Author: Dan Dickinson

Last year, I was intending to write a top 10 list of albums for the year. I failed miserably, after realizing that there really weren’t ten albums I could firmly say I liked.
But 2004 seems to be a different ball game:
The Streets released a follow up album to Original Pirate Material that actually gave scientific proof that UK hip-hop is not a joke.
Then Dizzee Rascal did him one better.
The Prodigy released their long awaited fourth album and shockingly, it wasn’t an album full of tripe like Fat Of The Land was.
Green Day have a new album coming out, and from what I’ve heard, it may be their best album to date. Saying that about Green Day will probably draw “That’s not saying much” comments, but it’s honestly a solid album.
Phoenix released their debut album, and it’s a nearly flawless mix of soft alt-rock and electronic.
Bjork put out Medulla, which turned out to be much more than just a gimmick album.
m-flo not only released their best album to date, Astromantic, but also a remix album thereof, Astromantic Charm School.
DJ Shadow released a mix DVD/CD of his own work. It’s like a greatest hits album, only better.
Orbital released their final album, which was much better than I could have anticipated after their last two.
Diverse Systems, the #1 name in Bemani remixes, released D7, a three-CD megacollection of new remixes. They are almost all truly a fantastic.
MC Chris, Richard Cheese, and David Cross all had new albums drop. There’s nothing wrong with any of them, outside the obvious insanely-funny thing.
Utada Hikaru, who has seemingly lost her lost name while coming across the Pacific, is getting a US push and album release. She deserves it.
Fantastic Plastic Machine has churned out four excellent mix albums this year alone.
They Might Be Giants tossed out a marvelous album in The Spine, easily my favorite of their albums.
And perhaps most importantly, The Kleptones have demanded my attention and received it, with two excellent mashup albums; Yoshimi Battles The Hip Hop Robots (Flaming Lips based) and the just released A Night At The Hip Hopera (Queen based, from what I’ve listened to thus far). Fuck “The Grey Album”, this is what mashing up is all about.
The year’s still got three months left. How cool is that?

Pop’n Navy can now be found at popnnavy.com.
Katie’s blog can now be found at domokate.com.
And vjarmy.com is renewed for another year.

So it’s here, and it looks so much better in the flesh than it does on Apple’s site.

The unpacking and setup process is dirt simple, as to be expected. The Firewire transfer from my old machine worked great, although the time estimate started at 21+ hours and rapidly dropped. The performance is good, the screen is really nice and crisp and seems a lot larger than I’d expect for a 17″, and the lip at the bottom is not really a big deal.
Unsurprisingly, neither the Apple nor the “iMac” on the back light up. There is a sleep light – it’s located about an inch down from the bottom right corner, and is just a small round circle of light.

Somewhat shocking was that the machine came with neither a USB extension cord nor a video out converter; apparently you have to buy that separately, even though it’s come with every portable for the last 3 years.
On the plus side: This machine is so quiet, I don’t think it’s on. I started to install UT2K4, and then promptly forgot the install was going on because the machine is that quiet. The speakers being pointed downward works really well and gives me ample sound to blast my music.

It does seem that a number of updates from the last month didn’t make it onto the machine (it is running 10.3.5, but behind on a number of little app updates). Still, I am extremely satisfied – the whole thing is a fantastic machine for the price.
And that brings me to the benchmarking. These are the steps I took:
1) Install UT2K4.
2) Patch UT2K4 to the latest version, 3323.
3) Run it once to create the proper support directories. Quit immediately.
4) Run the Santaduck tools to benchmark.
Now please keep in mind that this is a machine with 256 MB of RAM, and I get the feeling that the performance is getting affected significantly by this during the botmatch, but even with that said, these framerates are better than I would’ve expected.


I’ll do more benchmarking after I get more RAM, as well as some Halo testing and whatever else I feel compelled for.