Author Archives: essiep

Core 2 Quad

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20°C, rain am, Sun pm;

It took ages to fit, partly because I was so careful about it, but also, I put the heatsink’s support frome in the wrong way. It presents some interesting problems, some games don’t benfit much, but 3DS Max and photoshop work at double speed with it. The BIOS reports it running at 600Mhz, but in use it does runn well. Oddly, Windows 2000 pro only shows 2 cores running in Task Manager. Either, Task manager in Win2K only displayes 2 cores, or maybe, Win 2K doesn’t support more than 2. Very strange that last possibility since it supports multi-processors right from the first service pack.

Quad core

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13°C, showers.

Scan.co.uk is a hardware supplies place in the UK, who offer computer componants are decent prices along with a very wide range to choose from. Today should have seen a quad-core processor delivered here. They only deliver when all decent folks are out at work. Therefore, on Saturday I will have to drive there to collect it, about 12-15 miles from here, a journey that will negate the cost benefit of buying mail-order. There’s no point using them again because of this.

Bessie showed me up today.

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19°C, wet morning, gorgeous afternoon.Sun

Bessie "roughed up" a terrier dog this afternoon and it’s
owner was livid. He ranted & shouted at me- which made it difficult to be
immediately apologetic. Trouble is, he was walking his dog in a field but kept
it on a lead, and dogs feel cornered by that, especially when a bigger dog comes
bounding over. It must be easy to for this bloke to see Bessie as the baddie, an
not notice the likely snap his terrier most certainly will have done. Westland
terriers have been bred for hunting, killing rabbits and the like, plus their
reactions are very fast; but the guy wasn’t in the mood to hear any of that. His
threat was to have a letter from a solicitor come through my door. Quaint.

Assassin’s Creed

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7°C, rain.

Assassin’s Creed: after a session marking I got it running. It always takes me a while to get used to controls but apart from that it’s very intrigiung. There are some very spectacular sets in the game- especially Damascas, the city is enormous with excellent leves of detail. No doubt it’s all done by setting the LOD switches quite close, but they have judged it well. THere are plenty of "side missions" which worked well enough in STALKER to make that a feature to look out for in games. Right now, my impression is that it is a pity that they had to put the science fiction elements in, I’d prefer paper style maps, maybe a compass but no GPS on screen.
Assassin's Creed2

Absinthe

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9°C, chily & strong E. Winds

Assassin’s Creed is finally out on PC so I picked up my copy today. I’ll run it after posting this, so no thoughts to report yet.
 Assassin's Creed1
Today has been characterised by shopping, probably a diversion activity from the weight of coursework marking that ominously filling my black bag. Anyway. The other  noteworthy thing today was a bottle of Absinthe, it’s the Parisienne from La Fée. It’s much like Pernod, or Ouzo but a softer more subtle flavour. It’s famed bitterness is not that noticable; perhaps I put in too much sugar.
Watch out though, it is very strong.

another avian meeting

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13°C, cloudy, lighter winds C=33 miles.

Climbing a sunken lane, there was a crow perched in the left embankment. Strange place for a crow so I stopped. He looks injured but didn’t fly away when I approached. See the photo. Poor creature seems to have a head injury, perhaps he was concussed. The other worry is that he has a disease, West Nile virus affects crows in the USA.
He stood there for a while, looking around and blinking but otherwise quite still. So I picked him up and took him over to a nearby field. Like other biords, he was quite calm once covered in a raincoat, even wild animals seem sedated by darkness. On letting go, he flew a short distance but crash landed in the undergrowth. I left hime there, at least he couldn’t get run over there. I wished him well and continued my journey, there really is nothing I could have done.
Good luck…

Anslow Rheas

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13°C, windly but a nice sunny start. c=27 miles

Rode up to Anslow bank today to find those "Emus" that I spoke of here previously. I got a bunch of photos this time, but on looking them up in Wikipedia, they turn out to be Rheas. No less curious for that I say.

Coniine

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Cold strong N Wind, some rain, 41 miles on the bike.
Riding in the rain wasn’t so bad this afternoon. Perhaps I have physically adjusted to the colder weather after four days hiking in the driving rain and snow of North Wales. The house we stayed in was damp and draughty which made drying clothes difficult and keeping bodies warm impossible. The sea was distinctly green and covered in white horses, visble from the kitchen.
It was a great trip though, Cader Idris looked fantastic covered in snow, but we didn’t get up there- the snowstorms were drawing in at a time when sunset was getting near. At this point we hatched the idea of a hiking holiday in the Pyrenees. Hannah is fit enough to really enjoy this on equal terms.