Quiet
Monday 19th February, 2007 10:21 Comments: 2
Too quiet. Yes, I went away this weekend, as it was my brother's birthday on Friday. We ended up seeing Hot Fuzz, which was really good and worth watching at the cinema, but I think Shaun of the Dead might have been a bit better. The scores at IMDb don't reflect that, but both are really high, so you can tell they're both worth watching. I can't really say too much about the movie as I don't want to ruin it.
I've also spent Sunday evening taking apart my old computer and building a new one using half of the parts. The good news is everything appears to work, which is a relief as I didn't want to have to put everything back together again. At some point I might even screw in the power supply and DVD-ReWriter. The bad news? Well there had to be some bad news. Despite getting it to work on Vista x64, I can't get my graphics card to support 2560x1600 on my clean installation of Vista x86. It's as if it's refusing to acknowledge that my card can cope with dual link, or that the monitor supports that resolution. But I have the Dell driver from Windows Update, and I've tried three different versions of the NVIDIA 100.xx beta drivers. I'm sure it'll be something trivial, I plan on hooking up my 20" at the same time and trying to move things about to try and confuse it and see what happens. I was also dissapointed to discover that I can't get the SPDIF connector working with my Creative soundcard. I'm not entirely sure, but it sounds like SPDIF support was brought in with earlier drivers that stopped working in January, and the current betas (I think) don't support SPDIF out anymore. Even though it gives the impression that the digital out is working. I'll try hooking it up with my old speaker cables and see what happens then, but I'm not very happy with Creative. Then again, I'm not surprised either. They've never had a good track record. They've already slipped to an official release date of March (probably the end of March). I'll try out my other hardware later tonight, hopefully now that I'm using x86 I can get my webcam, 1GB pen drive, bluetooth adaptor and USB cable for my mobile to work. I'm also hoping I can get all my emails etc. back from the Vista x64 installation if I plug in my old hard disk. And then copy across all the files for WoW and Steam.
I discovered a few quirks in my UK Radio Player gadget over the weekend. I've changed the URLs to point to my server, which then redirects the user to the location of the stream. This is great as I can update it whenever something changes without forcing users to download a new version. On the downside, one of the checks I used to do was compare the current URL against that of the selected value. With the redirect in place, these would never ever match, causing currently playing streams to restart even if you didn't select a different station. So I fudged it. It now compares the name of the radio station, and if they match it doesn't restart. If it's different and the previous stream was playing it will automatically start the new stream. I've also added an Autoplay feature, although I don't plan on using it myself, but I think that was what someone was requesting (otherwise they were requesting a feature that has always worked fine since the second version, and mostly worked since the first version - except it'd always say "BBC Radio 1"). I also re-wrote the code to check if something was playing. And moved the css, images and JavaScript files about, as I'm now switching the stylesheet based on the selected theme. Hopefully Microsoft will approve 1.2.2 at some point today.
Finally, it appears that Heroes is starting on the Sci Fi channel. Although my previous recommendations (e.g. House) have been ignored by most people, this show is also fantastic and you should watch it. if you don't have the Sci Fi channel, it will be on BBC Two once Sci Fi have finished showing it. Save the cheerleader, save the world.
I've also spent Sunday evening taking apart my old computer and building a new one using half of the parts. The good news is everything appears to work, which is a relief as I didn't want to have to put everything back together again. At some point I might even screw in the power supply and DVD-ReWriter. The bad news? Well there had to be some bad news. Despite getting it to work on Vista x64, I can't get my graphics card to support 2560x1600 on my clean installation of Vista x86. It's as if it's refusing to acknowledge that my card can cope with dual link, or that the monitor supports that resolution. But I have the Dell driver from Windows Update, and I've tried three different versions of the NVIDIA 100.xx beta drivers. I'm sure it'll be something trivial, I plan on hooking up my 20" at the same time and trying to move things about to try and confuse it and see what happens. I was also dissapointed to discover that I can't get the SPDIF connector working with my Creative soundcard. I'm not entirely sure, but it sounds like SPDIF support was brought in with earlier drivers that stopped working in January, and the current betas (I think) don't support SPDIF out anymore. Even though it gives the impression that the digital out is working. I'll try hooking it up with my old speaker cables and see what happens then, but I'm not very happy with Creative. Then again, I'm not surprised either. They've never had a good track record. They've already slipped to an official release date of March (probably the end of March). I'll try out my other hardware later tonight, hopefully now that I'm using x86 I can get my webcam, 1GB pen drive, bluetooth adaptor and USB cable for my mobile to work. I'm also hoping I can get all my emails etc. back from the Vista x64 installation if I plug in my old hard disk. And then copy across all the files for WoW and Steam.
I discovered a few quirks in my UK Radio Player gadget over the weekend. I've changed the URLs to point to my server, which then redirects the user to the location of the stream. This is great as I can update it whenever something changes without forcing users to download a new version. On the downside, one of the checks I used to do was compare the current URL against that of the selected value. With the redirect in place, these would never ever match, causing currently playing streams to restart even if you didn't select a different station. So I fudged it. It now compares the name of the radio station, and if they match it doesn't restart. If it's different and the previous stream was playing it will automatically start the new stream. I've also added an Autoplay feature, although I don't plan on using it myself, but I think that was what someone was requesting (otherwise they were requesting a feature that has always worked fine since the second version, and mostly worked since the first version - except it'd always say "BBC Radio 1"). I also re-wrote the code to check if something was playing. And moved the css, images and JavaScript files about, as I'm now switching the stylesheet based on the selected theme. Hopefully Microsoft will approve 1.2.2 at some point today.
Finally, it appears that Heroes is starting on the Sci Fi channel. Although my previous recommendations (e.g. House) have been ignored by most people, this show is also fantastic and you should watch it. if you don't have the Sci Fi channel, it will be on BBC Two once Sci Fi have finished showing it. Save the cheerleader, save the world.
Fab - Monday 19th February, 2007 12:17 I may well be interested, one day...! :)
I fixed the dual link problem. I knew only one of my DVI ports supports dual link, and I'd picked the wrong one. I thought I was certain I'd picked the right one, which is why I felt so silly when it worked. Thankfully, I didn't waste any time, as it was the first thing I did when I got back from work. I also have sound working perfectly using the analogue cable. And I was able to access the files from the old install of Vista, so I even have my email working again.
UKRP 1.2.2 is now up. I also did some sketches for new themes late last night.
UKRP 1.2.2 is now up. I also did some sketches for new themes late last night.