Spur of the moment

So for some reason the other day I had the urge to dye the rice I was going to eat for supper. Plus we had to use up the food colouring. So this is how it turned out, a very colourful meal but as my brother pointed out it sort of resembles mashed up smurfs...

Minecraft Server

Minecraft really is a really flexible game. There is hours of fun to be spent playing singleplayer but where it really gets good is a minecraft server. I was able to set up a private, local server for my brothers and I thanks to the very helpful people on the bukkit forums. This server has been built over 4 days with 2 people building 90% of the structures.

 There are several mods on the server. one of which allows us to travel by Dragon :P

 This is the Tree dome which has a treehouse just visible at the top.

Spawn with my brothers house in the back

 The arena with the hidden entrance. The roof made of obsidian is the arena itself.

 An underwater hotel that my brother created. 5 Rooms, Zoo, Diving, Restaurant.

Berlin

Berlin is a beautiful city. I was fortunate to be able to go there with my school on a history trip in the Christmas of 2011. We spent a week there touring the amazing city and visiting many of the amazing sites. Here are some pictures from that trip. All the shots are taken with my Galaxy S II

 Some of my favourite shots were from this amazing stadium. Truly amazing especially when the lights come on.

 The Peter Fechter memorial R.I.P

 Some interestingly scented incense that my friend found :)

 The fabled Golden Cross that the Soviets inadvertently produced on their TV tower.

Macbook Pro 2009 Review

This is going to be a review of my current laptop. It is a Macbook Pro 15" with the following specs:

15" 1440x900 Glossy Display

2.66ghz CPU Core2Duo

4gb 1066mhz RAM

320gb HDD

9400m & 9600m GT 256mb GPU

I bought this laptop in late 2009 for my school. Since then it has been used for video editing, picture editing in photoshop, general browsing, hosting minecraft servers, school work and more. It is still three year on a very good laptop and even, to me and my friends have commented on this as well seems to perform as well or better than new windows laptops with much higher specs. That may be due to OSX Lion but this laptop still feels snappy and is great for all my needs. I am hoping to upgrade when the new Macs come out but only because I need to satisfy my need for new tech :) and my brother needs a laptop and is eying mine. 

Performance

The 2.66 dual core in the laptop is relatively weak for todays standards, however as I mentioned earlier the laptop remains fast and very usable with no signs of lagg. The boot time is around 45seconds in OSX and around a minute under windows. The only slowdown is seen if I am using the 9400m and have more than 15 windows open and a 1080p youtube video in the background. The laptop used to have bootcamp on it (Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit no service pack) Under windows the CPU was overclocked to 3.06ghz and the 9600m GT was clocked to 9700m GT clocks:

Core Speed *	625 MHz
Shader Speed *	1550 MHz
Memory Speed *	800 MHz

Cinebench r11.5

Windows Overclocked:

OSX at stock:

3dMark06

Stock: 6130

Overclocked: 7509

3dMark Vantage:

Stock: 1827.9

Overclocked: 2167.5

PCMarkVantage

Overclocked: 4474

Battery Life

So its three year on and the battery has held up pretty well it still holds around 91% of its capacity and I can use it for around five and a half hours with light usage (Music + Writing document + static webpage browsing).

In more heavy usage I can get around two and a half hours (Youtube videos 1080p + Hosting minecraft server + browsing websites). In gaming I can achieve around one and a half hours using dedicated graphics (Rome total war, Oblivion).

Heat & Noise

The computer hovers around 42 degrees Celcius at idle with fans at 2200rpm and under load full load around 80 with the fans on full rpm 6200rpm. At max there is a noticable whine from the fans but is easily drowned out by any games or videos or music that you would probably be playing. At idle the fans are all but silent unless you really try to listen out for them. The laptop gets hot just below the screen on the left side of the laptop next to the charging port and the underside also gets fairly warm under load.

Input


The apple chiclet keyboard is great, and remains unchanged in the new macbook pros. The keys have a good amount of travel and a joy to type on. The backlit keyboard is great for use in the dark and doesn't distract from the typing. The glass trackpad is still, in my opinion the best on the market and is perfect for multitouch gestures and general use.

Display & Sound


I'm no professional but the display in my opinion is great. Blacks are never going to be infinite such as on Amoled displays but are good and dark movie scenes don't appear gray. The viewing angles are also good with little discoloration and only is unusable at extreme angles. The speakers are decent with a clear punchy sound but it lacks bass, they are fine for occasional listening but dedicated speakers are definitely an upgrade. I personally use the display as a second screen when plugged in to my 22" monitor and have dedicated speakers for media.

So this has been my review for a Macbook Pro 2009 as used in 2012. IT is still a great laptop and is perfect for my needs as a student. Look out for a video review to match this review in the future.