bytex64.net/blog

I'm sitting here eating a mound of potato salad (no one makes it like mom does), and I'd like to introduce you to Trackmania Nations. It's a racing game with a very different take in the post-Gran Turismo world. Instead of focusing on oodles of cars, realistic simulation, and beautiful scenery, Trackmania Nations is notable in its stark simplicity.

There is only one car. The only game mode is time trials. There is only one arena. From this simplicity arises genius: The one arena is infinitely reconfigurable using an in-game track editor, and the game is focused on online multiplayer action. Picture you and twenty other people racing against the clock, and the only thing that separates you from the rest is your skill. That is racing at its best.

The game plays a lot like a F-1 racer meets F-Zero. The car is small and fast. (Speeds typically range from 100-500, but the game lists no units) There are no gears to shift, that's done automatically. The car handles like a mid-engined formula car without any snap oversteer — the car is planted, you just have to tell it where to go. As you can imagine, the margins of victory are razor thin.

The graphics are smooth and beautiful. The scenery is always the same, but it always looks realistic with features like motion blur and bump mapping. If you found TN on a Xbox 360, you wouldn't be disappointed. I personally don't care that much about the visuals, but I know some people do.

The track editor is the spiritual descendant of games like Stunt Driver. The track pieces go together like slot car track, with curves of varying constant radius, banked track, and elevation changes. Tracks come in both flavors, the kind where you just have to get from point A to point B, and circuits. Jumps, loops, and obstacles add even more challenge.

Online play is smooth and enjoyable. Since TN only does time trials, there are no car-car collisions. You can drive right through the other competitors. A round lasts only a few minutes, you have to get the best time in that short window to win the round. Players from around the world play TN, and griefing is virtually nonexistent.

Adding all these things up, you get an arcade racer of the purest quality. Oh, and all this is free. You can download it from their website, no strings attached. (Sorry, windows folks only) The game is partly an advertisement for their other games, Trackmania and Trackmania Sunrise, but it also hosts a number of online championships.

Well, I'm out of potato salad... I'll see you on the track. :)

I think I'm starting to feel a little confined here. I'm falling into routine, and every week seems to follow a similar pattern. I've always liked it here, but I've always had the option of leaving if I wanted. Now that I've decided to stay, I don't feel comfortable. Frankly, it's putting me a little on edge.

At Jillian's tonight, a waiter asked us if he could get us any drinks. I asked to see a beer menu, and in response, he asked "bottled or draught?" I said draught, and he rattled off a list of terrible macrobeers. As if to say "Your beer selection sucks," I ordered a water. I made sure to add a vocal sneer when I said it. (Beer Snob Tip: If they don't have a beer menu, they probably don't serve any good beer)

Now, I have nothing against Jillian's or the people serving there, I was just in a bad enough mood to make things a little tough on the guy. I need to relax, but how do you relax when you've got nothing to do but relax?

I guess I forgot to mention here that my trusty old HP laptop, which had seen such rough treatment (ask Jen how its original hard drive died) and traveled across the country with me, kicked the bucket about a week and a half ago. It had survived a hard drive crash not too long before that, but this time the power supply burned out. At the time, I was transcoding a DVD rip of Music and Lyrics, and the power shut off as I opened the lid. "Fuck," I thought. As I fiddled with the power cord, trying to figure out why it wouldn't turn on again, I smelled the distinct smell of burned power electronics (most likely a burned-out electrolytic capacitor). "Double fuck."

"Well," I said to myself as I surveyed the wreckage, "Maybe it's time to buy a new computer."

This is kind of a big deal for me, since I've never actually bought a computer before. Everything I've had up 'till now has been gifted, bartered, or stolen found. Furthermore, I've never really had a desire for anything modern. I was really kind of at a loss for what to get.

I could certainly go the workstation route, get something honking big and multi-core. As Erickson pointed out, as frugal as I am with CPU power, such a machine would last me 'till the heat death of the universe. But, as a certain web-slinging superhero has made popular of late, "With great power comes great responsibility." I'm pretty irresponsible; a machine that big would spend most of its time playing games.

Ever since the unstoppable ThinkPad we used on our (rather stoppable) robot, I've been a big fan of the heavy black box that just won't die. I asked Erickson, "What was that ThinkPad designed to work well with Linux?" "The T22," he replies, "but the T23 is basically the same thing, only upgraded." I hunted for one on eBay, finally found one to my liking, and won it for $232.49 shipped. This was on the 18th. I got it yesterday. Five days from payment to sitting in my lap. The laptop arrived even better than expected. The advertised CD drive turned out to be a CD-RW drive, and I got a floppy drive even though the auction said it didn't include one. The battery seems to be in good shape, a value of at least $80. Seller merg_tech, you have my absolute satisfaction on a job well done.

You'll pay a little more for a ThinkPad, but I think the price is absolutely justified. Compared to what was a pretty decent little HP laptop, the T23 has:

• Two PC Card slots instead of one.
• A rugged rubberized case.
• A TrackPoint mouse instead of a touchpad. This means better control as well as three actual mouse buttons. (Admittedly, this is a matter of personal preference)
• A serial port. This doesn't sound like much, but I still have a certain Wacom pad from before the advent of USB.
• Useful audible and LED battery status notifications.
• Like all IBM computers (and many accessories), it can be used as a highly effective weapon.
• It's badass matte fucking black. No amount of MacBook or DS Lite black can stack up to how ninja-covert-ops-samuel-l-jackson-in-pulp-fiction awesome this thing looks.

I guess you could say I'm happy with it. :)

I may have mentioned here that I have a webcomic. Since I sometimes enjoy looking back on my past self, and due to the fact that I have a goldfish-like memory, I re-read through my archives. It's a really eye-opening thing to look at yourself from another time. It allows you to see how times have changed, and also how the times have changed you. What have I gleaned from my retrospective wanderings?

My webcomic is fucking terrible.

The art is terrible, but that is the part I'm least ashamed of. The characters are either copied from real life or wholesale cliches transmuted directly from an adolescent geek fantasies. The plot is nonexistent. As near as I can tell, what I did was mix equal parts of Penny Arcade and Megatokyo, inserted myself into it, and deluded myself into believing I was on to something good. Reading through the archive, the only one that I actually laughed at was the Liberian Dollars rehash, a complete departure from the rest of the comic.

There is only one thing I can do now: I have to go back in time and stop myself from creating overclocked.

Hm, sounds like a great idea for a webcomic...

1. It is impossible to tell if a girl likes you.
2. A note explaining your feelings will not cause her to reciprocate those feelings.
3. Just because a girl is a good friend doesn't mean she likes you enough to be your girlfriend.
4. In fact, she probably likes your better looking, taller friend more than she likes you.
5. Any girl you talk to will have a boyfriend.
6. If you do meet a single girl who seems interested in you, you will ask her out "too soon after the breakup."
7. Two weeks later, you will see her hanging on the arm of a better looking, taller guy.
8. The girl with whom you fell in love at first sight will not feel the same way.
9. If you do find a girl who agrees to go out with you, the date will be completely lackluster and end without satisfaction.
10. Two weeks later, you will see her hanging on the arm of a better looking, taller guy.
11. If you are the better looking, taller guy, the girl won't be interested in either of you.
12. The only girls that think you are cool live thousands of miles away.
13. If a girl says that she likes something that you happen to do, she will be talking about someone else.
14. Sometimes, you will fall for an asexual girl. If it makes you feel any better, this is just as confusing for her as it is for you.
15. Traveling across the country will not magically enable you to forget about a girl.
16. Girls who are interested in you will fall completely below your radar.
17. If you and a girl you like are going to a get-together with friends, she will show up with a better looking, taller guy.

Me? Bitter? Why, whatever gives you that idea?

I was going to go to Acen this weekend, but then I found out that this weekend was Mother's Day. What kind of fucks put an anime convention on Mother's Day weekend? Sheesh. Also on this weekend? UofI Graduation.

And Kan Kan came to town. :)

As per standard procedure, I didn't know this until Friday night. (A few days earlier, and I could have not worried about Acen at all...) Since I'm a bit fuzzy at this point about what actually happened, here's the high-speed replay:

Friday - Sushi at KoFusion, moonshine and beer, Whores of Warcraft, midnight gyros, party at Ward's, and sleep. (and maybe a crush on a new friend. Look forward to that disappointment.)

Saturday - Eats at the Alumni Center, lunch with Kan and friends at BBW, meeting Mike at O'Brien Auto Park to give him a camera, hanging out on campus, soccer with friends, dinner at Guido's, and hanging out in the Rec Room. (Thanks, Chrissy. Sometimes, your timing is just uncanny. :) )

Sunday - Mother's Day. We visited Mom's Mom's grave, and Brian's, and successfully left without getting overly weepy. The family then went to Crystal Lake Park and had a picnic. Danielle started a fire, and space-case Dad went to get s'mores parts, but came back with mini-marshmallows. The whole day was pretty good, I consider it one of the best Mother's Days we've ever had. (Later that night, I watched Music and Lyrics. It was OK.)

I seem to have fallen out of my blogging habit. I will try to fix this, but not much interesting has been happening.

Erickson has pointed out a *cough* small error in my Mac Pro calculations. A while back it was brought up that I had used the Xeon 5030 instead of the 5150. Me being so out-of-touch with current processor specifications led me to believe that they were practically the same thing, maybe minus some cache. Turns out the 50XX series is Netburst-based. You remember those, right? 20-stage pipeline, lots of heat, generally regarded as a failure of design. The 51XX are Woodcrest CPUs, which are new, shiny, and insanely fucking fast. I felt pretty safe, though, that a small increase in CPU cost would still put me under budget. Well, today that difference in price became really, really clear.

The 5030 costs about $155. The 5150 costs six hundred and eighty-five fucking dollars.

The result is pretty staggering. My 'Byte Pro' now costs a little more than $2900. Even with my previous cost-saving measures, I could only beat Apple's price by about $100. A few things we can glean from this sobering result:

• Dell isn't making much off of their Dell Precision 490. HP is still making boatloads, though.
• Intel is giving Apple discounts on CPUs. There's no other way they could sell this machine for $2500.
• There is no Apple Tax. There is now, in its place, an Intel/Apple Fuck-You-AMD-And-Dell Discount.

Upon further pondering, Intel's strategy here is pretty sharp. Allow me to explain.

1. Sell CPUs to low volume, high brand image system maker at a deep discount.
2. Copycats.
3. PROFIT!!!

So yeah, DIY is pretty well screwed on this front. Back to scrounging computers out of dumpsters. :-/

Nokia, we have to talk.

We've been together now for almost three years, and it's been one of the most fulfilling relationships I've ever been in, but I think it's time I moved on. Don't get me wrong, you've been great to me... but lately, I just haven't felt satisfied.

There's a lot about you I like, from your excellent battery life to your crystal-clear sound quality. I just... I don't feel like you're really mine. I'm a man who needs complete devotion, and you're — please don't take this as a comment on your family or your heritage &mdash Cingular-branded.

It was kind of cute at first, you know? You've got that little cingular_tune.mid. It's not my thing, but it's no big deal. Then I found out I can't delete it. I know it's only 2.5K, but it's not about the space. It's about my freedom. Why can't I delete it? Why is it so important to you? I just don't understand.

I don't want to hide anything from you, and the truth is, I've found someone else. She's a Sony Ericsson K510i. She has features that you don't, like email and RSS feeds, but most imporantly, she's unlocked. I can...

Yes, she's half-Japanese, what does that have to do with anything? I don't...

Yeah, she has a camera and comes with a cable. You said you weren't into that kind of kinky shit! Look, just...

Alright, fine. I can see you're angry... No! I didn't do this just to hurt you! Alright, I... goodbye.

BEEP BEEP BEEP *click*

So my sister came over to the house today to work on the brakes on her car. She walks in and says, "Hey, I got something for you," and hands me an issue of People Magazine with Drew Barrymore on the cover. Thanks, Danielle, that means a lot to me. :)

I'd like to quote a little from the article, a few words of hers that echo my feelings.

On being happy:
"I just think happiness is what makes you pretty. Period. Happy people are beautiful. They become like a mirror and they reflect that happiness. If somebody walks in the room and they're drop-dead gorgeous and sexy, it's really fun to look at. But if someone is giving of their spirit and they make you laugh and feel good, that's a whole other level of beauty."

On dating:
"The only fundamental rule for me is to just be yourself. Let your freak-flag fly, and if someone doesn't get you, move on."

Well, uh, so far, so good on the freak flag thing. :-/ The rest of the article is beauty tips (yawn) and cute pictures of Drew (yay).

*sigh* :)

NOTE: Please see the update on this story, it changes the result considerably.

As it often happens, Erickson and I will be talking about computers and he'll make a statement about how great Macs are, almost always something about his beloved MacBook. I then respond that I'll never buy one until they sell one with a multi-button mouse. He replies (quite rightly) that you can plug whatever mouse you want into it. "But I hate Mac OS X," I opine, already aware of where this conversation is headed. He points out that I can just install Linux on it. I explain, "If I'm not going to run Mac OS X on it, I can just buy something else and not pay the Apple Tax." With a quite self-satisfied smirk, he brings up his ultimate point: "There is no Apple Tax. Apples cost as much or less than similarly equipped PCs from other manufacturers."

I am officially calling bullshit.

Not, mind you, on the part about Apples being cheaper than a Dell or a HP. This part is true. But the seeming disappearance of the Apple Tax is merely sleight of hand by Apple's premier magician, Steve Jobs. For the sake of argument, I'm going to be comparing the Apple of my eye, the $2499 quad-core Mac Pro, to a very similar homebuilt machine. Before I begin, I should give a detailed breakdown of the machine in question.

• A motherboard using Intel's 5000X chipset
• Two Intel Xeon 5030 2.66Ghz CPUs
• Two 512MB 667MHz DDR2 FB-DIMMs
• One 250GB 7200RPM 3.0GB/s SATA drive
• NVIDIA GeForce 7300GT 256MB w/dual DVI
• One 16X dual-layer DVD±R/W drive
• One fuggin' huge power supply (likely 700W or above)
• Keyboard, mouse, case

First, the motherboard. So high up into the performance range, there are only a few manufacturers to choose from. Tyan, Supermicro, and Intel. I've been rather satisfied with Supermicro boards in the past, so I'm going to go with the X7DAL-E. It can be found for $385.

The CPUs won't vary much in price, so we'll just get a couple of them from Newegg for $155.49 a piece.

Memory. I'm not really interested in heatsinks, LED displays, matched pairs, or any other fancy hoohah, so I'm going to go with two 512MB sticks of good ol' Kingston Value Ram. Don't let the name fool you, this stuff has to pass all the same tests as their regular products. It just doesn't come blister-packed and shiny like the ones you find in stores. $97 each.

For the Hard Drive, it's not hard to find people who swear by a certain brand. According to some independent research (ATMOS computer support), no one drive manufacturer tends to fail more than any other. The whole thing really is a crapshoot. But if, heaven forbid, the day comes when your data goes tits-up, it may at least be comforting to have the drive still under warranty. And this is where things differ. Most manufacturers will give you a parts/labor warranty between one and three years, depending on the drive. Seagate is the only manufacturer that gives you a five year warranty. One 250GB Barracuda 7200.10, please. $69.99.

A GeForce 7300GT comes in a number of different flavors, but a dual DVI version will cost you, oh, about $80.

A DVD±RW drive shouldn't be that big of a decision. I've been very satisfied with Lite-On in the past, so I'll get one of those for $45.99. It's even black. I like black.

We've got to get a case to put all this stuff in, now don't we? We should get something versatile that doesn't skimp, offers plenty of cooling, and maybe even looks cool. Oh, and it has to come in black. Something like a Cooler Master Stacker. $281.98 shipped. (Why it costs $6 more to ship than the silver version is beyond me)

You'd think a >$200 case would come with a power supply, wouldn't you? Nope. A power supply is definetly one place you should not skimp. Every other part you buy depends on this one part to supply it clean power. Poor-quality power supplies can cause system instability or premature component failure. And having a power supply that is rated for your load is absolutely vital. Since we've got a lot of upgrade possibilities here, I'm going overkill and getting a 1000W unit, this OCZ GameXStream from Newegg. $308.01 shipped.

The Mac Pro comes with a mouse and keyboard, too, so we should equip our machine likewise. Keyboards/mice are often though of last when building a computer, but they are the devices that most direcly affect our experience with the machine. Their importance can not be understated. And very few companies have been building typing machines longer than IBM. Of course, I'm talking about the legendary IBM Model M keyboard. They can be picked up for $50 at clickykeyboards.com. Finding its companion, the 3-button USB IBM ScrollPoint mouse, proves to be a little harder, but it seems that they can be had on eBay for as little as $12.45.

As mentioned in the opening paragraph, some of that $2499 is paying for OS X, so to be fair, we should add in the cost of an OS as well. This is where it gets a bit fuzzy. If I wanted to be completely fair, I could throw in a copy of OS X Tiger for $124.98. But since the legality of running that on non-Apple hardware is pretty much nonexistent, I'm going to add in a copy of the next worst thing, Windows Vista Premium OEM Chunky Bacon Ranch (OK, I made up the last three words there). $110.99.

So what's the damage? *drum roll*.

$1849.38

For those without a calculator, that's about $650 less than the Mac. It's over $1000 less than a similar $2887 Dell Precision 490. And it's over $2000 less than a similar $3932 HP xw6400. Therein lies the ruse. The Apple Tax is still there, it's just hiding in the shadow of the Dell Tax and the HP Tax.

The savings don't stop there, though. Use Linux, save $110. Already have a mouse and keyboard? That'll save $62 or so. You certainly don't need a 1000W power supply if you don't plan on adding lots of drives. A 600W unit can be had for about $200 less. That case, while pretty damned cool, can be replaced with one for half that price, easily. If you go that route, you'll wind up with a machine costing about $1337. (Full disclosure: I may have doctored those numbers to get that result. :) )

The bottom line is: You are still going to save lots of money by building a machine yourself. For me, at least, it's the better choice.

(Note: I may have made a mistake in either the calculations or approximation of the Mac Pro. If I did, please let me know.)