You know what’s incredibly disconcerting when working with computers? Watching as your CPU hits close to 100C.

I’m pretty sure it’s been done, but when this machine finally dies, years from now, I am going to cook an egg on it. I’m going to boot it up, and use the very last of its life to cook me some delicious breakfast. Perhaps even boil some coffee water when I’m done.

But really, it’s scary that simply booting into Windows causes temperatures to skyrocket to the high 60s and 70s. And when it comes time for some actual gaming? The result is those lovely numbers you see up above. The fans revv into high gear, clocking in at close to 3000rpm. The heat ventilation system actually burns on touch.

Laptops by nature are designed to handle more heat than their desktop counterparts, and Apple’s assured myself and other concerned users that this is normal for these types of devices. But really, when I’ve actually seen an Intel Quad Core shut itself off at 120C as a safety precaution, you can’t help but be a little worried.

But what I’m really upset about here is the huge discrepancy between Windows and OS X power and thermal management. I mean, as a Mac user, I’m apparently supposed to develop some sort of deep-seated loathing for all things PC, and shouldn’t even be running that heathen operating system in the first place. But the fact of the matter is, I do, and because I like Windows too. So the question is, what’s the deal, Apple? You’re making laptops that are advertised to run Windows, so why shouldn’t I expect an experience comparable to what I’m used to with the PC’s you so love to ridicule?

Oh, but of course. If you were to make my Windows experience a pleasant one, then there’d really be no point in buying a Mac in the first place. Because we all know that pleasant Windows experiences don’t exist in Apple’s world.

Imagine, if you will, that you are an incredibly expensive, yet trendy computer manufacturer. You maintain a legion of cult-like followers who flock to the finely-brushed aluminum devices you hawk at inflated prices, while pushing a degree of simplicity that even the most vegetable of hospital patients would be able to operate at their leisure.

At what point does being different mean eschewing common sense?

Rambling aside, the decisions Apple makes at times completely baffle me. Take the new, unibody Macbook Pro, for example. One of the machine’s big selling points was the ease with which it could be upgraded, by even the most technologically challenged among us. The bottom of the laptop has a magnetic latch, which, when removed, reveals both the battery and hard drive – easily accessible to the intrepid user.

I decided the time was right to finally move into the 500GB club. After all, my collection of vintage cartoons was growing pretty steadily, and there’s only so much softcore Swedish pornography a hard drive can fit. Only one screw is needed to free the hard drive from its Apple-chic clutches. Or so you’d think.

Before this whole upgrade began, I can honestly say that I had never even heard of a Torx T6 screw bit. Quite frankly, the name of it reminds of me of robots, or some foreign kitchen appliance that will probably achieve sentience and become our new overlord one day. The point is, this incredibly small screw is what’s required to mount the damn drive inside the machine. And damn, if it wasn’t impossible to find somewhere that sold these; in the end, it took two trips to Rona and Home Hardware just to get what I needed.

Well done, Apple; so much for simplicity. Your desire to be different has backfired into the realm of stupidity.

—-

While I don’t think I was prepared to do entire backup and reformat at the beginning of the week, things have actually gone far better than I had hoped. In a moment of quick thinking, I cracked open my 2.5” external HDD, and harvested the SATA to USB connector that it runs on to pull the files off my old internal. As you can imagine, this saved a great deal of backup/reloading time, and meant that my Swedish softcore collection was, thankfully, working again by bedtime.

This also meant that I’ve had a nice array of 2.5” HDDs splayed across my desk for the better part of the weekend. It’s been a matter of making sure my data is safe and sound, and then zeroing out the drives for a nice, fresh start.

Maybe now I’ll finally have the room I need for all my pictures, and the chance to give my Flickr a much-needed update too.

I don’t think you quite realize how good University internet is until you have to go without it. The speeds are usually fast – or, the upload is, at least – and the campus is covered in a nice, wifi blanket. Whether the latter is actually a good thing, we probably won’t know until we all begin to drop dead from cancer. But for now, I’ll take as much cross-campus wifi as I can.

Yet, the most important aspect of University internet is that it is completely and totally unfiltered. Throttled, perhaps, to prevent heavy P2P users from clogging up the tubes, but totally devoid of censorship. Naturally, this is a must, considering the liberal nature of most Universities, and would probably prompt a firestorm of angry students if the Internet was anything else than what it currently is. There’s a certain degree of trust extended to students, in the hopes that they won’t surf anything rude or crude in places they shouldn’t be, and for the most part, that’s adhered to.

It's not a big truck. You can't just dump stuff on it, you know.

And then you have my hometown, beautiful Mississauga.

A suburb of Toronto, about a half-hour drive from the big city, Mississauga enjoys wireless access across most of its municipal and recreational facilities. This means that, when I go to guard the pool, and theoretically save lives for my job, I can wander back to the guard office and fire up my laptop while on break. In theory.

To most users, what’s offered by the City of Mississauga is considered the Internet; to myself, its a glorified web browsing experience, with a number of serious catches. Sure, I can access the internet – granted I don’t want to access any pages that have to do with the following…

• File-Download/sharing websites
• Porn
• Video games. Game-related websites and forums.
• Proxy websites
• A number of webcomics
• Chat websites and downloads

So I can access the internet, but only if I promise to do none of the above. Frankly, I despise any sort of censorship – particularly to this extent. But it might just be manageable if, in addition to blocking web-based content, they hadn’t decided to block every single port of consequence as well.

Of all the things I can do on the internet, I’m limited to HTTP port 80. I can’t FTP on port 21. I can’t launch Steam. I can’t launch AIM, MSN, IRC or web-based chat apps. Thunderbird, for fuck’s sake, doesn’t even work. I can’t access me email. Ugh.

So, in the interest of protecting the City of Mississauga’s users – or the children, or whatever crooked notion of protection they’re harbouring – the city has proven that they just don’t get the internet. I can understand putting such measures in place on their own machines, but subjecting external users, using their own laptops to the same treatment? It’s ludicrous, and, quite frankly, heavily affects the way I can use the internet the way I’d like – and the way that it was meant to be used in the first place.

Canadians always seem to get the short end of the stick when it comes to streaming video. It’s a frustrating situation the US networks put us in, wherein, Canadians have access to US stations over television, but are then blocked for any content streamed over the internet. The peculiar thing is that the content in question isn’t anything different than what is already displayed on TV – in fact, networks have mainly used streaming as a way to provide viewers with on-demand viewing of their television content. Of course, if we’re to believe the networks, the way in which we access this content apparently makes a big difference.

Enough of a difference, in fact, that the world of internet streaming has essentially become a geographically defined walled garden. If we don’t live in the U.S, we don’t get access. It’s as simple as that.

Hulu: Watch your favourites, anytime. For free.

Streaming has never been terribly important to me, which is probably why geo-blocking doesn’t bug me all that much. If I want to watch some sort of television content on my laptop or xbox, I’d much rather torrent a higher quality version, with the added bonus, of not only being able to access it anytime, but anywhere. Or better yet, I’ll buy the DVD releases. Then again, part of my streaming aversion is probably because, until now, it has simply been too inaccessible for Canadian users to stream meaningful, good quality content.

In the US, you have Hulu, ABC, NBC, FOX, and even Joost for a while, who provide high-quality streaming content of nearly all their shows. Then there’s UK, which does much of the same for the BBC. It’s only recently that Canada networks, like Global and CTV, have started streaming what US networks have long provided.

Getting past the network imposed blocks isn’t impossible, but not terribly easy, either. It usually relies on fiddling with obscure proxies, many of which either don’t work, or painfully slow for streaming purposes. Frankly, I’m surprised I hadn’t heard of the latest method sooner. I could blame that, in part, upon my nonchalant attitude towards streaming, but I still feel as if a little of my geek credibility has died inside.

AnchorFree is essentially a glorified VPN network, which not only provides private, but anonymous browsing, making it extremely difficult to identify where exactly a user is truly accessing from. While the intention is to protect and obfuscate your internet usage, particularly when browsing from a public place, this anonymity means that Hulu is only a click away for Canadian users. This certainly isn’t the first sort of service to allow unfettered access to blocked content; a similar service has existed for Chinese internet users for years, allowing them to subvert the so-called Great Firewall of China. Yet, while these methods required a host PC to be set up in a country specifically with unrestricted access, AnchorFree takes removes the troubles of finding a willing host. Install the software, connect through your favourite browser, and watch as geo-blocks crumble beneath your virtual feet.

At the very least, it means I can enjoy the latest in British television – without being anywhere near my TV.

While LCD TV’s have grown hugely popular over the past couple years, their one major flaw is with regards to motion blur. You see, unlike a conventional TV, or plasma display, the refresh rate of an LCD screen depends on how fast the liquid crystals can be convinced to change colours. While the technology has gotten better in recent years, it’s still necessary for consumers to pay close attention to the refresh rate listed on any potential TV; numbers can range from as low as 2ms, to 15ms and higher. In this case, the lower number is definitely better.

Regardless, most people will notice that, when compared to more conventional TVs, this issue with refresh rates creates a bit of an annoying side effect, seen as motion blur. Sports, as a good example, usually look fine on conventional CRTs, or even plasma technology. But subject an LCD screen to a fast moving puck or ball, and you can easily see the problem in question.

In the interests of developing a solution, a number of TV manufacturers have introduced their own sets of motion-smart televisions, usually reliant on a feature dubbed 120hz displays. Sony, in particular, has an implementation known as MotionFlow, which is present in my current 47″ model. What the technology does is essentially double the frame rate of conventional film or television content, using interpolation to add extra frames to create what is supposed to be a smoother image. According to Sony’s own site…

“Not one, but two new images are added to the action, creating powerfully sharp images displayed at an astonishing 120 frames per second. You won’t miss a single detail of sporting action.

And now films and cartoons shot at 24 frames per second are made better too as Motionflow 120 inserts five new images, getting rid of any annoying judder or blur. What you’re left with is a superior reproduction of the original. You simply won’t be able to tear yourself away.”

You can even adjust the level of MotionFlow control, which is changes the extent of which images are added and processed in the creation of the final product. Yet, there’s a very large and glaring problem in this sort of fix.

When studies were conducted by a number of large TV manufacturers, the results indicated that viewers were extremely impressed by the way in which content filmed with an HD camera was displayed. Of course, this would mean convincing Hollywood to abandon their traditional 35mm lenses in favour of HD-specific cameras – a daunting and unlikely scenario. By incorporating technology like Sony’s MotionFlow, manufacturers could work to achieve the same sort of effect with current material, with the hopes of providing viewers a similar picture to that of HD-filmed content.

Of course, the results aren’t as good as one is led to believe. Films are shot in 24fps for a reason, and directors take notice of all the quirks of filming for such a format, including the speed at which the camera can be panned and zoomed. By taking content purposely filmed at such a speed, and increasing the frame rate by a huge degree, the result is an image that looks wholly unnatural. The one thing myself, and others, have noticed, is that many films viewed with MotionFlow technology turned on simply look too unnatural. While attempting to create a viewing experience that mimics the smoothness and quality of the natural eye, the end result is actually a film that looks almost too smooth, and far different from what the directors intended, and viewers expect.

Case in point, I tried watching Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey last night. While an excellent movie, the addition of MotionFlow technology simply turned many of the space sequences into a distraction, since all my attention was focused on determining what exactly was wrong. Once I realized my TV was playing games with my beloved 24fps, turning off what was otherwise supposed to be a useful innovation, actually made things better.

Further reading: Home Theatre Magazine has an excellent article on the topic of 120Hz which helped me understand things a little better. Check it out here.