Flash sucks

For the first time in ages I’ve installed Flash. I don’t usually do this.

And I wouldn’t be installing had I not payed $20 for access to some resources which happened to be FlashPaper. Nor would I be installing it if Gnash were somewhat more mature and actually capable of rendering it.

I’ve thought about setting up an isolation VM to keep Adobe stuff away from my installation, but these resources are for exams which conveniently happen to be tomorrow.

As soon as I’ve used the PDF printer to convert them all, Flash is going.

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CPC464s

I got a CPC464 the other day. Very nice, except the monitor’s a bit fuzzy and half the tapes don’t work. Otherwise, very cool. Except for the fact that you can’t just buy CPC464 tapes nowadays.

Exams

I’ve worked out I have > 24 hours of exams in the next four weeks. Starting in two days. Right now I’m blogging rather than studying.

Getting a new PC

Russell: ECC RAM would be nice, I’ll see if that’s an option. If it’s too expensive though I’d probably just take out an RTB warranty, as I can live without my machine for a few days.

wjl: sounds interesting. I’ll consider getting a barebone and buying the rest of the parts myself. Depends on price of course.

Leon: where would you get a $400 system like that from? Of course once I add in a bigger HDD and a non-integrated, non-nVidia graphics card, extra RAM, a new monitor, it would be closer to $1000.

For anyone wondering why I don’t want an nVidia graphics card, it’s because they’re the ones which are behind on the open-source drivers front. AMD’s announcement of specs to developers and their plan to help in the development of an accelerated open-source driver are the main reasons I want to support them.

I need a new machine…

Ran memtest the other day, found errors at locations pointing to both RAM sticks. Haven’t yet tested to see whether it’s the chip or the socket, or even both.

Enumeration of what’s gone wrong with this machine:

• Shipped with a virus-infected Win 98, straight from the factory
• Hard drive died
• Monitor controller broke
• RAM died
• PSU blew
• CDRW not doing too well, although I suspect that’s wear and tear

I’m looking at getting a new system, which ideally would be a dual core Athlon 64 with an ATI video card and at least 2gb of DDR2 RAM, as well as getting an LCD monitor. Any suggestions on stuff to look out for?