I get my gallery back up and running you will see some nice images.
Comments either here or on the pics 
The #uksnow of January 2010
Now, living in the UK, along with a lot of people, there was a bit of snow here. Apparently, it is the most in over 40 years. I say is, I mean it’s still going on. I think it’s quite fun, how a bit of snow causes so much havoc and problems for 99% of people here. 3mm I believe is all it takes to cause mayhem, so when over a foot falls overnight, hell most certainly breaks.
However, I have a few photos to share of the snow. I will categorise them based on the date I took them. Better versions are ok Flickr, and once I port my gallery here, they will also feature there, so hopefully it works out well.
Gallery for: UKSnow – 5 Jan 2010 -> 12 Jan 2010
I’ve also got some other pictures, but they are going in another post.
ChromiumOS Downloads
Posted by Si in Technology on November 22, 2009
Jumping on the ChromiumOS Downloads, I have built and compiled a version of ChromiumOS, the URL for viewing builds and downloading is available at http://www.spcook.co.uk/chromiumos
OMG AN UPDATE
Posted by Si in Uncategorized on October 26, 2009
Well, the pre-cursor to an update. Just to let people know that watch this space, some cool stuff is coming
No peeking now
A tale of a laptop (and Windows 7) Part 1
Posted by Si in Computer, Technology on June 20, 2009
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This is part 1 of a post that I will continue with when I have tested more
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Well, as you may or not be aware, I recently bought a new laptop, a HP Pavilion tx2530. It doesn’t have multi-touch or any of the other naff that the latest TouchSmart tx2 series has, but who uses multi-touch after two days of use anyway? It does however have single touch and pen input, as Windows keeps reminding me. It also has a Windows Experience Rating of 4.3, which isn’t bad for a laptop I reckon.
The laptop came with Windows Vista Home Premium, but hey there’s a release candidate of Windows 7 floating around here, so why don’t I install it? So that’s just what I did, and now I will discuss what works and what doesn’t.
Installation
First step of any system, installing the operating system. In case things went south, I decided to keep Windows Vista installed as well. This would allow me to at least have a working system if things went wrong. So the first thing I did was to take an 80GB chunk of the main hard drive and called it my Windows 7 install, as you can see in the image of Computer.
Now that has been installed, it’s time for some driver installs. But wait, Windows 7 isn’t released as RTM yet, so what drivers to go for? Well, Microsoft claim to have 100% compatibility with Vista drivers, so a nice trip to the HP Driver Download site to get some drivers. Looking down the list, I grabbed everything, apart from the ATI graphics drivers which were very out of date, so I grabbed some dedicated Windows 7 drivers from the AMD site. Good hour of installing, and only one catch, the drivers for the sound chipset wouldn’t install because I’m running an “old” version of Windows. Thankfully Windows Update is a dream so that just fixed that problem. Now that everything’s installed, lets see if it works.
Testing Previous Features
Now, the first thing that I need to make sure of, is that I have not lost any functionality by this move, but have indeed gained functionality, so I will test original features.
- Sound buttons
Now, as you may or may not be aware, the tx2530 has backlit buttons that are blue by default, but the mute button turns orange when the sound is muted. Before installing drivers, muting the sound did not cause the colour to change. After all the driver installs, this appears to work perfectly. Orange to blue and blue to orange, button or mute via windows, it all works. Not a stopper if it didn’t but nice that it does. - Tablet and touch
The main point of the laptop, the touch screen and (more importantly) the tablet. After testing in Windows Journal, the pressure sensitivity from the pen, the rubber on the pen, right click, having touch enabled, all works perfectly. However I have one problem with it, and that is pen flicks. Basically you use gestures, throw up and down to scroll up and down, left to go back, and right to go forward. But wait… in Windows 7, left is forward and right is back. Sorry that doesn’t make any sense at all!?!?!? This is easily fixed however by enabling the 8 directional pen flicks and changing them manually, but that is just weird how it is in reverse by default. - Multimedia Remote
This laptop comes with a tiny remote (that is almost guaranteed to be lost). Before the upgrade it used to control everything perfectly, it controls Windows Media Centre and also the QuickPlay software. After the new install, and mashing of every button on the remote, this still works perfectly, which is good. - Screen Image Auto-rotate
A feature that at times has been a pain when I haven’t wanted it to automatically rotate the screen around. But heck, its still useful if you want to switch to tablet mode and not want to rotate the laptop. Shutting the screen here causes the same correct effect to happen which is good. - Other Features
I have tested other features, but they are not worth of a full note, and all work perfectly. The SD Card, the monitor connection, TV out, network all work. I haven’t tested if the modem works, but then again I don’t use dialup or a modem for anything, so this really doesn’t need a test for me.
Now that these have been checked, let’s see what’s new.
New Items
The first item is quite useful, the new tablet pc input screen. Firstly, the on screen keyboard has some nice effects, firstly the buttons look nicer, and they now have a nice effect when you press them, which makes it easier to tell if you have hit the wrong button.
The pen input differs from Vista as well by as you write it does text recognition on the words and shows it where your writing once was. There are new gestures to split and merge words, and the best feature (in my opinion is if you click on a word you can view it in character mode and change letters as you go.
Summary of Part 1
Is Windows 7 worth it on my laptop? I would say definitely. Installing this has been very good so far, and in Part 2 I will be comparing battery performance as well as other features in Windows that should hopefully make it worth the switch from Vista to 7.
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This is the end of part one of this post and I will get back to this. But for now there is more Windows 7 testing to do on my laptop.
Some sort of uber epic catchup thing
Well, it would appear that now my exams are all over, it would be a good time to get back to something that has been majorly ignored, and that would be my blog. I mean, when is the last time I actually wrote something in here that is of some use. Oh, so long ago that you can’t remember?! Well, thats my point proven.
Unfortunantly for some, my exams are more important than other stuff, including the failed Pic-a-Week, that unfortunantly is postponed until futher notice. Yeah, I know, I must suck and be fail or something but pah, sod it, I don’t care, you’re getting new websites soon, which should be awesome
So now for some content, what have I been filling my time with? Well, exams are what take the number 1 space in wasting time as I have had 8 lovely (not!) exams in 18 brilliant(-ly boring) hours. I swear thats almost more than there at the end of Sixth Form, and well, that declares the end of that. How did they go? Fine. (I hope!) Results are on next Friday (19th) so it will be one last trip back to Bristol for that before I run away going “dammit, I only got x% in this exam” (hopefully higher than the pass percentage ) Apart from that, Lolgasm recordings have taken up some time, even more now considering that it seems each episode, something else goes wrong in Audition so maybe it’s time to just give up on that. After all these exams some time is due to just doing sod all. My flat mate and I went to Bristol Zoo, it was quite cool. Got some nice pictures, look at the spam-a-lot-gallery if you wantto see them (oh and see the Fail video ) (note to self: dont write turtle or tortoise you will ALWAYS be wrong).
Exams over, I’m back at home. (barely!) Two bags that weigh OVER NINE THOUSAND grams each (well about 20 each) carrying 3 miles to BTM wasn’t the most fun in my life. All of my body aches and stuff which just makes the day go wrong. When I got home it’s starting to spend. Ordered my new laptop, my new graphics card, RMA’d (for refund ftw) my old graphics card and bought a new wireless adapter. Yeah Skillers, not quite a tx2 (more like your model) but for the price feck it I’m happy. Then hell came. <No one should know this (except DHR) so please don’t go asking>. Thus concluded Friday.
So, when does my stuff arrive? Monday for the laptop, Tuesday for the gcard pickup, friday for the gcard and wireless arrival. I will soon be back in business. But wait, I hear you cry (Dragon) how was I playing TF2. Well, for saving buying a Techious Subscription for other people, TF2 and L4D on my dads pc is in order (@Will_Anderson lol ). Now to not spend anything else (until Wii Sports Resort comes out of course!)
Plans for the summer, well theres three projects on the go, spage, SiBot and AdminBot. Yes, the server is self-aware (well will be when I’m done ) MWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA I HAS BUILT SINET </bs>. Then comes the TECHIOUS LAN 09! Bring it on bitches I PWN J00. Folding will hit a full going over here (at 2500ppd atm 24/7 (and thats just on one pc)). Finally (of course) will be trying to see all my friends alot this summer (unless this bs fude bs starts again :@). Oh yes, I am also planning a special new mp3 release, my voice artist show Morally Objectional?)
There has never been a better time for anything in life to happen. The interwebs will be our friends (and other technorubbish). I hope this small reply is good enough for you, and I will be writing alot more from now on (I promise!)
Arrivederci!
Pic-A-Week 3
It’s about time for the third picture, as Skillers’ birthday has just gone past, maybe he would like some cake?
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