Duke Nukem must be one of the most popular first person shooters ever made, geez it even had action figures at one stage. The latest version Duke Nukem Forever must be one of the longest games in development, ever! Ask the makers 3D Realms about a release date and this is what they say:

The release date of this game is “When it’s done”. Anything else, and we mean anything else is someone’s speculation. There is no date. We don’t know any date. If you have a friend who claims they have “inside info”, or there’s some game news site, or some computer store at the mall who claims they know – they do not. They are making it up. There is no date. Period.

But could this be about to change!

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Do you find transferring files to and from your hard disk is a little time-consuming? Well, Gigabyte has launched a device called i-RAM, a hard disk storage alternative, which is based on fast DDR SDRAM chips rather than slow-but-stable flash memory chips. With data stored on memory chip, it is truly much faster than saving data onto rotating hard disk medium. Unfortunately, there are disadvantages to using i-RAM; that is, Gigabyte acknowledged that the product is not suitable for systems that are turned off permanently for long periods of time, and secondly, not useful for anyone who demands more than 4 GB of storage space capacity.
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Anticipated for months, ATI have today finally announced their next generation of graphics cards. Reviews and benchmarks are all over the web, take your pick from the usual sources (I saw the news on Anandtech).

A comprehensive list of the current (p)reviews can be found at Rage3D.

As usual it depends on what game you benchmark and what configuration you choose as to whether this new ATI range takes the performance crown away from NVidia but two things are certain:

1) The top end will be very, very expensive (350+ quid is a *lot* of money to spend on a graphics card)
2) As with all recent ATI releases you can’t actually buy them yet. Expect to see stock in time for Christmas. Maybe.

I’m sure we’ve all had days where we just wanted to throw something. Hard. Usually at someone, or at the very least at something breakable. And most of the time you just don’t follow through – the lawsuits, paperwork and general hassle involved in replacing the windows are all enough to put you off the idea.

But I say go for it – just make sure you’re doing it with one of these foam bricks from drinkstuff.com and not the real thing!

I remember the days when newsgroups where one of the best sources for info and nobody had heard of a forum (how things have changed). As newsgroups were text only (forget the attachements in warez and shall will say adult ones) the geeky way to sign off a message was with an image made up of asking characters, like:

What’s this?

( . )
___( . )

That’s a big breasted girl running without a bra. (thanks Hodgedup)

Anyway onto the post about generating ASCII art (if you can call it that) from photos.

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Unlike the recent release of Apple’s iPod nano or Dell’s DJ Ditty, the Toshiba Gigabeat Audio player is a HDD-based audio player that comes with a variety of selections of storage space. The Gigabeat is fully loaded with functions, presented with a large 2.2-inch QVGA TFT display at the front, and looks pleasing to the eye as a portable handheld player.

The Toshiba Gigabeat F series is available in four different storage capacities, starting with 10 GB, up to 60 GB, to satisfy the demand of storage-hungry users. In addition, these players are colour-coded to differentiate their various storage capacities in the media. The 10 GB version is available in aqua blue, black and silver acrylic; 20 GB in either black or silver brushed aluminium; 40 GB in champagne brushed aluminium; and 60 GB in dark gray brushed aluminium. The external cover is quite hardy to prevent damage to the interior circuit board. The controls on the panel are touch sensitive, supported by five blue blacklit buttons located on the right profile of the media.

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After being made a plonker off with our report on the Quintet TFT Display we thought it only fair to find something better and *real* to report on. Digital Tigers produce multi-screen displays ranging from the boring dual TigerVista Duo right up to the monster 8 screen zenview Atlas priced a dollar short of 5K.

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I’ve long been a fan of Sony’s digital camera range. Partnering their undoubted electronics expertise with the respected name of Carl Zeiss optics has produced consistently class leading results.

The DSC-N1 is the latest in a long line of Sony digicams and has most of the features associated with a high end camera: 8 megapixels, a video mode, a range of manual controls and a 3.8x zoom lens covering a 38mm-114mm range.

It also goes to ISO 800 – I’d like to see the noise performance of that!

The big news on this camera is the touch screen, allowing you to pick a focus point by touching it on the screen as well as operate the standard menu functions It’s an interesting idea – could make for a nice UI. It could make for an expensive repair when you drop it too!

RRP is $499, more details at sonystyle.com