Errances

Road Test: Renault Latitude 2.0 dCi 150 Business

2011-06-07T09:00:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone! It's been a while hasn't it? I figured the car I drove this week-end was worth a post. (Not that said week-end was not worth one but it's useless anyway)

I'm gonna be short and brief and stuff. I drove the car for a little over 1100km. The engine is absolutely brilliant (5,8l/100km for 1,9tonne and 150 bhp is not too shabby) the gearbox/clutch combination is awesome. It truly is a joy to drive that engine which appears stout and healthy even at a low low low 1250rpm. The seats were comfortable the shocks were a bit too soft which made for some oddly wobbly moments.

The car was decently equipped with a nice integrated Tomtom GPS (with IQ route, goodbye traffic jams!) automated parking break, rear PDC, nice stereo with USB input and bluetooth compatibility.

No onto the bad points and truly there are. The car is bland if not hideous, the interior is a joke if you compare it to its sibling the Laguna (more on that later). It's way too big, there are many storage compartments but all of them too small to put anything worthwile in them. And it's fucking costly.The base model I had is worth 32k€. For that price you can get a nicely decked out Laguna 3 that is much more pleasing to the eyes both inside and outside and also more powerful (since it's lighter).

Don't get me wrong, it's a good car nonetheless but definitely not worth that price. Especially when you consider it shares basically 90% of its components with the Lag 3.

So yeah, no picture but it's a boring car anyway. Deal with it, or if you've got time to waste, go find some.

Science-Fiction kicks your ass

2010-09-17T04:46:00.000-07:00

“At first I was so afraid to die that I was a coward and thought only of myself. Now I see how selfish I was. The terrible thing about dying like this is not that I’ll be gone but that I’ll never see them again; never be able to tell them that I didn’t take them for granted; never be able to tell them I knew of the sacrifices they made to make my life happier, that I knew all the things they did for me and that I loved them so much more than I ever told them. I’ve never told them any of those things. You don’t tell them such things when you’re young and your life is all before you — you’re so afraid of sounding sentimental and silly. But it’s so different when you have to die — you wish you had told them while you could, and you wish you could tell them you’re sorry for all the little mean things you ever did or said to them. You wish you could tell them that you didn’t really mean to ever hurt their feelings and for them to only remember that you always loved them far more than you ever let them know.”

Snip from The Cold Equation a 1954 SF short story. Awesome. Read it. Now.

Over and Out...

2010-06-17T13:43:00.000-07:00

by Alkaline Trio (rather decent group in my humble opinion)

Bare with me I promise promise that I will do an update for the bike, at some point :)

"Over and out," she said from a hospital bed
"For what it's worth it doesn't hurt, don't cry"
"Over and out," he said with a .45 to his head
"The war has taken everything from me, it's all I see"

So run for cover as fast as you can
Where fighters are lovers and enemies are friends
And pens and knives apologize for leaving you tonight
Leaving you tonight

"Over and out," he sighed, "It seems I've run out of time
Please tell my wife I loved her more than life itself"
"Over and out," she sang as the telephone rang
"There's no pain, no answering no more, no"

So run for cover as fast as you can
Where fighters are lovers and enemies are friends
And pens and knives apologize for leaving you

Run for cover and you'll find us there
We'll take on the anguish, make it disappear
With hand grenades and napalm flames
Are leaving you tonight

Let this candle burn 'til you get home
Never forget your face, never lose hope tonight

Run for cover as fast as you can
Where fighters are lovers and enemies are friends
And pens and knives apologize for leaving you

Run for cover and you'll find us there
(Over and out)
We'll take on the anger, make it disappear
(Over and out)
When razorblades were softly serenading you

I'm done

2010-05-03T10:47:00.001-07:00

And it looks beautiful. Well no, not quite, but I'm still glad to have had the opportunity to do this.

Here's a hint:

A knife and a ship

2010-04-21T06:09:00.001-07:00

It's official, I'm now a crazy psychopath, but I am not alone in my despair!

Right putting that aside I wanted to talk to you, dear blog, about this wonderful music-based shoot'em up, named Beat Hazard. More precisely it's an arena shooter (fixed area, no scrolling). The xbox 360 pads are simple and nice enough. Left stick to move your ship, right stick to fire, yes they are independent, which is great but often not enough! The game adapts to the track you selected, the faster/louder it is, the harder the enemies will be but the better your ship firepower will be, as well. It's tailored for quick a fair number of style of music (and not only the heavy ones) but don't go selecting a ballad and hope it will go well for you as it will definitely not.

I'm uploading a video to youtube to show you, dear reader, what it's about. You will soon see how I suck and you will see that death is fairly punishing in the game.

I had a dream.

2010-04-16T01:10:00.000-07:00

(nope it doesn't involve black people in any way, sorry!)

I ended up having a certain someone (yeah yougee that's who you think) in my arms. When I told her it was fairly much impossible that it was happening here's what she told me: "It's not because it's impossible that you should not take advantage of this" then I woke up. ARGH! Give me some more time please :( I promise I won't wake up anymore.

No subtitles needed.

2010-04-04T16:00:00.001-07:00

Quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con quel con

Lyrics time

2010-03-31T11:39:00.000-07:00

It's been a while right? RIGHT?

Boxcar Racer - There Is

This vacation's useless
These white pills aren't kind

I've given a lot of thought
on this 13 hour drive
I miss the grinded concrete
where we sat past 8 or 9
And slowly finished laughing
In the glow of our headlights.

I've given a lot of thought
to the nights we used to have
The days have come and gone
Our lives went by so fast

I faintly remember breathing
on your bedroom floor
Where I laid and told you,
but you swear you loved me more

Do you care if I
don't know what to say
Will you sleep tonight
or will you think of me
Will I shake this off
pretend its all okay
That there someone out there
who feels just like me
There is

Those notes you wrote me
I've kept them all
I've given a lot of thought
of how to write you back this fall
With every single letter
in every single word
There will be a hidden message
about a boy that loves a girl

Do you care if I
Don't know what to say
Will you sleep tonight
Or will you think of me
Will I shake this off
Pretend its all okay
That there's someone out there
Who feels just like me
There is

Do you care if I
Don't know what to say?
Will you sleep tonight
Or will you think of me?
Will I shake this off?
Pretend its all okay
That there's someone out there
Who feels just like me
there is

Do you care if I
Don't know what to say?
Will you sleep tonight
Or will you think of me
Will I shake this off
Pretend its all okay
That there's someone out there
Who feels just like me
There is

Targeted ads

2010-03-31T00:23:00.000-07:00

Now that I am single, according to the spammers, I should fix my World of Warcraf account security (I do NOT and will most likely NEVER have one), order a russian bride and invest in some quality counterfeit luxury watches... Not being paranoid but I've been receiving those the *moment* I switched my facebook account to single.

Can I have some shoes?

2010-03-26T01:35:00.000-07:00

Ok so I did it, I did modify the track a bit as I did not think heading all the way east would be worth the risk. Still it comes at 20km which is not too shabby either.

Walking

2010-03-25T05:06:00.000-07:00

While some run, unfortunately my stamina, my weight and lots of other things kinda prevent me from doing any serious running, at least for now. That will change fairly soon as I will be trying to solve this problem. For now though I walk, it's enough exercise, well better than nothing and I am usually at peace when I do this. Here's the map for this evening. I might shave the right half off depending how I feel when I am done with the err first half but we shall see :)

So that's about 23 km for the whole run and about 16 if I forgo the right half. A full trip around town (well almost, there are places I am not willing to go, even in the name of sport) would come in at 26km so I'm rather content with the route I devised.
One thing I would like to do is get to Etretat by bike, don't tell anyone I told you that though. I kinda lack the bike :/

S, L or ES?

2010-03-25T03:44:00.001-07:00

So, pick your poison. I did. And somehow I WILL pull it through.

Road test: Mégane III dCi 105 Carminat Tomtom

2010-03-22T01:49:00.000-07:00

It's Monday, I turned the car in so it's road time test, with pics!

Ok I miss the car already :( My clio feels so heavy (yeah sure 1t vs 1,2t). The biggest question I might get asked will probably be "Is this a green car?", after all the dCi 105 is badged eco² so we might think so.

Nope definitely not a green car :/ Ok now that joke is done, let's get on with the remaining of my thoughts on it. Interior wise it's pretty much spotless with a beige/black interior which feels definitely classy (and a nice change from the all black ones) dual tone for the win, I guess. No I didn't take any pic but chances are if you really are interested, you will know where to find some. The Carminat Tomtom trim is basically the Expression trim with an added on-board nav, I won't dwelve much on it considering it kinda lacked the sd card containing the maps. I did find the screen rather nice, even though it didn't do much more than tell me it could not find any map.

Now the Expression trim is what I like to think as the sensible trim and it is probably the one with the most bang for the bucks (or euros). You don't get a bare car but you don't get silly useless equipment either (hello silly 17" alloy wheels). I kinda missed the leather wrapped steering wheel they have on the higher trims but that's about it. The 6-speed gearbox is fantastic and it truly is a joy to use it. And trust me, if you want some decent fuel economy, you WILL use it. It's a bit silly the first gear is sooo short but you can basically do 1-2-4-5 and you will well be able to cruise at 50km/h at around 1250rpm.

I'm a little less fond of the engine but with 240Nm of torque starting from 1750 rpm to 2500rpm it is by no mean a shit one. It's just that there is about nothing below those magic numbers but that is pretty much a given on those small engines (I hear the dCi 110 fap version fixes that). Still it will allow you to cruise at silly rpm, provided you stay higher than 1000rpm. (50km/h -> 5th gear, 60km/h in 6th). The engine-gearbox duo makes it really easy to skip gears provided you're not worried about the performance.

There's not much I will write about more considering I don't care about performances, heck I don't care about much anything. Save the short rambling on the engine-gearbox, but that's merely for my leisure. It drives nice, it's comfy enough, the booth is big and there should be enough room for everyone in it. Oh and the other plus side is the storage bin on the driver side. I can put my small-ish bag in it and it snuggly fits there, which is great as in the Clio I'm obligated to put it below my seat. It's not that big of a deal, unless you need to get something from it.

My only qualm will be the driving position is a bit weird considering you're a bit far from the door, it's kinda hard to put your arm on the armrest (I like to do that :( with the Laguna you were a bit more 'integrated' in the car. But the Laguna is a little bit overkill for me even though I still have a special place in my heart for one.

Prayer cleanses the soul, pain cleanses the body.

2010-03-21T08:05:00.000-07:00

Ok. No job? Check. No relationship? Check. Huge blunder? Check.

I'm wondering what's left for me to do before this streak of bad luck will cease. Well yeah I know, it's less of bad luck and more of me pretty much being an useless prick. But still! Nothing is lost, yet. I have still got one last move to pull. Bare that though, I think I will need to leave this place.

Now (even more in fact) I am being dragged down by all those memories. Some good ones, true enough but they do not outweigh the increasing number of bad ones. I simply hope I will be able to reboot my life as easy as it's said. Granted I've been considering this possibility for a few years now and I guess I'm reaching a point where it will have to be now or a life full of nothing. Which might have been fine for me a few years ago however it will not be sufficient or rewarding enough now.

People change, in little or big ways. And I need to change, once more. We shall see what happens from now on. Now that I'm done typing this, it might help, I don't know. Thanks for reading, the usual schedule will resume shortly.

Book review

2010-03-05T15:32:00.000-08:00

Alright, I'm tired, I've got other things to do so I will keep it short.

I'm currently reading (and re-reading) the Knights of Myth Drannor serie from Ed Greenwood. I thought it would be at the very least semi-decent. Fact is, it sucks, reading three pages is enough to lull me into sleep. I guess the Forgotten Realms were forgotten for a reason, pointless adventure (every couple of page is a candidate for the FAIL Blog), uninteresting characters oh and they are going nowhere. Not to mention it is written in a very obnoxious way that makes reading every sentence a fight in itself.

Really good to get me to sleep though, the combination of bad writing and general bore makes those three books a keeper, for me who cares about my sleep at the very least.

Here goes!

2009-12-05T01:55:00.000-08:00

How many times, on a cloudy sunday afternoon, have you wondered while surfing the net "Damn, are my ISP DNS down or is it a local problem only?". Way too many times, I'm willing to bet.

There are alternatives to the somewhat crappy and often sluggish DNS our isps are providing, there was first OpenDNS which seems to make a fair number of people happy and now google public DNS or whatever. It's a good alternative provided you don't care what those companies do with your data but what if there was a better alternative? I'm going to try and provide you with one thanks to Unbound a small DNS resolver that's targetted at both being simple and using low system resources.

It doesn't take rocket science to install but I still felt the need to make a post.

Step one is to head to the Unbound download page and get either the installer version (if it's a firt time install) or the zipped one (for hassle-free upgrade).

Step two is to get the DNS root hint file available on the INTERNIC ftp server labeled named.cache. Move it to the Unbound directory.

Then edit the service.conf file to make sure there's a mention to the dns root hint files.

root-hints: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Unbound\named.cache"

Once that's done and if you don't need the server to listen to requests on your local network, just head to Control Panel\Administrative Tools\Services and look for the Unbound entry, you should be able to start it, and it should start correctly as well. If it doesn't, check your Applications event log for error messages.

To test whether it's working or not before you change your network settings, just launch a command prompt and type nslookup -127.0.0.1 and type google.com or whatever domain name comes to your mind.

Stay tuned...

2009-12-01T11:31:00.001-08:00

...for the one and only post that will blow your mind off...

Except it's not happening tonight.

Music = event

2009-11-25T11:11:00.000-08:00

I always associate certain tunes with events (some meaningless) or part of my life. Currently I'm listening to Millencolin - Lozin' Must part of their "For Monkeys" album which I was listening to when I was playing Ultima Online. That's almost ten years ago, but I still associate the music with this.

Servers, my history with them

2009-10-28T02:35:00.000-07:00

If you were here with me last night, or if you noticed my slight outbursts on various internet places, you will know one thing, I love servers. As I've finally upgraded to Server 2008 R2 last night. It had been a long time since I had done an upgrade. First with server 2000 enterprise (oops, I once though more useless services were better) 2003 standard and then 2008 R2 standard.

The hardware, more than the software actually, evolved quite a bit most of the time though it's been salvaged off a previous computer.

It all started with a Celeron 700Mhz (on an intel D915EEA board, no don't ask me why I still remember) which was then upgrade to a Pentium III 833 Mhz EB (oh the 133Mhz FSB oh the increased cache...). Fast forward some years later, I upgrade to a brand new (and yet old for the time) Asus K8N-E Deluxe (integrated Gigabit Ethernet baby!) with a rather neat Sempron 2800+ (1,6 Ghz) which will immediately start his life overclocked to 2Ghz, now that was a healthy speedboost.

I then begin to have worries about power consumption and decide to upgrade to something that will have to be more powerful than the Sempron and slightly more power efficient. (key word here slightly). I scour the web and finally stumble up an Athlon 64 Mobile 3400+ (2,2Ghz of goodness with 1Mb of L2 cache). And that's been sitting for quite a while in there, until a few months ago when I salvaged my old athlon x2 platform.

So now it's running on an A8N-SLI Deluxe (with a dead chipset fan, but at least very quiet) an Athlon x2 4200+ at 2,2ghz and 2gb of ram. The only advantage of this platform is the slew of SATA (8x !) and the two integrated NICs (nevermind the fact the chipset is not supported by nvidia anymore). One thing I would like to stress is, bigger is not always better. I'm fairly certain I could still be running my old PIII with decent speed. All I've been doing is recycling older parts, a few notable exceptions aside.

Next upgrade will be something lower powered and, I'm sure, actually faster than the current hardware.

Farewell...

2009-10-16T00:52:00.000-07:00

So I've finished reading The Ghost King which I guess is the last volume ever for Drizz't Do'urden. It comes at a 352 pages mark but I'm fairly certain you can slash the number of pages by 2 given how they've styled the book. (and that's partly why I hate hardcover books.)

I won't delve too much on the story since I want to avoid possible spoilers but this last trilogy (Transitions) is much much darker than R. A. Salvatore previous works. Except he clearly is not used to this style. Not only did this trilogy, and particularly the last volume, felt rushed but it felt also, and very much so, clumsy. He knew he had to put the story to an end but probably had reservations or did not know how. And it shows fairly and sadly well.

It's not a very bad trilogy per se but it feels like it could have been so much more had it been paced and arranged better.

My trip

2009-09-13T00:19:00.001-07:00

Rahhh lovely...

OH SHI---

2009-02-05T10:14:00.000-08:00

30 Seconds To Mars - The Kill

What if I wanted to break

Laugh it all off in your face
What would you do?

What if I fell to the floor
Couldn't take all this anymore
What would you do, do, do?

Come break me down
Marry me, bury me
I am finished with you

What if I wanted to fight
Beg for the rest of my life
What would you do?

You say you wanted more
What are you waiting for?
I'm not running from you

Come break me down
Marry me, bury me
I am finished with you

Look in my eyes
You're killing me, killing me
All I wanted was you

I tried to be someone else
But nothing seemed to change
I know now, this is who I really am inside

Finally found myself
Fighting for a chance
I know now, this is who I really am

Come break me down
Marry me, bury me
I am finished with you, you, you

Look in my eyes
You're killing me, killing me
All I wanted was you

Come, break me down
Break me down
Break me down

What if I wanted to break?
What if I, what if I, what if I
Bury me, bury me

Help?

Rise against - Entertainment

2009-01-04T09:57:00.000-08:00

Very solid group, a bit too heavy for my taste but still very listenable to.

All we are is entertainment
Caught up in our own derangement
Tell us what to say and what to do
All we are are pretty faces
Picture perfect bottled rage
Packaged synthesized versions of you

We've all made petty fortunes but we can't afford a life
Confined to pull-out quotes and hotel rooms
They all scream California and it's toppling empire
But cant you see the end is coming soon

All we are is entertainment
Guaruntee s then obligations
Spotlights follow every single move
Basking here on ten foot stages
Pouty lips and oh so jaded
All as if we have something to prove

We've all made petty fortunes but we can't afford a life
Confined to pull-out quotes and hotel rooms
They all scream California and it's toppling empire
But cant you see the end

And if we cared at all about this unknown plight then we'd do something more to finally make this right

All we are is entertainment
Pull the curtains, places please
We learned to sing and dance and cry on cue
But this is more than entertainment
In a world so sick with pain
This is the only thing that's real or true

Desptite these petty fortunes we still can't afford a life
Confined to pull-out quotes and hotel rooms
They all scream bloody-murder over graves already dug
But can't you see the end...

Typos most likely are prolific in this dirty copy/paste, I don't care :)

Road Test: Laguna 3 Privilege vs Expression

2008-12-26T00:50:00.000-08:00

I really need to type that out...

First thing first, the girl at the rental agency is both awesome and totally cute. There I said it. Oh and it's probably the first time ever I chat up with a girl, easily.

Back to the car then. I only got an Expression this time and while it's two steps lower in the trimming department it still holds favourably against the Privilege. There might not be as much dampening material than on the Privilege as the engine was quite noticeable but as far as I know it could well be the Renault™ effect since each engine is unfortunately not born equal. As far as equipments go, while the Privilege was almost fully loaded (with on-board nav mind you) the Expression was rather bare but that still made for an enjoying ride. My only complaint in fact is the onboard receiver that kinda sucks sound-wise.

Other than that there was not that much differences. Performance and handling were the same, the seats were as comfortable so it's still a good car in my book :) 5.1l/100km average is nothing to balk at either considering it was the 2.0 dCi 150. The road was busy but not too much and the back trip was simply void of any cars which made for a very pleasant drive. Oh and Laetitia...

***While I said "noticeable" it really is more like a low growling than anything else and at stabilized speed you do not hear it anymore. Oh and something that still amaze me is this; start the car, listen at it idle, it sounds just like a petrol car. Really.

2008-12-05T06:37:00.000-08:00

I blame yougee for this...

2008-12-04T12:31:00.000-08:00

Ahh Day & Age what a wonderful album. Well for me at least. I'm liking the slight emphasis on the keyboard this time. This is yet another album in the "can listen while drunk" category. Not that it's an habit mind you but I just find that the keyboard in the tracks makes for something you can just listen and lay back for awhile.

The killers - Forget about what I said

We used to tear it down,
but now we just exist.
The things that i did wrong,
I'll bet you've got a list.

Now i know how you remember
and those moments that you choose
will define me as a traitor,
stealing everything you lose.

Forget about what i said,
the lights are gone and the parties over.
Forget about what i said.
Forget about what i said,
I'm older now and i know you hear me.
Forget about what i said.

You'll stay up late tonight,
you'll turn off your phone.
Well you were selfish too,
but you were never all alone.
In those ugly pink apartments
with the hustlers and the kids,
mapping out some retribution.
Do we have to go through this?

Forget about what i said,
the lights are gone and the parties over.
Forget about what i said.
Forget about what i said,
I'm older now and i know you hear me.
Forget about what i said.

All of the stars are whandering around tonight,
we used to try them on.
And sometimes I hear you,
the galaxy sings your song.
And tonight I sing along.

Forget about what i said,
the lights are gone and the parties over.
Forget about what i said.
Forget about what i said,
I'm older now and i know you hear me.
Forget about what i said. [x2]

Now what was it that I said? :/

We will be going live in 5... 4... 3... 2... 1...

2008-12-04T12:26:00.000-08:00

Like the space conquest every major experiment requires a test subject, so like the ape that got sent for a trip around the Earth, this is the post that is going to be sent around the Web. If it comes back intact we will have passed yet another milestone for this grand human project that this is going to be.