Need for Speed Most Wanted (2012)

This is a great game.  Open ended city racing (aka GTA3+ style) but with set races, cars to find, upgrades, multiplayer.  And the graphics are the best I've seen.

And yet....

The game insists on a persistent internet connection.  This wouldnt be so bad, but it *silently* drops the connection on a regular basis.  It doesnt tell you this, just lets you amass XP, only to have it stripped when you switch to multi-player (and subsuquently resync with the servers).

Now this is pretty much the worst crime IMO.  Essentially, you lost your work.  Often in the region of hours of racing.  All because EA cant figure how to stop piracy without mandating a persistent connection.

Oh, and the UI completely loses the plot and starts showing debug/error messages in the interface!

Shame, this will bite lots of ppl i expect, and it is otherwise an amazing game.....

Amazon Fire HD 7" vs Google Nexus 7

Dimensions (mm)

193 x 137 x 10.3 vs 198.5 x 120 x 10.45 (Winner: Amazon Fire)

Weight (g)
395 vs 340 (Winner: Nexus 7)

Display Resolution
1280x800 vs 1280x800 (Draw)

Display Technology
IPS, polarising filter, anti-glare vs IPS (Winner: Amazon Fire)

CPU
OMAP 4460 Dual core @ 1.2 Ghz vs Cortex A9 Quad core @ 1.4 Ghz (Winner: Nexus 7)

GPU
PowerVR SGX 540 vs 416 MHz 12-core Nvidia Geforce ULP (Draw)

RAM
1 GB vs 1GB (Draw)

Max Storage
32GB vs 16GB (Winner: Amazon Fire)

Battery Life
11 hours vs 10 hours (Winner: Amazon Fire)

Connectivity
Dual band 802.11 a/b/g/n vs 802.11 b/g/n (Winner: Amazon Fire)
HDMI vs Bluetooth 3.0, NFC (Winner: Nexus 7)
Micro USB 2.0 vs Micro USB 2.0 (Draw)

Sensors
Accelerometer, Microphone vs Accelerometer, Microphone, Gyroscope, Compass, GPS (Winner: Nexus 7)

Operating System
Android ICS 4.0 with Amazon UI vs Stock Android Jelly Bean 4.1 (Winner: Nexus 7)

App Store
Amazon AppStore vs Google Play Store (Winner: Nexus 7)

Price (USD)
$199 vs $199 (Draw)

ScanExpress A3 USB on Windows 7

We've just moved our company secretary over from XP to Windows 7.  Pretty much all of the printers and devices she was accessing had Windows 7 drivers, but one that didnt was her Mustek Scan Express A3 USB flatbed scanner.

The download only provides Vista drivers:

http://www.mustek.com/product_resources/drivers/scanner/usbport/a3usb/win-vis...
(amusingly, step 5 of the instructions tell you to "Get off the internet" :-))

However, installing these drivers via web.exe (and rebooting) doesnt work.  After rebooting, an icon appears in the system tray, but the scanner is still not correctly recognised by Win7.  It shows up in the devices page, but as an unknown device with no driver.

The fix is to change the compatibility settings for web.exe to:

1.  Windows Vista
2.  Run as Administrator.

Then reinstall the driver (by running web.exe) and you should get a warning this time about installing an unvalidated driver.  If you accept and reboot, the next time you plug the device in Windows will *finally* install the drivers.

The little tray icon still shows scanner as not detected, but I can successfully scan (using the standard TWAIN interface) from programs such as Paint Shop Pro.
Sorted, and secretary will no doubt be pleased.

Kindle pain...

I've just finished playing DeadSpace 2 (cracking game) and thought I'd check out the associated book that came out recently "Dead Space Martyr".

Quick search and splendid, the publishers Macmillan have created a Kindle version.  But oh, wait a minute, whats this - not available in UK.  WTF?  So, I'm stuck with buying the paperback version and breaking my rule of digital-only books.

Bugger it, I think I'll just give the whole thing a miss.  Their loss...

10 years on... Starcraft 2 system requirements

Amazon have just notified me that my pre-order for StarCraft II has been dispatched. Yeeeha!

Its been 10 years since the original Starcraft was released. The minimum requirements back then were a poultry:

• Windows 95/98/NT 
• Pentium 90 MHz processor or higher 
• 16 MB RAM 
• DirectDraw-Compatible SVGA Video Card 
• DirectX 2.0 
• Double-Speed CD-ROM (Quad Speed for Cinematics) 
• 80 MB of disk space 
• Mouse/keyboard

Whilst, today's latest StarCraft II requirements are:

• Windows® XP/Windows Vista®/Windows® 7 
• 2.6 GHz Pentium® IV or equivalent AMD 
• 128 MB PCIe NVIDIA® GeForce® or ATI Radeon® card or better 
• 12 GB available HD space 
• 1 GB RAM (1.5 GB required for Windows Vista®/Windows® 7 users) 
• DVD-ROM drive 
• Broadband Internet connection 
• 1024X720 minimum display resolution

So an increase of:

• x28 CPU speed 
• x64 Memory 
• x154 Disk space

So, extrapolating in a silly fashion, StarCraft II in 2020 will require:

• 72.8 Ghz processor (this is unlikely due to heat-constraints, I suspect 
• adding more cores is likely) 
• 64GB memory 
• 1.8TB (1848GB) of disk space

Scary...        

iPhone Dependency..

So, I was on a trip to London yesterday, and someway through the trip it dawned on me how dependent I've become on my iPhone....
 
1. iPhone alarm wakes me at 8.45
2. Check train schedule with Todo PIM app
3. Navigton sat-nav app gets me to the railway station.
4. Realize I dont have my booking id for getting my prepurchased ticket (bought via TheTrainLine iPhone app). Use email app to find booking confirmation.
5. Get on train, listen to podcast for an hour or so
6. Off train, popup Tube Deluxe app to figure out tube route to destination
7. Off tube, use Maps GPS to plot route to destination
8. Later, browse online for London attractions, get location of Science Museum.
9. Tube Deluxe to plot tube route, Maps to get me from tube to museum.
10. Tube Deluxe for route back to final train station, Maps again to get to station
11. Podcast on return journey.
12. Navigon sat-nav to get me back home.

God only knows how I survived before :-)            

EasyPeasy Linux... NOT

So I've been thinking of giving my old EeePC 901 to my brother, as I've upgraded to the superb N10J and he could probably make use of it.

Looking on the web, the EasyPeasy Linux distribution (formerly Ubuntu Eee) seems the most popular and promised a pain free install. So, having an external drive, I decided the simplest method was to simply download and burn the install ISO onto a DVD. So far so good, Eee boots DVD, Ubuntu starts and then.... I'm dumped at a BusyBox console. Er, what? After some annoying checking on the web, it appears I'm not the only person having this problem. Strike 1....

I decide to try the USB stick route, which seems to be more common. So, following their instructions to the letter, I download and execute the little Windows application for transferring the ISO to a stick.  Reboot with the stick in and..... I'm dumped at a bootloader console with the error "Could not find kernel image: linux". WTF? USB stick installation borked as well? Strike 2.....

At this point I've had enough for the morning. I have to say this is the worst Linux install I've experienced in a looong while. I've installed ancient versions of Redhat on creaky old boxes with less fuss than this.

In conclusion - EasyPeasy Linux is anything but!

UPDATE 11:11

Finally got the blasted thing installed using a removeable SD card I had lying around.  Frankly, I'm amazed at how poor the installation support for EasyPeasy Linux is.  The distribution only targets a subset of hardware, namely EEE pcs, not the entire plethora of hardware that standard Linux distros have to cater for.  So why oh why is it so difficult to install on what should be their most popular choice of device?