MrPingouin's Igloo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_(zodiac)

I've just spent 4 days in Vienna, for the Frequency Festival, and for the town itself of course.

The town is great, the buildings are really beautiful. The streets are wide (public lighting is most of the time hung in the middle of the streets, having no lamp "bodies" on the sidewalks make them really wide), and oh god, it's so clean : no cigaret ends, no craps on the floor, almost no posters (compared to Paris), and the main part of the posters I've seen are about art exhibitions, it may sound so silly but it's hard to find this in Paris !

The public transports network is awesome :
- It's, again, and I really insist on it, so clean, no ugly graffitis or scratches (I precise : I have nothing against artistic and beautiful graffitis, I love them, but the little nicknames written with a felt pen everywhere with no more artistic sens than vomit, I just can't stand them).
- Still no ads... I mean, just come to Paris and see how much you're assaulted by posters claiming that the tomatoes are only 1 euro in such shop, or how you do feel better and stronger with such clothes or whatever
- it's brightly set up : each lines of the subway (the "U-bahn") has a specific color, which is common would you say, except that the props you'll find in the stations, banisters for instance, do have the same color than the line they serve, it's just simply ingenious
- and the best : there's no gates. No. Gates. I mean, what the hell, there must be such a civic and polite education that people doesn't cheat on this paying no tickets ? You'll NEVER find this in Paris, never.

I've never been shoved out at anytime by people (even in the festival !) except at one time : when I got into a church to listen to Mozart's requiem, people was from everywhere but Vienna. Shhh... tourists.

And then you come back to Paris.
You take the "RER B" to go from the airport to the center of the town, and finally you realize.
After only four days, I keep in mind an idea I've never really noticed before : we french people (especially in Paris I guess) are just ****ing gross barbarian porks.

Try to imagine a marvelous Atlantis built by a crazy man, a world where the body perfection was an aim of life, where insanes doctors were trying to reproduce Picasso's art on real bodies, and all of this surrounded by a wonderful 60's soundtrack.

It's been a while I haven't seen a game with such an atmosphere, kind of a dreamy atmosphere you'll never ever find anywhere else. If you've never heard of Bioshock, go, run for it, buy it, and let yourself be immerged by its wonderful mood.

And here are some of the sounds of Bioshock OST, just for our pleasure.

Happy new year world.

Let's begin 2009 with strictly useless pictures I've taken during the night of the "Réveillon".
With my brand new small-and-cheap Canon Powershot A570.

Try to upgrade your current one first. There's a chance of being easier than on a tower computer case.
You may only need one screwdriver. The good one tough. Yeah I know it's not exactly what you see on the pic. Anyway.

The two easiest and main parts to change : RAM and hard-drive.

For the ram, don't forget to check what kind of ram you need and how much memory you can put at max. Oh, windows xp 32 bit does only know how to handle 3 GB of ram, don't put more, it would be useless. Most of the computers are now shipped with 2 gigs, it wasn't the case of mine, just 1 gig more and it already sounds like a revolution.

If you have a Core 2 Duo CPU, don't forget those chips can run in 64bit mode, if you need/want to put 4 GB of ram, you'll of course need an xp or vista 64 one.

Second part. What has always been the slowest part of a computer, the hard drive. You might/must have a 5400 rpm hd installed. If you don't mind about autonomy (and don't have a lot of money), upgrade to a 7200 rpm model. But if you have money, you should consider the SSD models (don't take the cheapest models, well, never). I'm opting to buy a WD Scorpio Black model, it's about 60 euros, a good ssd (with not a lot of space tough, maybe 64 or 128 GB, samsung for example) would cost at least 200 euros more.

A lot of computers also have an express card slot (oldly called PCMCIA), wifi or SSD can be put in this slot.

And finally. If you consider upgrading your current laptop, search on google the "service manual", those documents explain you how to completly disassemble your computer.