I have finished my 5 weeks of initial training with BA and have been in my first placement since Monday.   Unfortunately, due to BA’s HR department and the recent postal strikes, I have one reference which still needs checking (it is currently somewhere in the postal void between here and London).  Without a full reference check I cannot access the computer systems and cannot do… well, much at all.

Andrea is looking forward to the half term break for some sleep and planning time.  I am sure she will find a few moments to further raid the North Easts fine charity shops for childrens books and games. When she returns she will be taking over the classroom fulltime as her job share partner has decided to be a stay at home mum!

After the dissapointment of New Zealands premeture exit from the Rugby World Cup (Andrea sulked for a whole week), we (mostly me) are looking forward to the final on Saturday, howay the lads.

John and Andrea.

Ps. The title of the post refers to an excellent and very funny new game from Valve called Portal, part of the orange box collection.

The Beast is built.  It was a fairly painless procedure and was completed in a couple of hours.  I had heard that the P180 case was difficult to work with to make the cables neat.  I found it pretty easy… then found out today this was because I had actually been shipped a P182! I know, crazy eh?  :) 

Anyway, for normal people who do not read tech websites daily… this case was just being announced in Germany about the time I received mine so it looks like a few lucky people got free upgrades, cool!

It really is a fantastic piece of kit too, as you can see in the pictures.  The drive bays all pull out, it dampends all the sound and its engineerd to a high standard.

Neadless to say the machine flies along like a greased hippo down a wet slide.  The only problem is the 15″ monitor that is giving me a headache!  I am busy downloading Hi-Def content ready for the 24″ monitor I have lined up.  :wink:

For anyone who is following the saga that was my dad’s new computer, the new part came and hes is also up and running.  Happy days.

 There are a couple of pictures in the gallery but none of the full desk setup yet, that can wait for the monitor…

John.

After watching the latest hardware come and go over the last three years I have finally had the opportunity to take the plunge!

From the trusted old laptop, now on his last legs, I have ordered all the parts for my new machine.  Early next week I should have everything and be able to assemble the monster!  I am borrowing a small monitor to use until I can find suitable employment, enabling me to buy the much coveted 24″ Dell monitor

So, the spec of the machine…

• Antec P180 black Case
• Corsair HX Series 620W Modular PSU
• E6600 Intel core 2 Duo CPU with Arctic Freezer 7 Pro CPU fan
• EVGA 680i Motherboard
• 648MB leadtek 8800GTS Graphics Card
• 2GB Geil 6400 Ram
• 2x 400GB Samsung Hard Drives
• 1x Lite-on DVD writer
• 1x NEC DVD writer
• Logitech x230 2.1 Speakers
• Logitech Cordless Keyboard & Mouse
• Logitech Quickcam STX PLUS Webcam
• Vista Home Premium
• Then, when finances allow;… Dell 2407WFP 24″ Monitor

Hopefully this will be a smooth build… unlike my Dad’s.  His new machine was dead on first boot and this was eventually tracked back to a dead graphics card.  The replacement should also arrive early next week.  Of course, his machine will not be quite as fast as mine

I will post some pics next week of the delicious hardware.

John.

The site is just about finished and is going to be handed over soon, exciting!

John.

So we are beginning to think about getting ready to leave NZ.  We haven’t actually done much to prepare as of yet, but we are thinking about it!

I have spent a lot of time in the last 6 months or so reacquainting myself with the wonderful world of personal computers.  That is not to say I had ignored it for the previous 2 and a half years since I left the UK but I had let a lot of the advances pass me by.  Because I couldn’t buy.

The faithful ASUS laptop I bought back in Brisbane really has done us proud.  It will be close to 3 years old when we land in Newcastle and will have many thousands of hours of service under its belt.  It’s nearly time for a rest my good friend.

The technamalogical world is looking very healthy at the moment and the rate of advancement never seems to cease.  The next 6 months will feature more marketing and hype than most, but not without good cause.

On the software front, Microsoft today announced that the five year epic that is Windows Vista’s development has come to an end.  The next version of Windows is finished and the difference between it an XP is akin to the difference between 3.1 and windows 95.  They also have Office 2007 which, unlike some past office upgrades, is apparently a vast improvement on previous editions.

The hardware vendors are not resting on their morals either.  Intel launched the very impressive core 2 duo processor range a few months back and are about to release a quad-core beast.  If you can do four heavy tasks at once or use software which already has the ability to take advantage of multiple cores, its a massive boost.  Intel has pledged to be producing 80 core chips in 5 years.  wow.

With the new version of Windows comes the newest incarnation of DirectX, number 10 to be precise.  This of course means we all need new graphics cards to take advantage of the new instruction set.  Nvidia is first out of the blocks and its power hungry G80 monster cards destroy any previous board in terms of performance.  And of course, price.

Then there is the prospect of having a home theatre PC (HTPC) which can be used like a TiVO to record programs and stream other media (freshly downloaded episodes of 24?) over a network.  Oh the joy…

Maybe the thought of getting back into my favorite hobby of building and tinkering is being used to subside some of the sadness of leaving NZ… but there’s no time for deep thought like that, there’s the new Wii from Nintendo, how fun does that look?!  Waving the controller around.  There’s the new PS3, shiny!  Gears of war for the 360 – wow…. I think i’d better go lie down.

John and Andrea Udberg.

Links:

XFX GeForce 8800 GTX 768MiB

Intel’s Core 2 Quad CPUs

Windows Vista