Archive | March 2013

It doesn’t matter how much money you spend, eventually something simple will break.

Mar21

So I like music.

I like music with depth and tonal separation.

I like music to be clear, to be defined, to be something I can listen to at low levels and still get the subtle nuances that it conveys.

I also like to listen to music whenever I’m not home, like on public transport.

This of course means I need a dedicated set of headphones for this exact purpose.

So last year I decided to shell out for a set of Kicker HP541 DJ-style Foldable Headphones.

I liked the feel of them, the sound quality, the fact that they had a detachable cable.

Up until this year they’ve served me pretty faithfully.

However there’s one flaw to the design which caught me off-guard, the internal wiring.

Let’s just say I now have the fun task of replacing the internal wiring, and then soldering it.
The first part will be easy, it’s the second that will prove my downfall since I haven’t soldered anything in ten years.

The lesson to me is to check the easily accessible solder points for breaks before I start disassembling the entire thing.

Now to decide if I should use the parts to install the drivers in to something else, like say my Cyberman voice changer helmet.
I always planned to redo it’s wiring to install speakers for a chest plate to amplify the pissy little voice modulator.

AmK.

From a fan, to me, to you.

Mar5

So, today I received an email from a guy claiming himself a fan of my site (Hi Craig) who was interested in supplying some content for my site.

So being a comic fan I decided to check it out. Seems about right.

Of course there’s huge differences in terms of things.

Bruce took up being a vigilante because he had nothing else.
Lots of money, no parents, and an urge to take out his frustrations of many years without his parents out on other people.

Tony took up being a hero, well because getting pumped full of shrapnel required him to do something about it or die.
The guy who helped him of course inspired him to do more with his life than get drunk, bang women, and sell guns.

Bruce inherited his position, his money, his house, his everything, even a pretty awesome butler.

Tony inherited his position, his money, but he bought his own house, his own cars because well he likes cars, but unlike Bruce he’s an actual engineer, he built his suits with his pretty kick ass AI, Jarvis (inspired by the Jarvis from the Avengers comics) assisting him on bringing his vision to life.

Bruce utilised parts that had already been developed for the military, there were no actual development costs to him personally, he just put the pieces together.

Tony on the other hand, he designed and provided stuff to the military. He designed and fabricated the parts required for his suits.

Bruce ended up with a suit that had good manoeuvrability, that could take small-arms fire, and decent for stealth combat.

Tony ended up with a suit that could fly under it’s own power, can keep up with military jets, can take hits from weapons designed to kill tanks, and has weapons designed to kill tanks.
Tony has Augmented reality.

Bruce hides his identity for fear that people my find him and blow up his stuff.

Tony revealed his identity because he could handle the people coming after him, and the stress behind it all was just going to cause problems.

Bruce gives money to charities, but almost got his own city blown up with a device he commissioned to be built.

Tony is determined to provide limitless clean energy to the world, that energy got used to open a portal for an invading alien race of conquerors.

If you can’t tell by now, I’m very much in the Iron Man camp. 😀

And now on with the Infographic!

If there’s anything people would like me to talk about, you know geeky stuff, comics, movies, games, technology and so on, send it to me!

The System Protection Saga, it’s still really annoying.

Mar1

So awhile back I posted about the annoyance of the current state of copy and account protection for games and my small Blizzard problem.

I guess it’s time for a bit of an update.

It seems I never get to calling whenever they’re open, because I have no idea what time of day or night that is for me here in eastern australia.
7am to 8pm may seem like a big time window. But really it’s not when dealing with people on the other side of the globe.

Just then I did some conversion work, and I have a wonderful time slot of 2am to 3pm according to their message.
I just called, it’s not even 2pm here, they’re closed.

So that’s off the board for another 12 hours I guess.

I managed to locate my warcraft 3 and frozen throne cases complete with cd keys on them.
So I figure why not put those in to the system, you know to verify who I am.

Just like my Starcraft 2 key, these ones also don’t appear to be in the system.

Wow, this is a brilliant idea.
Sure I can play warcraft 3 no problems, and even diablo 2 (I don’t install, I just migrate the directory between machines).
However Starcraft 2, the Heart of the Swarm Beta, and Diablo 3 are all off the books, all because I moved house and their automated system refuses to recognise product keys that have been registered with my account.

I have the games, I have the boxes, I have the jewel cases and the discs, manuals, the works, but I might as well not.

Now I compare this with the wonderful experience I’ve had with dealing with arenanet support trying to get my password for my guildwars account reset.
All the information asks you to submit a ticket on their system which uses a different login system, easily done.
They then ask you for a bunch of information like game keys and other stuff they can compare to your account.
And well it turns out I didn’t need that after all, since I just did it more or less instantly through the ncsoft account site, which had questions I could actually remember (seriously, how the hell am I supposed to know what name I would choose if I could change my name? what year did I decide that answer?)

So now I’m still unable to touch my battle.net account, yet in a fraction of the time and annoyance I’ve reclaimed my ncsoft account.
So now I’m working with the ncsoft tech guys to figure out how to get guild wars working with windows 7 using directx 9.
They’re actually a pleasure to communicate with.

So to break it down, ncsoft good, blizzard bad.

And to prove how I feel, the following picture 😀

Gotta catch them all.

So I herd you like guildwarz