MyToys (RSS)

New boy toys(not adult toys:p) I seem to buy every so often. Sometimes includes a review, othertimes just info.

Blog moved to WordPress and new domain...

I've moved my blog to my own domain and onto a WordPress engine, CS + SPAM was driving me nuts!

Catchup posts: Oh yes, I've been in Japan for a couple of months, first 2 weeks of photos are uploaded on Flickr, I still havent had a chance to upload the thousands after.

Whats more, I've actually written some information about me so you can finally find out my sad sad way of life. See About Thushan Fernando.
posted Sunday, June 29, 2008 2:57 PM by Thushan Fernando

Goodbye ATI.com, heeeellooo ATI.AMD.com

A couple of months back I gave my initial thoughts on the ATI + AMD merger and my fears for what may become of their merger. Well as of today the merger is considered a done deal with AMD making their newest adopted kid on the block ATI feel cozy in the AMD subdomain system (ATI.com redirects to ATI.AMD.com). There's also the formal announcement of Fusion which is (in simple terms) where the CPU & GPU are on the same slice of silicon. This should make things interesting for the NVIDIA camp as well as how the combination will work (Eg. I avoid *any* integrated video card boards - unless its a server-box - purely because of the speed - no need to worry GPU will do the work - and the shared memory issues), will they somehow have a seperate video memory chip/controller on the board or use the onboard memory? How would the combination work in terms of Cross-Fire, can you still have addon cards? Will ATI (oops AMD-ATI) continue building addin cards (even though they may be used on non-AMD boxes)... Oh so many questions and so much time before we'll know anything.

Just another brain dump. Sad to see ATI go, but oh well.
posted Wednesday, October 25, 2006 12:04 PM by Thushan Fernando with 1 Comments

MyToys: Rancilio Silvia, Rancilio Rocky Espresso Machines

Something a little different, I bought an Espresso machine today (excuse: for my parents, reality: I love coffee) after a week of solid googling and talking to random Barista's at cafe's. It was a tough call but here were the top 3 contenders:
  1. Rancilio Silva -> 15 Bar (Brass Boiler)
  2. Gaggia Classic -> 17 Bar (Brass internals? Aluminium Boiler)
  3. Saeco Via Venezia -> 15 Bar (Stainless Steel Boiler)
Now lets clear something up first, I am in *no-way* experienced in Espresso Machines, so I had a few friends (thanks!) & Google telling me what to look for. At the start I thought the "Bars" we're the standard benchmark (like a processor in a system/Kw of power in a car) but alas its only the start.

The Saeco was later written off because of its stainless steel boiler, which left the Rancilio and Gaggia and seeing the following the Rancilio had I opted to buy that unit. It wasnt easy finding a store - most had sold out of units and had a 2-3 week wait and me, I never wait that long. Eventually I came across Mocopan in Preston (Melbourne) who had a fresh 108 units of the Rancilio sent from Italy on Thursday. So off I went, asked several stupid questions and came out of the store with the Rancilio Silvia, Rancilio Rocky (Grinder) and the base thing to make it look cool. All up a nice $1300 investment (the fine ladies at Mocopan threw in some free coffee and cups, jug and I bought some Cappuccino mugs to get me going).

Rancilio Silvia Side-Shot

Now I realise I'll have to learn how to use Ms Silvia and learn what buttons to push to get her steaming and produce some creamy yummy coffee (hmmm...)... SO I've started yet another new topic on this blog titled n00b Espresso Extraodinaire! to document my journey at learning the tricks of the trade of using an Espresso machine. I'll try and keep that updated when I start using the machine more regularly:-)
posted Saturday, May 27, 2006 10:06 AM by Thushan Fernando with 2 Comments

Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor Released

Vista brings a whole new ball game to the Windows crowd, will your system be able to handle it? Is it strong enough, inteligent enough, juiced-up enough or quite simply good enough to stand against this new generation of operating systems? Well find out with the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor (currently Beta - Caused a BSoD while I was writing this!)

With all the options selected (so its checking for Windows Vista Ultimate) I found my main desktop (summary specs below) are (surprise!) adequate, however it didnt detect my HD Tuner (DViCo HDTuner) and didnt like the drivers for my HP Printer (which work on Vista builds now!), granted my main box is grunty I am running an older (but DX9 compatible) gfx card and quite an old sound card... anyhow see what your machine racks up.

System Summary
  • CPU: Intel 3.8Ghz (ES) [ Waiting for Conroe to move over to DC! ]
  • Motherboard: ASUS P5WD2-Premium
  • RAM: 2x 1GB Corsair 8000UL DDR-II = 2Gb Total
  • Hard Disk 1: 2x Western Digital Raptor 150Gb (SATA) RAID 0 [ Not Clear Cover ]
  • Hard Disk 2: 2x Western Digital WD5000YS 500Gig SATA II (RAID 0)
  • Video: Sapphire X850XT PE (Before the current Generation of 1xxx Series!)
  • Audio: Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Platinum (not ZS, model before that)
Everyone should try and get a copy of Beta 2 (soon!) and try it on their machines to see how it will be running on your current setup, with the various builds I'm using at startup (with quite a bit of tweaking) I've got ~500Mb of memory already allocated to Vista. This means we're looking at an "atleast" 1Gb limit for most average users (which isnt that bad considering how far we've come)< My plan is to move over to 64Bit fulltime with atleast 4Gb of system memory to make things work nicely once Vista RTMs.
posted Friday, May 19, 2006 1:08 PM by Thushan Fernando with 4 Comments

MyToys: Eclipse AVN6000 GPS, Audio and Video System.

I bought a Subaru Liberty (aka Legacy outside Aus) earlier on in the year (yes I know I still havent posted those images! maybe this week!) and I've been itching to get the GPS installed to finally come into the new century of not using the Melways (== a street directory for everyone outside Melbourne!).

Originally I was planning to go with the Subaru SatNav which would be about $4K plus installation, I looked around knowing that there must be better, more feature packed GPS systems out there. For a while it seemed the VDO MS 5700 SD was going to be it... that was until 2 days ago I dropped by GL Pro Sound and came face to face with the Eclipse AVN6000 and fell in love (geeky-love, not wierdo-love:p)... I only paid for the unit to be installed today, so its not in my car as yet (you'll get a first-hand review once its in there) but let me go through some of the funky features this baby has that I saw... (mind you this was only released a week ago!)
  • First and fore-most, its touch screen and not one that leaves thumb-prints or marks all over the place (I tried to, but failed!)

  • Its smart enough to do auto-completion based on whatever's loaded in the system. Wha? This means, say I want to get to Middleborough Road in Rockhampton (not a real place I dont think, I just picked those because they are long names)... I'll go and type in M (it'll only enable characters that are valid and disable ones it doesnt list - Eg. Z, X, Y will be disabled if nothign starts with MZ,MX,MY etc) it will complete the street name if it finds a proper match. At the store I selected my suburb (autocompleted after 2 char's entered) and automatically filled out my street name after my second character too.

  • Video, while its (apparently!) not designed for DVD-Viewing the system can display very clean, properly saturated colored DVD videos (no MPEG4 yet though - I called and asked...) We threw in a copy of Monster's Inc and it looked quite good and clean, sure its not the same quality compared to a full-LCD, but its doing a good job (You can stick a screen for the back-seat pasengers which will be better for video!)

  • The AVN also replaces all your audio system controls, so your OEM system no longer needs to be used as the AVN provides a clean filtered output that can be sent to your Amp (or to your speakers - and make use of Circle-Surround) In terms of audio support its got your usual CDA/MP3/WMA (DRM?) in there.

  • I've had my Pioneer system stolen out of my Camry (my fault I forgot to take the DIN) and after that I was very thoughtful about what I buy (Eg. no detachable face units because I know i'll leave it in there), Eclipse  (first I've seen) has so much trust in something called ESN that they dont have detachable faces on their headunits nor their AVN. ESN is a tracking system which is quite unique and useful, if your unit is switched off (power goes/removed from car) you'll need to provide an activation CD to get it working again. The "legal owners" are stored on file so if you do endup buying (or stealing:p) a unit the chance of you getting caught is pretty high.
That's all I saw from my brief 2hr or so discussion with Peter at GL Pro Sound, more indepth review's with lotsa juicy photo's later.

For the moment though take a look at the Feature List and the Specifications to see what the unit handles, oh and theres also the Accessories.

Update - 24/05
Finally uploaded pictures of the modification.
posted Thursday, May 04, 2006 11:56 AM by Thushan Fernando with 6 Comments

MyToys: Uniden 8855+1 Cordless 5.8Ghz Phone

Cordless phones are great, especially when you need to run around trying to find that darn piece of paper or (as most of you would have been) looking for a stupid pen that works out of the 50 in that bowl... Whats not so great about them is the fact that they rely on the same band as the Wireless spec... 2.4Ghz, so any cordless phones around will cause interference and interference causes dodgy connections...

So whats the cure? Get a cordless phone on the 5.8Ghz band! I just bought (a couple of weeks ago) a Uniden 8855+1 just for that reason.

Heres what it looks like from the maker's site:
  


Yes, that little thing on the dock is a flip phone and yes its for the home phone (not a Mobile or Cell) but its freaking awesome. I've been using it for the past week now and I have to admit, I'm loving it! The reception is very good (I've got it on my desk upstairs and I can take it to our backyard - about 15 meters away - and the reception is still good), the global addressbook is useful too, i add an entry to the internal addressbook (100 entries with 4 numbers max for each entry = 400 numbers) its available on both phones, *AND* you can add up to 10 handsets (I've only got the components you see on the images)... What's even cooler is the other headset (non-flip-phone) only needs the power (no additional phone sockets - like most other cordless-base phones) and I love the intercom on there (I constantly get annoyed at night by my parents in the room down the hall, now they just "ring me" if they need anything!) and lots of cute little images etc (its a color screen - not the best/highest res but its enough for a home phone).

Overall if your after a phone that wont interfere with your wireless networks, look at a 5.8GHz phone, if you want something that looks funky, has so many features (I havent talked about many) take a look at the Uniden, Panasonic also makes a 5.8Ghz phone but its a plain vanilla one.
posted Thursday, May 04, 2006 7:36 AM by Thushan Fernando with 3 Comments

Think you know 3D Audio sound? Listen to this and see!

Stumbled apon this and nearly got scared sheetless... We know sound companies *cough* Creative *cough* drop the "3-D realism" of sound into their marketting jargon but I have yet to feel the true feeling of 3D Realism to its potential (sure Doom III, Half-Life II have it, but still not to my liking...

Well get ready for Holophonic effects. Firstly grab a pair of headphones (I use Sennheiser HD650 & the HD595 ones... awesome!)
or if you dont have one, turn up your speakers and make sure you dont have anything else disracting it (although I'm not sure about the quality from non-headphones!) then download Cereni - Holophonic.mp3 and get ready to be blown away...

I honestly thought someone (namely my sis) was behind me with a box of matches... AWESOME stuff!
posted Wednesday, January 04, 2006 1:05 PM by wsoftware with 0 Comments

MyToys : Canon S80 Digital Camera

Another new section:-) MyToys will have some of the new stuff I tend to buy every so often, some good, some bad and maybe a few with reviews.

First up is the spank-me-I'm-sexy (the camera not me!) Canon S80 Digital Camera. I've survived with the Kodak DX3600 for almost 3 years now (I'm not much of a photo-guy!).
Canon S80
Reviews Online Approximate Price (AUD): $677-829 (23/11/2005) [ Bought For: $729 from CameraWorld ]
Experience:
Yet to use the product, however I was in a rush to buy this and not many places had stock, so I went with Camera world. Otherwise I would have considered I-Store($709) or BozCorpTech($689). Canon unfortunately wont have these back in Australia until *cough* end-of-november (but more likely end of December + some time for Customs to get their act = mid-January)

Why Buy?
We're off on a bit of a roadtrip in december and it was about time I get a camera (plus the motorshow is coming up). I was originally wanting the S70 but moved over to S80 after seeing the model at Teds Cameras, its 8MP and has some very very sweet quality images, video (although you'd want a seperate one for video) can be done properly in this model with a high-definition output (limited) and finally the new processor (Dig!c II) has got some very nice features... read the reviews online for some more info!

Visual Studio 2005 Launch Thursday!

I'll be at the Visual Studio 2005 launch tomorrow (thursday) in Melbourne (Sofitel Hotel on Colins street) so I'll take some Photos then and upload them. I'm stuck with the default 32Mb card because the 2Gb card I ordered didnt arrive earlier:(
posted Wednesday, November 23, 2005 8:21 AM by wsoftware with 0 Comments