Yesterday, as I was sitting in the bus on the way to Krefeld, I made the impulsive decision to buy an iPod. Actually the decision wasn’t all that impulsive. I had been using my cell phone to listen to music on the go, but lately it’s become really annoying: one set of ear buds broke, the contacts for the head phone cable were acting up…. I’d been checking out numerous mp3 players and then decided this:

my new 80GB Ipod Classic

Directly after getting home, I installed iTunes, imported my music and loaded up my new toy with 11,335 songs, some podcasts and videos. I was amazed at the speed with which iTunes synced with the iPod. It copied almost 70GB in under half-an-hour! The sound quality is also great!

I’m really loving my new toy! Go buy iPods, everyone!!!

It’s that time of year again! Love Parade 2008 in Dortmund - “Highway of Love” I got up at 8:00 and around 10:00 I set off with Ramona and Dennis. Like last year, the train station in Krefeld was pretty crowded, but in the train we had enough room - not near as bad as last year. We arrived in Dortmund at 13:00, and minutes after leaving the train station a short, heavy downpour set a trend which would continue for the rest of the event.

We then set off on foot, through Dortmund, about 2-3 kilometers to where the parade and main stage was. We had made some new friends on the train, another trend which continued throughout the day - meeting cool, new people. Despite the frequent downpours, everyone was “gut gelaunt” (happy/joyful) and friendly. You’d find yourself talking to someone like you’ve known them for years and suddenly you’re thinking: “Wait, I don’t even know her name….” But that’s one of the coolest things about the Love Parade - that’s what sets it apart from other electronic music festivals. Maybe it’s because the event is free, maybe it’s the completely informal, ad-hoc planning, or the “love” theme, but the Love Parade has a unique character.

Some costumes were quite amusing, others were just strange, and of course there were also the sexy ones. The floats were also all unique.

Around 15:00 we arrived and minutes later, the heaviest downpour of the day struck. The whole area turned into a sea of mud and puddles. But, after a few minutes, the sun came out and the party went on. We spent the next few hours dancing, watching the parade, watching the parade from road-sign mountings over the highway, hanging out at the main stage and enjoying the numerous flavors of electronic music. It kept raining off and on, the mud got deeper, but no one seemed to care… the party went on going, the love kept flowing. Around 19:00 the sun came out to stay and, as the floats all slowly left, the big-name DJ’s started to appear on the main stage: Moby, Paul van Dyk, Armin van Buuren, Carl Craig, Richie Hawtin, David Guetta, Underworld. The highlite for me was the set from Armin van Buuren, closely followed by those from Hawtin and van Dyk. We headed home around 23:00, which means we missed the Finale with the light show by Gert Hof. My twitter update from 11:45 captures that moment perfectly.

OK, the weather really sucked, logistics were a nightmare, most of the time no cell coverage, mud and water everywhere…. But all that gave the event character! Who cares if the conditions aren’t ideal for an outdoor event. The Love Parade is all about celebrating life, love and music - and that’s exactly what we did!

Pictures: here

Video: Moby and Armin van Buuren

Found this site in my RSS feeds this morning. I really liked the Steampunk walls presented, so I collected some of my favorites and uploaded them.

ENJOY!

The new album from The Locos is finally there!!! Energia Inagotable. And it rocks!!! They haven’t changed their style at all… perfect!

Two pics from the concert I was at on 04.04.2008:

YEEEHAW!!!!

Got the parts for my Shuttle XPC Barebone SG33G5M yesterday:

• 1 250W Shuttle XPC SG33G5M / Intel775-G33 / HDMI
• 1 CPU775 Intel Core 2 Duo 3.00GHz (E8400) / 6MB / 1333 / Box
• 2 DDR2-800 2GB Kingston / CL5
• 1 DVDRW IDE 20x Samsung SH-S202J / BEBE Bare black
• 2 HDSATA2 0500 7200 Western Digital WD5000AAKS 16MB
• 1 VP-NV8800GT-512A XFX GF8800GT 512MB (600M / 2xDVI / TVO)

Started by putting it all together. Wow, the Shuttle G5M chassis and FG33 motherboard are really well-thought-through. It may be small (31 x 20 x 18.5 cm) but somehow Shuttle managed to find room for a whole bunch of stuff found on full-size motherboards. The board has on-board Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3100 (GMA 3100), 250W mini power supply, 775 CPU socket (supports 65 and 45 nm), two memory slots, 1x PCI-E, 1x PCI slot, 2.1 and 7.1 sound, 3x internal SATAII, 2x external SATAII, 6x USB, 1x IDE, Gigabit ethernet, firewire and a bunch more. The black aluminum chassis has a mirror front face with gold trim and an integrated display compatible with Windows Media Center. A remote control is also included.

I first mounted the Intel Core 2 Duo. The cooling unit - Shuttle I.C.E. 2 (Integrated Cooling Engine)- is one of the most amazing components of the system. Three heat pipes run from the heat sink into a small cooling grill mounted behind the main housing fan. The first time I started the system, I had forgotten to reconnect the housing fan (oops) but the system got halfway through an XP installation before overheating. The ICE can passively cool an 3.0 Ghz Core 2 Duo for over 15 minutes (don’t try that this at home :D)!! After inserting the RAM modules, I mounted and connected the two 500GB hard drives and the DVD drive. The last component was the XFX GeForce 8800GT Alpha Dog Edition which requires extra power (3x 24 volts :D) and the motherboard needs to be jumpered so it uses the PCI-E graphic card instead of on-board.

I then fired up the system, and was amazed at how quiet such a high-powered system can be. At first all fans come on at full power, but then the intelligent cooling logic from the housing fan and graphic card kick in and you can hardly hear anything. After installing XP and upgading to Vista Ultimate with Media Center, the fun really began: over-clocking :D. I started at 333MHz FSB x CPU factor of 9 (3.0 GHz) and slowly cranked it up. At 450 MHz FSB the system died and I had to reset by pulling out the CMOS battery. After crashing the system a couple more times, I got it running stably at 441MHz FSB (3,98 GHz).

Time to fire up some games…. I started with Hellgate London. Running with DirectX 9.0, all options maxed - no problem at all. DirectX 10 was a bit slower, had to turn off the trilinear filtering to get the same performance. NFS Most Wanted and Carbon were also sweet, still gotta check out Pro Street. And I’m looking forward to Crysis and UT 2008!!! 1080p HD movies were also no problem at all and the Media Center remote control is a really nice feature. After five hours of heavy duty gaming, I got a blue screen. Haven’t found the problem yet, but I’ll most likely have to adjust the overclocking values a little.

All in all, it’s a really sweet system! I’ll definitely be having some fun in the future

UPDATE (April 29): This baby is sweet. Had to drop the overclocking down, now running stably at 3,4GHz. All games run perfectly, except for NFS Carbon… gnrgh… Lovin’ it!!!!

UPDATE (May 13): Running at 3,6GHz…. Get’s pretty warm in this kind of weather, but seems to be working