Individual Eleven – The World's Cyberbrain

Custom DPI

As with most Razer rodents, you can adjust the DPI on the fly after you install the software. This is very useful if you play games from different genres. I never adjust the mouse setting in the game anymore, and instead I use the side buttons to up or reduce the DPI to my liking. As a rough guide, in Team Fortress 2, Unreal Tournament and other FPS games I have it set to 4,000 to 5,000 DPI. You can do lightning reflex turns with ease, something I always found lacking on a normal Microsoft mouse. If you are doing RTS games such as StarCraft 2 or Shogun 2 (my favourites at the moment), then 2,000 to 3,000 DPI is fine. You can change the increment of each step, and I generally don’t go below 2,000 DPI for general tasks.

The software bundled with the mouse has a very Tron-esque GUI which I love, I should also mention the packaging. They have put a lot of work into the presentation and I like the braided mouse cord for durability. At 7 feet, it is long enough to not have to worry about where your PC is.

Handling

At first, it seemed too square for it to work. It is styled with Tron in mind, and sharp defining lines has always been a theme in the film. This is replicated in the design of the mouse; there are no rounded corners or curves at all. It may seem strange to hold at first but after a couple of weeks it fits in my hand quite nicely. A thing to note is that it may be too small for some; it has a lower profile than some of the other models I have seen.

The first game I tried with it was Team Fortress 2. I was amazed at how smoothly it glides across the mousepad. There is no friction at all, which is perfect for first person shooters. Using a normal mouse on an average pad seems so slow and horrible to use, I have now spoiled myself in that regard. The pad is big enough for all your movements; well to be frank, at 5,000 DPI you are not going to need that much pad space. It is so fast on that setting, that I managed to jump to avoid a grenade and then spin round to gib somebody in the face within a 2 second timeframe.

Overall…

I like it, I really do. Being a bit of a Tron fanatic this satisfies the fandom and at the same time it is practical. However, would I drop 100 notes on it myself? At a push yes; the cost really is extortionate but you are paying for the Tron branding and style. I used to own a Razer Copperhead for 3 years before it died, so this is a worthy replacement.


If you want to see the light trails in action, I made a video clip of it a while ago for your enjoyment.

Enter, my triple-boot operating system configuration: OSX Snow Leopard, Windows 7 x64 and Kubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat. In a way, this is Inception for operating systems with 3 layers.

OSX Boot Camp for Windows 7

First we will dual-boot our MacBook with Windows 7, using a utility called Boot Camp. Most people will be familiar with this, so I will not go into much detail. It is a very easy tool to use; click through all the options, decide how big you want your partition to be and install with the Windows 7 disc. There is a known bug, that you may be prompted to download Windows Support software and then failing to do so. You can ignore this and continue, all the software you need is on the Snow Leopard CD.

I chose a partition size of about 170GB; Windows will have the biggest partition size out of the three as I will be installing games which takes up considerable space. When partitioning, Boot Camp will take a slice from your OSX partition to give to Windows. Bear this in mind, as you will need to leave some space for the Kubuntu slice.

Once the install is complete, you will be able to boot into Windows 7. During the bootup chime, press and hold the Option key to give you the option to boot into Windows. Once Windows 7 loads, insert the Snow Leopard CD and run the Boot Camp software installer. This will install all the drivers you need for things such as the sound card and hardware buttons (volume control etc.). You may also want to go to the NVidia website to download the latest graphics card drivers. You have now successfully completed your dual-boot installation.

Kubuntu 10.10, Maverick Meerkat. Triple-boot and GRUB loader

This part is slightly more tricky. You cannot use Boot Camp to do this, as it has already been used for your Windows 7 install and it does not support other operating systems to boot with. So, we shall do a little preparation.

First, you will need to prepare a partition size for Kubuntu. Boot back into OSX to prepare your partition and load up Terminal to use diskutil. To find the disk identifier for your OSX partition, type:

diskutil list

This will give you a list of all the partitions you have. Once done you need to use the following syntax command to resize your OSX partition to give to Kubuntu:

sudo diskutil resizeVolume [disk identifier] [disk size] [partition type] ["Partition label"] [partition size] [partition type] ["Partition label"] [partition size]

So an example of how I did it would be: sudo diskutil resizeVolume disk0s2 12G “MS-DOS FAT32″ “Kubuntu Linux”

You may wonder why I have chosen FAT32 as my partition type; it doesn’t matter what it is. In the guide here, under “Boot Camp & Partitioning”, it indicates “Linux” as a partition type. I could not get this to work so I used FAT32 instead. When you install Kubuntu, it formats it to EXT3 to give it the correct partition type. I gave Kubuntu 12GB which is plenty for the operating system and the swap partition.

Now you are ready to install Kubuntu. I am using the latest release, version 10.10 Maverick Meerkat. I prefer KDE instead of Gnome, so I am using Kubuntu in this instance. You can, of course, use Ubuntu if you prefer or any other Linux distribution of your choice. Boot off the Maverick CD and go through the installation, taking care to set your own partition preferences and choosing the partition you just created to install the OS. If you decide you want a swap partition, you can take a small chunk from that during setup.

Once installed, the GRUB boot loader will setup everything for you for multiple operating system boot choices. A thing to note, is that initially the GRUB loader will not properly boot into OSX at the time of writing. I believe extra additional packages need to be installed for this to work, however I did not worry too much as I can still use the Option key to choose OSX at start up.

Now you have successfully completed your triple-boot system!

Additional support for MacBook Pro functionality in Kubuntu

For full functionality, you will want all the hardware to work. It is fairly straight forward, as there are instructions on how to get the hardware buttons to work and the backlit keyboard.

To summarise, you will need the Mactel PPA support tools:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mactel-support && sudo apt-get update

And pommed:

sudo apt-get install nvidia-bl-dkms pommed

And that is pretty much it, I now have Mac OSX to boot into if required, Windows 7 for gaming and Kubuntu which I use for productivity tasks. I actually use Kubuntu the most, and it is very pretty. If you want to know how to enable the Desktop Cube in Kubuntu for said pretty, head on over to Girlygeekdom where I will explain more!

What with the snow and such, all the Secret Santa packages were delayed hence why I only just got mine. Plus the fact I only just did my bit and sent my one off; December was a bit of a hectic month. To help my Secret Santa, I added the usual things to my likes, such as anime and geek stuff and also… bacon. The swine produces some of the best meat around and I have to say I am quite addicted to it. Lo and behold, I got bacon! Well not exactly…

Bacon popcorn?! I mean really?! I was amazed that such things exist, but I guess you can get anything these days. I admit to having a sweet tooth, so I wasn’t sure about this. At first bite, it just seems like salty popcorn. But after a few chomps the bacon flavour does come out. It’s actually OK, I’m not a great fan of salty popcorn like I say but I keep diving my hand into the bowl so it can’t be that bad! Second on the list is Mo’s Bacon Bar; a chocolate bar… that tastes like bacon. Whatever next! Surprisingly, it is quite good. It’s not salty at all; the chocolate side of things is more prominent with a hint of bacon. For some reason, it actually works fine on the tastebuds. I think I prefer this out of the two presents, but regardless a very thoughtful and original gift so a big thank you to my mystery Secret Santa

Some Fun Gum sweets were thrown in too, to balance out the bacon taste perhaps?

Collectable Technology – I love this book and it’s great for the coffee table. Technology has moved on over the years, and these monumental moments are recorded beautifully in this book. From the early incarnation of the pocket calculator, to personal computers and games consoles it’s all here. The first mobile phone made by Motorola is quite amusing; it is literally the size of a brick and not only that, but they originally worked in analogue only. My favourites include the Apple II, Commodore 64 (of course!) and the Sony Walkman. The dawn of computing during the 80s was an exciting time and it’s nice to sit back and relive them through these pages.


The Maps of Tolkien’s Middle-Earth – I got this book Stateside and seems to be near impossible to get on this side of the pond; it is half book and half maps. The map side of things are protected in an internal hardback folder, and contain Beleriand, Numenor, Middle-Earth and a map for The Hobbit which outlines famous landmarks such as Mirkwood and the Misty Mountains. The second half is an actual book describing in great detail all the famous places mentioned and how they correspond to the novels. Each map is so beautifully drawn with great care and attention. A perfect companion for the Middle-Earth universe.


Star Trek. The Starfleet Survival Guide – Another Star Trek book, this time to help you along in your days as a Starfleet Officer. There are some interesting scenarios, such as how to wrestle free of a Denebian Slime Devil to protecting a campsite from pests using a Tricorder and Phaser. The best section is Dangerous Life-Forms. The universe is just teeming with nasties and you must be ready to combat them; this includes how to deal with the omnipotent being known as Q. It is also useful to know how to detect and escape a temporal causality loop; did I or did I not just drink the same cup of tea just now?


Terminator and Philosophy – This is a different look at the events in the Terminator films and the ethical dillema of artificial intelligence. When does a machine become sentient enough to be classed as more than just a machine? Should Skynet really be destroyed, or like any other species, is it just fighting for survival? Was it narrow minded of its creators to think that such machines could not obtain self-awareness? This book is easy to read but still thought provoking and asks many questions that you may not have considered before when watching the movies at home.

Everyone got an Angry Bird slingshot plushie toy which is very cool, it even squawks loudly as it fires and makes contact. I managed to get one myself as I went to the after party at LeStudio52. A lot of fun to be had there, we had a DJ with Julien from LeStudio52 taking over halfway through. I left the party too late and missed my train home; after some nightmareish wandering around Tottenham Court Road trying to get transport, I managed to head back to the party again to crash there. The night didn’t properly finish till around 4am, we even went out for bagels which stays open 24/7! It ended up being quite a night with some rather interesting dance moves.

I hope there will be another event next year!

P.S: Tequilla is nasty stuff, I can think of better things to consume if you want to get drunk quickly.

Tonight focused on this and also web gaming in general. The one thing that HTML5 relies on is Javascript. Remember the days of C++ and BGE (Borland Graphics Engine)? Well this is what HTML5 reminds me of. HTML5 with Canvas for the graphics, and JS for the backend functionality. I’m all for open source. With the games being demoed tonight, I felt like I had stepped back in time to Commodore 64 days. Having said that, it isn’t such a bad thing. I think HTML5 is definitely a step in the right direction; it opens up opportunities for practically anybody to develop on such an open platform.

Of course Quake was mentioned a few times; if you haven’t played the web version then you must. It is a joy to behold with full graphics running in your humble web browser. That is the future of gaming. Mozilla were quite generous with the booze, I’ve never seen the beer they were serving before but it goes down pretty well! I adorned my bag with FireFox goodness, I couldn’t resist.

Some pictures as always, and it was great to see some regulars. I look forward to my bed when my train takes me home tonight.