Flashlight lighting 

Indoor lighting 

Looking the other way 

Sun casting over the town 

A close up view of the water and the reflection 

Oooh water... 

Review: Logitech G7 Gaming Mouse

So here I was at home, with an MX1000 mouse that wasn't recharging. Oh no! So I decided hey I might as well get a new mouse. After a little reading I thought the best candidate would be the new Logitech G7 gaming mouse.

A little testing with WoW, FEAR and CS:S proved that the G7 is definitely geared towards accuracy.

With a body design more closely resembling the MX700 series, the G7 is a bit lighter than my MX1000 was, which isn't a bad thing. The tracking is great even at the "medium" sensitivity setting, at higher tracking rates the mouse tends to feel too sensitive and you can jump around readily.

The dual batteries and the reduced number of buttons (unlike the MX1000 you don't have as many thumb mouse buttons) makes it easier to avoid "misclicking" Though I did think the sensitivity buttons could be a problem if you tend to press on the palm area heavily.

Hopefully I can convince my friend Squibby (and fellow blogger) to post a similar first-impressions view of the MS 6000 Wireless Mouse. If you're looking for a fairly light high DPI mouse for gaming the G7 definitely doesn't disappoint. I give this a 9.1/10

Side shot of the G7 itself. Notice the speed/sensitivity buttons near the mouse-wheel. 

The charging doc for the swappable batteries on the Logitech G7 

A handy little shot of a Diamondhead 

Quick Shot of HeavyArms

 

HeavyArms is the newest PC to the Vraxx Lab. This SN25P replaces my older SN45G system as my principle SFF. So far I'm very happy about the system. The SilentX PSU and internal cooling systems are very effective (not at heat displacement but certainly quiet). The case itself is a bit larger than my older system but the extra space does make it easier to work on the wiring. The toolless install of hard drives and optical drives took a while to get used to. A word of caution the optical drive can shift slightly causing it to bang into the front bezel. Hopefully with a partial upgrade of this box planned for early 2006, I'll have more to report.
 

A New PC in the Vraxx-family

Well after a bit of a scare when FedEX dropped off my gear to my doorstep and didn't hold it at the drop site. In any case, the final configuration is indeed a Shuttle SN25P with an Ath64 (Venice core) 3500+ processor. Rounding out the memory and storage is 1GB of Mushkin RAM and a Western Digital 300GB SATA drive, lastly a Plextor 708A burner. A simple ATI X300 256MB vid card is being used for the display.

Given the Ath64 specs I may eventually consider the 64-bit version of XP, which would subsequently mean I'll need to double the RAM. An optional upgrade for early 2006 might be to swap out the basic Ath64 with an X2.

At first I found the SN25P a bit more forgiving space wise than my previous SN45G, but in some ways it is a bit more cumbersome. The tool-free rail guides for the HDD and Optical drive are an interesting design though for the DVD drive this also means that alignment can't be tightened up. Because the SN25P uses a hinged door to hide the drive alignment is key, a few degrees up and the tray will hit the front bezel. I'm somewhat leery about adding a 2nd or 3rd drive to the system, but hopefully I'll find no problems when I decide to expand.

So far so good, hopefully I'll have all the software loaded and data migrated before the end of the week.

Big woofie deal

http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051017/SPORTS09/510170349/1032

Now don't get me wrong, I believe in supporting your local sports teams and everything, though personally I don't see a reason to get this fired about it. She made a mistake, she's a rookie, it's what they do. However, to contend that the whole thing is a travesty? Jeeze are we coddling Michelle Wie just a wee bit too much? I have a general rule, put up, shut up or go home. If you get beat, that's the breaks. While I think Wie has a promising future, I don't think accolades should be doled out effusively. Let her cut her teeth for her first year in the Pros, then we'll talk.

Who knew my buddy Hal was so diverse! 

Grand Theft AIM

So here's why typing messages in IM should come with w/a proofing option.

Vraxx: i might be on in a bit kinda doing hores
Vraxx: oh great.
Vraxx: chores
Miyazawa: rofl

Damn you C-key!

A Sad Day in the Vraxx Lab

Well it was bound to happen eventually given the shear uptime that this tiny rig had, slightly more than 2 years of operation. I am sad to announce that my general purpose SFF PC Trowa has bitten the dust. The motherboard shows signs of a short near one of the DIMMs and the board is getting 0 current.

Worry not however, data should be intact so I should be up shortly, soon as I get my new rig. Without further ado, and somewhat earlier than hoped I'll introduce Heavy Arms.

The current layout for Heavy Arms is a Shuttle SN25P chassis, with an AMD Ath64 3500+ processor. 1GB of Mushkin RAM, 300GB WD Caviar SATA drive, a re-used Plextor DVD burner, and its looking like an ATI X300 PCI-X based card.

Downtime aside I hope to have HeavyArms operational by next week.

Photos from UH vs Nevada game 1-08-05

Set'em up, knock'em down. Freshman standout sets up for a massive kill, Nevada didn't stand a chance 

UH vs. Nevada Womens Volleyball

Rundown, shots are 3200 ISO taken with a 300mm Sigma lens. Really working for the action shot with the Sigma I realized just how much I actually prefer my Canon USM 28-200mm. Better travel on the focal adjustment controls and a quicker response time on AF adjustment. Sorry for the graininess, images are cropped and downsampled a bit when using Picassa.

Port mortem of a good kill by UH 

Sometimes a facial expression speaks volumes for the game 

Great.. now what? Soogle?

http://slashdot.org/articles/05/10/04/1234229.shtml?tid=102&tid=217

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5888798.html?tag=zdfd.newsfeed

Recent /. article and zdnet articles. Interesting though I tend to wonder just how much Sun will try to leverage this. They already have eyes to pit their SunOS derivative against Linux, will they pressure Google to make a similar shift to their hardware and OS offerings?

I'm a little skeptical that this particular move by Google is really in anybodys best interest but I'll wait to see what the first few fruits are from this interesting tree.