Today I checked with the T-Mobile store to see if I can get my hands on one of the new iPhone 4 models. Sadly, there weren't any more available. I thought I did make the reservation quite early but I guess it wasn't early enough.
It's strange how things go: My first iPhone I got without prior planning or anything. Until the day it was released here, I wondered and pondered if I should get one myself, and then on a whim I simply decided to head to the T-Mobile store on that day in the afternoon (!) and I actually managed to get my hands on one of the last 16GB 3G models they had available. So no prior planning, no early reservation, nothing. And I got lucky.
This time, I actually informed myself and tried to get a reservation early - to no avail it seems. "We'll call you when the iPhone for your reservation arrives", I got told. Fair enough. I can survive alittle longer with my old one - the only hard part will be trying to avoid all the hype out there atm. I'm still curious what's different this time. Maybe the hype over the new model is bigger than the one over the first iPhone? Hard to believe. Perhaps it's because this time, we really got the iPhone 4 very early here in Germany - the first one took a while to reach us.
Perhaps I'll try another store later today - probably in the afternoon hehe - and simply ask them if they have any iPhones left. Maybe I do get as lucky as 2 years ago.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Sunday, March 7, 2010
XBMC Live on ION - automatic mode-change with EDID
Before I begin, I wanted to thank JumJum for the following post on the XBMC forums. I've been able to get my settings to work well on my ION-based Acer Aspire Revo:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?p=516904
I didn't need many of the steps mentioned there, since I already had XBMC 9.11 Live running on Linux. So far, I was using my own ModeLines I set up manually. But it turned out the EDID-modes actually do work fine out of the box with the following settings:
/etc/X11/xorg.conf
That was all that was neccessary. Well, in order to find out what "Modes" the driver has available, you have to have the "ModeDebug" setting enabled and then check the listing of modes within your /var/log/Xorg.0.log:
Then simply pick the wanted resolutions. Afterwards, restart the X-Server for the changes to take effect. In case of the XBMC Live, that means:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?p=516904
I didn't need many of the steps mentioned there, since I already had XBMC 9.11 Live running on Linux. So far, I was using my own ModeLines I set up manually. But it turned out the EDID-modes actually do work fine out of the box with the following settings:
/etc/X11/xorg.conf
Section "Device" Identifier "nvidia" Driver "nvidia" Option "NoLogo" "true" Option "DynamicTwinView" "false" Option "NoFlip" "false" Option "FlatPanelProperties" "Scaling = Native" Option "ModeValidation" "NoVesaModes, NoXServerModes" Option "UseDisplayDevice" "DFP-1" Option "ModeDebug" "true" Option "HWCursor" "false" EndSection Section "Screen" Identifier "screen" Device "nvidia" SubSection "Display" Modes "1920x1080_24" "1920x1080_50" "1920x1080_60" EndSubSection EndSection Section "Extensions" Option "Composite" "false" EndSection
That was all that was neccessary. Well, in order to find out what "Modes" the driver has available, you have to have the "ModeDebug" setting enabled and then check the listing of modes within your /var/log/Xorg.0.log:
sed -n '/- Modes/,/- End/p' /var/log/Xorg.0.log | sed 's/.*(0)://g' > ~/modes.txt
Then simply pick the wanted resolutions. Afterwards, restart the X-Server for the changes to take effect. In case of the XBMC Live, that means:
service xbmc-live stop service xbmc-live start
Friday, February 19, 2010
ELENA ab jetzt, Auskunftsrecht dann in 2 Jahren
Folgender Satz steht auf meiner aktuellen Einkommensbescheinigung:
"Ihre Daten wurden entsprechend der gesetzlichen Vorgaben an die ELENA-Speicherstelle übermittelt.
Weitere Informationen finden Sie unter http://www.das-elena-verfahren.de. Sie haben das Recht, von der ELENA-Speicherstelle Auskunft über gespeicherte Daten zu verlangen."
Schön, dass ich das Recht habe. Und davon Gebrauch machen würde ich auch erstmal gerne. Wenn sich mir schon die Vorteile des neuen ELENA-Systems nicht erschliessen dann will ich mich doch zumindest von der Transparenz des Verfahrens überzeugen. Dann lese ich jedoch auf der offiziellen Webseite:
"Im ELENA-Verfahren besteht ab 2010 für den Teilnehmer ein Anspruch auf Auskunft über die zu seiner Person gespeicherten Daten. Eine Auskunft ist vor 2012 aber nicht realisierbar, da der Abruf durch die abrufenden Stellen erst ab 2012 möglich ist."
Super Aktion! Ich habe also Anspruch, kann davon aber keine Gebrauch machen? Wie soll das denn funktionieren? Klingt als lief das Ganze mal wieder so schnell schnell. Hauptsache erst mal Daten zentral sammeln. Datenschutz und Transparenz haben wir auch... irgendwie... irgendwann, erstmal nicht so wichtig.
"Ihre Daten wurden entsprechend der gesetzlichen Vorgaben an die ELENA-Speicherstelle übermittelt.
Weitere Informationen finden Sie unter http://www.das-elena-verfahren.de. Sie haben das Recht, von der ELENA-Speicherstelle Auskunft über gespeicherte Daten zu verlangen."
Schön, dass ich das Recht habe. Und davon Gebrauch machen würde ich auch erstmal gerne. Wenn sich mir schon die Vorteile des neuen ELENA-Systems nicht erschliessen dann will ich mich doch zumindest von der Transparenz des Verfahrens überzeugen. Dann lese ich jedoch auf der offiziellen Webseite:
"Im ELENA-Verfahren besteht ab 2010 für den Teilnehmer ein Anspruch auf Auskunft über die zu seiner Person gespeicherten Daten. Eine Auskunft ist vor 2012 aber nicht realisierbar, da der Abruf durch die abrufenden Stellen erst ab 2012 möglich ist."
Super Aktion! Ich habe also Anspruch, kann davon aber keine Gebrauch machen? Wie soll das denn funktionieren? Klingt als lief das Ganze mal wieder so schnell schnell. Hauptsache erst mal Daten zentral sammeln. Datenschutz und Transparenz haben wir auch... irgendwie... irgendwann, erstmal nicht so wichtig.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Mass Effect 2 - what a game!
I've spent most of my freetime the past week playing Mass Effect 2 on my Xbox. And after finishing it, I'm simply staggered... It's one of the best games I've ever played!
The game looks amazing, the controls feel right, the music, sound and voiceacting are excellent... but most of all: it has atmosphere! The story is solid but what really takes you in are the characters, the people, the places, the worlds, races and crew-members feel believable, real, with substance. They all are unique, have personality and strengths and weaknesses.
You play the game and you're sucked into the world of Mass Effect and you begin to genuinely care for your crew-/party-members. The dynamic plot- and chat-options often give you really tough choices, and many times I've found myself really cringing and wondering what I should chose... and the gameplay was so much fun I ended up playing all bonus- and side-missions and quests before starting the final battle, because I wanted the gaming-experience to last as long as possible and I wanted to see everything the game has to offer.
**** SPOILER ALERT ****
It went even that far that I ended up re-playing most of the final mission a couple of times, only to ensure I made the right choices to not have any of the party-members die (and I mean die story-wise!) because I didn't want to lose precious, loved characters and I wanted to make sure I can see them again in the 3rd and final game of the trilogy.
If a game takes me in that much, it's something special, and I enjoyed the ride alot. I was sad when the game was over, but at least it lets you continue to "free-roam" the galaxy afterwards, which makes you feel alot better since the ending is not so "final".
So how can I end this? By thanking Bioware for creating such an amazing gaming-experience! And with one of my favorite quotes that made me laugh after finishing the game and talking with my crew again... (though I fear only people will understand that did actually play the game aswell and in a certain way)
"I just wanted you to know, I'm running a minor fever, my joints ache, and my sinuses are packed with I-don't-know-what. But it was TOTALLY worth it."
The game looks amazing, the controls feel right, the music, sound and voiceacting are excellent... but most of all: it has atmosphere! The story is solid but what really takes you in are the characters, the people, the places, the worlds, races and crew-members feel believable, real, with substance. They all are unique, have personality and strengths and weaknesses.
You play the game and you're sucked into the world of Mass Effect and you begin to genuinely care for your crew-/party-members. The dynamic plot- and chat-options often give you really tough choices, and many times I've found myself really cringing and wondering what I should chose... and the gameplay was so much fun I ended up playing all bonus- and side-missions and quests before starting the final battle, because I wanted the gaming-experience to last as long as possible and I wanted to see everything the game has to offer.
**** SPOILER ALERT ****
It went even that far that I ended up re-playing most of the final mission a couple of times, only to ensure I made the right choices to not have any of the party-members die (and I mean die story-wise!) because I didn't want to lose precious, loved characters and I wanted to make sure I can see them again in the 3rd and final game of the trilogy.
If a game takes me in that much, it's something special, and I enjoyed the ride alot. I was sad when the game was over, but at least it lets you continue to "free-roam" the galaxy afterwards, which makes you feel alot better since the ending is not so "final".
So how can I end this? By thanking Bioware for creating such an amazing gaming-experience! And with one of my favorite quotes that made me laugh after finishing the game and talking with my crew again... (though I fear only people will understand that did actually play the game aswell and in a certain way)
"I just wanted you to know, I'm running a minor fever, my joints ache, and my sinuses are packed with I-don't-know-what. But it was TOTALLY worth it."
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Firefox 64-bit - no Flash? no problem!
Recently I tried out the 64-bit version of Firefox 3.6 ("Namoroka"). I have to say it does feel alittle smoother and faster - that could be just a subjective impression of course, though results of performance-tests online seem to agree with me.
What caught me by surprise was that there's no 64-bit version of the Flash-plugin for Windows available from Macromedia.
So I've been using Namoroka 64-bit for a while now and I have to say that I actually like surfing without Flash. You don't even need an ad-blocker anymore for most websites to look so much cleaner... no more full-screen ads as backgrounds, no more animated logos that play weird sounds or mini-games inviting you to beer-drinking contests.
I realized most of the things I look up online are usually plain infos, and those you can easily get across with just text and static pictures. I still have a 32-bit browser installed in case I do need to see a flash-video of some sort, but chances are high that with the release of direct video-embedding in HTML5, those Flash-videos/Flash-video-players will die out sooner or later... and I won't miss them.
What caught me by surprise was that there's no 64-bit version of the Flash-plugin for Windows available from Macromedia.
So I've been using Namoroka 64-bit for a while now and I have to say that I actually like surfing without Flash. You don't even need an ad-blocker anymore for most websites to look so much cleaner... no more full-screen ads as backgrounds, no more animated logos that play weird sounds or mini-games inviting you to beer-drinking contests.
I realized most of the things I look up online are usually plain infos, and those you can easily get across with just text and static pictures. I still have a 32-bit browser installed in case I do need to see a flash-video of some sort, but chances are high that with the release of direct video-embedding in HTML5, those Flash-videos/Flash-video-players will die out sooner or later... and I won't miss them.
Monday, January 25, 2010
more complicated than neccessary - silent fail
After watching fefe and Erdgeist bash stupid APIs on the 26C3, I decided to also write/rant about such topics that I came across in the past. So here's the first one, from quite a while ago already...
I think you can safely say that most code these days should be multithread-aware, even if it doesn't feature threads itself. Older API-calls easily cause trouble since they are by design not reentrant - or at least their implementation isn't.
I understand that the programmer has to ensure his code is thread-safe. He has to know to call the right reentrant-variants of syscalls whenever possible. But what I experienced on Solaris really left me baffled.
Seems like on Solaris (at least V2.8 for SPARC), if you want to have certain system-library calls behave correctly in a multithreaded environment, you have to set the compiler(!) flag "_REENTRANT". Yes, you as a programmer have to tell the system header-files that you want them that you are planning to use them in a multithreaded environment!
But the best part: If you don't set that flag, you probably won't notice right away. I noticed when the errno-variable was always 0 in that case. So basically, it fucks up your error-handling - which you will only notice when things actually go wrong.
Solaris-Code reentrant
I think you can safely say that most code these days should be multithread-aware, even if it doesn't feature threads itself. Older API-calls easily cause trouble since they are by design not reentrant - or at least their implementation isn't.
I understand that the programmer has to ensure his code is thread-safe. He has to know to call the right reentrant-variants of syscalls whenever possible. But what I experienced on Solaris really left me baffled.
Seems like on Solaris (at least V2.8 for SPARC), if you want to have certain system-library calls behave correctly in a multithreaded environment, you have to set the compiler(!) flag "_REENTRANT". Yes, you as a programmer have to tell the system header-files that you want them that you are planning to use them in a multithreaded environment!
But the best part: If you don't set that flag, you probably won't notice right away. I noticed when the errno-variable was always 0 in that case. So basically, it fucks up your error-handling - which you will only notice when things actually go wrong.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Dragon Age: Origins and DLC issues on Windows 7
I recently got "Dragon Age: Origins", including promotion codes for 2 additional DLCs: "Blood Dragon Armor" and "The Stone Prisoner". I knew I especially wanted the latter, since having a Golem as Tank in your group is simply cool! And after trying it out, I can only say: It rocks! (pun intended). And so does the game, btw! It's another amazing game from Bioware! Thank you!
But as so often with PCs, I had to tinker with things first to get the DLCs to work at all:
The problem was that even though I successfully registered my unlock-codes on the website for my online-profile, the DLCs didn't show up ingame, not as available, nor pending or installed. In fact, no add-ons did show up at all, no matter if I was signed in to my account in the game or not.
After some searching, I found the answer in the official Bioware-forums: Dragon Age installs a Windows-Service that takes care of the handling of DLCs and that service needs to be running. Well, it didn't on my system. It was installed with the start-method "manual". After actually starting it, I could see the DLCs ingame and download and use them.
A few things came to my mind right away (usually in form of rants, as usual when I'm fixing computer-issues):
Anyway, once I installed the DLCs and played the game some more, I ran into another problem...
When I tried running the game again later and wanted to resume my last savegame: I got an error saying that the savegame requires additional DLCs that are not enabled. So I checked the DLC status ingame and it did show them as installed, but also had (unauthorized) next to the status. I was guessing that it's an online-verification thing, so I tried logging out of my game-account and back in. Then I realized that when I was logged out, the "(unauthorized)" status disappeared and I was able to play the game again. As soon as I logged back in, I had the same problem again.
Well, solution for that one was to run the game "as Administrator". Well, Windows 7 is still Windows, so I'm not too surprised about that "fix", but it still annoyed me. Maybe it has to do with the fact that there is a service involved. But I don't really want to have to think about such issues! These things should work out-of-the-box, and I do neither have a very special system nor a very special configuration. I simply installed the game from DVD, created an online-profile and registered my 2 promo-codes.
But despite all my ranting, I still think that "Dragon Age: Origins" is an amazing game! It has depth, nice graphics, great voice-acting and an epic, exciting story that really takes you in. When a game has that much spoken dialogue and I don't mind at all sitting through it and really listening to it without skipping and when I start to genuinely care about my party-members and their personalities, the game achieved what is hardest: an atmosphere!
So if you have a faible for RPGs and Tolkien-style fantasy-worlds, then go and get this game! And hopefully, you won't be running into problems like I did. And if you do, I hope my post helped you resolve them.
But as so often with PCs, I had to tinker with things first to get the DLCs to work at all:
1. DLCs not available
The problem was that even though I successfully registered my unlock-codes on the website for my online-profile, the DLCs didn't show up ingame, not as available, nor pending or installed. In fact, no add-ons did show up at all, no matter if I was signed in to my account in the game or not.
After some searching, I found the answer in the official Bioware-forums: Dragon Age installs a Windows-Service that takes care of the handling of DLCs and that service needs to be running. Well, it didn't on my system. It was installed with the start-method "manual". After actually starting it, I could see the DLCs ingame and download and use them.
A few things came to my mind right away (usually in form of rants, as usual when I'm fixing computer-issues):
- For one, why does it have to be a Windows-Service? I am no fan of such background-processes constantly running, using up resources, especially when I have no idea that those are installed/running. And for a game? come on! I might have the game installed for a long time, but it doesn't mean I'll be playing it constantly. But the service will... Wouldn't a user-process have been enough for this? Ok, I can see things like background-downloading as an advantage, but not as a big enough one to justify using a windows-service.
- Second: if using a service, then at least have your game check that it's up and running, and not silently fail/ignore if it's not. If I wouldn't have known that I have DLCs, I wouldn't have ever found out about them when playing the game, since it simply does not show any. This is actually quite counter-productive regarding the fact that Bioware tries to establish an additional income-source via the DLCs they provide for their games.
Anyway, once I installed the DLCs and played the game some more, I ran into another problem...
2. DLCs not "authorized"
When I tried running the game again later and wanted to resume my last savegame: I got an error saying that the savegame requires additional DLCs that are not enabled. So I checked the DLC status ingame and it did show them as installed, but also had (unauthorized) next to the status. I was guessing that it's an online-verification thing, so I tried logging out of my game-account and back in. Then I realized that when I was logged out, the "(unauthorized)" status disappeared and I was able to play the game again. As soon as I logged back in, I had the same problem again.
Well, solution for that one was to run the game "as Administrator". Well, Windows 7 is still Windows, so I'm not too surprised about that "fix", but it still annoyed me. Maybe it has to do with the fact that there is a service involved. But I don't really want to have to think about such issues! These things should work out-of-the-box, and I do neither have a very special system nor a very special configuration. I simply installed the game from DVD, created an online-profile and registered my 2 promo-codes.
But despite all my ranting, I still think that "Dragon Age: Origins" is an amazing game! It has depth, nice graphics, great voice-acting and an epic, exciting story that really takes you in. When a game has that much spoken dialogue and I don't mind at all sitting through it and really listening to it without skipping and when I start to genuinely care about my party-members and their personalities, the game achieved what is hardest: an atmosphere!
So if you have a faible for RPGs and Tolkien-style fantasy-worlds, then go and get this game! And hopefully, you won't be running into problems like I did. And if you do, I hope my post helped you resolve them.
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