May 15, 2003
Obligatory Marx Brothers Reference File
Entry 1:
Hello, I must be going,Hooray for Captain Zoidberg! [Spaulding! — Ed] Whatever! Hooray!
I cannot stay, I came to say, I must be going.
I'm glad I came, but just the same I must be going.
Under The Lemon Tree
Comic of the Day is Under the Lemon Tree by Ralph E. Hayes, Jr. I'd really advise that you start from the beginning.
Buffy! Futurama!
Buffy Season 6 and Futurama Season 2 are out on DVD!
Also, yesterday marked one month of blogging. At least three people have read at least part of my blog, so clearly it's not all in vain.
I really do have work to do, and so I must be going.
Near Enough...
Rain, rain,
Rain, rain won't you help me
You know this day, isn't going to last for long;
Rain, rain,
Rain, rain won't you guide me
These arms, these legs, propel them to another day.
Adventures In Downloading
Another episode of Futurama an episode of MST3K (Deathstalker and the Warriors from Hell), an episode of Buffy (season 7, episode 21, the final semi-final as it were) and the Azumanga Daioh movie have joined Jungle wa Itsumo Hale nochi Guu Deluxe episode 6 on my hard drive. All in all a good night's downloading. Some day soon I may have the opportunity to watch them. Now stop bothering me, I have work to do.
More Guu
Jungle wa Itsumo Hale nochi Guu Deluxe Episode 6 is available now on BitTorrent. Which means that by tomorrow it will be on Kazaa, and by the weekend it will be everywhere.
Meanwhile, why not waddle on over to AnimeSuki for this and a huge amount of other anime goodness.
Everything You Know Is Wrong
Song of the Day is Everything You Know Is Wrong by Weird Al Yankovic:
Everything you know is wrongWeird Al's new album, Poodle Hat, is out on May 20th.
Black is white, up is down and short is long
And everything you thought was just so
Important doesn't matterEverything you know is wrong
Just forget the words and sing along
All you need to understand is
Everything you know is wrong
Gweilo Diaries
Blog of the Day is Gweilo Diaries:
Today we've got a possible North Korean plot, Chinese underwear soup and lots of gratutitous breasts.He's wrong, of course. Breasts are never gratuitous.
gra·tu·i·tous Pronunciation Key (gr-t-ts, -ty-) adj.Well, okay, I'm happy enough to accept definitions 1 or 2. But unncecessary, unwarranted or unjustified? Bah!1. Given or granted without return or recompense; unearned.
2. Given or received without cost or obligation; free.
3. Unnecessary or unwarranted; unjustified: gratuitous criticism.
Three Processors In Search Of A Buyer
Since I rejoined the workforce I've been thinking about upgrading my PCs. I have two main computers (plus a notebook), and they're both over two years old. They're 1.2GHz Athlons; one running WinXP (which is a whole 'nother story in itself) and the other running Linux (Red Hat 8).
Now, my rule of thumb is to upgrade a computer (assuming I have the money) when the replacement is (a) cheaper than the original and (b) at least twice as good. So, I should be looking for a 2.4GHz Athlon, right?
Small problem: there isn't one. There's a confusing gaggle of performance ratings, and if you're trying to work out how fast a particular Athlon might be, you have to know that the XP2400+ has a 266MHz bus and 256KB of level 2 cache, the XP2500+ has a 333MHz bus and 512KB of cache, but runs at a lower clock speed, and the XP2600+ apparently comes in two flavours, with a 256KB cache and either a 266MHz bus and a higher clockspeed or a 333MHz bus and a lower clockspeed. The XP2800+ has historically come in three different flavours, so very much caveat emptor.
Then there's Intel. I'd rather avoid Intel, not because their products are bad, but because they are evil. Not as evil as Microsoft, not nearly as evil as the RIAA, but clearly on the darkish-grey side of the line. But the Celerons are pretty cheap, and run at 2.4GHz, so...
Turns out Celerons pretty much suck. I'm not sure why, exactly; they have the P4 architecture, and the 400MHz Celeron bus is as fast as that found on any Athlon. Presumably part of the problem is the 128KB cache, but they should be good for something. But I benchmarked a 1.7GHz Celeron, and my tests showed that it was no faster, and often significantly slower, than my existing 1.2GHz Athlons. So, no joy there.
Finally, there's the P4. The shiny new 800MHz bus version is out. That huge bandwidth increase seems to offer only trivial performance increases, though, on the order of 3 to 5 per cent. On the other hand, they all have hyperthreading enabled, so it's sort of like getting a dual-processor system for free. On the other other hand, most of the time I'm only running one thing anyway.
So, what I've decided to do is blow all my money on beer and skittles. Or, since I don't drink beer or play skittles, keep it.
Except for the iPod. Still gotta getta iPod.