Roo’s Ramblings

So I treated myself to a nice Canon EOS 400D (or XTi Rebel to those over the Pond) and have started taking up photography. I wish I had more time and remembered to take my camera out more, but hey, I’ll get there, and I’m still having fun. So Flickr seems to be the place to be for all budding photographers, and I must admit I’m getting rather addicted to it. I could spend hours on end just clicking the Reload button on this page: http://flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/ - do check it out.

In the meantime, here are a few of mine that seem to have caught other peoples’ attention…

(This one was used at Flickr’s recent 4th birthday party!)

Do share your pics too!

I’m enjoying a week off at the moment. Daytime TV is so dire that you are forced to delve into your DVD collection. I have quite a few, and my collection includes all three extended editions of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I must be a real fan, right? Well, no, actually.

I bought the first (Fellowship) on a whim because my girlfriend thought I’d like it (for some reason she thinks that because I’m into computing, I must like sci-fi/fantasy!). The film wasn’t that good but what I enjoyed a lot was the two discs of extras which come with the extended editions. They were really great and very interesting - I personally enjoyed them more than the films, and ended up buying the other two films purely on the stength of the extras (sucker!)
Yesterday, I watched Return of the King. I saw it at the cimema when it was released, but this was the first time I watched the extended version. My gawd, is it me or did that film last for about three days?!? Yawn.

How come no ones’ facial hair gets longer throughout these films?

So, I went to see March of the Penguins the other day. It’s an interesting little wildlife documentary - not the sort of thing you expect to see at the cinema, but welcome nonetheless. I would recommend it to others. But, man, does it tug on the heartstrings? It makes the Bambi look like a walk in the park. You’ll be needing to reach for the tissues more times than a Pamela Anderson home video.

The film charts the pretty amazing ritual of the Emperor Penguins’ breeding season - or, as Hollywood would say, it’s a “love story”. I won’t say any more other than because the location is antartica, it’s a tad chilly and that presents a few problems. Those crazy penguins…

Anyone given this a try yet? It’s a Java port of the Quake 2 game. I tried it a few months ago - admittedly, I was in my Windows partition at the time - and it ran really well.

Ok, I can read your mind though: “it must be sloooow?!?”.

Well, I can’t give you my own findings, but there are some benchmarks on the site charting the progress of their port.

Here’s the table from their page:

Benchmarks being benchmarks, there is always flaws. However, I think the numbers are pretty decent. The Quake FPS test has been a pretty robust benchmark for many years. That said, testing at 800×600 seems rather too conservative. Running in full-screen mode is what seems to cause the largest issues, but it’s hardly sluggish.