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January 27, 2004
Diet Coke with Lime
Having my second Diet Coke with Lime. Hard to say yet what I think about it yet, but it's orders of magnitude less toxic-tasting than Diet Coke with Lemon which, I've often said, tastes like you didn't rinse the glass after washing it. Lime's okay though; ask me again in a few six-packs.
Posted by Lee Clontz at 9:39 AM
January 25, 2004
Logitech Z-680 speaks
After a really bad experience with a Samsung Home Theater in a Box, where the DVD player didn't work out of the box and the 5.1 decoder had a 1 second delay from the optical input, I returned them and bought a set of Logitech Z-680 speaks. I'm very impressed -- a really great set of multimedia 5.1 speakers. There are four inputs: an digital optical input, a digital coaxial input and a set of analog front/rear/subwoofer inputs on the rear and a miniplug input on the front. They're great looking speakers and they sound incredible, supporting Dolby Surround 5.1, DTS 5.1 and Dolby Pro Logic II. No 6.1, but I think I can live with that, especially since the whole kit was less than $300. Very pleased.
Posted by Lee Clontz at 11:17 PM
Invisible War
Finally started playing Deus Ex: Invisible War, the sequel to one of my favorite computer games of all time. So far, it's pretty solid, though the frame rate is a little lower than I'd like, very often dipping below 30 fps. The lighting and physics engine, though, almost makes up for it. There are few things cooler than throwing a body and watching it flop down a flight of stairs. It's basically a role-playing game, so unfortunately the shooting engine needs a little work -- shooting someone in the face with a shotgun should kill them, but that's not the case in this one.
The game gives you several ways to solve most problems in the game -- shooting, sneaking or hacking -- which will hopefully give it some replay value. Really has me looking forward to Thief III, which will use the same physics and lighting engine, although hopefully they'll get the framerate locked at 30 fps by then.
Posted by Lee Clontz at 11:09 PM
January 4, 2004
Project for the Weekend
Put together Baby Clontz' crib today: a Baby's Dream "Generation Next" model. The assembly was pretty simple and the thing is really solid with no shakes and shimmies. The hardest part of the process was moving all the furniture around to accommodate it, because we're pretty cramped in here as it is. I'm very pleased with the fit and finish, though the color is darker than we expected.
If anyone's looking for a crib, though, it's a really nice one. We got the Colgate "3-N-1" mattress, which seems very nice as well, at the suggestion of our salesperson.
Here's some pics of the assembled crib. FYI, it took 70 minutes to put together solo with no cursing.
Posted by Lee Clontz at 7:28 PM