Feckoff.net

Because it lets me run 64-bit virtual machines on a machine which is running 32-bit Windows, albeit on 64-bit hardware.

/nerd

Its still really hot here but I’m getting used to it. Its nice to not have to worry about getting pissed on every time you want to go and do something outdoors. Hot and sunny climate ftw. I’ve booked myself a flight to Las Vegas ($300 return from Lubbock) and accommodation in the MGM Grand ($250 for 3 nights, sharing a room and splitting the bill \o/) during September. Really looking forward to it. I’ve been working hard since I got here, some downtime will be nice. Also, I’ll be reclaiming that Irish bank holiday I got screwed out of by being over here in the form of Labor Day in early September

I’m was almost tempted to buy an Amazon Kindle, even though its wireless functions will be utterly useless outside of the US, until I discovered that they won’t even sell ebooks for it unless you’ve got a US billing address on your card. I’ll get some kind of ebook reader though, and this is due to the rapidly growing stockpile of books I’m building here. I’d like to bring them all home when the time comes but I don’t think I’ll have the room in my luggage. Ebooks would solve that problem. I tried using an ebook reader on my iPhone, but that sucks. I can’t read lots of text for long periods on that small screen, plus the battery life is not sufficient.

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Stuff is so cheap here. I bought a HP laptop with a 15.6″ 720p screen, 3 gigs of RAM, decent dual core AMD CPU and a not entirely shit graphics chipset at good ol’ WalMart for $598. That’s €425 at current rates. I could have only got a weedy netbook with 1 gig of RAM for that back home. Or maybe some piece of crap with a celeron CPU.

It came with Windows Vista home premium but is eligble for a free upgrade to Windows 7 whenever the hell that’s released.

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Check out the new theme! This is “Pixel” by Sam. Also updated to the latest version of Wordpress which broke a couple of plugins. I do like the new dashboard/control panel though.

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I just updated my iPhone to version 3.0. It was quick and painless, although my jailbreak and carrier unlock have been removed by it. Fortunately the iPhone Dev Team crew are promising to release their jailbreak tools for 3.0 tonight, and unlock tools (called Ultrasn0w ) on Friday.

I don’t need the unlock since I’m on an O2 SIM anyway, but its always nice to keep one’s options open… and to use cheap foreign SIM cards when roaming.

I particularly like the new spotlight search, which will search the entire phone (including emails, music tracks, podcasts, contacts, etc) for content matching your keywords. See the screenshot below for example.

Also, some long overdue features that should have been present from day 1, such as MMS messaging and copy & paste finally arrived. Its free it seems to have come with no performance penalty, although I have read about a few people on boards.ie experiencing difficulty performing the upgrade and having to wipe and restore their devices.

I still recommend it. This update is available to iPod Touch users as well but Apple will charge you for it

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And its easy too, but there’s a catch. It needs to have bootloader version 5.08, which mine conveniently does. If you have 5.09 or newer, you’re still screwed for now.

Full and idiot-proof instructions on iClarified. Essentially all it does is downgrade the baseband firmware of your iPhone to a version that the existing soft unlock tools work with. It worked perfectly on my O2 iPhone.

Today I hooked my PC up to my nice 32″ HDTV using a DVI-to-HDMI adapter and a HDMI cable. The picture looks wonderful etc. However, there’s a problem. The main reason I did this was to play games like Left 4 Dead and Team Fortress 2 on the big TV rather than my small PC monitor.

The problem is nVidia’s graphics drivers do not support running things in full screen mode on a secondary display. Huh? Wtf? A quick google reveals that people have been complaining about this since at least 2004. The only current solution is to make the TV the primary display before playing games, then change it back (manually) to the monitor when I’m finished gaming. What a pain in the ass.
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• Erm, anyone else hear about this bullshit blasphemy legislation our glorious FF leaders are plotting? I can has free speech pleez? #

• Major fibre break in the south east overnight. Everything in work is broken as a result #

• Durrow vintage car show tomorrow. Anyone going? #
• Just back from a very long walk with the dog in all-too-rare beautiful sunshine. However, this also means I’m sweating like a rapist. #