I want a new Mac Mini!!!

Apple has announced the new Mac Mini with a Core Duo Intel Processor! It's so Cool!!!

The new box comes with Front Row, 4 usb ports and Optical Audio out! If this new Mac wasn't built for being a PVR I don't know what is!

Also released in this run of Apple announcements is iPod Hi-Fi!

Cnet have reviews of both products iPod Hifi and Mac Mini

A Blast from the Past

I was reading an article from IGN about the 10 Worst Controllers of all time and I stumble across a console from my past the TI-99! It's controller (if you'd call it that) managed to make 6 on the list.

6. TI-99 Joystick

Computers in the 80s weren't meant for the gaming market, but let's be realistic: that's all we really used these things for anyway. Texas Instruments' TI-99, a computer with an optional disk drive twice as massive, jumped on the gaming market early with a bunch of classic games like…um…M*A*S*H…and, um…some Pac-Man clone… Anyway, you had the choice of controlling these games with either A) the keyboard, or B) one of the crappiest, most unresponsive, piece of junk joysticks ever produced. But hey, there were two of them!

Brought back some font memories... How could you forget this home page!
Some of the games were pretty advanced for their time. My favourite was Parsec a side scrolling space shotter that I spent hours playing with my Dad trying to get to the end... Don't think we ever did!

The system had a speach module that was unheard for in a Home Computer, I think we even the text to speech engine for it. Not only that but the fact it had a Disk Drive... not just tapes and cartridges... a REAL Disk Drive... sure it was the same size as a mini tower, but it was there..

So despite it's competely useless joystick it was a heap of fun... I'm going to hold the TI completely responsible for my current gaming addiction... That's right the fact that I bought a Gameboy Micro yesterday is completely the fault of the TI99/4A...

Getting Very Very Close now

It's officially 1 Month and 1 Day until our wedding today! And It's 2
weeks and 2 days until my bucks night!!!

I'm not really sure what's happening but it's all planned to happen on
the 11th March!

Hope to see you there!

Weekend run down!

This weekend was pretty packed in the end. I arrived back fairly late on Friday night from Toowoomba, but in the end it was in enough time to see Ness score 2 awesome goals in her trial match against Kangaroo Point.
On Saturday I'm not exactly sure what came over me but I decided to get up with Ness in the morning at about 5am and walk her to boot camp... Just to top it off I then filled in the time she was at boot camp with a 6km round trip to the city, although I did managed to fit in enough time to play one cup of Mario Kart DS.
Saturday also marked the first trip for MinX to have some work done. I had her booked in for a new Alarm/Immobiliser, Central locking and some new front speakers. I decided that the front speakers were not to crash hot with some rattles and crackling with just about every base note. I had some nice new Boston Acoustic S65 coaxials fitted which improved the sound no end but on inspection of the speakers that were in the doors fitting a $5 set from SuperCheap Auto probably would have been an improvement. Still the speakers sound great even running off the stock headunit.
This was the first time in a long time that I've had anyone actually install stuff in the car, usually I opt to do the install myself, but the guys at Autobarn at Springwood did such an awesome job at such a good price it's hardly worth doing it yourself. The new speakers are in the factory holes and you'd never know that anything had been done to the car except for one little blue flashing light on the dash.
After droping off MinX it was off to Indoor Cricket final... I think the less said about it the better. I hit a 7, They Won... We lost...
Sunday was mostly filled with Wedding jobs, I found a suit and shoes... All in all it was a good weekend!

OMG I've been without internet for 2 days

I'm out of Brisbane onsite at the moment and the only internet I have is the email access on my phone... which is hardly idea! Oh and before some one pipes up with "Just go to an internet cafe" that may be all well and good during the day when I'm supposed to be at work but a internet cafe that's only open 9-5 is no more help than ..... something not very helpful.

On the up side I have been able to get back into some serious DS action because lets face it I can't surf the Web! I've almost finished getting all the Stars rankings in Mario Kart DS (something that I've managed to slack off on for the last few weeks. I also got through 2 levels that I was stuck on in the Hard mode of Ouendan!

This weekend is the dreaded summer finals at indoor, which means playing cricket in a tin shed at about a thousand degrees. Fortunately we've got a morning final which means the centre will have only reached about five hundred degrees by the time we finish. After that MinX get's her first trip for some work, a new alarm system and central locking.

I think every other spare moment of the weekend will be spent catching up on much lost 'net time!

Wood You Believe?

This was just too weird not to post...

Wood You Believe?: "We knew things were getting bad in Serbia, but this is ridiculous. Our beloved blogging brothers-in-arms from Jalopnik tell us about a Serbian Yugo with a rather unusual fuel source. Instead of pulling the car along with horses, somebody tapped into a different kind of 125-year-old technology and ended up with a car that's faster than the original—which is not a tall order when you're talking about a Yugo. That anachronistic-looking smokestack on the back of the car uses wood gas for fuel. The idea here is that wood doesn't burn completely, and emits hydrogen and methane is a byproduct. Hey, isn't that stuff flammable? Yep. Put it in a conventional internal combustion engine, you have a special fuel that gets the job done. You laugh. Someday we may be looking for the plans for this thing.

Just what you need after an 8:30 Cricket Match

Last night I turned up for indoor cricket to discover it was finals time... This means play offs, the problem with this is we're second on the ladder. So our first match was against the top team meaning we had a second chance if we lost. But here in lies the problem, if we lost we had to play the winner of 3rd and 4th straight afterwards.

Of course we lost the first game so after playing our guts out in the heat and humidity we had to line up for another game at 9:50pm (which started at about 10:20pm) which resulted in me getting home at about 12:15am this morning.

I haven't played for a few weeks so I was happy to get back into the bowling with a wicket on my first and second ball and only going for about 2-3 runs over my whole spell. My batting wasn't anything to shout about but at least I managed to get a practice session!

Fortunately we won the second one which means we're in the Grand Final on Saturday. It's an early morning match so I'm hoping for a bit of a cooler session.

Every DS needs one of these

It's been ages since I've posted about some technology but when I saw this I couldn't resist! Engadget have previously written about a 4GB add on for the PSP but it's the best news about a media player for the DS I've ever seen!

Using the Game Boy Advance cartridge slot to store and power the hard drive, and the DS card slot to store the Media Player software, the combination promises to turn your game-centric DS into a PSP clone 'a powerful home entertainment device, with movie playback, music on the move and a convenient picture viewer.' It's unclear if this system will work with the new, smaller, Nintendo DS lite. All things told, it looks like a pretty nice product and, for about $225, it better be!

Basically it will give us everything we need to take all your media on the go... The only real problem is the DS isn't pocket sized to begin with and strapping this on the back doesn't exactly help!