guTech

The Cursed Build

Zheng Gu — Sat, 03 May 2008 10:53:15 -0400

This is a documentary of a nightmare come true. Back in mid-February, I decided to order the hardware needed to build my new desktop computer. Newegg shipped them to me very promptly, being a reputable e-tailer and all. You can imagine the excitement when I received the last package in the mail. The hours immediately following were spent putting all the pieces together. Then, the time finally came to push the power button. However, the situation suddenly became problematic and complicated. Something in my desktop was DOA. The hard part is, of course, figuring out what that something is.

The End of Vista

Zheng Gu — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 10:54:49 -0500

You might have heard that Microsoft has released Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista to all testers. I, hoping for an improved experience, went ahead and downloaded it.

The Orange Box Beats the Competition

Zheng Gu — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 00:00:00 -0500

What’s inside the Orange Box? The anticipated next episode of Half-Life 2 that falls short? Valve’s shiny little gem that won over our hearts? The decade-in-the-making highly worthy sequel to one of the greatest multiplayer games of all time? Yes. In addition to Half-Life 2 and Episode 1, just in case you missed out, you get Episode 2, Portal, and Team Fortress 2, as respectively mentioned. It has been a full month since the release of The Orange Box. Has it been worth it?

Impressions of the iPod touch

Zheng Gu — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 15:55:23 -0400

In a recent blog entry, I mentioned that I was ditching my Creative Zen Vision M for the new Apple iPod touch. I’ve finally been able to acquire this device at Radio Shack, not the Cornell Store as previously anticipated. According to Cornell Store staff, Apple is delaying the shipment by 3 weeks. But anyhow, this does not matter, as I’m now happy to bring you my impressions and review of the Apple iPod touch. This is the first of a two-part series. This part contains my impressions of the device, after approximately 12 hours of use.

The packaging is well-designed. The box is compact, conveying that the device is also compact. The life-size glamour pictures on the front and side of the box also facilitate this purpose. Upon opening the box, I was first greeted by the beautiful face of the iPod Touch. The enclosure design and aesthetics are certainly above any other portable media player that I’ve ever seen. The best word that I can use to describe it is ‘fluid’. Also included in the box are, of course, the earphones, the USB2 cable, the manuals, and also a cloth for cleaning the screen, a piece of plastic that turned out to be the stand, and another piece of plastic that turned out to be the universal dock adapter.

Creative Labs

Zheng Gu — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 00:00:00 -0400

Anandtech does Creative Labs. If you have followed my past posts, you can see why I’m not surprised at the author’s conclusions.

The Move to Apple

Zheng Gu — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0400

After finding out that my Creative Zen Vision M fails to operate in Windows Vista due to an instant lockup upon connecting, I’m finally moving over to the world of Steve Jobs, at least for my portable media player needs anyway. Of course, the documentary of that experience will come in the near future because the Cornell Store decided to not have the iPod touch yet. I’ll review my new Apple experience soon.

Bioshock Woes

Zheng Gu — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:38:13 -0400

You may have recently heard about the digital rights management issues with BioShock. The game allows only two installations before failing, and most PC gamers are in an uproar. However, there is another issue: the game requires Shader Model 3.0, which is only supported on the Radeon X1000 series or higher video cards from ATI. An incredibly large number of people still use the previous (and very successful) series of ATI video cards. Especially considering that the underlying graphics engine of the game, the Unreal Engine 3.0, fully supports Shader Model 2.0, the developers’ decision to disable support for it is, to put it bluntly, stupid.

Razer DeathAdder: The Ultimate Gaming Mouse

Zheng Gu — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 11:44:21 -0400

In my 13 years as a PC gamer, I’ve had the pleasure of using or owning many Razer products, including the legendary Boomslang, the revolutionary Diamondback, and now, the perfected DeathAdder. I say perfected because in the month that I’ve owned it so far, it seems to me to be the absolute pinnacle of optical mice for right-handed users. Razer took hints from the ergonomic design of the Habu, which it developed in partnership with Microsoft. And in terms of raw mouse performance, Razer is the best in the field. The DeathAdder combines the best of both into a stylish gaming mouse that is simultaneously fast and comfortable.

Duke Nukem Forever is Alive

Zheng Gu — Wed, 23 May 2007 10:55:50 -0400

3Drealms has posted a new job listing for a programmer to work on their long-anticipated Duke Nukem Forever project. The post includes a screenshot of a pigcop render. It looks like 3Drealms has switched to the Unreal Engine 3, or something that looks very similar. I guess this proves that they are still working on this game, even after 10(?) years of being in development. I guess this also shows an extreme of being put under absolutely zero pressure to release the title. You can find the post by clicking here.

Supreme Commander Technical Review

Zheng Gu — Sat, 05 May 2007 11:11:31 -0400

After participating for months in the beta program, I picked up Supreme Commander the day it came out. Since then, I’ve played the game both casually and competitively for hundreds of hours. I can confidently say from personal experience that the game is truly revolutionary in the real time strategy genre.

By stepping up the scale of the game, Supreme Commander gives you more of everything, action included. The larger scale also allows new things, especially strategies, to be feasible. For first-time players, it will be like transitioning from rock-paper-scissors to chess. The game’s user interface has evolved and grown to accommodate this expanded style of play. Many low-level actions can now be automated by the game’s artificial intelligence. Also, one of the most hyped features is the ability to zoom all the way out to a large map view using your scroll wheel.

Windows XP Snafu

Zheng Gu — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 00:16:23 -0400

Two weeks ago, my laptop had a physical hard disk failure. I was forced to order a new one, so I took the opportunity to upgrade to a new high-performance disk. New disks come blank, of course, so I needed to go through the process of setting up the operating systems again. Since I decided to dual-boot Windows XP and Windows Vista, XP had to go on first. I’ve performed this procedure several times before, so I expected it to be quick and painless. However, what happened was something completely unexpected for me.

Creative Falling Behind

Zheng Gu — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 00:00:00 -0400

Creative Labs – once a juggernaut in digital audio hardware – has now become a runaway company that has left many of its loyal customers behind. I, for one, have used Creative Labs products for 13 years. About two years ago, Creative brought the triumph of design known as the Audigy 2 ZS Notebook Edition to consumers worldwide. Mobile users such as myself were finally able to get the same quality of audio processing that desktop users have had, in the form of a card that neatly pops into the side of my laptop. However, since the release of Microsoft’s Windows Vista, the quality of both the experience and the support have been seriously lacking.

The official drivers provided by Creative are nearly identical to the beta drivers, and have the same problems. They pin my processor usage at its maximum, which lags my operating system into a frustrating and unusable state. They come with a pathetic control panel which lacks anything beyond very basic features. They lack hardware audio acceleration support, because Creative decided that only its new X-fi series of cards should be supported by Alchemy, which enables said hardware audio acceleration for many applications.

Vista: Ahead of its Time?

Zheng Gu — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 00:00:00 -0500

I was one of those people who jumped on the Vista bandwagon the day it became accessible to Cornell ECE affiliates. I thought I might give this “revolutionary” piece of software a try. After two weeks with Windows Vista, I can most certainly say that my “WOW” is one of utter disappointment. One of the highlights includes some face time with that lovely Blue-Screen-of-Death, which, along with some “official Vista”

drivers that seem like they were hacked together in minutes, messed my new setup and caused me to waste yet another entire day doing a reinstall.

Wow, I love reinstalls, especially after I just did one.

The ‘Flip3D’ feature also deserves an honorable mention. ‘Flip3D’ is Microsoft’s imitation of Apple’s Exposé, except done poorly and for nearly all purposes unpractical. The key difference is that Exposé makes use of the entire screen as opposed to just the center portion. More screen real estate means I can see more. Wow, that was obvious, right? Personally, if I wanted to find something quickly among some objects, I would prefer them spread out on the table rather than in a pile.