Broken Reality

Almost a year ago i got all excited and giddy over the concept of Wireless Power and how magical and fantastic it would be in the realms of fantasy and science fiction as at the time the idea seemed to be way off in terms of actually, you know, happening.

It would appear atleast that last part was utter bollocks.

Wireless power is much, much closer to actually making it’s way into our homes and i’m really rather excited by that, after the jump we have a Gent from a new company called - funnily enough - WiTricity Corp. telling us all about our futures.

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Rather than do a write up, i tweeted my initial reactions to the M$ Conference this year. It makes no sense but i don’t care. You can find my ramblings at http://twitter.com/MrCarrick as ususal.

However i did quite enjoy some of the mentions. I loved the original Crackdown and so a return to this franchise is much welcomed but i will have to see how much love i will send their way when more is revealed. The game now looks a lot less cell shaded, more gritty and well has zombies and monsters in it.

Like everything else.

Speaking of Zombies a return to another much loved game and the IP of the year for me from 2008 - Left 4 Dead.

The second installment sees 4 new survivors, 5 new campaigns, new special zombies along with alterations to the ones we know and love (to kill); such as Wandering Witches. It seems not all emos hide from the sun as the Witch likes to wander about when it’s day light rather than sit and cut herself.

There’re two doses of Halo loving for me in the next 18 months with both Halo ODST AND Halo Reach a previously hidden project buried deep in the earth’s crust whom no one could gaze upon untill today.

Both look awesome.

Now what else… let’s head toward the (and i will say personal oppinion, i appreciate some people like these games*) fail scale.

LEGO Harry Potter Years 1-4. Fail.

Forza 3. Treacle Fail.

Cliffy B. Life Fail.

Tom Clancy Presents: Tom Clancy’s: Tom Clancy’s: Splinter Cell: Conviction by Tom Clancy, Presented by Tom Clancy. Tom Clancy Fail.

Metal Gear Solid. Sony Fail.

Natal Man Borking his Avatar. Windows 98 BSOD Fail.

And for the Win…

Natal (if it works). Win.

Metal Gear Solid. Xbox Win.

Sky, Last.fm & Zune. Win.

Arkham Asylum. Sexy Lady Win.

Beatles Cock Up. Fail Win.

Alan Wakes Existance. Not Duke Nukem Win.

Appart from those slanted views toward the 360 conference, there was something called Modern Warfare 2 as well. Who knew Infinity Ward made games eh?

Oh, Chuck Norris can do all of the push ups, in answer to your question Microsoft.

*Except Splinter Cell. That IS Fail.

EDIT: Just found this. Nice.

I must admit; i think getting my Windows 7 beta machine ready for a rebuild has been one of the more stressful experiences of my computing life.

I’m not sure if it’s my server, an issue with the beta version of the software, or just the gods of karmic retribution casting a negative eye on me but i’ve been plagued with issues. Mainly in copying files over the network and from place to place on the machine, i couldn’t get through a batch of files over a few gig without explorer deciding it didn’t want to play. Not crashing you understand, just out right stopping, with a progress bar of meaningless need just plodding along the top of my screen but never reaching the end.

Of course the fun began in true steed once explorer actually crashed, rendering my machine useless. Yes it bounced back nice and quick but it become useless.

Trying to use anything but the shut down button would result in an error message of epic proportions, a simple full stop which was helpful, i must admit.

I guess i’m complaining over nothing, since the only issues i’ve really had with W7 Beta have been trying to get rid of it, something i guess doesn’t really matter in the design scale of things!

Anyway, time to install the Release Candidate (finally! slight delay and all) in x64 type win.

As i write this post on my Laptop, Windows 7 is slowly making its way to being my OS of choice of the Desktop machine.

The first thing i noticed is that i’d forgotten my machine has a stupid way of handling boot devices but that’s by the by.

Initial boot was slow it sat on it’s all new BSOC (Blue Screen of Conception, lol) for a long time, long enough for me to reboot once thinking it had died anyway as there were no activity lights but it was the same case after a restart and so it took 7 a short while (10 minutes) to to give me the setup window (shown).

Bareing in mind this process is allot more transparent in XP before Windows had a GUI from the off, so the lack of visible progress made this seem quite a long phase of inactivity.

Once at that stage things have been ok, the only other noticable change is that on a fresh install in a new partition, 7 makes a system partition of 200meg, why? No idea.

Things are chugging along nicely now and it would seem the physical installation is almost complete after only 10 - 15 minutes and a single automated restart. One rather interesting moment is that at around 75% setup killed my main monitor and popped up on the other one, continued to 100% and has stayed on monitor two.

It’s time to create some logins.

Same old same old although minus an Administrative account setup and it would seem 7 now forces password hints, something i’ve never seen the point of in a day-to-day use system. Oh well.

Key goes in, seems M$ now stick everything in UTC (R.I.P GMT), network type selection (for use with HomeGroup and other permissions) and the HomeGroup setup itself. Not bothering with this as i don’t have another Windows 7 PC! Yet, anyway.

DeskTop. Ta Da!

Not bad at all, including my own impatient reboot and wandering off during setup; it’s taken all of 45 minutes to get to the desktop, if i had more patientence and the attention span more than that of a gnat i dare say setup would be done easily within 30 minutes.

Now to actually use the thing. More soon.

The lovely people at Microsoft have today released an official beta version of Windows 7 - hoorah!

Although it’s been available for weeks on the various torrent sites around the interweb i have waited untill an official release so i may get a true beta experience; which will undoubtedly be the same anyway.

It’s the thought that counts.

Currently the download is at ~500meg and coming down my internet tube* at an impressive 434kbps, well done Be Unlimited! So hopefully soon - and by soon i mean when i back up my machine and all of it’s magical content - i shall install it and all will be well.

I’m actually looking forward to this.

*the internet is a series of tubes. Suprised it took this long for me to quote that…