Yay! Christmas is coming up! Well, according to the big corporations, it's been Christmas time for the last several months. But hey, you can't really blame them for trying to make money.

The one thing I'm really looking forward to (and I'm getting it a little bit before Christmas, since I've been saving for 2 years), is my new computer. Behold, the old rig:

Packard Bell Platinum 650 -

Intel Pentium III 651.5MHz (Coppermine)

127MB RAM (SDRAM)

nVidia Riva TNT2 32MB VRAM (old gfx card)

ATI Radeon 9250 128MB VRAM (current gfx card)

Aztech PCI 288Q3DII (Sound card)

A broken DVD drive, and a somewhat broken CD drive

15GB HDD (original) + 40GB HDD (new add-on)

And that's enough as I can remember off the top of my head and the sticker on the old box (broken). Enter the new rig (this is as in-depth as I can make it).

CPU - Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4GHz (Conroe)

RAM - 2GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2 RAM 800

GFX Card - XFX nVidia GeForce 8800GTS 500MHz 640MB PCI-E

HDD(s) - Western Digital CAVIAR SE16 320GB 7200RPM SATAII 3.5in HDD (x2)

Case - NZXT LEXA-Classic ATX Mid Tower (No PSU)

PSU - Antec Trio 580w

Monitor - ASUS PG191 19 inch Built-in: Webcam, Subwoofer, Touch-pad, Stereo speakers

Keyboard - Logitech G15 (15 programmable keys, backlight keys, LCD display)

Mouse - Logitech G7 (2000dpi laser)

OS - Dualboot: Windows XP Pro and SimplyMEPIS 6.0

Unconfirmed motherboard name (bought by my friends at the computer shop though, I trust them)

Unconfirmed CD/DVD drive (same as above)

As you can see, it's a pretty good computer. and surprisingly cheap(er than the Dell XPS range and Alienware, which is Dell anyway).

Enough of that. Anyway, aside from my projects, like IR and the C++ game, not much happening on the dev scene.

I saw a sweet game trailer a couple of days ago. Although, the in-game graphics aren't as good as the trailer, but still really good. I checked out a demo video (done on a nVidia GeForce 8800GTX) and it looked pretty nice. Especially the nuke. Except the nuke blast was kinda unrealistic, because everything on the map should have been completley obliterated, not just one suburb in the town thingy. Anyway, the game is called World in Conflict (Sierra/Massive Entertainment), and it's an RTS. The thing that I liked: no resource collecting. Check it out. Also, another trailer I saw was the one for the much-hyped game Crysis. The engine looks awesome, but I wonder if the game will be good.

Keep L337,

Firebird out!

[Don't believe anymore.]