I always wondered about Mac fanaticism, but when I saw what Danny Choo had to say about Macs and how Apple fans continued to argue about how one mouse button is better than two, I suddenly realized that not only were mac fans loyal customers, they subscribed to Stevism. Every word that comes out of his mouth during a keynote is welcomed with worship and praise fit for the saviour and the messiah. Tis' the season of the WWDC and I'm sure all of you have heard the great apple speak and his loyal minions crying with tongues of brushed metal and glass LONG LIVE STEVE JOBS... rofl.

written by astrobunny \\

I remembered when LCD color monitors started to be sold for desktop computers and not just for notebook computers, which were beginning to be much more mobile as LCDs were being used as their displays. I was born into an era where computing was already (inevitably) blazing down the path of dominance of everyone's lives. Despite LCDs still being far inferior to CRTs (yuck), and their refresh rates hideously slow, it did not take long for LCDs to improve from that monochrome display used by the the computer seen above (which was my first notebook computer btw), into low refresh rate low brightness versions of the wonderful displays we know today.

Fast forward to one week ago, Dell sent in one of their almost-phased out version of their 24" desktop LCDs, the 2407WFP. Despite being sold at clearance prices now, this panel still trumps many many other panels in terms of performance (6ms refresh), image quality (1:1000 contrast WOOT) and vividness (5% brightness lights the room up as well as the fluorescent lamp on the ceiling). The box came in such a wonderful, such conspicuous glamor that everyone in the house couldn't help but ask what it was (-_-").

written by astrobunny \\

Finally done with my computer. It took forever for the parts to arrive, especially the 8800GT which gave me immense amounts of headaches when it came to dealing with the ultra-stingy shopkeepers. -.-; Make sure you do not buy from any shops owned by Chinese people, even if it means there are lots of them around and they sell stuff at supposedly dirt cheap prices which are actually miles above the actual cost prices. >.>

When work gets in the way with your usual anime-loving life, you know you need a break and start doing things that you like. Last month I secured a figure that should by then have been extremely hard to find since production has stopped and its made by Max Factory. Yeah, the 1/8 Shana that I was eyeing ever since I was a child. (Okay maybe not) So I decided to commemorate the completion of my new PC to open up the Shana box and give her a bit of a modelling session. This will be relatively educational for all those of you who haven't gotten your hands on this figure yet. Make sure you do not regret for the rest of your lives. Pictures after the jump...

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written by astrobunny \\

Alright. Forget what I said about the new 3rd gen iPod Nano being fat and stupid. If it can let me bring my Tomoyo and Kyou around, its FRIGGIN AWESOME. Watching CLANNAD videos on an iPod is so sweet because it's aspect ratio is ACTUALLY 3:4! Which is very very iPod friendly indeed. Getting the episodes on to the iPod was a chore but hey, it was ALL WORTH IT.

Doing it isn't hard really, it was the part where I had to figure it out. Anyway, if you want to learn, I wrote some instructions here. You need Linux though.

written by astrobunny \\

I woke up this morning, took a shower, changed and turned on my PC and I was greeted with this:

We love indirectness in competition. I hope they would come up with something like this next time:

Not that I like slingshit, but sure enough it has caught my attention with its ad. I think they are better off an entertainment company.

written by astrobunny \\

Apparently, Apple Inc. has been targeting a worldwide audience too. I ran across some blogs on my feed and discovered these Japanese Get a Mac ads on youtube. They are subtitled, so you don't need someone from the land of the rising sun next to you trying to explain all the puns. Enjoy

written by astrobunny \\

While being a big anime fan is wonderful, its also nice to stray off and nurture other interests as time goes by. I'm sure Nagato will agree.
Today I shall talk about the very center of my final year university project. My university project consists of creating an emulator for a computer that first years can play around with to learn about how a computer works after you hit the compile button. I'm supposed to emulate a stack machine.
Now, typical processors you see such as those made by microprocessor giants Intel and AMD are called register machines. These machines typically store numbers in little boxes in the processor and use them. Stack machines however, only have a few long boxes (typically 2) in which they pile up all the numbers that they use and pick them out one by one. Examples of stack machines are the Motorola 68000 and the Java Virtual Machine.
Yes I know. They are pretty lame compared to the almighty Core Duo and Athlon Processors, but hey its gotta be simple enough for a first year to use right?
Well, now I'm gonna talk about what I'm really writing. Basically, its gonna be a simple processor where you write some instructions into memory, and the processor will run through them and do exactly what you wrote. Sounds simple?
Cool! Now, we're going to have a keyboard! This means the CPU needs to wait for your input! Wow. This does mean that we are gonna be needing some sort of interrupt now. Basically, what happens is, when you press a key on your keyboard, the keyboard sends an interrupt to the CPU, or in other words, it taps the shoulder of the CPU saying "hey, mind if you come over here and have a look at this key the user pressed?" and the CPU will stop whatever it is doing for the moment, and come over to see whats going on. The CPU coming over to see what's going on is called "interrupt handling". Basically, every interrupt must be handled, or the machine simply won't work properly. This means there needs to be some kind of table for the CPU to look up to find out what it has to do when a certain interrupt comes in.
In the olden days when geeks had long hair and were less accepted in society and carved program code on cave walls, these interrupts came in through wires directly connected to the CPU. Things are different today and now the hardware simply sends a message across, and the CPU knows what to do.
Now how exactly does it know what to do? Well, thats gonna go int owhat instruction set the CPU uses!

written by astrobunny \\

To all of you who are regular readers of Ars Technica and SlashDot and random posts from Digg and del.icio.us, here's an alternative read to satisfy those brain cells of yours craving new content. Marvin is a friend of mine who loves to talk about technology. Well, after much deliberation he decided to spread his rants for the whole world to see. Thus, 50volts.com was born. Now you can enjoy one more blog filled with the latest praises to apple, google features and lots more original content. Yes and I do mean original content. He writes the blog himself, and doesn't copy and paste like most @@#%@sites do. Don't take my word for it, hop on over now to 50volts.com

written by astrobunny \\