Maz

I am still alive

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 23:13:21 +0000

Just an update to say I AM alive. There's not much more to it than that. I have a few more projects on the go but until something gets some momentum there is bugger all point talking about them. I lack the motivation to keep working on any of them and besides, no one is reading this site anymore. I care so little that I won't even be back to check the comments.

Now rather than wasting anymore of my time I'll submit this and see if it's still working.
Maz

Never ever EVER buy an nForce motherboard.

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:39:57 +0000

The latest trick from nVidia to screw everyone over is an inability to playback video when using an nVidia graphics card on the new nForce 7 chipsets. From the FAQ on their site, they are now aware of the problem (only took a couple of months) and are "working hard" to fix it.

I figured that the nForce boards must have improved since the old nForce2 days but apparently they just cost more and crash more frequently. Not to mention the fiasco to do with wireless drivers and nForce chipsets that cause a system lockup.

Fuck nForce boards. Do yourselves a favour and buy an Intel board. For more links to what the video corruption problem looks like and a plethora of complaining customers (pretty sure nVidia is calling us 'suckers' by now) check out this post on the nvidia forums. Or search something like nForce video artifacts in Google to be swamped with reports of this occurring.

Here is my open letter to nVidia which you are more than welcome to support by leaving a comment...

Dear nVidia,
Eat a dick. Get the drivers right before you release the hardware or give us back our money for this unusable crap.
Yours sincerely,
Maz

Remember to shut down any virtual machines or videos while reading this site so your pc doesn't lock up. Unless of course you bought Intel, in which case.. Swap you?
Maz

My photos - How to request originals

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 01:07:21 +0000

Just tonight I had a couple more people ask me to email them the original (full size) images from some of my journal entries and I thought leave a note here about it.

The larger images are given out for free for non-commercial use. I.e. you are free to use them for things like desktop wallpapers or print them for your wall.

If someone asks you where the photo is from, please point them across to my site.

If you would like a larger copy of one of my photos, please send an email to request at maz dot net dot au with a link to the original post or image and a description of which one from that page. I'll try get them out to you as soon as I can, normally within a day.

Please keep in mind that these are between 3mb and 6mb when not resized.

If you modify them in any way or use them in a photomanipulation, please email me back a copy of your end result so I can have a look.

Thanks and enjoy!
Maz

(More photos will be up tomorrow morning.)

Let this be a lesson to you. Take a bloody tripod!

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 00:28:56 +0000

So my few photos are basically ruined by the fact that I didn't run back and grab my tripod. Woe for moon flare as well.

So #$%@!

No one reads this

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 23:26:27 +0000

And I can't blame you. I can't even be stuffed updating it most of the time. Life is boring, workdays are long. I did buy rollerblades during the week so that has certainly been a bit of adventure. For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to consume vodka then strap wheels to my feet and roll home. This might have worked if it weren't for the significantly large hills along the way. Going up was fine, albeit a bit slow. Down was the exciting part. Having had rollerblades for about 2 days at this point and not rollerblading at all in the last 10 years or so meant that I was a bit fuzzy on the idea of stopping, (i.e. I had no idea). As soon as I started to pick up speed I was totally out of control. I crashed into a dozen fences along the way. The most exciting was when I had totally lost control and there were no fences or space to stop on either side of the path and I was heading for a busy intersection. I reached out and grabbed onto some random sign post and I was going fast enough that both my feet were lifted off the ground as I spun around before landing on my face. On the upside I wasn't hit by a car, but the downside was nearly ripping my arm off. So for the last 2 days I have just been practicing stopping. The next part of my adventure home was to give up trying to stop, and just keep going until I started going uphill again. This worked until I went across a road, and on the ramp thing back up to the footpath on the other side was some non-slip tiles. These sent me veering to the left and towards a water fountain. Just at the last second I managed to regain control or I probably wouldn't be writing this right now. In the end I made it home with just a few scrapes. My blades took significant damage but still work.

What's next? Finishing my new website. I know I have been going on about this for over a year and honestly, I haven't looked at it in months, but I will be finishing it soon because I want to use it. Added to the proposed feature list has been a rich-media module. Designed to integrate video into my posts easily and neatly. After that there might be some exciting watching as I crash into things on rollerblades. The funniest bit being the look on people's faces just before I hit them.

Just joking.

Take it easy!
Maz

4am photos. Remind me never to get up that early ever again.

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 23:30:44 +0000

Too early to think, who needs to think?:

Early morning mishap:

Tapping in on bad puns:

The pier, (with awesome weird flare due to not having a lens hood):
Note: Flare may not be visible due to being saved as a jpg

This is not a test maybe

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 22:07:53 +0000

I'm getting up tomorrow morning at like 4:30am to try and take some sunrise photos. Bugger me! So this is just a test to see if my site still works so I know if I'll be able to put some photos up here, (in the unlikely event that any are ok to look at).
Fingers crossed.
Maz

802.11n required settings

Sun, 03 Feb 2008 20:32:37 +0000

Using 802.11n here with D-Link gear. Just thoguht I'd mention it for anyone else who is having the same problem, it only connects at 54mb/s unless you are using WPA or WPA2 as well as AES. It was driving me mad all week until I managed to stumble upon the solution. Nothing online seems to say this (not that I found anyway) so figured I'd put it up.
Hope this helps.
Maz

Online games - a.k.a. Don't use Exetel for your ISP.

Sun, 03 Feb 2008 20:26:50 +0000

This weekend, for the first time ever, I bought myself some games to play online. I bought them online using steam and I'll have to admit that the whole process was relatively painless. The biggest issue is that I don't have media for the games now but you download them off the net. At this time I was up at KJ's and using his ADSL1 and downloaded Team Fortress 2 at about 550KB/s from the Internode mirror so didn't take too long. We played that online for a fair chunk of the evening until I went home.

Today, I decide I want to play Counter-Strike so I have to download the last 9% or whatever I hadn't got while I was KJ's. On my nice 'fast' ADSL2 service from Exetel I get 20KB/s. So it took a few hours. Here's the funny bit. It's not just a slow steam mirror. That's as fast as my internet is now apparently. Speed tests from an Exetel mirror get me some fancy godlike speeds of almost 33KB/s! As you could probably guess, popping online and simply playing the game is just too much for my dial-up, (oops. I mean.. really fast ADSL2+) service and I've had to give it away for the weekend.

It's not just rediculously SLOW data either. It's almost getting 50% packet loss too!

Pinging google.com [64.233.167.99] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 64.233.167.99: bytes=32 time=396ms TTL=240
Reply from 64.233.167.99: bytes=32 time=361ms TTL=240
Reply from 64.233.167.99: bytes=32 time=348ms TTL=240
Reply from 64.233.167.99: bytes=32 time=493ms TTL=240
Request timed out.
Reply from 64.233.167.99: bytes=32 time=709ms TTL=240
Request timed out.
Reply from 64.233.167.99: bytes=32 time=305ms TTL=240
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Reply from 64.233.167.99: bytes=32 time=393ms TTL=240
Reply from 64.233.167.99: bytes=32 time=427ms TTL=240
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Reply from 64.233.167.99: bytes=32 time=408ms TTL=240
Request timed out.

Ping statistics for 64.233.167.99: Packets: Sent = 16, Received = 9, Lost = 7 (43% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds: Minimum = 305ms, Maximum = 709ms, Average = 426ms

This has to be the worst internet connection I have used since living in rural Australia using Telstra dial-up. Ping times on game servers constantly jumps to over 800ms. For this amount of money each month, I could sticky-tape a few dial-up modems together and get better speeds. So I logged a fault with Exetel who email and then ring to tell me that, "A fault has been logged with our supplier for you, as soon as we receive an update we will contact you and inform you on what needs to be done."

No doubt I'll put an update on here as soon as I get fast enough net to download the images on my main page without killing MSN.
Maz

Sun setting over the ocean

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 00:35:36 +0000

This is a novelty for me being from the other side of the country and all. These will probably be the last photos of Perth I put up from this trip and I hope you all enjoyed them.