Salintheus

Please excuse this rather bad poll as WordPress.com doesn’t have a built in polling system.

Well, I have been posting lots (if you haven’t noticed) on both blogs still trying to find the best one.
At the moment, I love WordPress.

This time I might do some proper summations:

Setting-up: I can barely remember this. It was a close one but I believe it goes to Blogger due to WordPress colour scheme.

Customisation: WordPress hands down gets this one. Even though Blogger allows you to create layouts and paste other people’s code in, the WordPress one’s look infinitely better. Even though there aren’t that many (100+) they each have customisable features

Ease of posting: If we’re talking about ease and not enjoyability, Blogger gets this because their ‘poster box’ is laid out in the traditional manner and there is nothing else to it. Piece of cake. WordPress is almost as easy but has a couple of annoying features that force you to work in source view (which I don’t mind though).

Knowledge: This is about how much information about yourself you can display without the viewer having to visit another page. This is very hard to decide. Almost all the Blogger layouts allow you to display information where as only a few WordPress ones do. For the sake of sheer knowledge, Blogger wins this round.

Maintenance: I can’t really judge this as I haven’t dealt with any actual comments yet.

Widgets/Extras: Widgets to WordPress, Page Elements to Blogger. This is very, very hard to decide. Blogger offers some more general ones like YouTube Video, Poll and so on. WordPress’ are a little different. Flickr, Meebo, Sonific Songspot (Last.fm type service) and some more odd ones. Blogger have one that allows you enter HTML and Javascript which would allow for widgets from other sites. WordPress really needs one like this, desperately. Most of WordPress’ are just customisable lists.
Out of sheer quantity, it is a tie. But ultimately, it ends up as a tie. They both offer some really good ones and some basic ones. But they also offer some very different ones to each other.

RSS: Out & In: Blogger screwed this up. Because I am situated in a GMT +9:30 timezone, it treated it as a +9:00 for the RSS. It set all of my posts coming from Blogger out by 30 minutes. WordPress won that round.

Dashboard Quality: Both are functional and they both each have some annoyances. Blogger display lots of stuff in few links where as WordPress do the opposite. So one means a lot of reading and one means a lot of clicking. For those with slower connections, Blogger would be the choice. But because of the way it is laid out, the WordPress one wins overall because clicking and finding exactly what you want is much better than reading through a whole bunch of badly displayed information.

Tagging: WordPress has tags and categories, Blogger has labels. On WordPress, I use both. I categorise my posts and then assign tags to the specific post. Organisation genius there. Blogger has its labels. They are just tags. WordPress win this round.

Commenting: I haven’t made or received any comments to judge this yet.

Offline client?: Okay, I had some rather interesting experiences with this. I tried QTM, Quamana and Journler. It was a terrible experience. QTM was the best but posted to drafts and didn’t work with Blogger. I still have to try MarsEdit though.

Firefox plug-in friendly: I use the ScribeFire Firefox addon for blogging. I highly recommend this for blogging as long as it is not used with Livejournal. It works perfectly with Blogger but needs more for WordPress. As for my other plug-ins, NoScript and AdBlockPlus, they don’t affect it unless there is a video on either blog. In fact, they do nothing to the blogs. Excellent.

I removed the Mac Friendly criterion because it was silly.
Blogger: 3
WordPress: 4

Its very close. I might add a few more criterion as well though.
Flock Compatibility.
Ease of discovery.
Web 2.0 integration.
On own host.

Well, thats it for this latest installment of Blog Wars. I shall post again for this in a couple of weeks when I have my hosting set up.

I’ve been sifting through the internet today trying to find the best hosting plan for my needs. I had a bit of a journey.

I started to look more into Bluehost.
They seem to have a couple of tricky legal issues (i.e. we can look at your page at anytime and if we see something illegal, we will shut it down without notice.)
Now, not that I shall be having anything illegal on it, I would rather not have their employees looking through it. Just a privacy thing I have.
I then moved onto HostGator. Didn’t have a WordPress installation.
Wasn’t there for long because I found PolurNET. Had a look around their plans. Just not enough space.
I found Host Rocket next. They need to have a better site with all their plans laid out before you click ‘Order Now’. Not very inviting.
I then found Lunarpages.
This actually has everything I need and some damn cheap options. Its $6.95US a month and the add-ons I want for it would make it $9.50US a month. It even has 10 add-on domains.
I could host my fioncee’s site on this as well. Awesome.

We have a winner. I wonder if there is a catch somewhere. I bet there is.

Sorry if this sounded a bit like an advertisement.

My fioncee recently got a new lens for her camera (A Canon EOS400D) and as per usual, I must steal it and attempt to take rather mediocre photos.

1: iPod on top of my SAE completion letter.

2: My fioncee’s and mines cat, Babbet.

3: My keys.

4: I called this one Dirty money. Guess why?

5: Babbet on my car.

6: Babbet with a rather god like status.

They aren’t too bad. But that is my opinion.
A couple have been edited with Photoshop (1, 4 and 5). My first actual escapades with it.
Of course, they were all edited with Lightroom.

I have recently acquired 2 new browsers, Flock and Opera. I shall put reviews up of them soon.
I also may be posting from my own host soon.
That will mean the end of one of my projects!

I now have added to my arsenal Photoshop CS3. This combined with Lightroom may provide me with better tools for my rather bad attempts at photography. Just have to learn how to use both programs rather well.

This also means that I shall be removing GIMP from my system.
I think this will mark the end of my open-source productivity suites, well, on this computer anyway.

As my university situation has become somewhat complicated, I now have a bunch of free time on my hands until March-ish.
So I shall endeavour in a couple of projects:

Build my PC.
Have a completely open-source system boot (i.e. Linux, OpenOffice, GIMP, Pidgin, etc..)
Actually record some of the many songs I have written.
Get a web host.
Finish Blog Wars

I’m sure I’ll have some more projects to add to this list over the coming weeks.

Just thought I would put up a couple of links that I thought were interesting recently.

The guitar as an MP3 player. (from CNET’s Crave Blog)
This is pretty cool except for the fact it would be rather pathetic at its designated task.

A pointless digital business card. (from CNET’s Crave Blog)
Cool idea, bad execution, worse price.

Sony sells PS3 chipmakers to Toshiba. (from Gamespot)
Oh the irony. Selling their chipmakers to the company who created the rival format.

Unlimited online storage for free, almost: Wuala. (from CNET’s The Daily Download)
This is a cool idea. Online storage with a twist. 1GB free, remaining storage is free BUT it has to match your amount of storage on your local hard drives.

New Meebo Firefox extension puts notifications in your Web chats. (from CNET’s The Daily Download)
About time. I use Meebo while at uni or have to deal with restrictive proxy servers and its great to finally have a better chat notification than a flashing tab bar.

Hello Kitty commandeers heating source. (from CNET’s Crave Blog)
Oh the Sanrio empire, what objects must you NOT manufacture?!

Photos: Hands on with the Porsche P’9521 phone. (from CNET.co.uk’s Crave Blog)
Only to have this phone.

Toshiba helping prep HD-DVD-equipped 360? (from Gamespot)
Damn them, just as we bought an Xbox 360 with an HD-DVD Player for much extra.

Well, they are my favourite links from this past week.
Enjoy.

Well, this has been an interesting week.
Key reason being that this blog started. I still haven’t continued with Blog Wars because I absolutely love WordPress, so much so that I may actually get a host and host it myself. This way I’ll be able to test all the plugins and also do the same for Blogger to continue Blog Wars.

What have I learned this week:
Cameras are fun.
Writing reviews are hard.
Managing 3 blogs is even harder.
Flickr is cool.
I hate the Australian OFLC.

Hopefully when I decidedly focus on one blog (+ Livejournal) there shall be more music, gaming, tech, apps, rants and silly stuff.

Thanks to the people who contributed to my 46 views. I wasn’t actually expecting more than 5 by the end of the first week.

What am I listening to while writing this: Sworn In The Metal by Lost Horizon.
This power/prog metal band from the town of melo-death are amazing.
I’ve listened to this song three times in a row now.

Their Official MySpace?

Hardingrock are a Norwegian folk metal band which consists of Ihsahn (who of course is the genius behind Emperor), his wife Starofash (Peccatum) and fiddle player Knut Buen.

“HARDINGROCK is a collaboration between the musicians Starofash (Heidi Solberg Tveitan), Ihsahn (Vegard Tveitan) and Grimen (the fiddler Knut Buen). Set for release in June 2007, the album Grimen presents folk tunes on the Norwegian national instrument, Harding fiddle, text and melodies based on Norwegian mythical tradition, arranged and recomposed in modern form with influences from heavy metal and classically inspired electronica. This is an experimental project where folk tunes are thematically broken down and expressed in a new rhythmic and harmonic form with guitars, piano, keyboards, percussion, recitation and song.” – The bands official MySpace.

This couldn’t really sum it up better. In fact, this is a perfect summation of the first track, Daudingen. Its a rather mellow piece with the fiddle, some electronica, percussion and Ihsahn spoken Norwegian and then Starofash singing Norwegian. Rather a nice track even if it does appear to be a bit weird.

The second track, Fanitullen, brings in all the instruments that you would expect from anything with Ihsahn’s name on it. When the main rhythm starts, it sounds much like a later Emperor or Ihsahn track just taken down a bit in tempo and distortion. Still as technical as ever though. The fiddle adds a rather nice flavour otherwise parts of the song might just end up sounding like a Tyr track or other folk and/or viking metal band. The last 64 seconds of this track is amazing. The harmonising of the guitar and fiddle works so well. This in fact is my favourite song on the album.

The third track, Faens Marsj, sounds so very Emperor but instead of the strings and brass that is common place with them, you have the fiddle. About as technical as the previous track but this it has more keyboard and much less fiddle. Unfortunately, its not so much of a memorable song.

The fourth track, Margit Hjukse, is spoken Norwegian over keyboard. Its kinda mellow, kinda creepy and kinda interesting. Can’t say much more about it.

The fifth track, Den Bergtekne, starts off with a creepy-ish fiddle over guitar and moves into a creepy fiddle with Starofash singing. Low level guitar gets added and it becomes a little weirder. A rather nice track. Soothing almost.

The sixth track, Faen På Bordstabelen, shocks me everytime it plays because of the high pitched, screeching fiddle at the beginning. This is another electronica piece with spoken Norwegian over the top. Nice. In the middle of the song it gets a bit heavy with some heavier electronic drumming and the addition of guitar. It then returns to its electronica stage. The catchy melody in it is rather, well, catchy. This song is about as soothing as the one before.

The sixth track and the title track, Grimen, is mainly spoken Norwegian with fiddle coming in at the end.

The seventh track, Fossegrimen, is where it all comes back. Starts off heavy and then adds some creepy Starofash singing with a strong fiddle. Of course, Ihsahn’s vocals come in shortly after, alternating with his wife’s. The fiddle acts as the lead instrument in this song and works so well. A bit of spoken Norwegian is in this track but that doesn’t take away from this being the heaviest track on the album.

The eighth track, Nykken, is an ambient instrumental. Its rather nice. I can’t say too much about it.

The ninth and final track, Huldreslåtten (Bygdatråen), is pretty much the same as track eight but is mainly a fiddle based track.

Overall, it is a very interesting listen and if you have seen my Last.fm recently played tracks, it has appeared rather often.

Offical MySpace Page

Ihsahn, Knut, Starofash

Over the past couple of weeks I have been trying quite a few different Mac OSX applications to try and make life a bit easier.
Some are pretty bad, some are mediocre and I think a couple are actually decent.
These shall be short summations with a point score.

Onyx: This little system maintenance tool for OSX is free and allows you to customise some really basic things within OSX, some UNIX ones and some hidden features. E.g. you can change what format the screenshots you take are saved to. It actually allows you to do an awful lot. A couple of bad things about it are the general loading of it can get painful (especially if you do a S.M.A.R.T scan!) and that the cleaner doesn’t do anything to Firefox or other browsers apart from Safari. Laid out really well. 7.5 / 10

AppFresh: I didn’t use this program for very long mainly because it caused a severe slowdown on my computer. Although when that stopped, I liked the results it came up with. It found out that there was an X11 update about 4 days before the Apple software update decided to point that out to me. If it didn’t slowdown my computer, it would be a much nicer program. Laid out really well though. 6 / 10

SnapNDrag: An alternative to the built in screenshot command and Grab application. Really nice but causes some pretty intense slowdowns when doing a full screen cap. Also, the lack of autosave is a bit annoying but it has some redeeming features like JPEG quality and the option to resize (but you have to pay for that). 5 / 10

Vienna: I love this program. RSS Feed reader with a built in browser. Laid out perfectly. Blogging option. Skin customisation. 9 / 10

1001: I’m relatively new to Flickr (less than a week) and I have been using the official Flickr Uploadr to upload my pictures. I thought it was a bit bland and so got a different one. 1001 looks promising but its rather hard to get it to do what you want it to. The upload side of it is good but the other part of it that make it special, made it rather bad and clunky. The option to see a specific Flickr feed or a group feed sounds like a good idea, it just doesn’t seem to work. 4 / 10

Journler: This looked really promising. Its a blog client/note taker. Its laid out really well with a couple of exceptions. I didn’t like this one purely because of a personal reason. It just didn’t look ‘right’ to me. It has a ton of features that make it nice but I just couldn’t use it very well. It would be nice if it had more of an iTunes integration, e.g. ability to insert current play track. Seems to have a very intense Livejournal integration though. 6 / 10

Qumana: Oh god, I saw this program on a list of top 5 blog clients. It looked okay but the reviewer said the source view was pitiful. I didn’t think it could be that bad. It was. Integration with WordPress was rather good. Just the actual writing in both source and layout mode is horrible. Source mode doesn’t stay aligned and so if you keep going back and forth between those two modes, you spend ages cleaning up code. 5/ 10

QTM: I didn’t really try this one for long but it seems to be a barebones blog client. Fairly easy to set up a connection with a blog. Laid out fairly well. Its a very boring program to use. Wiht a better GUI (its open-source), this could be a rather top notch program. I can’t wait to see how it becomes past its current version of 0.5.5. 6.5 / 10

Xjournal: For those who use Livejournal like I do (my personal blog) and who use Mac OSX, this is one program you should get. It does everything you could want it to. In fact, its pretty much the Livejournal editor with some cool automation (like getting the current iTunes track), a couple of features that exist on LJ but a slightly harder to find and the ability to save everything as an offline draft. One little problem with it though is that you can’t enter your current location. 9.5 / 10

GIMP: An open-source image editing program coded in X11. Think Photoshop at around CS1 and then add some slower speeds to it and a slightly confusing interface. Thats GIMP for Mac OSX. Still, its free and does Photoshop’s job really well. A tad clunky and the keyboard shortcuts need to be learnt (not the same as every other Mac program.) 7 / 10

I understand classification and I think its done rather well in this country.  But, the OFLC (Office of Film and Literature Classification) won’t give a game a rating of higher than MA 15+.  This, in my opinion, is fucking stupid.  People watch R rated films don’t they, whats the difference to playing an R rated game apart from that it seems a bit more personal and that it may be a bit harder to regulate.

The reason why I am bitching about this is that they have banned their second game this year.  It was also one I was looking forward to, “Soldier Of Fortune: Payback”.
This game is an achievement in graphics, animation and programming.

Why?
Because of the physics system allowing limbs to act as limbs and so on and not just one body.
Its hard to explain exactly what I mean but I’m sure this movie will help explain.

Fucking cool right?
Think about all the extra programming, animation and other such things that are done to make this work.

The ‘Saw’ films are much much worse than this yet pretty much anyone can go and see them.

Here is a quote from an OFLC spokesperson about why it was banned.
“playing impact… was a high impact which exceeded the MA15+ classification”. Some specific examples included “close range shooting with substantial blood spray, blood splatters onto the ground and walls, [the ability to] target various limbs of the opponent which can result in dismemberment, and large amounts of blood sprayed which comes from the stump but victims sometime stay alive”.

It doesn’t sound too bad does it.

Anyway, my main point is that why isn’t there an R18+ classification for games.