The haunted night

Things are getting weirder and weirder these days. First this depression thingy, now I found myself surrounded by ghosts and mysterious visions. My last night was a pure nightmare. I barely closed my eyes and grabbed some sleep. It almost felt like I was soaked into the plot of Poe’s ‘Tell-Tale Heart’

Right after going to bed and resting my head on my pillow I heard a silent, gently knocking from somewhere inside the room. It wasn’t actually a knocking, it sounded more like the rhythm of a marching drum in a far distance. Worst thing about it, I couldn’t locate where it actually came from.

I wasn’t really caring that much about the drum or the knocking or whatever it was and fell asleep – finally.

It was around 3:00am when I heard that knocking again. A little more intense and the rhythm changed from marching drum to constantly knocking. Even the noise itself became much louder than the one I heard before closing my eyes. I tried to cover myself in the most comfortable way possible and tried to get back to sleep. Without success —-

The knocking disturbed me and I also have to admit that I got little frightened. Another thing that bothered me as hell, I’d to pee so badly. I tried to ignore my strangury and kept lying quiet under my cover.

 

There weren’t many options, I had to go off to the toilet and got rid of my liquid baggage. I gathered all my courage and did what I had to do. Success —

It was almost 4:30am and not even an hour until I have to stand up and get on my way to work. What I did was tossing around till the alarm clock rang and got finally up. Everything was fine, I was a little tired, but that’s no surprise due to the fact that I barely grabbed some sleep in the night hours before.

I was sitting in front of the TV watching some stupid, classic videos on VH1 and eating my breaking. Until, out of nowhere, that knocking appeared again. Loud and clear and closer than ever before —

The X-Mas underdose

It’s holiday season and the oh-so-holy Christmas is drawing dangerously near. If haven’t already noticed. Well, consider this a last note to get to a mall near you and get a whole lotta bunch of cheap useless stuff to gift. I personally lost connection to Christmas a few years ago. I don’t know why, but I actually don’t give a sodding damn about Christmas. The main reason is the media overkill you get during holiday season.

It starts on Black Friday and ends somewhere in the middle of January. A lot of things happen but from my point of view I see nothing in common with the old traditional Christmas. I’ve found myself several times grabbing some extreme good deals on several shopping platforms on the internet but there was no single, bloody moment where I’ve found myself getting some rest or get some reflectiveness.

Candy cane christmas - by *Ophelias-Overdose

I’m also not very sure how this could look like. Just sitting there nearby a mistletoe reviewing my previous. Doing some extreme cuddling action under the Christmas tree with my better half. I just don’t know. Biggest epic fail about it, I once knew. Not really knowing, but, you know. Argh, *sigh*, it’s complicated.

Maybe it’s the lack of snow this year. Maybe it’s the fact that my head is filled with routes and network protocolls. Maybe it’s the fact that I simply missed to get some Christmas influences. I was off to the Christmas market one time, but more for a drinking reason than a reflective one. Additionally, I don’t watch much TV and when I watch, it’s VH1 or National Geographic. Not the kind of broadcast you watch, when you want to become christmasly influenced.

One premiere this year, I got all my presents together that I want to gift on Christmas. [enter applause here] Ans also got one present for me personally. I like myself sooo bloody, sodding much this year that I HAD to buy me a present. Whatever the case, it does not bring back the true traditional meaning of Christmas and that’s some kind of, well, dunno…

Happy, lazy days

It’s been quite a while since my last post and the reason for this is simple, I’m on my free and enormous lazy days. Actually, I had several of what to on days like these but I finally decided to do whatever comes up on my mind. I have to admit, once you’re into this vicious circle of laziness you probably don’t have much you actually want to do. I prefer waking up late, watching some stuff on my HTPC, play some games I always wanted to complete and so on.

This week is a little different because I suffer from some things broken. Most importantly, the hard drive storing all my TV stuff on my HTPC alerted me with a SMART error. The drive is still functional in some kind of way but it will completely break down in the very nigh future. As far as I found out does this drive have some spinning problems and several bad sectors appeared during the last couple of days. Till now I’m able to do the backup, which takes some time, approximately around 32 hours due to the spinning problems. Normally this drive runs around 60MB/s but currently it gains around 8 – 24MB/s on average. Anyhow, I’m able to backup and the exchange drive is already on it’s way.

clock ball

Another weird thing happened the day before, my office chair broke. By leaning back I totally fell backwards because the top of the vertical axis ripped off the attachment beyond the seat. I cannot deny that I have a massive overweight right now and that this was predictable, but it’s pissing me off because it finally happened during my lazy days where I use to sit a LOT on this particular chair. Whatsoever, I’ll replace this broken chair as soon as possible.

I’ve finally made to finish a lot of games that I always wanted to have completed. “Limbo” got released on Steam I completed it. A fine noir-esque indie title that totally deserves a try. Another game on my list was the awesome “Batman Arkham Asylum”. I completed the main plot and now I only have got some Riddler trophies left to gain the 100 per cent. Besides this I revisited Liberty City in “GTA IV” and I would say I am at 90 per cent of the main plot, almost finished per say. Most importantly “Mirror’s Edge” gained back my attention and I’m already in chapter 7. It’s a pretty tough and sometimes frustrating game but it’s still a very awesome game. The whole graphic style is unique and beautiful and the parcour gameplay is just great.

Besides these games I started playing the new Alice game “Alice: Madness Returns” which a little disappointing under some circumstances but on the other hand pretty intriguing. The levels are a pleasure to look at but at the end of the day you’re always doing the same and it’s pretty linear. It feels pretty much like jumping section, fighting section, jumping section, fighting section and so on. Anyhow, I guess I’m going to complete this game, too though.

I wanted to do some sports during my free time, but I actually haven’t found the will to do so. Maybe, within the next, let us say, in the nigh future.

My media centre – A field report

It’s been nearly 9 month since living with a media centre PC in my living room and it has become a regular part of my daily life. The balance between the simple watching of TV broadcasts and the common use of a PC, like surfing the internet, playing games has changed. Nowadays I do watch more and more content that is streamed and published via the internet and old school TV makes only a minor part in my daily life. The point actually is, that I don’t have the time nor the will to watch specific contents on TV at a special time and nor do I have the will to spend like half an hour to setup the HDD recorder that I don’t miss a show on TV. This is old-fashioned in my opinion, especially by regarding the fact that if I use the media centre I can watch whatever I want and what I subscriped to at any time I want. If I watch TV I’m bound to a fixed schedule and like I previously said, I’m not going to waste my rare free time to TV programs.

Another, and in my opinion, very important point that the media centre has become so popular for me is, that the content it offers is mainly customized to my needs and interests. As you may know, I’m a gamer and I love to watch broadcasts with videogame content, so I watch like GameTrailers.com, GiantBomb or GameSpot contents any time I want. If I’m more in the mood to get a little relaxation and enjoy earth’s beauty I lay back and watch the marvellous shows of Earth-Touch.com. I’ve also got tons of subscriptions on Youtube, mainly gaming content but also channels with subjects like sports, news , photography or simply comedy. As you can see, I’ve got this large variety of things to watch at any time I want, I’m near the point to think about cancelling my cable provider subscribtion because it makes barely sense.

Besides simple watching of different contents the media centre also offers another ability to serve me well, it’s a gaming platform. I had to make a compromise between ultra silent media centre PC and gaming PC. This PC serves in both ways and is not as quiet as a media centre usually used to be, but this doesn’t really matter, because while watching movies or anything else like this, you can barely here the PC and it’s not as disturbingly load as a regular gaming PC. This case, where the hardware was built in, is a silent case and I also avoided the use of unnessecary fans the gain a low noise level and I’m pretty happy with the final result. I can’t deny that there’s still some room for tweaking the system to gain a little less noise, but it’s fine the way it is.

Anyhow, the media centre is a well balanced and efficient gaming PC as well and I use this PC very often for some relaxed gaming sessions. I used to play a lot of games that are played console style (with a gamepad) on the media centre PC and left the FPS and RPG to my main game system. It’s way more fun to play a soccer or a basketball game on the couch watching the stuff on a giant TV instead of seeing this on a small 24inch PC monitor. It also fulfills some social aspects because I personally play much more games with friends visiting me as I’ve done before by just having the “normal, regular” gaming PC. Another important point for me is, I don’t have to waste money on an expensive console, even though I would like to have a PS3.

As a final conclusion can I say, that the media centre was a good investment. Ordinary TV becomes less and less important for me and like I said, I’m near the point cancelling my cable provider subscription. I gain more information in a much smaller space of time and most importantly information that I actually need instead of getting tons and tons of crap information, e.g. celebrity stuff. Some of my “gaming habits” have changed too because I’m more willing to play “casual games” like sports games and games regularly played with a gamepad. Yap, I like the media centre, everyone should have one.

Why are his feet so high?

Sometimes life goes curious ways and punishes you that you feel the naked slap of life’s bare hand in your face without a doubt. I did some research on A/V receivers for nearly six month now and finally found one that suits my requirements perfectly well. Like I said, it took me nearly six month to find the one for me. Everything was planned in detail. The receiver was found and the speaker set as well but I missed one very important point, the god damn measurements of the receiver. Actually the whole thing should fit into the TV rack where everything is situated right now but who could have know that its feet are that high, that it can’t be placed within the rack. This truely makes me suffer and a kind of sad because this whole set was my birthday present and I am not able to use it right now. I’ve found this cool rack on the one and only true platform when it comes to modern interior – IKEA. Benno is a simple rack with a slight modern look, without these shiny silver things that you can find on so many other racks and it is made without any glass. Benno rules. Benno could fit my needs. Well, some day… till then I keep looking on my receiver and the closed box with the Teufel speaker set.

New media experience

I bought me a new TV a few weeks ago and yesterday was the first day where I integrated my unused but very powerful third PC into the whole multimedia system. By now there is no OS installed but in the near future I am going to install Windows 7 and Fedora on this PC. Windows 7 will be a kind of gaming console replacement system (DMC4 on a 40″ TV will kick ass) and the parallel installed Fedora will be the media center and “internet-machine”. I have chosen Fedora because the overall performance of the system is way better than Windows 7 and I don’t like the MC which is integrated into Windows 7 very much.

Actually I am not very sure about running two systems on a media center but the file handling sharing options are much easier than they are on Windows. Like I said Windows 7 will only be there for gaming, such as a nice Street Fighter IV session or a competition in Pro Evolution Soccer and Fedora will be the movie master. Another thing I am not sure about for the moment is, which media center software I should use under Fedora, mythTV or moovida, or if I should completely leave it and just use VLC or SMPlayer and customize the GUI of Fedora in that way that it is minimal but ultra functional.

One thing that is really annoying and disturbing is that the case, where the whole hardware is installed, is pretty loud and noisy. I am going to fix this in the nearby future by simply moving to another case that uses less but bigger fans and includes more 3.5″ slots. By now I have a lot of cooling boxes built in to the case for my hard drives but all these 40mm fans do too much noise so you’re not able to watch a movie in a friendly and silent environment. Well, well… there’s still a lot to do, but there’s no hurdle that cannot be taken…

Quickie

Here’s just a short update of what has happened in during the last days since my last blog post. To be honest, nothing really special happened. It’s FIFA World Cup in South Africa and I try to watch as many matches as I can, even at work. I was so pissed with my old tube TV that I had to bye me a new 40″ flat LED TV screen and I also signed a new contract with my cable provider to get as much HD as possible.

Another thing that pisses me off for a while is my job. It bores me on the one hand and it stresses me incredibly much that I can barely concentrate on anything on the other hand. Actually it feels like a burnout syndrome but I’ll wait till the last day of my upcoming vacation in France if this feel is still present. If it’s so I’ll look around for a new job.

Straight edge is running well at the moment except one thing, my addiction for ice. From today on rule #6 which says “Say no to chocolate and candy! Subsist yourself healthy!” will change to “Say no to chocolate, sweets, ice, cake and candy! Subsist yourself healthy!”

I had to make this change because I personally think that my nutrition wasn’t that healthy as it should have been in last 2-3 weeks and there were too much of this sweet thing crap. Maybe with “Straight Edge 2.0” I’ll introduce something like a “day off”-rule to get more control into flexibility and wanted rule breaks. But I have to think about this rule.

Tonight is the night where I am going to see AC/DC in concert again. I’ve seen them last year in Leipzig in the Central Stadium and now I am going to see them in Berlin’s Olympiastadion which will be a great and amazing scenery for a rock concert of this size. For those about to rock, we salute you…