Best Firefox Extension ever

I'm a recently new Firefox 1.5 user, however I love to get extensions that help me to work smarter

For example Gmail Manager in within Mozilla is awsome! but this new tool to post new entries in your blog has been awarded with the Best Extension ever price.

Performancing for Firefox is a " blog editor" who also have a list of your blogs (MSN Spaces, Blogger, custom, etc) allowing you to publish on any of them at any time! It also support Drag and Drop of files into the editor, save content after publish and formated text.

Have to say, very nice idea and with this kind of tools , updating a blog is much easier and faster and less time comsuming.

Hardware Upgrade and BF2

Last week a serious heat problem, apparently, killed my P4 motherboard. Several attempts were made to resurect it, but.... it was long gone.
So I bought new parts to get my pc up and running soon, however I went that extra mile:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+
GA-K8N-SLI
XFX GeForce 7800 GTX
ThermalTake Xaser 8000+ WinGo Ed
(Running Windows x32)

I installed FEAR again to test the new videocard and cpu ........I'm still shocked! Everything is set to MAX or Ultra, however the PC seems to be doing a very easy job.... no lag no nothing!!!!! Just AMAIZING :-)

In the other hand, we have our friend Battlefield 2. This SOB doesnt work on X2 CPUs, you have to create affinity with one processor only. Otherwise you will experience lag or crashes during the game. (more info visit this thread in EA Forums)

My new settings are:

1280x1024 @72 MHz
All Settings = Ultra (Setting only available when you change manually the Video.con file)
AA 2x
AF 16X (Controlled by Nvidia Driver)

The only problem that I got is a 30 sec lag at the begging of MAP (first matach only) and loading the map takes forever.
My PC has 1Gb DDR 400 RAM, but when you check the memory in use during a game it is ~1.250GB (papaun!)
This is known issue and to run the game in max resolution 2GB is required. (next buy... RAM)

During my invetigation I found a website called TweakGuides.com
This site contains tweak hints for any game and also for video drivers as well. I was interested on these 2 very cool guides: Battlefield 2 and Nvidia
Forceware tweaks . For example one of the cool tips was how to avoid the videos when you launch the game. (BTW thos EA, DICE and Intro Videos are ~250MB in total, this means all in memory before connecting to a server.)

Hope that next BF2 patch will contain some improvements for AMD X2 CPUs and take advantage of new technologies!

Tired of download "garbage" while you download torrents?

...well, read this post and you will find a possible solution!

Doing my daily reading across several forums and blogs, I found a FREE tool which blokes connections from spammers, spyware sites, ads sites, private corporations, etc. It's name is PeerGuardian 2.

I've installed it on my computer and amount of connections blocked is incredible, plus the speed of the downloads has increased dramatically

It's free, the code is available to download in case you are afraid of what this tools does on your system....Why not!

Enjoy

CommBank customers alert!!!!!

Attention, there is a new email going around asking to update your details for netbanking, please DO NOT INPUT YOUR DETAILS!!!!!!!!!!!

The URL is:

http://www.commbankupdate.com/netbank/bankmain.htm


Hope this helps!!!!!

Audio Cards - PCI-e Vs PCI 2.1

Steve Erickson, vice president for Creative's audio products , has explained why new powerful and high performance Sound Blaster Cards are not available in PCI-e technology:

As far as PCI Express (PCIe) is concerned, which is the next bus, what we found is that the performance of PCIe is truly bad for audio. We are seeing four times degradation on the bus for audio.
PCIe is designed for graphics and high data transfer, but audio sends very small packets and the overhead can be very big! Moving the data across PCIe is much, much higher than PCI. So what we have to do is go back to the drawing board and work on the transport part of the chip and re-design it to add more silicon to overcome some of the problems we had with PCIe. So for us to come up with a PCIe solution is going to take a while because we have to overcome the problems we're facing with that bus.


Did you know ? I didn't!

Davis take that building!!!!!!

Yes, Its COD Time

Call of duty 2 is out and Gonza has been playing 3 days killing bloody Nazis across Russia and Africa and France.
The game has not changed since COD -United Offensive some graphics, same AI some gameplay but more difficult and I have to say... ACTION NON STOP!!!!

Enemy soldiers come out from buildings like ant, while you platoon will remain covered and firing their guns but nobody will move forward if you don't do it first.
Sometimes is very silly, because you have 3 MG-42 + 5 soldiers firing at you but if you drop a smoke grenade .......@........ Silence.... They stop fighting!!!!! So you can advance and kill them all!

in 3 days I've finished the Russian Campaign and almost finished the British one and playing in HARDENED!!!

I'm very disappointed with the game, because is identical to COD United Offensive and this should be a completely new game


Good: Very addictive, lots a different weapons, KILLING SPREED!!!!!!!!
Bad: New scenarios in an old game, very lineal and very poor AI
My Review: 6/10

I've finished F.E.A.R

What a game!!!!!!

Good Story Line, strange ending, but good game.
But I have to admit, as the game riches the last levels the amount of combat decreases as the "scary visions" become in something very common and anoying, plus that you lose all you arsenal 3 times in the game >:-s

It's an open ending, so we can expect an Expansion pack in a future not to far.

Now is time for COD 2.

My new Media Player

After evaluating between a Windows Media Center PC and a Media Player device, I choose a Buffalo LinkTheater. It has Built-in DVD, Network connectivity (Ethernet and Wireless), support almost all the video and audio formats available now. Also allows you to attach a USB device to it or if you have the many, a NAS!

The cost is approximately half the price of a basic Media Center PC and provides the same functionalities, however it doesn't have a TV tuner, but I never record air TV , so that's ok.

I've also spent some extra dollars in a Vantec NexStar 3 hdd enclosure. This way my Media files are stored in this external drive, which is attached to the LinkTheater.

Have to say.. Excellent buy!

Think twice before buying an Internet domain

It's not always easy choosing the right domain name... but you can't do much worse than these people. What were they thinking?

Firstly there is "Who Represents?" - A database for agencies to the rich and famous:
http://www.whorepresents.com

Second is the Experts Exchange, a knowledge base where programmers can exchange advice and views:
http://www.expertsexchange.com

Looking for a pen? Look no further than Pen Island:
http://www.penisland.net

Need a therapist? Try:
http://www.therapistfinder.com

Finally we have the Mole Station Native Nursery, based in New South
Wales:
http://www.molestationnursery.com

New place for Gonza's Corner

After long time without new entries Gonza is back in this new location, thanks to Blogger.com.

I'm still setting up the entire site, however I will continue posting :-)

Hope you like it