I was using Google’s Image Search just a few minutes ago trying to find some pictures of some multi-monitor stands, and I noticed something strange. Next to the dropdown box that lets you select what size image you would like to be displayed, there was another dropdown menu that was currently set on “Any content”. I clicked on this second dropdown menu and much to my surprise the choices were News content, Faces, Clip art, Line drawings, and Photo content. It seems that Google has finally implemented the results of thousands of people using thier Image Labeler.
I decided to see how well Google’s new feature works, so I threw the word “Electronica” into the image search. I was greated with pictures of raves, some album covers, and a few other random things. I switched the menu to Faces, and all the images changed to pictures of people. I was highly impressed. I then gave it Apple, and because it was still set on Faces, I was met with a bunch of stares right back. I changed it to News content, and all the images were about Apple and its products in the news. All the other options gave results well defined by thier menu choice. It seemed as though Google had done a really good job. For good measure, I searched for Cake with the image search. When put it on Any content, it returned what you would expect. I then put it on Faces, and was a little disappointed. Less than 70% of the images were of faces, and I’m including faces on the cakes themselves. It seems that the image search couldn’t distinguish between cakes and faces.
It’s a pretty cool new (I think it’s new, not sure when they implemented it) feature, and should make it easier to get exactly what you’re looking for. While I’m sure it won’t work perfectly 100% of the time, it seems to be doing very well so far.
A few days ago, (last Friday to be exact) my friend Jay drove me home from a gathering we had been having at a friend’s house. It began sleeting, so he decided to stay the night. We were in my room when he spotted my flight controllers sitting on a shelf. I have the Saitek X52 flight control system, which I haven’t used in a couple years since I stopped playing flight simulator games like MS Combat Flight Simulator 3 and MS Flight Simulator 2004. I decided that that night would be a great time to get back into the flying scene, and so we quickly installed the drivers and programming software. We also installed IL2 Sturmovik, a combat flight simulator focused on the air battles of the Eastern Front during World War II. I hadn’t played IL2 that much, but I was ready to jump into it again.
After loading up the game, and figuring out how to edit a .ini file to get it to play at the full 1920×1200 of my 24″ Acer screen, we began configuring the controls. For those of you that have never played a flight simulator, let me tell you that configuring the controls is one of the most important things you’ll do. There are so many things you need to map to different axes, like pitch, roll, and yaw to start with, but then there’s also elevator, aileron, and rudder trim. Then of course you have all the combat buttons, like your weapon fire buttons, but there are so many others that some people don’t know about. Like the button to start your engine, raise or lower your flaps, put your landing gear up or down, set the wheel brakes, increase the fuel mixture, set the prop pitch, or even use the fire extinguisher. All of these controls can be set, among many others.
After getting everything all set up, we jumped into the first campaign in the list. It was the Finnish campaign, and while interesting, it was impossible to understand the radio chatter because IL2 has voice clips in all the languages it has campaigns for. Today Jay came over again, and we played some of the USMC campaign, which begins with focus around Wake Island.
IL2 is a great game overall, with many different campaigns to play though. There are several tutorials to get you up and flying, along with a custom mission builder so you can create your own scenarios. While not all that graphically pleasing especially if you’re used to the DirectX 10 beauty of Crysis or the like, IL2 Sturmovik is a very fun flight simulator that can keep one entertained for hours. It is very intense, often times having us shouting at the top of our lungs, scrambling to hit the eject button, or cheering when an enemy plane began spiraling toward the ground. If you are a fan of flight simulators, I would definitely recommend this game.
Happy New Year to all, it’s 2009. I’m looking forward to each release of new technology, and all the other things this year has in store for me. I wish you all the best, and here’s to a great year.
I’m home from college, and I’ve got to say, it’s….boring. Yeah, I’m stuck here without a car, (see this post for why) and there’s not much to do. I have started watching Entourage, and I’ve blown through the first two and a half seasons in the past two days. When I’m not working back at my old job being a waiter at Carpenter and Main, I’ve either been sleeping, watching Entourage, or reading a couple of the new books I bought. Speaking of sleeping, I’ve gotten messed up again. I go to bed early in the morning, and wake up as the sun is going down. I’m pretty sure this isn’t healthy, and I should probably try to fix things. Oh well, I’ve still got two more season of Entourage to go through.
I’ve been looking for a way to export all my Facebook contacts so that I could stick them on my iPod or my phone, and I’ve finally found a way to do it. If you have Firefox and GreaseMonkey, it should be no trouble, all you have to do is grab the GreaseMonkey script from here. If you don’t have Firefox and GreaseMonkey, grab the free download of Firefox from the Mozilla website, and then download the GreaseMonkey plugin. Open up Firefox, drag the .xsi plugin file into Firefox, and it will install it. Then, browse to this page, and click on the link in the middle of the page that ends with .js. This will ask if you want to install the GreaseMonkey script, which you do. Go to the Facebook Phonebook page, and go to Tools -> GreaseMonkey -> User Script Commands… -> Export Facebook Phonebook. Just follow the onscreen instructions, and you should be go to go.
You will also need a Google account to export to from Facebook, but once your contacts are stored on your Google account, you can export them to a .csv file, and import those into Microsoft Outlook or another program. My deepest thanks go out to the author of the script.
Well, I’m done with my final exams for this semester. None of them were too hard, and only one of them had any real affect on my grade, so overall things turned out okay. I’m glad the semester is over, because I am now done with most of my boring introduction classes, and I’ve finished two of my non-major required classes as well. I’m looking forward to next semester where I won’t have to get up at 8am every day, and I’ll be taking some classes that are new and exciting. But for now, I’m going to sit back, relax, and enjoy my vacation.
Two nights ago, I installed some new hardware in my computer. I started rebuilding things at about 11:30pm, and finished at about 12 noon the next day. It was a painful process. I replaced my trusty Asus M2N-SLI Deluxe with a DFI Lanparty DK T2RSB Plus. I also switched over to the Intel camp, and popped in a dual-core E8500 at 3.16GHz. Along with all the hardware changes, I made some changes to how my data is set up. I used to have four 750GB drives in RAID 0+1. This included my OS (XP Home) and all my data. I now have it set up so that my OS is on two 250GB drives in RAID 0, and all my data is on the four 750GB drives, no in RAID 5. I’ve installed Vista Business, and so far I like the new operating system.
I ran into many many problems throughout the night. First, I had to change the mounting hardware on my waterblock, and because I couldn’t find a hex wrench anywhere, I ended up breaking the Lucite so that I could remove the screws. Danger Den really needs to include a hex wrench with their products. Once I got all the hardware installed, I found out that my RAID card didn’t work in one of the slots, so I had to shuffle things around to get everything working. After many, many problems getting the RAID arrays to work, I finally got Vista installed.
Here are some pictures from that night, and into the morning.
Everything all moved into my dorm's lounge, 'cause it wouldn't all fit in my dorm room.
Draining the cooling system.
The new motherboard - DFI Lanparty DK T2RSB Plus
The CPU stuck to the waterblock, so much that I accidentally pulled it out of the socket.
CPU removed.
Removing the tubing.
Trying to remove the plastic hose clamp.
CPU and expansion cards removed.
Took out the PSU to clean it.
This is what happens when you forget the cable as one of those little hooks that keeps it attached.
So much dust! This is from about two and a half months.
Box of cables and other random stuff.
Cleaning and replacing the front fan air filters.
New motherboard installed.
I had to crack the Lucite mounting hardware on my waterblock so that I could remove the screws. They required a hex wrench, which I didn't have. I did have a new Lucite top though.
The inside of my Danger Den MC-TDX waterblock.
A closeup, the blue is from the coolant.
New E8500 installed.
Waterblock put back on.
Tubes reattached.
System filled back up, and leak testing.
Here you can see the paperclip trick used for running a PSU without it being attached to the motherboard.
The newly filled reservoir.
I sort of took over the lounge. It's sometime in the early AM at the point.
I made such a mess.
The old coolant.
Trying to install XP. That failed. The RAID arrays didn't like it.
The POST screen.
Look, daylight! It was quite fun to watch the sunrise.
Some random weird error that bugged me for hours.
Installing Vista.
Woohoo! Vista works.
Everything up and running. Cleaning up was a blast.
I have just handed in my portfolio for my writing class. I am done with English for the semester, and I hope for the next few years. I don’t like writing at all, which is sort of ironic given that I am writing this. However there’s a big difference. Writing an analysis or research paper is a chore, this is actually a bit interesting. That’s about all I have to say right now, I’m just so happy to be done with English for the time being.
This just in, the official news that the Windows 7 beta will be out January 13. Everyone that attends the MSDN Developer Conference will recieve a copy of Windows 7 Beta to test out. Man, I wish I were going.
Last night was interesting to say the least. Thirteen of us gathered at my friend Rob’s house to catch up with each other after having been away at college for several months. We cooked a delicious meal of gnocchi, cream sauce, homemade bread, and salad. After dinner we hung out for a while, just catching up on each others lives. But then it was time to get down to business.
Nine guys and one girl (eventually became two girls) went downstairs to the basement to the aptly named God Room. It is so called because of it’s god-like qualities with its comfortable couches, huge TV, and other wonderful things. We hauled in a huge 37″ TV, a 20″ monitor, and three XBox 360’s. We had four people playing on the main TV, three on the 37″, and two of us on the 20″ monitor (I played on the monitor). We all loaded in Halo 3 and began playing with each other on the same server.
After several hours, we decided we needed some junk food and energy drinks, so we headed out to the nearest gas station to acquire such items. I ended up buying one of those 5 Hour Energy drinks and 4 NOS energy drinks. My friends all thought I was crazy, and maybe I was, but at the time it seemed like a good idea. We went back to the God Room, and resumed our Halo playing. After downing the 5 Hour Energy and two NOS’s, I was getting a little jittery and crazy, but we pushed on anyway. By this time it was about 2am, and we had been playing for 4-5 hours. I drank another NOS, and began laughing hysterically, for pretty much no reason at all.
The actual Halo playing was awesome, because we could coordinate so well, with all of us being in one room. Capture the flag became an intense flurry of teamwork, and we won many games by working together all the time shouting things across the room to each other.
At roughly 3:30am I drank my last NOS, but by this time things were winding down. At 4am we decided to call it quits, all of us being pretty much burnt out. By this point I was crashing, the intense kick of chemicals and sugar wearing out, and I began to feel a little sick. I went outside to get some fresh air, and instead of feeling better, I vomited. Deciding it was time to go to bed, I crawled upstairs and tumbled into a spare bed. I left Rob’s house at about 10am, got home, and crawled back into bed. I woke up at about 4 in the afternoon, feeling rested and a little less sick.
I think that’s the last time I’m going to drink 4 energy drinks in that short amount of time, but definitely not the last time I play Halo all night. Overall the night gets a positive score, but next time I think I’m going to have to use a little better judgement.
I was using Google’s Image Search just a few minutes ago trying to find some pictures of some multi-monitor stands, and I noticed something strange. Next to the dropdown box that lets you select what size image you would like to be displayed, there was another dropdown menu that was currently set on “Any content”. I clicked on this second dropdown menu and much to my surprise the choices were News content, Faces, Clip art, Line drawings, and Photo content. It seems that Google has finally implemented the results of thousands of people using thier Image Labeler.
A few days ago, (last Friday to be exact) my friend Jay drove me home from a gathering we had been having at a friend’s house. It began sleeting, so he decided to stay the night. We were in my room when he spotted my flight controllers sitting on a shelf. I have the 
Happy New Year to all, it’s 2009. I’m looking forward to each release of new technology, and all the other things this year has in store for me. I wish you all the best, and here’s to a great year.
I’m home from college, and I’ve got to say, it’s….boring. Yeah, I’m stuck here without a car, (see 
