2006 News

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2006 News

Oct 5 , 2006
Today marks the ninth year since my mom passed away. In the intervening years since then, the number of close aunts/uncles (at least we referred to them in this manner) has tallied to a count of six and we remember them all in the spirit of shared moments etched in times of celebration. Today happens to be one of those cold rainy (melancholy) days where you want to keep the lights on and be someplace warm. I was reminded of today by my Sister and brother last night of today but the word anniversay of death is somewhat odd in phrasing. In my brother's case, it was a late phone call from my eldest brother: Something to be expected in my family and answering it is in keeping with the phone calls I was promised to make when I travelled in younger days, but keep less, today. One difference, this year, is that my sister is married a man that that makes her very happy and that my mom would be proud to call her "son". But it is in times of joy that the human reaction is least predictable and I find myself not at ease with my less than "bright" surroundings. I know she be up "visiting" with my departed Uncles/AuntsI miss you lots, Mom, and want you to know that your little girl will soon become a mother and to try not to smile "too much" :) ...love lots from Ray.

April 7 , 2006
It is one thing to be known as a failure and another to be known as a miserable failure...a message brought to you direct to you from the White House !!!

Jan 28 , 2006
It's been a while ...here goes a assortment of odds and ends:

ATI has a new chip (R580)and line of cards called the X1900 culminating in a simul-release of reviews and avalability on the 24th of January, 2006:

The CES (Consumer Electronics Show) and T.H.E (The Home Entertainment) Show were held at the beginning of this year. Read the various reviews here:

Chinese new year will be upon those that use the lunar calendar. In the 12 year cycle, marked by an animal, this will be the "year of man's best friend"...doggy!

I've upgraded my commputer to $80 Asus P4P800-MX motherboard. This was prompted by a trip to a surplus store which was clearing out computer cases by Acer...it had a great look. Other than the small form factor computer cases out there designed to fit on the same shelf as your "stereo", Computer Case designers need to go back and take course "101" on AESTHETICS. The case I brought is usually bundle as complete computer called the "Acerpower F2". The neat thing about this case is that 5.25 inch and 3.5 inch components that quickly removed and attached without needing a screwdriver. A quick release mechanism latches onto the cylindrical heads of attaching screws mounted onto bare components. The drive bay is modified by having slots to accept the slightly wider girth of the components with the "attached screws". Easier to appreciate with a pic that I'll post when one of your readers prompts me via e-mail. So what else it new on my first new computer upgrade in over 7 years ( Previous motherboard was a Asus P5A with Pentium MMX CPU running at 200 MHz).

Upgraded original Honywell Keyboard (circa 1984) and 3-button no-name "Mouse Systems" mouse to wireless Logitech Corless Desktop Express for $10...hello Boxing Day.
My previous motherboard was an classic AT with a mass of ribbon cables. The new board is an ATX form factor with all serial, parallel, keyboard, mouse, video and USB ports mounted on the main board. Ribbon connectors are mostly near the edge to minimize disturbing air flow. The neat thing about the unit is that you can turn it on by just pressing any key on the keyboard or pressing a mouse button: This is accomplish the a new low power supply output (5VSB) in combination with a motherboard option to detect a power on when activity is detected on the PS/2 ports. Picture turning on a computer by clicking a mouse with no wires. Cool!
The hard drive is now virtually silent. Kudos to Seagate for introducing an 80 GB 7200 RPM drive with technology to cut down the high frequency whine present on my old 5GB Western Digital Drive. The drive noise is reported in decibels (dBA) and is supposed to be in the mid to low 20 dBA region. Read more about Seagate and other quiet drives at this link (Wayback).
The new motherboard has integrated sound (courtesy Analog Devices) and video/graphics (Intel 865GV). This means that it has no external AGP slot support for the insecure. I looked at my habits of mostly web use and email and concluded that this would be enough. For kicks, I brought out my games from my playing days (Doom and Quake) and they were playable. A playable demo of "King Kong" bundle with my issue "Maximum PC" ran this DX9.0 game just fine. I like my games to look like games and am not into photrealistic rendering. I do not like heat and associate this with performance cars that are always at the verge of performance or a breakdown....just my own person priorities.
The included CD-ROM from ASUS deserves mention as it contains support of both the sound chip and the ethernet chip under Redhat Linux 7.2 via the modular use of Linux Modules. I'm connected to the internet as I type this with the "Superman (Crash Test Dummies)" playing under a winamp clone called XMMS. I'm currently running the graphics sub-optimally but OUT OF THE BOX using the VESA framebuffer support. This means that even if your favourite graphics card does not have its latedst 3D or 2D features supported by the various Linux development sites, you can run GUI/graphics based operating systems (like GNOME or KDE) right out of the UNIX box with judicious search of the terms "framebuffer" "GRUB" and "vga=ask". Trust me...it is great.
Software is just as important and the hardware. Red Hat 7.2 has been superseded but I found it to be an amazingly complete and easy to maintain version of Linux. Kudos to the graphically based adminstration scripts from Red Hat running under GNOME.
GNOME has the famous "G" prefix associated with GNU. It is at once simple and slick.

As you can tell, I really like where Linux has gotten to since my last upgrade. The packaged "GIMP" (Graphic Image Manipulation Package) has rescued many digital images from bad underexposure.