by Dave
Tue 30 October 2007 @ 22:05
Some great tips from consumerist.com on keeping your batteries in good health. I wonder if that applies to all battery types though?
- Do not set your laptop on a bed, couch, pillow, or in some cases your lap. This will heat up the laptop due to poor ventilation and destroy the battery.
- Kill it once a month. Once a month allow the battery to go through a complete charge cycle. If you are using a laptop or cell phone, just pay attention to the warning message that tells you to plug it in and you should be fine.
- Do not expose to extreme heat, this will drastically shorten their life spans. One day in a hot car (90 degrees plus) and you will not be able to hold more than a 10 minute charge.
- Do not expose to extreme cold (below 40 degrees can start to harm battery life). If you do, allow the battery to warm up to room temperature before using it.
- Use your laptop (phone, iPod, etc) at least once a month. If you let the laptop sit in a drawer too long without using it, you will damage the battery and affect its ability to hold a charge.
Linkage
by Dave
Wed 24 October 2007 @ 19:34
My German classes end on Friday. We're doing an exam in the morning, and then taking the time to discuss it afterwards. Its going to be interesting, as we have been mostly concentrating on speaking the language so far, not on writing it. Actually.. I have to say that I assume that the exam is written; it could actually be oral. That would be better... though I will really have to study the cases for the next few days. Bleh - the cases are always my problem. So is gender. Anyway, I signed up yesterday for the next course, which is in November. Its another €650 which isn't nice, but it really needs to be done. Yesterday we were at Anna's Grandmother's apartment, and I was talking to her in German. Anna noticed an improvement in my language there more than before, probably because she talks to me every day. This would no doubt be a good thing.
So, Hellgate London. I was playing it last night and it rocked! On my laptop which doesn't have a DX10 graphics card it was very slow until I turned down the options. When I did that though, it was like being freed from some kind of captivity. It's a very slick, fast, action game with a variable third person perspective above and behind your character. If you don't know the back story, check out the
web site. You could potentially sign up for the beta too. Anyway, in structure the multiplayer version is quite similar to Earth and Beyond. You go out from the safe area and perform dangerous tasks - typically like killing demons and collecting loot - but can always come back to the safe areas if you need to do things like recuperate or make objects. (I've just passed our new apartment on the train again... yay!) I've not gotten sp far with it yet - though I have killed some monsters in the early stages, and the action is lovely. Don't forget that more than any other game, this is the successor to Diablo. Its written by the same people and their penchant for (obsession with) details are incredible. I've seen some videos of the DirectX 10 version and it looks like some of the best graphics I have ever seen on the PC. I won't get to play that until I unpack my PC though, which isn't going to be for a few weeks. Have to head now, we're almost at the station. I'm not going to have much time to play it this week, but I'll document my findings next week for sure.
by Dave
Tue 23 October 2007 @ 21:02
My German course just got harder. We're studying the Genitive case, and its turning out to be bloody hard. I STILL haven't gotten a handle on word gender in the different cases yet either, and that's turning out to be a pain in the ass. Still, its going better than I expected, and my German is far better than it was last month. The course finishes on Friday, and we've got a test either that day or on Thursday. Yummy. I just love tests. I'm in the process of signing up for the next level too - which doesn't start until the week after next. That gives me some breathing room to practice though, which is nice. I really do have to figure out the Dative and Accusative cases for once and for all. So, we're almost there now - we move into our new apartment mid way through next month.
We've been doing some shopping for stuff to furnish it with, and will be doing more today too I think. We have a now a better idea of how we want it to look, and I even have a picture of a couple of the rooms in my head now. Of course... my pictures include lots of shiny black wood and chrome, so I'm likely to be overruled on many issues. Perhaps quite rightly so too.
I was just talking to Anna on the phone (I'm on the train at the moment*) and she told me her interview went pretty well today. She was talking to a pharmacutical company in Ismaning, which would probably be a 30 minute journey from door to door.
* Mobile phones work UNDERGROUND on the Munich tube system. /me flips London Underground the bird.
by Dave
Tue 23 October 2007 @ 06:09
"The NDA period for the general Beta test is officially over! THANK YOU all for being as good as you have been on this. Feel free to post, email, phone call, and alert your local news station about your play experiences!"
So, what can I tell you about Hellgate London. Well, not that much really, because I haven't installed it yet. However, I am downloading it as we speak, and will give it a good seeing to tomorrow. I've been waiting for this game for a LONG time now. It had better be worth the wait!
by Dave
Wed 10 October 2007 @ 23:16
Goddam... you'd think that there would be a spoiler warning on some sites where you get information about things you haven't even seen yet. Oh no, as evidenced by this image on Ain't It Cool. Damn them!
by Dave
Sun 7 October 2007 @ 05:28
I wasn't actually watching the record breakers program mentioned in the last post. I was watching Enterprise on my laptop. I've just started series three and it still works. It is one of the better series I think. I'm not sure what I'll watch when enterprise is finished... I think I may have the first series of Heroes here on disk, but that's still pretty fresh in my head. We shall have to wait and see. So, I installed the first Vista SP1 beta today. I shouldn't have really, it doesn't make that much sense for me to potentially trash my PC when the backups are not available to me... but I did it all the same. There are some pretty nice additions to NTFS and how files are handled across networks. I believe is may actually cause Windows to run faster too - though that may be just the power of suggestion. Someone on the beta message boards mentioned that everything was running faster and smoother on his system and that may have stuck in my head. Hopefully this beta will be good enough that I won't need to re-install within the next... six weeks. That's how long its going to take until I have all of my equipment back up and running again.
by Dave
Sun 7 October 2007 @ 04:55
Right them so there's a program on TV at the moment which seems to be shown every week, and apparently has been for many years in Germany. Its a Record Breakers type of program - with special guests. Today it is Jennifer Garner and Jamie Foxx doing the press junket for some movie. Anyway, this program is one of the most popular on German TV, and I just saw another record being beaten. It was one of those silly ones where someone balanced ping pong balls on a tractor exhaust and then tried to get several of them into a basketball hoop in a set amount of time. It was a success of course... and now some kid is trying to identify individual dolls from a collection of about fifty or sixty simply by rubbing her nose in their faces. Yawn.
by Dave
Sat 6 October 2007 @ 08:20
Today, Deutsche Bahn was on strike. The trains were all delayed and running on alternate schedules. They still ran very regularly though, and the schedules for each affected line were posted in an excel spreadsheet on their web site. Awesome doesn't even begin to describe how cool it was to see it all in action. Back in London, if there was a tube strike then we would have to use alternative methods to get somewhere because the trains would run irregularly and infrequently. Today the service was depleted by 50%, but they still ran on schedule. The schedules were posted to the minute, and the trains probably stuck to them too. I didn't find out though, wasn't on the train today.
We met Sylvia and Al on Wednesday - which was Re-Unification day in Germany. Its the public holiday that celebrates the day that the wall came down and the East joined the West. Actually, it may be more symbolic and not an arbitrary date at all, but I haven't done any research into it. Anyway, it was nice to see them after so long :-)
by Dave
Mon 1 October 2007 @ 15:25
I've been up since 06:40 because I start my German course this morning. Figured it'd take me that long to get up and ready. I was wrong. As a result, I've been surfing for the last 10 minutes and discovered nothing much has changed in the eight hours since I was online last. Maybe I need some new news sites...
Dave and Annabarbara's fun on planet Earth
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