Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age Origins

I bought Mass Effect 2 for a mere R 99.00, it was on special and it is the full game and fully legal. I was just at the right place at the right time.

I also got Dragon Age Origins for R 150.00, again the same shop, just lucky enough to walk in when the special was still running.

Also I feel the need to mention that I was actually on a mission to buy milk and coffee for the house, when I found this. So basically I went out to buy milk and coffee and I came back with Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age Origins.

Australian Computer Society, Part 2

So it would seem the ACS is not striking like the rest of South Africa. Probably because the ACS is in Australia, the land where people work to make a living.

I got my results back from the ACS assessment. They accessed me as a Class A Software Engineer. This means I can now apply for my Visa as a Software Engineer.

The  only obstacle now is obviously the South African government. I need to get an unabridged birth certificate and an unabridged marriage certificate. The South African government is striking at present. So hopefully they will stop their nonsense soon, so I can get my stuff and get on the plane.

The Samsung 24" LED LCD (BX2450)

I just saw this amazing Samsung at Take2.co.za, and I am impressed. More than impressed, I want it.

The monitor is really very easy on the eyes. It has the standard HD resolution that everyone has standardized on, but it has no DVI port.

My current graphics card, the NVidia 8800GT does not have HDMI out ports.

I did find a conversion dongle at Amazon. So I can use this with my existing graphics card.

Debranding my C905

I have a general hate relationship with Vodafone. I am not a Vodafone subscriber, I am a Vodacom subscriber. Vodafone bought some shares in Vodacom and now most if not nearly all Vodacom cell phones are now Vodafone branded.

I bought a Sony Ericsson C905 and one feature that everyone was talking about was the conversation thread you could have on your SMS messages. Vodafone in their wisdom decided to take it out of their Vodafone branded C905 cell phones.

Another thing that bugged me endlessly was the fact that my Java applications was so slow, very slow. I assumed it was the C905 that was not too good with Java applications.

I eventually decided to debrand my C905.

I found a nice post on debranding my C905. It took a while to get all the software ready and in place but after following the easy steps my C905 is now working the way it should be.

Not only do I now have SMS conversation support, my Java applications are much faster too. So Vodafone even broke the JVM on the C905.

I unfortunately did manage to reset my MAC address to 00-00-00-00-00, so no Wi-Fi for me. The fix is quite easy, but I will do it at a later stage.

Source Code Highlight in Blogger

I always wanted to have syntax highlighting in my blog posts but I thought Blogger didn't allow it. Thankfully I was wrong.

The code snippet below shows how pretty it can look. I am using SyntaxHighlighter version 3.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Xml.Linq;

namespace Core.EFT.XXX
{
    /// 

    /// This class will decode the XML from the XXX service.
    /// 
    public class XXXTCPResponse : TCPResponse
    {
        #region Properties
        /// 

        /// The request type.
        /// 
        public string RequestType { get; set; }
        #endregion
    }
} 

I will probably start posting more C#, C++ and Java code snippets on this blog.

New Lenovo G550

My old Hewlett Packard desktop replacement laptop was starting to show its age. It was time for a replacement, but I did not want another desktop replacement laptop.

I found for development I prefer a desktop. I can easily add more monitors and upgrading the desktop is much simpler and easier. Cost wise it is also many times cheaper.

I found a special on the Lenovo G550. The initial reviews on the internet were good enough and for the price it was excellent. So I bought the Lenovo G550.

Over the next few days I will install my favourite applications like Firefox, Directory Opus etc.