I want to utilise the power of the SSD even for games, however there’s not enough room to store everything. From this point of view, I want to start the core Steam app from the SSD, make it download all games to the hard drive, but then move selected games back to the SSD. This is doable by way of running symlinks, which is supported in Vista -> Win7.

Here’s the steps I’ve taken to get BFBC2 on the SSD as per the above. C:\ is SSD, d:\ is spinner (HDD). If you don’t like the directory naming then substitute your own. I made the spinner directory generic enough to capture any future symlinks, but the SSD one is a bit more specific to steamapps folder.

1. Install steam as per default to C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam (64 bit windows)
2. Create folders c:\steamapps , c:\steamapps\common, d:\steam
3. Start steam, initiate download of BFBC2 (or whatever game).
4. Wait a minute or so until $steam\steamapps\common has a folder for your game. Then exit steam.
5. Move the folder c:\program files (x86)\steam\steamapps to d:\steam\steamapps
6. Move the folder “D:\Steam\steamapps\common\battlefield bad company 2″ to “c:\SteamApps\common\”
7. Then rename it to “bfbc2″, just for fun.
8. Open a command prompt with admin privs (Press start, type CMD, hit shift+ctrl+enter, accept UAC prompt.).
9. Execute the following commands … (also showing results):

   C:\Windows\system32>mklink /d "c:\program files (x86)\steam\steamapps" 
   "d:\steam\steamapps" (HIT ENTER!)
   symbolic link created for c:\program files (x86)\steam\steamapps ===>>d:\steam\steamapps

   C:\Windows\system32>mklink /d "D:\Steam\steamapps\common\battlefield bad company 2"
   "c:\SteamApps\common\bfbc2" (HIT ENTER!)
   symbolic link created for D:\Steam\steamapps\common\battlefield bad company 2 ===>> c:\SteamApps\common\bfbc2

1. Restart steam, resume download, observe that bfbc2 folder on SSD drive is filling up now.

That’s it, I’ll have Steam starting instantly from the SSD, games that I download will automatically be saved to the HDD, however I can then move them to the SSD for performance on an as needed basis … and then back again when I am having a break from it or don’t need the performance (BFBC2 would seem to benefit greatly from SSD, as it is).

It’s probably worth checking from time to time if certain other files could benefit from being moved to / from the SSD.

To summarise, in 2008 and 2009 it was pretty much all work – exceptional amount of work in 2008 (that followed an initial good start due to getting back into hip hop dancing) after a long period of being relatively dormant/lazy on the fitness end meant that I got quite fat, no energy to work out, and thus the evil cycle of working myself into a very unhealthy corner played out. To counter this, at the end of 2008 a first ride in the You Yang mountains with my trusted old Trek Y22 started a very strong passion for mountain bike riding which ended up with my health doing a complete 180 as I enrolled in a series of MTB races to have further motivation for my training. Along with the followed a change of diet & lifestyle, and thus 2009 became year of rejuvenation that will hopefully have set the tone for this whole new decade. At 36, health is not to be taken for granted and thus it will be an important topic to me.

HEALTH: Doing a 12 hour MTB race - Nov'09; Bright, Victoria. Temperatures around 34-35c...

This year the following topics are on my radar:

1. Follow smartphones, tablets and ebook readers – e.g. Android and Apple [mobility].
2. Programming – ColdFusion, and Java / Android programming [programming].
3. PC/Gadgets; hardware and software [tech].
4. Internet topics; e.g. Google Reader / Wave, Aussie Censorship [internet].
5. Mountain bike riding and other healthy exploits  – hopefully also hip hop/funkdancing [health].
6. Entertainment, including shows, PC gaming, HTPC [entertainment].
7. Everything else, including e.g. environmental [general]

MOBILITY HISTORY: The N85 and N810 were some of Nokia's highlights for 2008

Now, I have been blogging on funkdancer.com since 2000; whilst the older archives will stay lost, this site has never been limited to just one topic. So I will clean up the site, starting with structuring the categories list to be ordered under the master categories above. I will also ensure they’re RSS’able; thus if anyone wants to read what I write about smartphones and subscribe to my RSS feed, by limiting to selected categories they shouldn’t have to get e.g. mountainbike spam in their feedburners. I expect to refine the above list as I go along.

TECH STUFF: Waterblocking the NVIDIA 280 (XFX Extreme edition); this attempt didn't go to well...

Cheers all,
Jørgen

ps. On an admin note, I started off by upgrading WordPress to the latest #2.9.1, which was pretty painless, and I must say that I really like the updates in the user interface on the admin end.

I finally found Yichi’s Resurrection – which is fast performing and very beautiful. A couple of things were broken due to it not being a WP2.3 template, however when I got rid of the Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin and replaced it with Reciprocity’s Configurable Tag Cloud – things were much better.

I also set up a twitter account, which looks like an interesting thingie – I will see how I go with it, on top of Facebook, Google Talk and other places to set my current status.

If we weren’t renting I’d love to get a solar panel set up. However I settled for getting the air leakage into the garage fixed up; the gaps around this sliding door were big enough to poke a finger through. Got a door specialist to do a perfect install of air blockers to prevent this huge energy loss so that we’re all ready for the winter. It’s pretty mind boggling how bad the house construction standards are here in Australia.

Also, just noting that Rudd’s first action as incumbent Prime Minister was to sign Australia’s ratification of the Kyoto agreement. Well done.

On Howard’s CV we have … Children overboard, The Tampa, Kyoto, Iraq, decimating the Aboriginal communities, lying about GST…

It’ll be an interesting time to see if Rudd will be able to be bring some of the compassion he is reported to have to his new role as prime minister.

Good luck!

Now, why would I go to this extreme? Well, they use 1/5th of the energy – 18w provides 90w of traditional output. 40 or 50w output uses half that. See the following article for more info – http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4922496.stm .

So it’ll hopefully offset some of that energy used by that big plasma….

Click on the images to reveal high quality, high res Nikon D70s shots; my apologies for the poor quality of the thumbnails. If your available browser res is less than 1280, click the image again to scale it to 100% – it should open in a nice popup thingie.

A few more…

And a few more….

[All shots copyright myself. Please ask for my permission before using these shots in any way; let me know if you'd have any interest in the original RAW/NEF files for whatever reason.]

On the topic, a couple of key issues have been annoying me a great lot. The first of all is, why is Australia 1) not an underwriter of the Kyoto protocol that mandates things like energy points etc, and 2) not doing more to actively influence the environment in a positive way.

Whilst 5 Star Energy building standards have finally been mandated – there is still so much that’s not happening. First of all is the issue of clean power. We are using dirty coal in this country, and a vastly more efficient source would that of nuclear power. Failing the implementation of that, however, would at least be the fall back of more modern coal cleaning facilities. But all we hear about is the prospect of doing such modernisations. Are they ever going to happen? Personally I think a combination of nuclear energy and more modern coal is the way to go – one step at a time.

Whilst there are obviously a large number of issues that influence the total CO2 emissions, we’ll have to look at one of them at a time and hopefully make enough contributions so that they’ll all stack up. Even a 2% reduction of our emissions in one area (such as better housing) is definitely worth while.

Then on the matter of things automotive, which I have a particular interest in, why at this stage are there still no incentives towards buying an environmentally friendly car? Australia is far too relaxed on emission laws, and there seems to be virtually zero incentives for someone to choose e.g. hybrid cars. When the greener cars receive zero grants from the government, the amount of pull happening in the market place is just about the same amount. Whereas if elimination of taxes from reaching a very high mileage per gallon rating – and conversely additional taxes for failing to reach adequate ones – would positively influence the market forces.

How about Australia grow some balls and introduce the tough-as-nuts Euro 5 emission standards from 2009 onwards, and in the mean time provide economic incentives to channel the market in that direction from the day today.

Furthermore, whilst on my soap box, I’d like to say that there is a huge economic opportunity in mandating the deployment of certain environmental technologies and standards. Whilst the dinosaurs will fall over and die unless acting (e.g. the market researchers used by Holden to predict that Australians will forever be wanting hugely inefficent, large crs), there’s an immense amount of opportunity to be grasped by those being able to see the plot as it stands (i.e. what if someone managed to bring 3 or 4x efficient solar panels to the market at a lower price).

The number 0284042236 would ring but hang up before you got a chance to answer. On calling them back, you’d get a prerecorded message offering mumbo jumbo. This happened to me a few months back and I complained to all the agencies I could, but they were at that time basically shrugging their shoulders and recomending calling someone else.

These guys are complete bastards and I wish them everything that is bad in this world. Watch this space.

The projector was replaced by a cheap but good flat 21″ CRT, which I purchased on EBay for about A$220. It’s been in use for 2 years, but it was finally time to make an upgrade. Enter the Panasonic 50PV60A. It’s a 50″ medium-HDTV plasma display, with a resolution of 1366×768, 1080p processing and 2 HDMI inputs.

I managed to negotiate a price I was very happy with, bundling it up with a Topfield HT7000S HD decoder. This is a perfect combo for free to air Australian television.

I’ve been running it in since purchase time in August 2006 with brightness and contrast settings of about 50%. I will continue to do so until it’s reached close to 1000 hours, then it is free for all. For the the first 200 hours I was quite particulate about using the zoom function when viewing 4:3 material, but I’ve since relaxed that bit. I’ve yet to see any burn in so I must be doing well.

The upgrade is a massive one, and it makes for an extremely cool home theatre system. I’m not going to the movies any more, and am really looking forward to when the 2nd generation of HDDVD players come out and titles become generally available.