Archive for July, 2007

I admit easily having a sweet tooth for single malt whisky (is this really possible?) But it is somewhat worth looking to the American side in order to find a good equivalent: Bourbon. But which one should I choose?

The solution: The Best Bourbon Whiskey (from BlueKitchen) is a guide among the best Bourbon alcohols. Not always comprehensive, but always the work of love.

Air traffic controllers have fun too and some of it is collected at this link.

Sure they are! But Kevin Richardson, animal behaviourist, has learned how to go freely with them.

He found that behaving submissively could ensure that the lions would accept him in their group.

Source: DailyMail.

Too many web sites offer you a list of PC configurations that they pretend ideal. but they do not bother trying to really set them up. This is not the case here at Roumazeilles.net, we tried to install the Gran Turismo PC presented in these pages in the recent days. Here are the results of this experience.
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My statistics show that the users of the Nokia mobile phones are starting to represent a signifcant portion of the visitors of this web site (10th or 11th most seen browser on this site).

Feel free to comment if you have difficulties or if you want to offer ideas of possible improvements.

Mashable published a list of Internet resources particularyl useful to photographers. The list is organised aroudn the following categories:

• Online photo Editors – Editeurs de photo en ligne
• Photo sharing – Partage de photographies
• Free photo hosting – Hébergement gratuit de photographies en ligne
• Photography blogs – Blogs photographiques
• Mashups – Combinaisons
• Mobile
• Photo mixing and slideshows – Mélange de photos et diaporamas
• Photo printing / Book creation – Impression photo / création de livres
• Photo search / Recherche de photographies
• Stock photos – Librairies de photos

The successor of the Alpha 100 from Sony (digital single lens reflex camera) was at the center of an article on the web site of Akihabara (the technology business/sales quarter of Tokyo).

Nothing great or very new, but 12.8 MP, up to 3200 ISO, 10 frames per second and image stabilisation on the sensor. 10 fps looks a bit too high to be completely credible and the post does not give any precise source of information, so beware.

This is exactly how Jonathan Scott will now be known thanks to a bad accident involving one SUV car, one open roof and one cheetah.

I am happy that my own experience in Kenya -while being a similar- did involve more photo shooting… and only that.

We have well progressed into the building of our two Summer PCs. But we still need to add a hard disk drive and a DVD drive. The later is no problem. the choice is huge and product differences are minor. Since I love the Pioneer drives (they are really reliable and used by other companies who just add their name stickers to the Pioneer drives), I selected the Pioneer DVR 112D drive. But honestly, there are many more that you can chose from with very similar characteristics. Both PCs will have one (Gran Turismo as well as Easy Penny).

I also love the Seagate-branded hard disk drives for their solid reliability (not only on specification documents), for their good prices, for their welcome silence and for their neat performance. Gran Turismo will like to hold a 320GB disk such as a Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 – 320GB of SATA 300 ncq interface with a cache of 16MB (ref# ST3320620as). But Easy Penny will receive a smaller one -always thinking of keeping costs low- with a Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 160GB of SATA-II interface with a cache of 8MB (ref# ST3160811as).

The less expensive PC could receive a slightly more expensive and bigger disk but its utility stays limited while its owner does not use it to store large amounts of videos or to install big software applications (but they are themselves often too expensive for a limited budget).

Samsung could also be an option to ponder about if you look for even better noise elvels. The small Samsung SpinPoint series has a very good fame here.

The USB interfaces of both PC allow to connect USB memory keys. For the digital photo amateur a useful 10€ or 15€ addition would be a Flash card memory reader compatible with Flash SD or Compact Flash (or a 13-in-1 reader, or the integrated Flash card reader of a high-end LCD monitor).

We will add more to the configuration in future posts, but we currently have:

• Gran Turismo: 32€ for a Pioneer DVR 112D drive and 79€ for a 320GB Seagate disk drive (current total: 919€)
• Easy Penny: 32€ for a Pioneer DVR 112D drive and 62€ for a 320GB Seagate disk drive (current total: 411€)

All prices are the best we could find in France at writing time.

When you’re self-employed, you have all the advantages of the world:

Copyright Andy Singer.

To protect the Summer PC (for the gamer [Gran Turismo] as much as the student [Easy Penny]), we need a computer case. For this, we must remember and understand the various roles of this important part of the PC machine. If we except the really odd high-end dream machines (big CPUs, double graphics cards, etc.) nearly all the computer cases available on the market are apt to their function: holding all components together and provide a convenient cooling. All that is left are more personal criterias like:

• Elegance, form and external appearance
• Extension capacity

I won’t try to offer my advice about the first item. But I tend to have a very pragmatic approach to the second. the gaming PC must allow some significant extension in the future (even more if it is relegated to secondary role when its performance starts to show its age, later). I will opt for a case with enough space for added drives (both internally and externally in 3″1/2 and 5″1/4 sizes). This being taken into account and having read the positive comments from ArsTechnica, I chose the Cooler Master, Centurion 5 tower case (sometimes known as the Centurion T05). It exists in a modern two-color black and blue presentation (but the most moderate buyers can have black or silver grey); It is not too expensive (54€ without power supply); It is up to the task of cooling a normal PC.

Regarding the power supply, the two PCs have very different needs. Gran Turismo, must support a much larger power consumption than what was considered standard in recent years. With mid-range or high-end graphics cards (AMD Radeon HD 2900 XT or nVidia GeForce 8800 GTX), the needs climb directly to 300W per board! Even if we do not not load fully the machine right now, we want to preserve extension capacity and we need to take into account one 250W graphics card, one 75W CPU and some peripherals. It leads us to 350W already. If we want to support future extensibility (in 2 years a new card or a second graphics card in SLI or CrossFire mode), a 450W power supply will be easily overwhelmed. The GameXStream series from OCZ have the enormous advantage of having a PFC (Power Factor Correction) that leads to extreemely high efficiency. This is important becasue between an active architecture power supply with more than 95% efficiency and a more traditional power supply with a more comme 75% efficiency (less, sometimes) there is such a difference that an old 500W PS can draw more energy from the outlet than a modern PFC-based 600W one (this is observed in the Legit-Reviews test, where two power supplies from the same brand, OCZ PowerStream 600W and GameXStream 700W, compete: The second has the smallest electricity bill despite its higher output power).

Not willing to go too far, I opted for a GameXStream 600W from OCZ in Gran Turismo (the gamer’s PC).

For the cheapest PC, Easy Penny, the issue is much simpler. The extension capacity is much smaller and the power needs are completely different. This machine will evolve mostly by components replacement and it won’t go as far in the future as Gran Turismo. The best solution is to find an integrated computer case. The Antec SLK1650 ATX is a small tower case meeting those requirements: 350W power and a murmur for colling down components. Even better, it is well distributed in France and in Europe; Its price just went under 65€ (less than 85€ with shipping and handling).

We will add more to the configuration in future posts, but we currently have:

• Gran Turismo: 54€ for a Cooler Master Centurion 5 case and 103€ for a OCZ GameXStream 600W power supply, including S&H(current total: 808€)
• Easy Penny: 85€ for the Antec SLK1650 ATX case, including S&H (current total: 317€)

All prices are the best we could find in France at writing time.

This is what can be read out of a post on a DPReview forum. The production of Canon EOS 30D would be officially finished in expectation of the Canon EOS 40D (the latest sequel in the line of Canon mid-line of digital Single Lens Reflex cameras).

Confirmation, anybody?

Authors of a web site sometimes (more and more often) find themselves in the difficult situation where the content of their site is “borrowed” by someone else. I just found a very helpful and detailled post by Lorelle (”What Do You Do When Someone Steals Your Content“) that explains what to do and how to react. My best recommendation to any blog writer.

To start with Easy Penny, the most reasonable PC, the integration of a graphics card inside the motherboard leaves the cost perfectly well managed. Added cost: 0€.

Eactly on the opposite, to play with PC video games, Gran Turismo requires a graphics card up to the level expected by most game designers of today (and of the near future). For this, I chose to look at cards able to support DirectX 10 (even though there is still no title adapted to this standard) and the eyes fall automatically on nVidia. The current offering from AMD-ATI (now only the Radeon HD 2900 XT) is obviously not mature enough and eats a electricity like if there was no end to oil reserves; This is not good for long-term reliability, cooling fans noise and overclocking capability (for the most adventurous ones).

Currently, the nVidia 8800 GTS 320MB boards are outrageously attractive. If you do not have a very large screen, 320 MB will be ample enough (if your screen is 1900×1200 or more go for 640MB) [1]. But the 8800 GTS 640 MB boards are much more expensive. Don’t wait! Get 320 MB, it’s a bargain.

As nVidia organized strictly the manufacturing of the boards of its partners, nearly all of them look identical (except for the color). The add-ins are the only real difference in the box. But since we wanted to go for a bargain price (if you need some games, look for the bundles), we went to a Sparkle SF-PX88GTS640.

We will add more to the configuration in future posts, but we currently have:

• Gran Turismo: 284€ for a Sparkle SF-PX88GTS640 graphics (current total: 651€)
• Easy Penny: 0€ for the integrated graphics of a Gigabyte GA-MA69G-S3H motherboard (current total: 232€)

All prices are the best we could find in France at writing time.

In France, we have public and private services to research information about existing and past companies. The best example is certainly and other services described in “Euridile et Cie – L’information financière à propos des entreprises françaises“.

But when you are speaking about American companies it seems that things are a bit more complicated. That’s not true. Thanks to Learn Web Skills, you can research companies online:

• Locate High-Level Company Information (including ticker symbols, Hoover’s online, Business.com, Public Record databases at searchsystems.net
• Identify Telephone Numbers and Addresses
• Locate Company Home Pages
• Research Company Financial Information
• Monitor Company News and Periodicals
• Review Public Opinion
• Learn about an Industry
• Use Business and Financial Meta-sites
• Locate Professional Associations
• Find Conferences and Seminars
• Find Sales Prospects
• Research Nonprofit Organizations
• Identify International Business Resources

This is a very good compendium of information.

Crysis is expected to be one of the biggest hits for PC games in 2007. Today, Electronic Arts launches the official Crysis web site.

Velcro is a marvellous invention. And it is impressive when shot in micro-photography: A very unusual image.

Copyright (C) artsyscience.

Kudos to Trazy.