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Simple answer to this one !

popcorn is a grain, and with all grains it contains water. It’s the water inside that makes it pop

the heat, causing water turn into steam, then putting pressure onto the inside of the grain the it bursts, turning the grain inside out, corn that has popped! POPCORN! cheesy or what!

So, why doesn’t rice pop? that contains water, right?

Yes, good question. rice doesn’t pop because the outside layer, named “hulls”, are different between each type of grain.

popcorn has a non-porous hull, meaning there are no holes for the steam to exit, therefore trapping the steam inside untill it pops.

rice, however has a porous hull, that have exit holes for steam to exit freely! In turn, making it not pop.

There also has to be enough moisture in the grain to make it pop, to be precise, this is half a percent of moisture needed to make it “pop” (.5%).

Hulls, if cracked do not pop. That is why you sometimes find un-popped corn in your popcorn bag or whatever you got it in! Because they are cracked!

So, I hoped you learn’t yet again, more usefull information!

Keep your eyes peeled for more!

Chris

Heres something that will strike up a major flame. Yes, pretty sure there will be one or two idiots mention mac and parralles .

So, lets take a look at this shall we?

XP requires less resources to run as an operating system. Thus, allowing games to run smoother because they have their fair share of the resources. Memory is one of the biggest humps, if you haven’t got enough, you will not be able to run the operating system with the game of choice without lagg, or maybe even not even start the game without the entire PC locking up.

Vista, a hog for the hardwarez… you would have to double what you would have to run XP on. But if you have a decent pc you can benifit from the new DirectX10, that we spoke about in a previous post, which is meant to be only available on Vista. But if you have enough money to cough up for a Vista 64bit version and 4GB ram and a DX10 graphics card, then be my favorable guest!

XP stands ground as many gamers prefer to use it, because it doesn’t use as much of the vital resources later needed to play the game.

But as the PC’s being shipped out of the pc stores become beasty enough by default to run Crysis and Vista nicely together, with Crysis around the high to maximum setting, then many games will switch because of the better support for DX10 graphics cards.

As a footnote, I can recommend some graphics cards that are affordable, and use DX10!

GeForce 8800

Geforce 8600 GT

Geforce 8600 GTS

They are around $150 - $175

Or you can cough up for the beasty EVGA version of the 8600GT and pay from $200 and up for the best DX10 support.

So, as said before, XP will remain a gamers choice, until PC’s come prepared for Vista and games by default!

Chris!

Yea… a slight detour of our “in this world” research. Someone requested it. So it must be done, no matter how pathetic!

So, we are all familiar with the egg on the wall rhyme? no? here it is:

——————————

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

All the king’s horses, and all the king’s men,

Could not put Humpty together again.

——————————

So, lets get started.

So, the moral could be not to sit on high walls if your an egg… nah, something more down to earth.

Could it be, not to sit on high walls as a repose angle? possibly… Or to do with wearing safety gear, like a helmet?

Further into research… There is a story in the English history, which continues on from the story, revealing the moral. But I can’t find it, although it does exist. I’m certain of it!

So, lets say there is no moral. Not everything has a moral, if everything had a moral, we would be very safe people. Knowing what and what not to do. Hmph…

I shall continue my investigation later on in the night… morning or possibly in 5 seconds.

So, at this moment in time. 19th August 2008, at 18:54pm. We have concluded that there is no true moral to this small, yet entertaining (for youngens atleast) rhyme.

Chris

Well, maybe your a bit behind… But have you ever wanted to rid of that lag in a game? But it would pack its bags and leave?

Ok, enough of the commercial type typography!

So, lets get down and dirty on what’s good in this "DX10" package.

Well, First off DirectX 10 is only in Vista… But sooner or later, I’m sure people will have it on XP even though, it would most probably act like 9.

NOW lets get into it

DirectX 10 is supposedly making games run faster, more stable as its new "method" is too use less of the CPU processing so the CPU is able to make more calculations made by the graphics card.

Thus, meaning the CPU wont have to render as much as in DirectX 9 . So the graphics card will have to do more of the work and letting the CPU take care of other things, like the in-game physics engine, character effects, and mostly, AI.

It also offers with every new graphics update, new, better shader effects and an addition of a "geometry" shader, which will give a motion blur, supposedly to give the game more realism.

The lets say the "Beta" release of the new DX10 cards used separate Vertex and Pixel shaders, making a slowdown, because of the "bottleneck" effect on date going out. Where the data is so big, it has to be let though the space "in turn" making the game "lag" so it has time for the shaders to catch up.

The newer graphics cards GPU’s have been updated, so that the Vertex and Pixel, and the new geometry shader can now work at the same time, almost as a team.
There is plenty more, but its mainly about ATI’s new graphics cards abandoning Vertex and pixel separately and using "stream processors" which is used depending on the in-game environment.

nVidia still continue to use pipelines for their vertex and pixel shaders, meaning some pipelines will, and some, not be used meaning it can provide that extra bit if needed

So, DX10 will provide a lag free game experience.

But the older "beta" DX10 cards… or the PreDX10… why do I think of a good word now…, typical. Anyway, the Pre-DX10 graphics cards still have a benefit belive it or not

Because the processing power of the GPU on the cards becomes more "generic" for DirectX 10 on the non-compatible graphics cards meaning the, GPU, can "shunt" or give more power towards the physic calculations and other processes not normally be dealt with by the GPU.

Also, to give a little more understanding on why it will provide a lag free experience, the power processing "overhead" means that the delay will be so much less that it would in the previous DirectX 9… Wish is the first and last time I mentioned DX9 in this post

So, bye for now

If you would like anything researched and posted here, just email me and I’ll get working straight away!

Chris.

Help me keep this site up and running. This will also help with developments for future projects and so forth.

Donation Via Paypal:

I’m talking about font… Before you start getting crazy, werid thoughts…

I was messing around with this uploader I am making and I was playing around with fonts, and It just clicked to have a big font, so I set the font to 36px… (pixels for you web illetirate people ) and the outcome was impressive!

BIG FONTS RULE!

Thats just one field… I’ve got to redesign the rest later

Also, The georgia font is good when its BIG

Bye Bye

I was just messing around with Google, and I found out that it can divide by tablespoons!

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=5000+%2F+tablespoon

and teaspoons…

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=5000+%2F+teaspoons

Theres more, what about a cup? Surely not, Yep. Google does that too !

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=5000+%2F+cups

Lets have a funny picture this time

Chris

Hello All!

In this post, Im just gonna spare some time to talk about WAMP and XAMPP. This post may bore you, so if your not interested in learning about WAMP and XAMPP and there differences. Please, find another post to read

So, WAMP… its an apache, mysql and php server in one, to be honest, so is XAMPP. But, there are a few differences!

XAMPP had a mail server, a neat control panel but a very space consuming application, WAMP is a smaller version, but does NOT have a mail server.

XAMPP is for those who are looking for a server in a window type thing. If you cannot buy another box to put Linux on. Which by the way, is the most secure! WAMP is for those who prefer to use their computer while running a server. But be warned… If your running anything that is a little exessive on the resources side and you have put your server out in the wild and you generate a bit of traffic. This could slow down your PC. Because the server, and you, are running off the same CPU, RAM and Harddrive. Which means you have to cater for the outside aswell as yourself.

The handy thing about WAMP is that is has a put online/offline feature. Where if you release it out in the wild and your getting a bit of traffic which is bogging down your PC you can put it offline which displays a “Forbidden” message to any viewers! Sweet!

I reccommend WAMP to anyone who is going to be developing and wants to test locally, as the root of the server is on your very own harddrive!

So yea… If you want to run a server on a seperate machine or your not worried about the dramatic decrease in speed, go with XAMPP but if you want to reserve the resources for youself get WAMP!

Chris

Hi all,

I will be posting my piano performances on here! It might be a slow trickle of performances for a while because im learning to read music which could take years to perfect. But after that, it might even be a steady stream of performances.

So far, I have one.

Mad World - Gary Jules

I was wondering, should I put some music sheets up for people to download and try and play them? Should I make them all free, or make people pay, or a mixture.

If it were a mixture, I would have it so if the music book, thingie was over 6 pages you would pay 25pence per page extra… (12.5cents, hope thats right)

So this could be something quite interesting to set up.

You ask for a music sheet, Ill try and find it and put it up on the site

Chris