Happy New Year Everyone!
One more mushroom cloud in Mushroom Clouds Gallery.
Added new large picture of Dominic I - yeso.
Still more nuking in Mushroom Clouds.
Added Operation Sandstone section.
Added new large picture of Sandstone - X-Ray.
Added two new hi-res pictures of Plumbbob - Stopkes, here and here.
Once again, more in Mushroom Clouds.
Added new large picture of Castle - Romeo.
Added new picture of Hardtack I - Oak, also updated old small picture of Oak with a new large one.
Added new picture of Plumbbob - Priscilla.
More updates in Mushroom Clouds Gallery.
Added Castle
Union and Castle Yankee test pictures.
Added operatinon galleries for WW II and Tombler-Snapper.
Bug fix in DHTML Nuclear Gallery script code, now prev button works properly after clicking home button.
3 new pictures of Truckee test in Operation Dominic I. Updates in Nuclear Tests gallery: Galleries for Dominic I, Crossroads and Mahnattan Project added.
Updated DEP FAQ.
Added new hi-res, color picture of Ivy Mike test.
Beat Half Life 2 on normal. Overall it was rather disappointing. Very good game, but I was expecting a lot more from the game that hasbeen in development for 6 years and hyped that much. Especially the story, which IMHO sucked.
Larger and better quality photo of Upshot-Knothole Annie test.
Thermouclear tests image gallery update. Larger and better quality pix for Ivy-Mike and Castle-Romeo tests.
Steam is done unlocking Half Life 2 and I am starting to play...
Steam is unlocking Half Life 2 preloaded files. 89% complete!
Finished Halo 2 on normal. IMHO very good game and sequel. Graphics are much better than in the original Halo, but the story in Halo was still better. Now, HL2 next week.
Picked up Halo 2 special edition with extra DVD from ebgames. Around 100+ people showed up at midnight. Talk about dedicated fan base. If it wasn't so cold out there, would've been much better.
Preordered Halo 2 @ ebgames. Pickup time - Nov. 8 12:00 AM. Funny. Those guys are opening the store just for that event. Which is a major one this year, no arguments. I'm going to be there.
Halo 2 release date is Nov. 9, terrific. Half Life 2 release date was just set to Nov. 16. Hopefully won't be pushed back again. So, when is one supposed to sleep in November?
Nukes gallery up and linked to Nuclear Weapons page.
Fixed bug for K-Meleon and Opera browsers with menu overlapping main section
First gallery up. Kewl. Knowing SQL and PHP does help tho, especially with soft in development stage.
Picke up new Rammstain album, Reise Reise. Overall, not bad, but previous albums were much, much better. Though there are a few things I liked: Keine Lust, Amerika, Moskau. Still, it's rather a disappointment :(
Ok, looks like Coppermine 1.4 alpha does do all I need. Probably there will be bugz, but whatever, I can fix small stuff and it seems to be working.
Damn. This whole thing is mucho more difficult that I have thought. Too many image gallery packages out there. None of them seem to have what I need, that is all the features in one package. Even if I am willing to pay...
Decided to install serious gallery software on the site. Number of pix approaching 1000 and it'd becoming difficult to manage all that. Besides, I want to put up something with voting support. Interesting what ppl view the most and what they will rank higher. Now all that's left is to choose one, out of few hundred...
After playing Doom 3 for a while I remembered that my video card has VIVO. And I found out TV capturing can be fun :) Besides I can get rid of all the VHS tapes cluttering space. Although capturing made me realize that todays comps are not nearly as powerful as they should be. 2 hours or more to re-encode few gigs of mpg? Come on. And that 200Gb HD you thought was soooo big, it's nothing but a few movies...
3:16am. I've just beaten Doom III on "Veteran" level, and not a single cheat :D. OMG, now what? Anyway, enjoyed the game immensly, although too creepy and dark. Definitely worth buying and playing. Ok, gotta get some sleep. Haven't seen much except demons these days :)
Doom III is here :) And I can't run it on 1600x1200 with AA even on my X800XT. Although even w/o AA graphics are amazing, and sounds are much better done too. Real creeppy game.
Doom III is officially shipping, and mine was shipped too :) Can't buy in local stores anyway, all sold out.
Final pieces arrived. Installed Zalman ZM80D-HP with optional fan, dropped temps by 5-7C on idle and 15-18C under load. Plus 512mb extra ram. Now all I am missing is Doom III.
Finally ordered GPU cooler for X800XT :) Since the new stuff from Artic Cooling is not available for unknown time I went for Zalman ZM80D-HP with optional fan. Should to the trick. For now while playing FarCry temps went to 74 C. Kindda high. I hope this will drop between 40-50C. We'll see.
Getting 512Mb more dual channel ram for my rig. 1.5 should be enough for Dooming :) W/o swapping it's necessary anyways.
Flashed ATI XT BIOS as per friend's advice. Pipelines are enabled anyway. Worked fine. Gained another 10%-15% :) 3dmark 03 score - 12645. After that I have flashed Giga-Byte bios with their tool, then read it back with flashrom.exe. Now I can flash Giga-Byte bios using flashrom.exe. Might become handy some day. Although for now I have it on ATI XT BIOS and @ 520mhz core speed. Once the cooler comes in I'll OC.
Surprise #2 - Giga-Byte VGA BIOS flash tool refuses to flash their XT bios to the card :( Complains it is not the right card. Stupid gfv11.exe doesn't recognize -f switch I guess.
Finally! Got the card. Can't say I got best bang for the buck, but the card is kewl and a must to experience Doom III in full :)
Surprise #1 - Giga-Byte X800 Pro VIVO came in with 16 pipelines enabled instead of 12. Although device settings info still shows it has X800 Pro bios. Apparently someone flashed to enable 4 additional pipelines, then flashed it back to Pro BIOS. And returned? Whatever, works fine. Twice as fast at stock clocks 475mhz core compared to 9800XT.
Shizz. This is insane. In the morning checked my X800Pro VIVO order. Still "To be Shipped". Called vendor, turns out they're out of stock. Promised to call me back with ETA. Now, go and explain to him that I need this card by Aug. 3. because that's when Doom III comes out. Didn't call back anyway. Had to call around, only 3 vendors have the card listed in stock. Bear in mind that thing costs 460$+. And still almost impossibel to get. What the hell is going on. Finaly placed an order with antares.com. They swore it'll be in my hands in 2 days. Canceled the other order. Lotsa fun... What's wrong with this manufacturers, can't they plan the damn thing?
Minor reorg on Fixed Blades page.
Updated Elektrolumens XM2 and Nuwai S1704 reviews.
Received TnC custom Key-Lux, CPF edition, AA version. Light rulez :) Kindda big, but still pocketable. Very neat design. Review in progress.
Completed Elektrolumens XM2 review. With pictures and all. Sorry no beamshots again ;). Cool, small flashlight, was a trouble a bit to get a working version, but all fine now. Read details in the review.
Converted flashlight pages to reflect OAL in metric and English system. I'll be converting the rest of the site to metric system in background.
Nuclear Tests image gallery updated, the last unidentified photo was ID-ed by Los Alamos guys as Fox shot in operation Ranger. Details here.
Completed Fire~Fly II review. With pictures and all. Sorry no beamshots ;) In short nice EDC. Though I was hoping for more complicated switch. Minor fixes and reference updates in Longbow Micra, and Tri-Star Phazer reviews.
Finaly ordered Giga-Byte ATI X800Pro VIVO card. Damn X800XT is impossible to get before Doom III comes out. I'm planing to soft mod the card to enable all 16 pipes, vs. 12 on stock. Hopefully the mod goes ok :) Fingers crossed and all that.
Invalid internal link fixes in Knife section.
Special thanks to Los Alamos National Laboratory guys :) After all these years they were able to positively identify strange nuke detonation picture I've had forever without knowing the origins. So, this photo depicts shot codenamed Fox during the operation Ranger, conducted in 1951. I'll update nuclear image gallery pages soon.
Updated Arc4p review.
MadMax 500 sandwich pill review completed. Nice drop in for your 2AA Mag ;)
Elektrolumens Tri-Star Phazer review completed and published.
Photon Freedom review completed and published.
Kitchen knives section expanded. In Miscellaneous section I've added two pages. Maintenance how to and buying how to. I've mentioned them earlier.
Preliminary version of Kitchen knives section completed and published. Yeah, dedicated section for kitchen cutlery. You'll find there several kitchen knife reviews. More to come. Small FAQ style pages are in progress and will be published later. Subjects such as: Maintaining your kitchen knives, and choosing them.
Decided to create this blog. To track what's going on with this site. It's become quite large for hobbyist site, needs some tracking or history or whatever. Let's see how this will work out. Don't wanna use blogging tools yet. Far commander will do ;)