Tetsuo Time

Twitter is too short to go into this properly so I'm making an entry out of it. Yesterday I upgraded to Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion. Here's some of my first findings with it. Like I have said in a tweeted response I think it's a bit too early to jump to conclusions as to the performance and how well OpenGL works because much of the performance increases I may think I'm experiencing may be chalked down to placebo. Just like how new OS updates tend to feel faster at first until the honeymoon period is over.

However that said it seems the performance is pretty competent so far and perhaps a little higher on average than 10.7 Lion. In one game.. Serious Sam 3 BFE I have noticed improved shadow rendering at a distance... previously it was grainy at a distance like a screen door and then it popped into full detail. No longer on Mountain Lion. SS3BFE was a game that was notorious for causing kernel panics and lockups on Macs when it first came out and even after they patched it later on I would still get a lockup or two on one or two parts of the game I still have to do a lot more testing to see if that's the case in Mountain Lion with the new graphics drivers.

Trine 2 seemed to work rather well at the default settings it detected for my computer. That's 1080p, high and FXAA. I hadn't played it much in Lion though so I'm not sure how much better it is now. I only briefly played the demo there. 

One game tested so far seems to be not working as well on Mountain Lion though and that was my unofficial cider port of Star Trek Voyager Elite Force. It as getting choppy in Mountain Lion for some reason. I had to move that over to wineskin for it to work properly again. I hope other wrapped games like it don't exhibit that problem. I tried my unofficial X-Men Origins Wolverine port and it didn't so there's some hope not all my cider ports are affected that way. 

      I haven't tried all my games yet though so there's still room for updates on this.       

As far as general use goes I like the OS but I'm missing candybar which is now broken in Mountain Lion. I'm not sure I like how the notification center looks but I'm sure it'll get handier all the time. I setup twitter with it but I haven't used it much as I'm used to just using a separate client like tweetbot to tweet. I like some of the small touches Mountain Lion has like the new auto birthday thing in calender. I'm not sure if I'd say the whole OS is snappier in general but Safari certainly seems to be faster now.

Haven't uploaded one of these here in a while so here it is... still the same 27 inch iMac... this time with Lion 10.7.3. Obsidian Menu Bar by Max Rudberg. 

Running programs: Twitteriffic, Google Chrome, Plex (watching the anime "Slayers" on Crackle). 

Click on the thumbnail below to view it full size:

Haven't uploaded one of these here in a while so here it is... still the same 27 inch iMac... this time with Lion 10.7.3. Obsidian Menu Bar by Max Rudberg. 

Running programs: Twitteriffic, Google Chrome, Plex (watching the anime "Slayers" on Crackle). 

Click on the thumbnail below to view it full size:

I'm posting another screenshot because I really like the image I just put as my wall tonight.. also another cameo of my custom steam skin. :)



Update: I didn't keep the link to the wall but it was easy enough to find again I got it at konachan and I had to do an advanced search for headphones and 2560px and bing: {Wallpaper Source}

Trillian's a multi-protocol instant messaging application. The name was taken from the story "The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy". It has the honor of being my first multi-protocol IM application from way back when Windows was my primary OS. At the time Miranda IM was just a bare bones ICQ client and nothing else could do what Trillian could do.

It was also a time when skinning was in full swing and Trillian's fully skin-able interface was a hit amongst people like me. Today skinning is pretty much a part of the operating systems so having an application sport its own skinning engine is not as desirable for someone like me as it used to be. Trillian on Windows Vista\7 only uses the native interface for its login screen. Trillian for Mac uses the native interface there too.. but it also uses it in other places.( continued inside... )

Trillian's a multi-protocol instant messaging application. The name was taken from the story "The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy". It has the honor of being my first multi-protocol IM application from way back when Windows was my primary OS. At the time Miranda IM was just a bare bones ICQ client and nothing else could do what Trillian could do.

It was also a time when skinning was in full swing and Trillian's fully skin-able interface was a hit amongst people like me. Today skinning is pretty much a part of the operating systems so having an application sport its own skinning engine is not as desirable for someone like me as it used to be. Trillian on Windows Vista\7 only uses the native interface for its login screen. Trillian for Mac uses the native interface there too.. but it also uses it in other places.( continued inside... )

I'm not sure I have posted this since the last time I talked about this subject saying it wasn't working so good. Well I have it figured out now.

I have dolby digital and HD working at the same time on the Apple TV. It can handle 720p videos and dolby digital at the same time but they have to be DivX HD (.avi).... h.264 (mp4 or m4v) only works well in HD if you have a two channel soundtrack on there so I reserve that format for standard DVD rips and MKV doesn't work well in HD there at all so I don't use it and I'm going to convert some MKV files I have to .avi or .mp4 depending on resolution.

With standard DVD rips I have made dolby digital work there as well with h.264 and the way you have to do it is by putting in two soundtracks. The first one being a two channel AAC version and the second track being AC3 pass through (dolby digital) and the Apple TV automatically picks the latter when playing on a DD reciever.

There's a trick to getting the AC3 tracks on divx files in .avi containers to play on the Apple TV though. If you do it on a fresh boot the Apple TV merely plays the soundtrack as white noise. But if you launch XBMC and play a test AC3 file first (or any file with AC3) it somehow changes something in the software environment that lets it see the AC3 track properly when you go back to front row. Don't ask my why it works it just works for me. It stays that way until you reboot the Apple TV which then you have to play the file again. I have short test file that tests all the channels specifically for that purpose.

They have some cheap hardware out there now that can play HD movies better and I think Apple should go ahead and update the Apple TV to that. But I'm not holding my breath.. some people thought the special event yesterday was going to usher that update in. It didn't.

I like this icon set. It's called buuf deuce by mattahan. It comes in a ~300MB torrent and has enough icons to customize EVERY application in the applications section of candybar. This makes it the most complete icon set I have ever used. It has tons more folder\etc. icons I haven't used yet.

I like this icon set. It's called buuf deuce by mattahan. It comes in a ~300MB torrent and has enough icons to customize EVERY application in the applications section of candybar. This makes it the most complete icon set I have ever used. It has tons more folder\etc. icons I haven't used yet.

Haven't done one of these in a while:



Now that I'm on the subject of it my family is getting me a 250GB hard drive for my Mac. I also have a logitech mac web cam on the way.