Before I fired up that Episode 0 PSD in Painter, I noticed that not only did I have some VERY minor burn-in (which I’ve been aware of for awhile), I was also beginning to get some faint ghosting on my primary monitor. It’s not enough to be distracting while working, but on solid backgrounds… yeah.

Mind you, I did get this monitor (a 19″ Samsung SyncMaster CRT) in ‘03. I think it was the biggest one I could get at the time, and it was to replace Blastoise’s 6-year-old IBM monitor that came with his original body, so I’m pretty much wringing everything I can out of every monitor I own because, of course, the way I roll, these things are not cheap. I’m already noticing a color quality hit and can compensate accordingly for now, but I know that eventually I’ll have to retire this monitor when it starts to really interfere with Painter and such. If it’s this year, then so be it… if I can stretch it out longer, that would be nice.

The other Samsung on Blastoise (a 22″ LCD) is… barely 2 years old– if you recall, it was actually the first thing I bought when I got the Magic Coin Block since the ViewSonic it replace literally died a couple days after the payout. Considering that the Samsung CRT lasted longer than that ViewSonic, this is a pretty clear statement as to the quality of Samsung displays. Not to mention that all the other desktop machines here are ALSO paired with Samsungs! We love Samsung just like we love Logitech and nVidia. :D

Have I ever considered going triple-monitor? Haaahahahaha… well, yes. I’d probably have to go SLI/double video cards because I’m already eating up both monitor ports as is, though Blastoise can certainly dual-wield video cards since he has an nForce-equipped motherboard. But, for the moment, it’s probably overkill and dual-monitor is very much adequate for my needs– primary monitor as my main workspace for Painter/gaming/whatever demands the most attention, and secondary monitor for IMs/Slingbox/other “offhand” things like sidebar widgets.

It’s Saturday, and therefore the weekly pizza “cooldown” resets (because I make the rules, I don’t count pizza consumed off-site or, as was the case Wednesday, I break quota for special events like the State of the Union). Ah, the only sucky thing about this is picking who gets my money for the week… Papa Johns for the size and cheese bread, or Pizza Hut for those Garlic Parmesan wings. I swear those things are so tasty that they should be illegal. O_O

Back to painting!

So, January for me was upgrade month. Altima Network’s LAN infrastructure got a shakeup via new router (the D-Link DIR-625) to replace an aging and crash-happy Linksys, and the addition of an Gigabit ethernet switch to migrate my chunk of the LAN into wired mode. The benefits of the latter aren’t obvious, but it frees up some of the wireless band and, because Yggdrasil and my Slingbox are in wired mode rather than wifi, the former has a MUCH higher in-LAN transfer speed (and can thus better fulfill his role as a server) and the latter can output pretty much as close as you can get to a true HD stream.

And that’s just the LAN! Blastoise and Yggdrasil themselves scored some nice parts. Thankfully none of them involved cracking open cases.

For Blastoise, he gets a new mouse to replace those that were bundled with both tablets (their scrollwheels ground down, one of them stopped recognizing right-clicking and the other thought I was double-clicking everything). Specifically, he now packs a Logitech Anywhere MX. I’d originally eyed a Performance MX, but I was too used to the size of the Wacom mice and thought it better to get the Anywhere since it was closer in size. That and the Anywhere’s cheaper. :P Blastoise also packs a QuickCam Orbit AF, or as I like to call it, “Eyeball on a Stick.” Seriously, it rotates and stuff! (Well, you can turn auto-tracking off, if you are so inclined.) Finally, while this piece is portable, I predict that the Plantronics .Audio 655 USB headset will get much more mileage on Blastoise since using headphones on him is a HUGE pain– I would otherwise have to disconnect my surround speakers every time I wanted to plug in. Now, because he considers USB headphones a separate sound card, I can redirect just about anything there. The webcam and headphones pretty much render me Skype-capable, and I get the feeling I’m going to be using that quite a bit in the near future. :O

Yggdrasil now has a suitable keyboard… suitable meaning one befitting his role as a media server. The Logitech diNovo Mini is a very strange little keyboard, and not just by appearance. It’s a little off-putting to handle if you don’t know what you’re getting into.

First off, if you think you can just type normally on it, throw such a notion out the window, because you can’t… even if you have very small hands. No. It does NOT work that way at all. If, however, you own one of those cell phones with a slide-out keyboard, the diNovo Mini is pretty much going to be second nature to you. I am SO not kidding, this thing was MADE for txt-junkies! It’s essentially a bigger version of those kinds of keyboards, and save for some odd placement of the shift keys and some others, it handles almost identical to those phones.

The diNovo Mini also claims to have a battery life of 1 month at a full charge… we’ll see about that.

You do, however, lose out on F-keys, trading them for the Fn combos (surely a familiar sight for laptop users). I’ll admit that I’ll miss having at least F5 (refresh in Explorer and most browsers) but I think I’ll live. Also clearly absent are the niche keys like NumLock, Scroll Lock, PrintScreen and, oh, the keypad. If any of those are dealbreakers, well… *shrug*

Make no mistake, the diNovo Mini is CLEARLY meant for a media center box. With no F-keys and the touchpad and directional keys being consolidated into a circular… thing… don’t expect to be able to do a lot of heavy typing or any kind of keyboard-based gaming (unless it’s with a gamepad) with it. Things like URL entry, Twitter and IMs are fine, albeit at a much reduced speed than if you had a standard keyboard. On a media box like Yggdrasil, I don’t do much text entry on him anyhow, so this is fine– he is, after all, the ultimate video playback machine and is an old man of few words. ;P

Now, all that said, this little diNovo Mini is AWESOME. Because of the way I use Yggdrasil, I don’t really need a full-sized keyboard that’s quite awkward to handle given I don’t really have a dedicated surface for a real keyboard. The diNovo Mini is small, backlit and gets the job done.

Although not prominently advertised, the diNovo Mini can also be used on a PS3 via Bluetooth if you are so inclined. You have to flip a switch on the back of the keyboard after popping off the battery cover to make it recognizable by the PS3, but the option is there. (Speaking of Bluetooth, for PCs, don’t be thrown off by its mention of Bluetooth. If you lack a Bluetooth adapter, it comes with a USB dongle. It’s pretty much an either-or thing.)

I gotta get Yggdrasil a USB hub, though… I’m already out of slots. @_@ Well, I’m probably going to raid ThinkGeek again in the near future for moar shirts, so I might use my pile of Geek Points to nab a hub while I’m there if I’ve enough racked up. (Speaking of ThinkGeek… are you effing kidding me? A USB-powered electric blanket?! Next thing I know, there will be a USB pet rock… oh wait).

And now, to bed for me, as Kestine is giving me his “I can has pet and hug tiem nao?” mew. You do not blow off that kind of mewing. >_>

One could easily say that if I wanted a media center box, I could have just dragged Blastoise over here. Except I like having dual monitors, not to mention there are things that Blastoise can do better than Yggdrasil. Blastoise and Dinah have been off for the past few days so I could make myself break in the newcomer. :P

As far as oomph goes… well, technically Iggy IS superior to Blastoise. 3 GHz vs. Blastoise’s 2.2, 1GB video card vs. Blastoise’s 512mb (but Blastoise’s is gaming-grade)… the old man is, numerically, only really lacking in RAM and that gets fixed in January. However, Blastoise is preferred for gaming because I don’t have to crank up text so I can read stuff and he has an actual mouse (albeit with a broken scrollwheel). If it’s something that isn’t text-heavy, Iggy will suffice.

though it can’t be denied that WoW and CoH are nothing short of drool-inducing on an HDTV…

I may look into getting a more appropriate keyboard to use on Iggy… at the very least, something backlit. The Logitech diNovo looks really nice…

Iggy is OMFG generous with the USB ports… potentially. His mobo has four on the rear, the case provides an additional two on the front… but his mobo has 3 more pin blocks for USB things, so if I really wanted to I could put in 3 mods that could give me a crapton of USB ports. o_O

What Iggy truly reigns at, and the reason he exists, is video playback. SD, HD, any format you could think of… he runs it, and it is HAWT. (Yes, this even includes YouTube!) Well, of course it is, he’s hooked up to a bloody HDTV! And this is on a VGA connection, though I could plunk down some coin and get an HDMI adapter (because like hell am I going to use the one on his mobo, that would involve giving up my GeForce for onboard Radeon). Despite being capped at 2-channel sound due to TV speakers, sound isn’t bad either. But, then again, considering there are 3 easily-provoked bulldogs downstairs, maybe it’s a good thing Iggy lacks the full surround setup…. bass triggers CACOPHONY OF WOOF, and that is bad.

I’ve Painter installed on here and my workspace imported from Blastoise (I didn’t know I could do that, up until now I was reconstructing my toolbox every time I reinstalled or configured a new unit) but I’ve yet to actually draw anything yet. I suspect Blastoise may still end up being favored for Instant Ramen because I’m so used to dual monitors, but I gotta try at least once on Iggy, if only to see how an HDTV affects things…

On that note, very soon I’ll be starting on the 2009 Snowscheme pieces– since I ran out of time last year, it looks like a Deeum+Baby Garm piece will be first.

ALSO:
Phantasy Star Zero or as I still call it, Lunar in SPAAAAAAAACE.
I has it! Got it for $23 after eCerts and free shipping.
Sega brought in one of my favorite character designers for this one (hence all the “Lunar in Space” jokes) so unlike PSU you will never hear me bitch about lolified costume designs and such. Kubooka has come a loooong way since Lunar, and for the better, and I think he might have slipped in nods to Gundam and Tales of the Abyss, bwahahaha. XD (seriously, a lot of the male CASTs look like mini-Gundams, and I coulda sworn I saw short-haired Luke and Natalia’s hairstyles in here… and RAmarl uniforms look very, VERY much like Jade’s clothes, hah)
ANYWHO, because I’m sure some want to know: I rolled Blastoise (HUcast), Dinah (HUcaseal) and Leslie (RAmarl). Poke on the AIM or what have you if you want friend code-ness, I know LF will. :P

And now I shall nom on pringles while watching Craig Ferguson. >_>

So I couldn’t write off the entire day as being a crock because of lame-o front panel wiring blah, I went and cut higher-res individual pieces of the Avatars from that earlier group shot.

The wonky thumbnails? Blame Gallery2 (the server software for on-site Instant Ramen Sketchbook). >_>

Taking another crack at Yggdrasil’s FP wiring tomorrow. Hopefully it will end in me being hideously bored while waiting for him to patch stuff (also pizza).
For now, I’ll fall asleep to disaster flicks. >_>;

About a week, two pizzas, and a crapload of inking and painting later and these punks are DONE.
Individual and team wallpapers forthcoming, for now you guys get the dA group shot. After I cut the wallpaper versions, I go onto the next phase of network customizing… which involves sprites and seeing how much Flash ActionScript I can remember.
And this is on top of prepping the AP podcast graphics. But that seems laughably easy compared to this, since those are mostly a ton of variations of the same thing (much like drawing skit portraits for RT).

And now… I really need to go do something else for awhile.