May 29, 2007
The IT Crowd on NBC
NBC will be remaking the British comedy hit, the IT Crowd, for this fall. The only actor from the original show will be Richard Ayoade, who plays Moss. Here's hoping they do a good job with this and they do better with it than others have done with the US remake of Red Dwarf.
May 28, 2007
There Are Four Cores
At least, that is what Captain Picard might say about my new computer.
My new computer was built by CyberPower, Inc. and consists of:
Intel Quad Core Q6600 - 2.4 GHz
2 250 GB SATA II 7200 RPM w/ 8 MB cache hard drives
2 GB DDR PC6400 RAM
Intel DP965LT LGA775 motherboard
EVGA Geforce 8500 GT w/ 256 MB RAM (PCI Express)
Along with the case, keyboard, mouse, DVD drive and DVD burner, and other components.
I'm running Gentoo Linux 2007.0 with this, but it was not an easy install - the install CD had a version of the kernel that was one minor version away from recognizing the motherboard. I was surprised with this considering how long the motherboard has been out. I was able to get around this thanks to Small Gentoo that contained a newer kernel that detected the motherboard just fine.
Still, that wasn't the end of the problems. Gentoo has not gone stable yet with a version of Nvidia's drivers that supports the 8500 GT. It's not even available yet through Gentoo. I had to go with an unstable version of the open source Nvidia drivers (which don't provide 3d acceleration) to get X to work. I will eventually go to the closed source Nvidia drivers when it becomes available, as I want the 3d acceleration for games and to take advantage of TwinView so I can have dual monitor support for my Samsung 740 BX and NEC AccuSync LCD 72V.
As a simplistic way of looking at benchmarks for this system compared to my old system (a P4 2.4 GHz 533 MHz bus w/ 1 GB PC333 RAM) and my Mac Powerbook (1.67 GHz PowerPC G4 w/ 1 GB SDRAM), I've used distributed.net's OGR25 contest to see what kind of speed I was getting.
Old system: Approx. 9,000,000 nodes/sec.
Powerbook: Approx. 20,000,000 nodes/sec.
Quad core system: Approx. 35-39,000,000 nodes/sec. - and that is just per core - it works on 4 packets at once.
My new computer was built by CyberPower, Inc. and consists of:
Intel Quad Core Q6600 - 2.4 GHz
2 250 GB SATA II 7200 RPM w/ 8 MB cache hard drives
2 GB DDR PC6400 RAM
Intel DP965LT LGA775 motherboard
EVGA Geforce 8500 GT w/ 256 MB RAM (PCI Express)
Along with the case, keyboard, mouse, DVD drive and DVD burner, and other components.
I'm running Gentoo Linux 2007.0 with this, but it was not an easy install - the install CD had a version of the kernel that was one minor version away from recognizing the motherboard. I was surprised with this considering how long the motherboard has been out. I was able to get around this thanks to Small Gentoo that contained a newer kernel that detected the motherboard just fine.
Still, that wasn't the end of the problems. Gentoo has not gone stable yet with a version of Nvidia's drivers that supports the 8500 GT. It's not even available yet through Gentoo. I had to go with an unstable version of the open source Nvidia drivers (which don't provide 3d acceleration) to get X to work. I will eventually go to the closed source Nvidia drivers when it becomes available, as I want the 3d acceleration for games and to take advantage of TwinView so I can have dual monitor support for my Samsung 740 BX and NEC AccuSync LCD 72V.
As a simplistic way of looking at benchmarks for this system compared to my old system (a P4 2.4 GHz 533 MHz bus w/ 1 GB PC333 RAM) and my Mac Powerbook (1.67 GHz PowerPC G4 w/ 1 GB SDRAM), I've used distributed.net's OGR25 contest to see what kind of speed I was getting.
Old system: Approx. 9,000,000 nodes/sec.
Powerbook: Approx. 20,000,000 nodes/sec.
Quad core system: Approx. 35-39,000,000 nodes/sec. - and that is just per core - it works on 4 packets at once.
May 17, 2007
More Heroes: Season One DVD Information
From The Digital Bits: "Universal has announced that its Heroes: Season One release (due 8/28 on both DVD and DVD/HD-DVD Combo formats) will include some 50 deleted scenes, a behind-the-scenes featurette and the 73-minute original series premiere that never aired on NBC."
May 15, 2007
Heroes: Season One on DVD
According to The Digital Bits, Universal Studios Home Entertainment has "...officially set Heroes: Season One for release on 8/28. The DVD will SRP for $59.98, with all of the episodes in anamorphic widescreen on 7 discs. The HD-DVD will also be a 7-disc set, and will carry a $99.98 price tag. The high-def version will also feature Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 audio."
I don't know which is more difficult - waiting for season one to come out on DVD or waiting for next week's season finale. The HD-DVD set would be appealing if I had HDTV and this stupid format war was over.
I don't know which is more difficult - waiting for season one to come out on DVD or waiting for next week's season finale. The HD-DVD set would be appealing if I had HDTV and this stupid format war was over.
May 13, 2007
Today's Pet Peeves
I usually do not rant here, but I feel a particular need to do so today.
Post office - "Hey, let's increase postage stamp rates and not make 2 cent stamps available except through our counter at our obnoxious hours."
People with cell phones at a sandwich shop - Pay attention when your sandwich is being made, particularly when they ask you what you want on it. If you tell them "all the regulars" while you are babbling on your cell phone, then stop them a minute after they put on tomatoes and say, "Oh no, I don't want tomatoes." These people should be ignored at that point.
Now back to your regularly scheduled blog.
Post office - "Hey, let's increase postage stamp rates and not make 2 cent stamps available except through our counter at our obnoxious hours."
People with cell phones at a sandwich shop - Pay attention when your sandwich is being made, particularly when they ask you what you want on it. If you tell them "all the regulars" while you are babbling on your cell phone, then stop them a minute after they put on tomatoes and say, "Oh no, I don't want tomatoes." These people should be ignored at that point.
Now back to your regularly scheduled blog.
May 9, 2007
New Version of Google Analytics is Very Impressive
I recently got moved over to the new version of Google Analytics and I am very impressed with what they have done.
Logging in will start you at the Dashboard screen. This screen shows you a visits and visitors overview, showing you how many visits your site has received within the date range showing at the top right portion of the screen. Also included is a "Site Usage" section, showing information such as number of visits, pages/visit, bounce rate, pageviews, average time on site, and % new visits. The Map Overlay color codes the world based on where your visitors are coming from, Traffic Sources Overview shows if the visitors come to the site directly or if they are referred by another site or a search engine, and finally the Content Overview shows the top pages.
Information I used from the old Google Analytics is still there, but I am glad that I can now see what sites visitors are coming from as well as the search terms used, just like I can in reinvigorate.net. Google Analytics does not give exact pages of those sites like reinvigorate.net, however. For more comparisons between the old Google Analytics and reinvigorate.net, you can see my earlier post.
The other cool thing I have found with the new Google Analytics is under the report for the Content Overview - you can now get a site overlay of click patterns. This will show you the front page of your site (or page, if you look at this for a particular page) and will have little bar graphs over the links on the page. The more filled a bar graph is, the more times that link was clicked on. This could be very useful for determining how someone navigates the page and potentially what someone isn't seeing.
Google has done a great job with this.
Logging in will start you at the Dashboard screen. This screen shows you a visits and visitors overview, showing you how many visits your site has received within the date range showing at the top right portion of the screen. Also included is a "Site Usage" section, showing information such as number of visits, pages/visit, bounce rate, pageviews, average time on site, and % new visits. The Map Overlay color codes the world based on where your visitors are coming from, Traffic Sources Overview shows if the visitors come to the site directly or if they are referred by another site or a search engine, and finally the Content Overview shows the top pages.
Information I used from the old Google Analytics is still there, but I am glad that I can now see what sites visitors are coming from as well as the search terms used, just like I can in reinvigorate.net. Google Analytics does not give exact pages of those sites like reinvigorate.net, however. For more comparisons between the old Google Analytics and reinvigorate.net, you can see my earlier post.
The other cool thing I have found with the new Google Analytics is under the report for the Content Overview - you can now get a site overlay of click patterns. This will show you the front page of your site (or page, if you look at this for a particular page) and will have little bar graphs over the links on the page. The more filled a bar graph is, the more times that link was clicked on. This could be very useful for determining how someone navigates the page and potentially what someone isn't seeing.
Google has done a great job with this.
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