| Alright! Rant No. 2!
And the poll is still going. I'll tally the results this Sunday and then we'll see whether we'll keep speech bubbles or not.
At the suggestion of Dave and Bob, though, I've removed the outlines on the speech bubbles, a compromise I'm more than willing to make. So, revote if your opinion's changed. And don't feel shy to post on the forums with your own opinion. The link's up the top.
I've been wasting all of my time on a nifty little MUD called Achaea. It's probably the best MUD I've ever played (out of about 5 or 6) but it's been so long since I played Cosrin that I can't remember if it's better or not.
Anyway, any fellow Achaeans out there, I'm Flisk.
I like this episode. I think I'm getting used to the speech bubbles, although several people I've talked to hate them.
Current events! My school's having a Fun Run on Wednesday, which ought to be good. Oh, and I'm participating in a cheery little Flame War in the KeenSpace forums with a newbie. (I'm trinket90, he's thwc) It's fun, I've never been in a flame war before.
It was discussed this lunchtime at school that the idea of a cockney nerd would be pretty funny. I'm guessing it was a you-had-to-be-there sort of thing.
Well, I'm totally out of things to write. I think I'll go and play Achaea for a bit.
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Who can remember the first computer they were interested in?
The first one you could use easily and quickly. For me, it was not the first computer I can remember(the trusty IBM XT, what with it's 80mb HDD and 2x 5.25" Floppy Drives, and CGA/Monochrome graphics) but the second, the much hallowed 486. I can't remember what sort of 486 it was, except it was a 486DX something or other, not the SX variety.
That computer was a beast. Especially stepping up from the poor old XT, the XT that took an entire minute to do the memory scan if you let it (and it only had about 512kb I think). This new computer had a Media Vision Pro soundcard! And a 2xCD-Rom drive (we had a CD Drive before anyone else I know, although we came very late in the VGA graphics field. Everyone else had a 286 or a 386 or something while we were still mucking around with that XT).
The first game I ever really paid any attention to was Commander Keen 4, which came pre-installed along with a whole bunch of semi-naked Elle McPherson pics. Keen was great. I eventually collected the entire set, although 5 and 6 were simply different level sets for the CK4 engine, marketed as seperate games. I hate that. Commander Keen 3 was probably the best. It had those squishy furry things you could smack about - but no-one ever played 3, because unlike 1 and 4, it wasn't shareware. You actually had to PAY for this game.
Eventually we put Windows 3.1 on it. Did you know that computer stuck around long enough to see windows 95 installed on it? A 486 with Windows 95. :D. And it didn't actually run too badly. Eventually that PC was given the arse for The Pentium One Fifty. But it caught up, in the shape of a Celeron 333, in a lovely upgrade from the local mum n dad computer store. Bung a TNTM64 3D accellerator in it and once again, it was the pure envy of all. I could run Quake with the OpenGL extensions at maximum res! And all from one video card. None of this Voodoo-i-cant-run-without-taking-up-all-your-expansion-slots seperate 2D/3D video cards.
Then I bought my own computer, which I'm sitting at right now. When I bought it, not so long ago really, it was a great performer. A Duron 700 from the recently risen AMD camp, 128mb PC-133 SDRAM, and another TNT2M64. The 3D accellerator was soon removed in favour of the recently released GeForce 2 (which I still have) and the RAM has been upgraded to 384mb, to make up for the ever diminishing processor power. It actually runs better than a number of 1Ghz+ computers I am familiar with, and do you know why?
Branded parts. I am of the opinion that the brand maketh the computer. Most of the parts we have ever had for our computers have been well-branded, and my computer has only one generic device (the NIC). And it shows. I have better drivers and better performing parts (for the medicore specs) than all my friends who have had generic parts. The moral of this long winded history is that you should always favour the moderately specced branded part over the higher-specced generic piece at the same price. Your big-numbers won't be as impressive to your friends, but you'll thank yourself later.
Keep safe, y'all. |
