Welcome, Felix!

On July 19th 2009 my wife gave birth to our third child and first son, Felix Tim.



No more words for now...

Why Ong Is Not Really Bak (Or: The Not-So-Sequel By Tony Jaa)

When I first heard the words "Ong Bak 2", I thought to myself "What, you mean Tom Yum Goong?". But I was taught it was true, a real Sequel! How grand must this be?

I have to admit I don't keep track of Martial Arts movies that much anymore, but Ong Bak 2 came to me as a real surprise. In fact, I only ever heard about it
when it was already released!

So I did all I could to get my hands on this movie, cough, and watched it with expectations that were impossible to fulfill, even by Tony Jaa standards. During the course of the movie, I felt my enthusiasm die away, bit by bit, until after the whole length of it a kind of "so, that was that..."-feeling remained.

The Sequel, as it turned out, is only a sequel by name, a marketing trick. Other than that, nothing even references to Ong Bak. To be precise, I even wonder whether the meaning of "Ong Bak" may be something like "Kick Ass", since that is the only thing the two movies have in common.

It's not a bad movie at all, It's just not Ong Bak. And it is way below Tom Yum Goong, as well. Much more swordplay and Jaa performing too many different styles altogether (It's hard to surpass what he's done in his previous movies) make it hard to see the real badass stuff that we used to get.

General Music is Dead, long live General Music

After my GEM PRP 800 has had a severe failure recently, I sent it to MusicStore, but repair is impossible (lacking parts, since GEM have declared their bankruptcy few months ago).

My current Keyboard is now a Fatar StudioLogic SL990, which I'd rate a lot inferior to the PRP's keys. Anyway, I have fallen in love with the PRP's Fazioli and Steinway sound, so I ordered a GEM RP-X sound module to keep, at least, the sound.

Can't imagine why no-one bought the company (or at least the DRAKE technology).

Windows 7 Street Date confirmed

Microsoft have finally announced the GA Date for Seven : October 22nd, 2009.

What a great Day this is gonna be!

First impressions of the Intel D945GCLF (Atom) Desktop Mainboard

My old AMD Geode NX1750-based energy saver machine (I posted about it here) has for some reason passed away - the mainboard keeps on crashing. May it rest in peace.

I took a look around to find out what's current in the energy saving market, just in order to decide whether repairing would be worth it, but in the end i opted for a completely new solution based on an Intel Atom CPU.

Since I always intend to keep investments as small as possible, I chose the Intel D945GCLF all in one solution, containing Mainboard, CPU and Video Card - the smallest solution offered by Intel. I would have preferred the D945GSEJT which is using a better CPU, the far more energy efficient notebook chipset and allows using external 12V adapters (which are all passive and more energy efficient), but it's about twice as expensive. I also try one further energy optimization : I exchanged the system HD with a Notebook drive. All storage comes as PNP USB devices. I could tell myself this will reduce the system energy consumption, but that would be fooling myself, I guess.

The new system brings along two major aspects of optimisation for me :
-I can now use cheaper RAM modules (DDR2 instead of DDR)
-I have a bootable S-ATA Controller, which makes HD replacement rather easy. IDE / P-ATA Disks are supported as well, I currently use an 2.5" IDE disk. I intended to buy a PCI-pluggable controller for the old machine, but that would have been as expensive as the whole new system (~ 55 Euros).

I can't seem to find my ammeter, so I don't realy see the difference in energy consumption. There's a review on the internet that displays some measured values : A system with a 2.5" Disk and DVD-drive supposedly consumes somewhere around 25-30 Watts idle and about 45 Watts in a burn-in-test-scenario.

Debian 5.0 Windows 7 RC1 runs smoothly on the system, which is meant to be online somewhere close to 24/7. No driver trouble - everything was installed using the netinst DVD image (I only had to tweak the xorg.conf to add a few resolutions) using standard settings.

Of course this system is not perfect, and here's the drawbacks (those that I have come to notice so far, at least):
- audible chipset cooler. I resent that, but I'll have to live with it. That's the skinflint's price for saving at the wrong end. If your main goal is absolute silence, use a D945GSEJT instead. This will mean ZERO noise, but it costs a penny more.
- Low peak performance of the CPU. Firefox with five tabs (running on debian) is about as much as I would give to this hardware. For working, this is useless. For numb tasks like Server-, Router- or Download-Solutions this will do just fine.
UPDATE: Windows 7 (RC1) runs a lot better than Debian 5. No performance problems, even with ~10 Tabs in FF :D

All in all, I really enjoy this kind of hardware :)

GIMP is short for "(Oh, how )Great Is My Photoshop"

Recently, I've had to deal with the GIMP from time to time, my company lacking a Photoshop license.I think eventually I got a bit into it, but it still makes me chunder whenever I have to use it.

To sum it up:
Using GIMP for photomanipulation is a bit like asking for a car and getting four wheels instead.
Using GIMP for webdesign is impossible.

Amen.