dxg

Also: First concept : Latest concept :

^^^ Just some photos of an old-shape Polo, right? Nope - look closely...

You guys might be interested in this: Finally got hold a Liquidgauge for the VRS - I've talked about it on here a couple of times... Have a look at the hp figure!! Completely stock car on 34k miles. Driven hard, so maybe that's something to do with it. Well chuffed!

Maybe the biggest one isn't all that expensive - from Daring Fireball:

Wooo!! But the quad core's still rather expensive. Mine cost £400 (well, the motherboard, memory and processor did!) Are those screens a a different aspect ratio? - they look wider than usual...

This is great: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aN1X_H2zjg off to experiment...

Awesome. Just awesome. Real talent. (Obviously staged, but we can forgive them that.)

Here's something quite nice. Maybe a little derivative, but I like it: And it's an excellent video: Youtube Video -> ">" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350">

I should be working (hard because I've got a lot of stuff to get done before tomorrow) but instead, I'm getting my (mac) geek on... Main desktop is the hackintosh, all nice and stable these days... Top left is the macBook I use for work; bottom left is the mini that's my tv in the living room.

It's awesome anyway:

For 10k, though, you could get a MK2 Octavia VRS with the 170PS CR TDI in it...

Well, in day to day motorway driving, my VRS is *way* faster than my GTI. It's all about the riding the torque wave of the older PD TDIs and adjusting your driving style to keep it on boost. I commute 90 miles in it every day (this is why I have it) and it's a great car. A bit dull, but v. fast in a straight line. Lots of pull at motorway cruising speeds - just put your foot down and (so long as you're spooled up), you're away... On the motorway the GTI, by contrast, requires planning ahead because you've got to wind it up to get the power... In short - and oddly I was thinking this when out in the GTI just yesterday - the GTI is a great "hustler" of a car - fantastic on the point and shoot and the darting around town. The VRS is the cruiser with the low down grunt.

I think I've said it on this board before, but I do consider Lily Allen a really good lyricist, but she has made a right **** of herself recently and is now firmly ingrained into the man. This - quite frankly awesome - video sums the situation up really nicely: Youtube Video -> Please, spread the link around - highlighting just how much of a hypocrite she has become furthers the word...

A further thought in the Hackintosh: I'm right now about to start sticking the paid for (again, in some cases) software on it with some considerable trepidation. It seems so "fragile." Case in point: went to install LittleSnitch so I could stop a dodgy copy of CS3 phoning home. And the littlesnitch driver caused a kernel panic on next boot. Luckily, I've learnt how to fix most of this without issue, but it's just not something you would encounter with a "real" mac. Still, lots of talk on the interweb this weekend about a new and cheaper bottom end macbook coming along with new imacs. Still no further details on the tablet, which is what I'm saving my pennies for...

Same here. Just bought the 4gb kit from Crucial and stuck it in - no problems.

I'm still tweaking the hackintosh (although I have started loading work software onto it) but I'm somewhat pleased with these geekbench results: Macbook: 2591 (2ghz core2duo; 4gb; Leopard) Hackintosh: 6275!!! (2.83ghz core2quad; 8gb Snow Leopard (in 32bit)). I'm a happy bunny! I thought it felt snappier!

Well, I'm typing this from the Hackintosh... Is it cheaper than a real one? Yes. Is it worth the hassle? No. It's still great, though, but the amount of messing around with drivers and failing to get things to work is just not worth it. If you have as little time as me, it's better just to save up more cash. It took about half an hour to physically build the thing and the rest of the weekend has been hacking drivers (as in compiling your own), experiencing kernel panics and complete reinstalls like nothing before. But it's stable now. That said, though, I am typing this on a quad core machine that OS X thinks is a Mac Pro. It churns through movie encoding like I've never seen; it's near silent and I haven't seen any core break 42oC in 24 hours of stress testing... (But I never could get the sound to work (I'm stuck with usb speakers), and the network only works at full speed when I force it into a 32 bit kernel...)

I'm still struggling to get it to work - that guide's pretty much hopeless and most of the stuff on the net makes no sense / assumes that you already know how it all hangs together. Still, in *many* hours, I have managed to get it from no sound at all to a clicking on startup and then a hang... And, aside from the sound, there's the small matter of the network being stuck on 10mb/s. If I can't fix it tomorrow, I haven't got anyother free weekend until Christmas!

Running OS X on PC hardware... This is the guide I was following: http://lifehacker.com/5360150/install-snow...acking-required I just can't afford apple's prices. I already have a macbook and a mini, but their form factor justifies the cost. I'm trying to built a workstation for home so I don't have to keep taking the macbook in and out of work (because it's getting worn out). So, for £400 I've got a machine that gives the benchmarks above. I'm reusing an old case and power supply but everything else is new...

Xbench results from the hackintosh, for those interested: Results 171.74 System Info Xbench Version 1.3 System Version 10.6 (10A432) Physical RAM 8192 MB Model MacPro3,1 Drive Type ST3500410AS CPU Test 200.82 GCD Loop 332.99 17.55 Mops/sec Floating Point Basic 163.55 3.89 Gflop/sec vecLib FFT 130.51 4.31 Gflop/sec Floating Point Library 318.56 55.47 Mops/sec Thread Test 607.50 Computation 1014.98 20.56 Mops/sec, 4 threads Lock Contention 433.47 18.65 Mlocks/sec, 4 threads Memory Test 251.90 System 289.84 Allocate 689.87 2.53 Malloc/sec Fill 196.04 9531.83 MB/sec Copy 263.15 5435.33 MB/sec Stream 222.75 Copy 208.46 4305.71 MB/sec Scale 212.81 4396.69 MB/sec Add 235.97 5026.76 MB/sec Triad 236.76 5064.95 MB/sec Quartz Graphics Test 267.52 Line 206.09 13.72 Klines/sec [50% alpha] Rectangle 262.97 78.51 Krects/sec [50% alpha] Circle 226.49 18.46 Kcircles/sec [50% alpha] Bezier 243.05 6.13 Kbeziers/sec [50% alpha] Text 664.25 41.55 Kchars/sec OpenGL Graphics Test 90.87 Spinning Squares 90.87 115.28 frames/sec User Interface Test 386.98 Elements 386.98 1.78 Krefresh/sec Disk Test 77.90 Sequential 222.57 Uncached Write 228.14 140.08 MB/sec [4K blocks] Uncached Write 218.12 123.41 MB/sec [256K blocks] Uncached Read 192.36 56.30 MB/sec [4K blocks] Uncached Read 262.74 132.05 MB/sec [256K blocks] Random 47.22 Uncached Write 15.33 1.62 MB/sec [4K blocks] Uncached Write 226.66 72.56 MB/sec [256K blocks] Uncached Read 102.24 0.72 MB/sec [4K blocks] Uncached Read 188.18 34.92 MB/sec [256K blocks]

And I'm posting this from the hackintosh I've built this afternoon!!! It's nowhere as easy as people make out - even with the lifehacker guide. Problems I've encountered: - creating a bootable usb stick from a snow leopard disk - getting the boot sequence right in the bios + finding which of the (twelve!!!) usb sockets on the machine will actually boot from the thing - getting the network to work - ga311 card won't work but onboard does - although it's supposed to have problems - bonjour isn;t working, for example. - getting it to boot into a 32bit kernel - I just can't no matter what I do, because: - can't get sound to work. have tried all the options I can find - I can see the card in the profiler, but not in the sound preference pane. I can, however, get sound to work if I plug in some usb speakers (that have way too much bass I which I hate...) I'm trying to get it into 32bit mode to see if that will make the onboard sound work... This is going to take some tweaking but - my God - is it fast. Four cores baby! Trouble is, I don't have the time to tweak it...

The tablet should be out by then, hopefully...

Building a hackintosh is not as easy as everyone makes out... Grrr! Will report back in due course...

Here's something a bit different: Youtube Video ->

Youtube Video -> ^^^^ lots of really good info in that video. 2013 - same time as the Bluesport, then. Decisions, decisions...