Well, after about three weeks of waiting, my Nintendo Wii-mote jackets have finally arrived! Not bad for a bunch of free stuff! At the beginning of October it was revealed that Nintendo would be giving up to four free Wii-mote covers to each Wii owner, which apparently has cost them $18 million dollars. Seeing how Nintendo has sold over 13 million units, one could see how this could be the case; the shipping costs alone must’ve been pretty high, even with a bulk-order deal they probably got.

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SpeedFan is a great utility for enthusiasts who’ve built their own PC. Besides being able to show the temperatures inside your system (from various sensors in the CPU, motherboard and HDDs) and other vitals such as voltages and fan speeds, it can also automate the cooling cycles of your machine. As its namesake implies, SpeedFan is able to automatically control your computer’s fan speeds based on the temperatures reported by various hardware sensors. This can allow you to find the right balance between a cool system and a noisy one. However, it does require some configuration, as I’ll attempt to show you in the following article.

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I recently got a new Wireless-N router (based on the Draft 2.0 of the 802.11n spec.) to replace my old, but trusty WRT-54GL, an 802.11g router. I bought this router just over a year ago to replace another 802.11g router that was acting up. I specifically bought the WRT-54GL (as opposed to the regular WRT-54G) because I knew that I’d eventually want to flash it with third-party firmware. (The WRT-54GL runs on Linux and has better hardware than later versions of the WRT-54G)

I recently got my Xbox (with XBMC) setup in my living room. This placed it far away from the wireless router in my apartment and not wanting to run an unsightly CAT-5 cable around my place, I decided that I’d need a wireless bridge since the original Xbox does not have a built-in wireless adapter. (Nor does the 360, I believe). A quick look around the web showed that most dedicated wireless bridges were quite expensive and of dubious quality. Since I already had the spare WRT-54GL, I decided to flash it with DD-WRT, one of the most popular third-party firmware replacements, and see how it would function as a wireless bridge for my XBMC setup.

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I’ve had a Logitech G15 gaming keyboard for over a year and a half already, and it’s pretty much been the best keyboard I’ve ever used. While it can’t compare to my old Fujitsu 4725, a “clicky” keyboard, in terms of tactile response, it’s built-in LCD and extra gaming macro keys put it on top in terms of usefulness. The LCD even has its own set of buttons for controlling programs or applets that are running on it.

Logitech bundled several applets with the G15 for displaying things like volume, resource usage and a clock. However, these things were on different screens, so if you wanted to see the clock you’d just have to wait for it to appear in the cycle, or else navigate to it using the buttons. This was annoying, and I ended up not really utilizing the screen to its full potential. That is, until I discovered SirReal’s multipurpose G15 plugin. This is the only G15 applet you’ll ever need. Please check out the screen shots and read more, and I guarantee you’ll love it.

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I recently got an IKEA FREDRICK work station desk as part of my new furniture ensemble after moving into a new apartment and though I liked it a lot for its clean, open approach, I wished it had some sort of keyboard shelf. I didn’t use to be a fan of keyboard shelves, but after four years of university with an $80 Wal-Mart desk that had a surprisingly good keyboard shelf, I’ve been somewhat hooked. (As hooked as one can get to a particular furniture feature)

IKEA has their own SUMMERA keyboard shelf, which is meant to be used with this desk. However, it wasn’t wide enough to accommodate my keyboard and mouse, something I believe is necessary for good ergonomics. Additionally, it didn’t feel too sturdy when I checked it out in-store. So, I had to resort to an online search to find the keyboard shelf I needed.

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I recently moved into a new apartment and ordered a bunch of furniture from IKEA to get started. Despite a few setbacks during the order, I eventually got everything and it took me about four evenings plus a weekend to put everything together and subsequently clean out and setup my apartment. Here’s a list of what I got, plus a few tips and my opinions on the furniture.

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Back in 1999/2000, I was still in high school, and thus had lots of free time for gaming. One of the biggest time wasters for me was Team Fortress Classic, better known as TFC. It was the first “true” online team game I played (besides CTF for Quake 2), and one of the first online games I got into after getting a high-speed Internet connection. It was simply loads of fun, and a testament to the power of the SDK for the original Half-Life.

Fast forward some six years. Team Fortress 2, the much-awaited successor to the original TFC, has gone through multiple development cycles and countless redesigns. Some believed it was pure vapourware, and that it would never see the light of day. Much to everyone’s surprise, we recently learned that TF2 was alive and kicking, and scheduled for an October release. Meanwhile, an ambitious but much lower-key project had been in the works for many years as well – it was Fortress Forever, a mod for Half-Life 2 that aimed to bring the glory of TFC to the Source Engine.

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You knew it was coming, but perhaps just never figured that it would take this long. Just about a year after Google bought YouTube, it has announced plans to integrate AdSense with the popular video site. Many analysts questioned Google’s acquisition of YouTube, since at the time they were not yet profitable. However, with Google’s large cash reserves, they could afford to buy the dominant video-sharing site (after failing to take over the market with their own offering) and let it incubate while thinking up a game plan.

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Well, today was the 2007 Ontario Provincial Election, and though voter turnout was light early on, things are expected to pick up as people show up to vote after their workday. Besides being a provincial election with all the usual major issues, there is another important decision facing voters – the referendum on whether to change the electoral system from the current first-past-the-post riding system to the mixed-member proportional system that’s being advocated. Continued

You know the feeling – you arrive home from school or work to find a slip posted on your door advising you that an attempted delivery of your package failed. The slip will often also say that one or two more attempts will be made, but barring that, you’ll have to make a trip to a shipping depot that’s usually located in the middle of no where to obtain your goods.

I’m willing to bet that 90% of adults aren’t home between the hours of 9 AM – 5 PM, the time that deliveries usually occur at. So, why do most shipping companies only delivery parcels at these times? I understand that likely a majority of their shipments are to business addresses, making the current operating hours suffice for those situations, but certainly a significant number of packages are addressed to homes as well. While online shopping has slowed in recent times, it still accounts for $116 billion (USD) in the United States alone, and all that merchandise has to be shipped.

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