The Would-be Geeks

me and Windows 7

2009-03-30T11:21:00.000-04:00

The internets have been buzzing about Windows 7 for a while now. I resisted the urge to snatch up a build until this past weekend, because nothing I saw got me hot enough to try it out. A lot of slick little tweaks here and there, but nothing relovutionary. But, to be fair, I had to ask myself what I expect from an OS anymore (out of the box, so to speak) and got this: stable, solid hardware support and ease of use. And after coming up with this I decided to give it a try. What the Hell, I have a spare computer just laying there, longing to be used anyway. I was curious, too, to see how the OS worked on a system driven by an old single-core AMD 3400+.

I grabbed a torrent of build 7068 on Saturday night off mininova and had the ISO waiting on Sunday morning. Once burned and then loaded into the disk tray, the install took ~20 minutes, which, subjectively, was much better than I remember with Vista a couple years ago (on, mostly, the same hardware). I did have to grab a public key for activation off the net (not hard to find). I went through 2 restarts before the final welcome screen popped up. Once the desktop showed up I instantly I noticed the sound icon with the little red "x" through it. Funny enough, within moments, Windows both detected the hardware problem, downloaded the driver and had the sound working (a Realtek driver). Very nice.

Quick thought: Aero desktop effects are smooth (I have an 8800 GT so this is expected). No driver needed on initial startup (I later went to Nvidia's site and grabbed their newest Win7 driver anyway), and the aspect ratio was correctly detected (1680x1050) with glass effects turned on by default. Again, very nice. I quickly went to tinker with the personalization screen (desktop right-click > Personalization) next. The layout is more robust now. I like it. Packaged themes are now easier to enable, while individual options like wallpaper choice or screen saver choices are nicely located at all times on the bottom of the screen. A lot of little things like this have been made easier to access where once some digging had to be done in the Control Panel.

The Big Thing in this release of Windows, however, is the new taskbar. At a glance: it is fatter. I thought about this, too, and I think it may be because screen sizes have ballooned in the last 2-3 years. I used to like to have the taskbar marginalized as much as possible, which makes this shift interesting. Before I digress too much, I should say that the quick launch toolbar has now been merged with running programs/opened windows. Have IE in the quick launch? Now when it is opened, but minimalized, it goes back to the quick launch icon. Hover the mouse over it and you get a preview of all open tabs (very slick). As more tabs/browsers are opened, more little stacks appear on the quick launch symbol. And this makes it clear why the taskbar was enlarged: visibility of the new functionality. Even loading urls are reflected in the symbol with a green fill-effect scrolling across the icon. Weird at first, but I find it very welcome.

The right-side of the taskbar (usually referred to as the tray) has a very nice little flag icon which, when clicked, informs users of important messages. Things like recent hardware changes, solved problems, etc come up when the flag is clicked. It is pretty cool really.

Those are the things that jumped out at me when playing with it for an hour or so. The system feels stable, too. No crashes, very responsive. I cannot say I am surprised, because the buzz has been positive, but it felt good to try it out. Nice to know that the Vista pitfalls (lack of drivers, instability, initial sluggish-ness) have been addressed. The leap to 7 will be easy for Vista users as it is not nearly as dramatic as it was for Vista from XP. I am comfortable with the idea that 7 will be on the next gaming PC I build (sometime next year?).

So, now I can throw some Linux flavor back on the spare PC and tinker with something else.

Oh and before I forget, more information on Windows 7 from Microsoft.

HTPC: the quest is on (maybe)

2009-02-25T09:53:00.000-05:00

I had this post all set a week or two ago about getting amped up to build an HTPC, but now I don't know. Nothing much changed, but I am hesitant to pump 500ish bucks into another PC that attaches to the TV just to watch internet stuff. My wife has her own laptop (she is perpetually on) and I am already on my (powerful, multi-screen) PC far more than in front of the TV, so is it worth it? And we have a DVR through Comcast so, again, is it worth doing? Especially with the economy in the tank and both of us never really knowing if we'll be out of a job.

Here is the post (for history: I may look back and get a chuckle):

I'm going to take the HTPC plunge this year. I'll pick the parts up here and there, check by check. My budget is $500 total. This should not pose a problem. I quickly whipped up a cart in Newegg and got under the limit. This included a 45w AMD, a 780G mobo, and a BD player (among other parts).

Typically, the priciest part is the case, but Apevia has a decent looking enough box (with a psu, however cheap). The AMD chip has a great track record and 780G chipset was built to handle HD playback, so they are no-brainers. BD/HD playback is a must. I want to stream Hulu and Netflix, but also have the option to pick up a BD disk, too, if I fancy it. A 500 GB HDD should be fine enough to hold torrents/backups as well.

The only real question I have is with software: what OS do I go with? I may try Ubuntu and have Vista as a backup. I still have to decide. Luckily, I have plenty of time. I want this up and running by the time the summer rolls in. Still lots of time.

Resident Evil 5 First (disapointing) Impressions

2009-01-30T22:39:00.004-05:00

Let me start off by saying that Resident Evil 4 may be one of my favorite games of all time. Actually, it probably is. I have been waiting for Resident Evil 5 since I finished 4 (of course) and when I found out the demo was released, I rushed to download it. It looked about right from the title screen. Same old deep Resident Evil voice. Same old menu system.

Then the game starts and the first thing I notice is that the body movements feel more robotic than I remember from 4. It looks like they took the camera from 4 and put the robot back in from all previous Resident Evil games. Also, my main issue, is they took away the ability to move the camera while running. You have to use the left stick and press the "a" (or "x" button on ps3) to run instead of it just always being on. And...another camera issue is that the camera angle is way to close to the character. He just takes up too much of the screen. Then there is the inclusion of a second AI, or if you want, real player which takes up even more of the screen. There is hardly enough room to see zombies.

Then on top of that, the colors have turned so vivid that you can not see the laser sight when aiming into a group of zombies. The best part about the last game was that all the subdued colors made it easy for the red dot to pop out. This time around it looks like I am aiming into a Prince of Persia game. AND on top of all of that, the graphics just look shitty. The blood looks less realistic than No More Heroes for the Wii. I just feel like Capcom wanted to make Gear of War lite instead of Resident Evil 5.

Fallout 3: Operation Anchorage is less than awesome

2009-01-29T07:57:00.050-05:00

I finished Operation Anchorage last night. I could have zipped right through it the first night. It was short, very short. My thoughts? Meh. I have no idea where the supposed 5-6 hours of play time was; it was 2-3 hours long. There is really no way it could have taken longer either because the role-playing portion is nonexistent. The add-on is nearly all action, and this is a shame because, while Fallout 3 was fun, the combat is the weakest part. I like shooting mutants and raiders while exploring, but going through a simulation and not being able to explore anything, pick up anything, or even search for loot on Chinese soldiers is pretty lame.

**SPOILER SECTION**
I was expecting bigger action, too. The end sequence with the T51bs marching to the gates was merely okay (why wasn't I outfitted with one?). The fight with the tank was laughably easy. Is it really that hard to create a traditional boss character to fight? I do not really agree with Bethesda's decision to focus on combat, or stealth with this. Fallout 3, again, is a role-playing game with a strong focus on exploration. This add-on neglected that entirely. Why make a simulator at all? Why not a malfunctioning teleporter that throws the hero into the past (seriously)? Going that route would make it possible to at least pick items up off the ground.

And the pay-off after the simulator is over--what the hero is there to help the Outcasts obtain: a "winterized" T51b that is strangely a little weaker than the ordinary suit in the main game, a Glauss rifle, an electric sword and a Chinese ninja suit. Cool items, but none of them amazing.

I am disappointed. Usually, I would wait and read a review, but I enjoyed playing the main game so much I did not hesitate to pick this up. Hell, I had to go through the annoyance of buying the content on Windows Live, too (last post). Oh well. I still have hopes that the next 2 add-ons will be better. No more simulations!

Games for Windows Live is a joke

2009-01-27T18:01:00.013-05:00

I am staring at a blank Windows Live screen while trying to purchase points in order to get Operation Anchorage, the add-on for Fallout 3. Compared to Steam, Live is a total joke. Having to install the LIVE portion of Fallout 3 was dumb. Having to install a separate client on my PC later was far more annoying. But not being able to buy some stupid kiddie points is maddening. Let me pay with my fucking credit card already. Enough with the baby shit. Guess Microsoft missed the memo: this is a PC.

Now I see that I have to go to the Zune Marketplace to buy points. Log in again, but this time to a browser (why not the standalone client I just installed?) input my info and see I can't just say what points I want to buy; I have to buy 400 points twice (because the next highest is 1000 and I'm not giving MS money for something I'm not buying).

God, the Steam purchasing experience is polished, easy and quick compared to this. What garbage. Getting in to actually buy points I can only pick from select increments. Let me buy what I want. Should just have copied Steam--one client to manage, support and buy games.

But if you don't believe me, there is always Rock, Paper, Shotgun.

Dirt Cheap PC Games

2009-01-22T13:22:00.000-05:00

I have several games in my drawer that have yet to come out of the shrink wrap: Sins of Solar Empire, Assassin's Creed, Supreme Commander (with Expansion), and until a couple days ago Spore. Spore was a Xmas gift, but the others? I picked them all up at Target. See, Target nearly throws away PC games. Unless the game has "Duty" or "Warcraft" in it, it will end up tucked away in a bargain section. Each of the games I mentioned I bought for less than $10 (they were actually $7 and change). They usually start more expensive in the bin, but they get lowered every week that goes by (because no one buys PC games at Target). I am exactly surprised that Target even maintains a PC game section (meager as it is). But for as long as they do, I will continue to pick up nice deals for outstanding prices. I have actually passed up prior deals (although my mind is blank on titles at the moment) simply because I knew I would never get to them.

Consider this a PSA: find the electronic bargain section at your local Target store (they exist in some hidden-away crevice) and grab a quality PC game. They aren't always there, but its always worth checking.

A Game to Get Excited about for the Wii...Madworld

2009-01-18T14:43:00.001-05:00

MadWorld 'Pre-TGS 2008' gameplay

Check out this trailer. Looks kind of like the next version of No More Heroes or something. Only other game I'm excited for this year aside from Resident Evil 5 and Street Fighter 4.

Switching to Linux Mint

2009-01-13T12:45:00.000-05:00

I'm a fickle guy. SUSE was a pretty hot chick, and we got along nicely. But then I had to go and see this new girl. She had a simpler style and was easier to get along with. Not that anything was wrong with the other. But I am happier (right) now.

SUSE was cool: slick and fun. But I couldn't get sound to work. And the system was more sluggish than I wanted (this is based on an old 2.3 GHz single core AMD). I don't want it to seem as though it ran poorly (because it didn't), though, so maybe it is better to say it wasn't as snappy as I wanted. So I switched (and fought off the silly temptation to get Win7) to Linux Mint. And I think it may be the best Windows-to-Linux OS I have tried. Right after installation it recognized all my hardware without any problems. It alerted me of the proprietary drivers for Nvidia, but let me use them just fine. No other quirks jumped out. The sound worked fine. And the system boots up incredibly quick. But what really makes this OS easy to slide into from a near life-long Windows world is their software portal. See something you want to install? Click the "install now" button. It takes care of the rest. This is amazing. Have simple taste (office, web, music)? Than no need to bother with package management. Now, the portal is by no means complete, but there is plenty of good software there for basic (and advanced) needs.

I fiddled with the OS for a few hours last night: Compiz settings, wallpapers, taskbar settings, etc. There are plenty of other things to explore, but so far so good.

Oh and I should add: the internet does not hang up with Mint. I have no idea why. It sucked when I had Vista and then SUSE on the hardware, but now it is just fine. Very weird. I must have been doing something wrong before (and stumbled onto something right now). Wouldn't be the first time.

Trying out openSUSE 11.1

2009-01-05T10:15:00.000-05:00

I put together a new machine last weekend and installed openSUSE on it. I always wanted to tinker with Linux, but I never had the guts to dual boot with Windows because I never wanted to compromise my main computer. I have plenty of spare parts, though, so putting a separate machine together was cake: only took a few purchases to make it a go (430w PSU and 320 HDD: both < $100).

Installation was a breeze; I picked KDE as my desktop environment. First impression? It is fine--nothing wholly alien or obviously weird. I had to update the driver for my nvidia 8800 GT, though, which caused a little bitty problem. Novell has a cool one-click driver update , but I kept running into problems when adding the repository. It just kept failing. After fiddling around with a few things (for an hour or two), I realized it was just the internet, well, more accurately, my network card: it is painfully slow and kept timing out with updates. I persisted though, and eventually got the driver updated. Now I have all the eye-candy Linux is known for: wobbly windows, transparency effects, cubed desktops, etc.

I should buy a new network card, though, because even browsing is shitty on it. The original network controller on the motherboard died when it was still my mother's old computer (was DOA really), and I have some ancient card in there now. I'll get something sooner or later (they are cheap enough). I still have to figure out how to get sound. Something wrong with a driver, but it hardly matters because I have no speakers attached. More things to throw money at.

For now, I am reading up on a few things and still exploring. I will post any info that strikes me as, worthwhile though.

Selling my video game collection

2009-01-04T17:28:00.002-05:00

I realized fairly recently, that I have a ton, like a hundred or so games, that I do not play anymore. Yea most of them have some sort of sentimental value, (omg I got this game when I was 6 and it was so fun) but at this point I am pretty much only playing TF2, Left 4 dead, and what ever new xbox 360 game that comes out that does not suck. I have been using amazon's SELL YOURS HERE option and just undershoot all the other sellers that are on there. So, if you are sitting on a few games that you do not want, go ahead a huckm'. Who knew that Legend of Mana for PS1 was worth 40 bucks? Or Tales of Destiny 2 was worth 80? And even better, that people will buy them.

With all this extra money I am going to buy a Cosmos case from Microcenter which is on sale for a hundred and fifty bucks.

Awesome.

Liking the Zune Software

2008-12-30T09:40:00.000-05:00

I don't use a Zune. And I have no real desire for a new media player. But I've noticed the buzz around the web the last few months concerning the Zune software as a WMP replacement (who would have guessed?). Last week I installed it to play around with on an XP machine. First thought: slick. Much cleaner and easier on the eyes than WMP 11. The general layout is more intuitive and effective: Artists on the right, albums with art in the center, and song titles/album titles on the right. It just looks better. And each section can be focused and resorted. Higher search filters on the upper right: artists, genres, albums, etc. A general search bar is given prominence at the top right, although it could be emphasized more (make it bigger). The player appearance can be tweaked through the display settings. Zune offers minor thematic highlights: a little welcome flare to an otherwise blinding white background.

The physical media controls are in the bottom right corner, and this is where I find real room for improvement. The buttons are too small. The section in general is too small. And the volume controls only manifest when you pan over the volume level. Again, the volume level bar is too small. Notice before:

And then while hovering over:

The buttons are so tiny! It is hardly a deal breaker, though, as the benefits of the software (compared to WMP) far outweigh these few aesthetic points. The big deal is native support for AAC files, unlike (annoyingly) WMP 11. This means files ripped through iTunes show up fine. This always annoyed me with WMP, and why I stay with Winamp (well, that and the triple pan sorting).

Unfortunately, the Zune software does not easily integrate Last.fm services like Winamp, iTunes, and WMP. Of course there is a solution with Zuse , but it is not the most elegant way to get tracks scrobbled. Zuse has to be activated separately, which I am not hot on, but it works by uploading direct to Last.fm. Some made need to download the .Net Framework 2.0 and/or the C++ redistributable package to get it to work but these are simple downloads. I read that the Zune marketplace has their own version of Last.fm, but I am not interested in tying up my listening habits with a media player/store run by Microsoft. I buy tracks easily (and happily) through Amazon. And I am happy with Last.fm. This is why I have not explored the marketplace much.

In addition, the Zune supports standard features like track ripping, play list creation, and drag-and-drop. Ripping file preferences can be made in the settings--all the usual stuff you would expect in a music media plaer. I showed the player to my wife and she instantly liked it. The same with my sister. Compared to WMP, it wins the at-a-glance battle. It wins all the battles really. The worst part of the software, however, may be the name. People hear Zune and think hardware. Don't have a Zune? Why would I use the software?

I hope Microsoft will, at the very least, port the design (or the design approach) over to the next version of Media Player. Maybe with Windows 7?

Odds and ends: cases, routers, and lusting for zombies

2008-12-03T09:21:00.000-05:00

My belly grew rounder following Turkey day, and I did not even have the chance to gorge on PC games because I was stuck in an in-law land far far away. One massive week away from my computer was tough to swallow--especially considering I barely had a chance to enjoy a new 24" monitor. And Left 4 Dead had just come out! Work has been so busy I have hardly even played it. But I survived the week. Access to the internet was enough to get by (the only thing that made it possible to go because of the work I had to do).

But anyway, following turkey day there were some decent deals. The few that caught my eye?

D-link 4300 : now it shows for $59.99 but for a few days it was $49.99, which is an excellent deal. I would have snatched it up in a second if I didn't already have one. This router may be the most reliable computer purchase I have ever made. At the time, I agonized over spending the $100+ to upgrade over a crappy Buffalo router, but it long ago paid off with continued reliability.
Antec 300: this case is a steal at $40. I built a computer for my family using it back in the summer and I couldn't resist picking another up. Always some spare parts lying around; cheap, sturdy cases (under $50?!) do not grow on trees.
Sandisk Fuze: The internets had a bounty of these 4 gig, $50 players through the weekend--in all kinds of colors. Most of these deals have long since dried up, but enterprising shoppers can probably still dig out a deal here or there (mixed metaphors anyone?). My wife and I both have older Sansas (2 and 4 gig models), and they have been great. I am not intimately familiar with this model, but from the little I have seen, it has a more comfortable scroll wheel and a smaller, sleeker look.

Just a few things that grabbed my attention. Oh, and I should mention that while away visiting, we picked up the Logitech Alto for my wife's laptop. Nice little piece of convenience (depending on the price). I'll write about it later, though.

Epson 4990

2008-11-25T17:54:00.001-05:00

Just bought the Epson 4990 scanner so I can scan my negatives at home instead of at school. It’s a pretty decent scanner considering it is four years old, but I bought it off craigslist from some older guy for 85 bucks, so I can’t complain. It comes with silverfast software which I am not a huge fan of because the digital ICE is strange on it. But it also comes with Epson’s stock software which I do not have any gripes with except that it is a little light when it comes to advanced features. The new version of this scanner, the V700, prices out around 500 dollars usually, so this was the one that came out before that and four years ago, also cost that much. All in all, good deal for me. No more dirty school scanners and I can update my photo blog more.

New Xbox live Dashboard

2008-11-24T01:41:00.001-05:00

It has finally arrived. The first REAL update to the Xbox live dashboard. Woo hoo.

The first thing that I noticed was the new slick interface. (can anyone say PS3?) Everything looks really sleek and sexy. All the "blades" that they used to have were replaced with new...well blades. They just scroll up and down instead of left to right. There is not as much clutter on the screen anymore with ads for new games that came out. There is a new avatar system which is like (well is exactly like) creating a Mii but with better graphics and cooler T-shirts. So really this update is just saying hey, people like PS3, people like the Wii, lets do both at the same time. And honestly, I am all for it. The only thing that I truly cared about for this update was to make it sexier (*check*), and get me my damn Netflix instant streaming movies. And alas, I got both. I wish I had more to say but honestly, there is not much else that I personally care about or noticed.

Thanks Microsoft, for finally updating the interface; kind of.

PS: Currently working on a custom arcade stick (well actually 2) for my 360. Updates and pictures to follow in the coming week seeing as how (ready for this) Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix, also known as SSF2THDR, comes out Wednesday.

New PC partial build...and a new BenQ monitor

2008-11-17T09:11:00.001-05:00

I upgraded my mother's PC this past Saturday and it went without a hitch. From box openings to Windows running smooth it took ~3 hours. I am still knocking on wood, although, I did not anticipate any snags either. I bought a new AMD 5200 and a Foxconn 780G board to go with a spare (boxed) 250 gig HD and a 2 gig Wintec kit I had laying around. Both the PSU and the case were recycled along with an Nvidia 7600 GS. She did have to get a SATA optical because the HD was IDE (and the mobo only had a single IDE port), but that only cost $25. I installed Windows with an external Lite-on drive I had totally forgotten about. Again, there were zero complications and I took my sweet-ass time removing the old parts from the case and screwing in the new ones. Hell, I didn't even mess up the case connections. Weird, I know.

I'll turn her old Biostar 939 board, AMD 3400+ and DDR memory into some flavor of Linux down the road. All I need is a case, but I'll snatch up some cheap thing.

On Sunday I brought it over and set it up quickly, too. And then later that night I bought a 24" monitor. Some extra work I did recently meant a "small" treat for myself. It should be here tomorrow, and I am excited: the only full HD display in the house will be only a face-melting foot away. Nice.

Edit: The new monitor is awesome. I was paranoid that it would be littered with dead pixels (buying a new monitor is easily the most anxiety-laden computer buy), or be ugly, or be just plain terrible with colors, clarity, etc. But it is wonderful. It right next to the 22" Samsung from last year, which is a bit overkill, but soooooooo worth it. Gaming at 1080P leaves me slightly mental with joy, too (in a good way?). It is bright though; I had to turn its luminosity way down. Absolutely now complaints for $320, though. I am so very satisfied.

Trying out Disqus

2008-11-04T15:02:00.000-05:00

I heard about Disqus a while back, although I am not sure exactly when or how. Sounded cool, though: a web service that aggregates all comment threads for a given account. Have 3 blogs? Implement Disqus on all of them and easily see what everyone is saying across them all in one place. Of course, Disqus explains itself better than I can. I am definitely curious to see how it works.

Fallout 3; Initial Reactions

2008-10-31T23:12:00.007-04:00

So after waiting until 1:00pm on Tuesday for my pre-ordered steam download of Fallout 3 to start (followed by a two hour download of about seven gigs) I have played the game for only about two hours. The good news is that I like what I see.

Coming out from underground in the first half an hour or so is probably one of the most breathtaking moments in any video game I've played. You can see the world go on forever. I have the game on all high settings and it runs extremely (and might I add surprisingly with an 8800 GT) well. Bethesda took the Oblivion engine and completely re-worked for this title. People look and feel real. The first time I came upon a Goul (people ravaged by radiation when the world blew up) and saw the melted face that stood before me, I was completely blown away. I felt grossed out but could not stop looking. He was beautifully grotesque--there is just no other way to put it.

Outside of the player models, the voice acting is excellent (for the parts that I do not skip). The thing about voice acting in video games is that usually I just want to read it because it takes the voice actors four times more time to say what I can read in a few seconds. I usually just try to read it before they can spit out the first word and get distracted. But if you care about the voice acting it is spot on and feels right for each character.

The Fallout 3 world is a wasteland. I think the review from Giant Bomb hit the nail on the head with regards to this: there really is just wasteland and not a lot else in the world. Not to say that it is not beautiful wasteland, but its mainly a lot of rocks, destroyed buildings, and road structures. The underground areas (mostly train stations) all have the right look and feel but they can get a bit bland sometimes. Thankfully, the awesome lighting makes up for some lack of diverse environment that I have seen.

The combat system is a bit tricky. Its like a clunky FPS meets with a dice RPG. The FPS style is just that: a style. You can aim at a guy's head but then the dice system takes over and decides whether or not you hit the target or not. This, honestly, is not that satisfying given the FPS style: I expect to hit where I aim. Then there is the VATS system, which lets the player stop time and select where you want to shoot (or strike with a melee weapon) the enemy. It is a good idea, but the problem is that I wind up just running at enemies, waiting for them to get close, and then blasting them with a hunting rifle in the head (I do not have stronger guns yet). This dumbs the system down because it totally disregards the first person-ness of the game. I try to just use VATS as much as my "action point" meter will allow.

Overall I am having fun, and I am engrossed in the world. I hope that as I acquire new things it will feel more than just a better looking, post-apoc, Oblivion clone with guns. Because, despite all the good points, I am a little scared that this is all it is...

Tversity; Making everyone's lives easier

2008-10-28T12:15:00.002-04:00

I know I posted about this a few weeks ago but Tversity continues to amaze me. You just download it and pick the folders where you store all of your media. Then pick which devices you want to share it with and it just works. There are no confusing menu options and it runs in the background without being a system hog. And it is extremely slick looking. There seem to be sporadic updates, but as long as it keeps streaming media to my Xbox 360 with me not having to do anything except have my computer and Xbox on I am happy.
It can also stream to other computers not on the same network, as well as the Wii, PS3, and the high-end Nokia phones.

FALLOUT 3

2008-10-28T11:35:00.000-04:00

Bought it on steam and am eagerly awaiting its download. First impressions to come soon.

Game choices and consequences

2008-10-27T15:10:00.000-04:00

I came across a couple posts recently about the role of player choice and consequences in games (here and here ) and thought I would add my two cents. I actually think it is relatively easy to make choices real in games (without persistent saving, cause that is just annoying). The key is to not make the consequences immediate. Sure, there will always be room for the "who-gets-to-die" pop quiz, but real choices effect things later. Like life. If I don't do my work today, I won't get yelled out 5 minutes from now--but I may get reamed out a few days from now. The idea is to more closely tie player choices to a game's greater narrative. We need to get away from player choices being so insular (as part of a quest) and therefore meaningless.

Now, while this is easy in theory I can see why it is more difficult in practice: it takes a hell of a lot more story writing and attention to nuanced change in narrative (but I have argued the games need real writers for a long time now). The story will need to be more fluid. In practice this could be immensely more rewarding than now. Current choices, moral or otherwise, in games are, at the end of the day, usually a statistic (how "good" a player is) or, at worst, only something to trigger one lame ending sequence instead of another (cough *Bioshock* cough). They do not all have to be about how has to die, or who is going to get saved. These choices, while obviously meaningful, are easy to get around with the reset button. Didn't want to have that character die? Reset the game and make the other choice. This is, in my mind, the worst way to implement choice because it brings the artificial nature of the medium to the forefront. Morality becomes an annoyance, something to manipulate.

What makes this complicated, however, is how to make a game fun while having far reaching consequences. While it is easy to make a character die 3 hours from when I do something, it may not be conducive to an enjoyable experience. I may have liked that character and did not have a clue that eating eggs and drinking the yellow potion would kill him/her. I suppose I am cautioning against arbitrary outcomes, though. Giving players choices to make means they should also be given (some relative) control.

The real question for developers is not how to give players choice, but whether they want to. Or better yet: how much choice? It is about intent. What kind of game is being made? What story do they want to tell? The trick for developers is to balance classic story-telling with choose-your-own-adventure. And that can be a tough thing to do.

Holidays are coming and time is valuable

2008-10-27T08:31:00.004-04:00

The holiday season is near (or here depending on who you ask), which is always so much cooler in theory than it really is. A lot of games, gadgets and all around cool stuff comes out, but real life makes it difficult to get and have fun with any of it. And there is the cost of it all; very difficult to buy all these cool things when they all come out at the same time. Fallout 3 comes out tomorrow, but I am (at this moment at least) not going to buy it immediately. I am still entrenched in the Witcher, and I really don't want to let it go. Seeing that Fallout is coming out on Steam has weakened my resolve, though; it is so damn convenient!

A few weeks from now and Left 4 Dead is coming out, too, and I am actually more anxious for this title. Valve did not disappoint me last year with the Orange Box, and the same team worked a lot on this. Dead Space came out, too. It had a lot of press leading up to it's release, but I was never hot on it. Too much shocker material (banned in other countries! The horror!). How good the game has turned out, however, makes me want the damn thing. The game seems to do so many little things right: no HUD, visor videos/messages that move with you, stunning visuals. And there is Far Cry 3, Rock Band 2, and so many more. Hell, I still want to check out Spore.

Despite the plethora of games I have not been actually gaming that much recently. Just haven't been into it (well, I still manage to squeeze in some time for Lumines and Pegge Nights). My weekends have been a little busier with family and friends. My wife actually took me to see the Jets win (barely) over Kansas City yesterday for our wedding anniversary. The day before we went clothes shopping (have needed work clothes for at least a year), then did lunch with her mother followed by a visit to my family's house. Family overload indeed.

Now I have my mother's PC; it has been acting up: random crashes, freezes and just poor performance. Of course, it was stuffed with thick dust. I cleared that out in her kitchem before I left. No way I wanted to get that all over my apartment. I will have to see what I can do. Her hard drive is old (7-8 years), so I will swap it out and put in a new WD 250 I have had lying in the closet for a few months. I picked it up real cheap from somewhere. I may get radical with her PC, too, and install Emerge along with an Apple-like dock (Rocketdock or Objectdock) in place of the task bar. Maybe fancy up the icons with a replacement pack, too. Why? To discourage her from saving/installing things arbitrarily. That would be a goog enough reason, but in reality I just want to do something different. People do love docks with their glossy icons and bouncy, magnification effects. It makes my job seem a little less repairman-ish, too. Mixes it up a little. I mentioned the ideas to her and she was amenable to them (I am not going to configure her PC however I like without consent; that would be messed up). I should follow up on my progress before the week is out.

TGIF - TF2 going strong

2008-10-24T18:53:00.001-04:00

Came home from work and fired up TF2 to waste some time. Had no idea that I would go on such a tear. Felt good to cause a whole team to rage-quit. It's the little things in life.

My New Website

2008-10-24T00:07:00.003-04:00

My friend and I have been working on my new site in javascript and it is proving to be a giant pain in the ass. When things work in one browser, everything totally flops on another. Shouldn't all basic code work the same in each browser or is that just me being idealistic? I know that each one has their own compiler and chrome is the fastest at one and firefox another blah blah blah. But I still think the basic code should be working the same way. The site should be fully up as of Saturday so take a look then.

www.shanegodfrey.com

New Wireless Printer HP Style

2008-10-21T19:48:00.001-04:00

For the past few months my girlfriend and I have been discussing how we hate having to go to school to print everything out. Yea its cheap and yea its convenient when we are there but it just does not beat having your own home printer.

So I went out to Micro Center and walked around for a bit looking at laser jets and ink jets; wireless and not. And it all came down to the fact that printers are so cheap now that I should just get a wireless all-in-one deal (its a c4580). It was 129.99 plus tax and it comes with ink and all that. I brought it home and installed it on my windows machine connecting it usb style, and then proceeded to install it on both my mac and my girlfriends.

The set up is a breeze. Pop the CD in and pick a wireless network. Type in the WEP password and then it does the rest for you. I liked it a bit more on the mac because on my windows machine I have to have a background program running at all times so the little LCD readout on it works (which I find frustrating its the same thing with the G15 keyboard and G5 Laser mouse) and so that will hog a bit more of my system memory. Not that that matters seeing as how I have 4 gigs but I'm just complaining to complain.

Overall, good experience with HP which is the first time in a LOOOOOOONG time.

Left 4 Dead Advertisement on Fenway Park

2008-10-21T14:44:00.001-04:00

I think this is awesome and kind of crazy. A Left 4 Dead advertisement on Fenway Park. If only zombies could play baseball. (taken with cell phone)

Earthlink is dumb

2008-10-13T14:45:00.001-04:00

I have been sending out thousands of emails very recently to notify clients to update various important information on my company's website (not spam or a solicitation of any kind). Because I am running the project--tracking responses, answers questions, etc--I have become acutely aware of how certain things can be done better next year (mostly email wording, better subject line, etc). But the reason for this post is because I have noticed how dumb Earthlink is. Any of the emails I have sent to people with @earthlink.net have bounced back with the following text:

I apologize for this automatic reply to your email.

To control spam, I now allow incoming messages only from senders I have approved beforehand.

If you would like to be added to my list of approved senders, please fill out the short request form (see link below). Once I approve you, I will receive your original message in my inbox. You do not need to resend your message. I apologize for this one-time inconvenience.

This is one of the stupidest, and most rash anti-spam measures I have ever seen. Is spam a problem? Yes, but what Earthlink has done is essentially punish normal people when they contact anyone they provide for. Massive paranoia--treat everyone as spam, unless they fill out a form? That is mental. I may as well view everyone that comes to my door as a potential burglar until they fill out a questionnaire--and I review it! I have been using gmail as my primary email and have never had a spam problem (I also use yahoo!, Windows Live, and had a netscape account) to merit this level of "security."

If spam is really that much of a problem, get a new (a real) email account and notify people that matter and move on. I would never tolerate this sort of paranoia in my email account.

Playing The Witcher

2008-10-09T08:08:00.002-04:00

I picked the game up over the weekend on Steam, and I like it. The download took forever, but I was not that surprised because it is around 10 gigs. Luckily I had no problems firing it up and jumping in. I did have adjustment problems to the layout or the menus and overall play mechanics, though. Prior RPGs have shaped my expectations and made me retarded when presented with a new (or different) paradigm. Even now, I can't really figure out what "level" I am, despite having gained several. And the ability tree just looks wonky. I should look through an instruction manual. Combat is fun; I like how I have to juggle different styles to take on different opponents: strong, fast and group. It is somewhere between point-and-click and active combat. I have to chain attacks together by clicking on opponents rythmically. An on screen cursor indicates when the timing is off. Having read what I wrote, it plays much better than it sounds.

The game is gorgeous looking graphically. The world is full of little details and the NPCs do not feel cardboard. Things react to the player. Attack a random traveler and people freak out. Do people favors and they tell you things. It rains now and then and a mist hangs over the ground. On a very basic level, you can meditate (like sleeping in the game), and the world moves through the day: morning, afternoon, evening and night. Fires are lit in fireplaces; people go to sleep; monsters come out at night. Everything feels very fluid, too. The Witcher is punishing, though, on computers. Running everything on max settings pushs my computer to the edge. And I can only do this because I have a higher-end video card (GTX 280) and "only" have a 1680x1050 monitor. The GPU fan starts screaming now and then--although this is not often.

So the game is fun to play and looks great. These are good things in a game but not the only things. The best part of the Witcher, from what I have seen over just a few hours, is the feel of it. The game is gritty and dark; it feels adult. The dialogue, while sometimes slightly off, is mostly excellent. Uncouth brawlers looking to fist fight (you can take part and also wager) call you a "cocksucker"; women grateful for having been saved ask for some booze and want to have sex (you can accept or decline). The sex honestly surprised me. It is not graphic, but it is direct. Characters exchange flirtations and then it cuts away and displays the women's name on a card (not sure why) over a hazy background of the two coupling (just the upper shoulder/head region). I have slept with two women in the game. Not sure what the ramifications of this are later in the narrative. The game presents hundreds, perhaps thousands, of choices to players, too. And they all effect story in subtle ways, although, from what I have seen, outcomes may only be seen much later in the game. I like this; it does not cheapen the idea of choice and reduce it to a gimmick that can be manipulated with save files.

So I hope to play this for some time. People on the interwebs say that the game can easily go over 100 hours if all of the side task are attempted. This sounds crazy. I am sure I won't have it in me to do that. I just hope the game remains consistent. From what I have seen, there is a good shot of that.

Silly Games

2008-10-06T13:24:00.000-04:00

Way back at the beginning of the year I purchased Lumines on Steam. I think it was when it was first offered on the service, and there was a small discount (I am a sucker for those, like everyone else). But then I never played it. Well, I tried it a couple times but that was it. For whatever reason, it never grabbed me. I can be a fickle gamer, though. Some time last week, however, I fired it up and now I love the game. Something clicked in my head and I think the game is awesome. My wife bought herself a copy of the game, too. That tends to happen with silly little games--like Peggle, or Geometry Wars for me before. Weird how small, simple games have a way of doing that.

More PC Game Stuff

2008-09-17T07:56:00.002-04:00

The GTX 280 came yesterday, and I had no problems installing it. I fired up a few games, including Bioshock, Neverwinter Nights 2 (I know, I know, but it runs so silky smooth now and I like the game) and Crysis, which runs so well that I had to play it for 45 minutes. I almost forgot how fun the game is because of all the attention the hardware requirements have always gotten (and still get). So, no bugs. No problems with setting up multiple monitors. It just works, which always surprises me with my PC (because it is rare). So now I am fired up for Fall/Winter gaming. I am looking forward to a lot of titles this year, but a few in particular will probably get my cash. Any of these are likely:

Fallout 3: easily my most anticipated (along with everyone else).
Left 4 Dead: Valve has yet to let me down; I am still playing TF2, so this may end of being my favorite title this year.
Warhead: Crysis, but without the technical snafu (I hope?).
The Witcher: I missed it last year, but I hope to snatch it up on Steam now.
Storm of Zehir (NWN2): Always nice when this game gets expansions
Far Cry 2: The first one is one of my favorite games ever, and I hear this one does not have mutants, which makes it sound better already.

That's my list, which is more than enough titles to hold me over until next spring because I know I will not get all of them. There are some I could have added, like Mirror's Edge, a title getting a lot of early buzz, but I have to reserve judgement until I see the finished product (notice how most on my list are sequels?). The biggest game of the year is definitely going to be Wrath of the Lich King (bigger than any title on any platform). I am sure it will sell an insane amount of copies within hours of its release, but luckily I have no interest in MMOs. I could have put the upcoming Call of Duty, too, but I never even played part 4 (gasp!). I also held out hope for a while of an '08 Diablo, but there is always next year (I hope).

Before year's end I plan on giving an overview of PC gaming in general: surprises, disappointments, etc.

Buying a GTX 280: First High-end Video Card Purchase

2008-09-10T19:46:00.002-04:00

The deal was too hard to pass up: a GTX 280 for $295.00 before a $75.00 mail-in rebate. Somewhere down the road the card will end up costing me only $220.00, which is insanely awesome. This makes me feel better about not pulling the trigger on a 9800 GX2 for $280.00 last month. It is all possible because of collected Amazon gift certificates--my credit card and my wife's rewards offers. I just bought the thing, so next week I should get it. I am excited to see what it can do. Should make Mass Effect incredibly smooth, and the upcoming Fallout 3 should play like a dream, too. Everything should play like a dream now.
So what happens to my 9800 GTX? It gets put on hold for a bit until I put together another desktop for my wife. I figure that will happen sometime around the end of the year.
This marks my first ultra high-end purchase computer part purchase . With each build I have used better and better parts, but nothing approaching this level. Again, I am very excited. So very crazy to think these retailed for $650.00 just a few short months ago...

Windows Media Center is TERRIBLE

2008-09-08T21:52:00.002-04:00

Now I know that companies like to make their own file types and make their players only be able to play that one media type, but WMC has taken it a bit too far. On the XBOX 360 you can only play WMA files and some type of mpeg files. That makes no damn sense because the most prevalent video file types are AVI files. Most people convert their files into that type because it makes sense. But nope, not WMC.

So to stream AVI files to a 360 you have to go into the Windows Media Player, select library, sharing, click the 360, add files to it, and then go into the media blade on the 360, pick the folder all the files are in, and then you can play avi files. HOW CAN IT PLAY AVI FILES THERE BUT NOT ON THE MEDIA CENTER. I hate you microsoft.

Chrome

2008-09-02T19:35:00.003-04:00

Well I am throwing my 2 cents out there on Google's new browser. It is slick; I have no idea how the Hell the thing is so fast with page loading! I love the tabs at the top--the entire window is now within a tab, which makes more sense to me. The layout is very minimalist, and I think I fell in love at first sight (but I have a thing about maximizing screen real estate). Again, pages load quick--really quick. I thought Fire Fox 3 was quick. The Address Bar and the Search Bar have been combined, which I thought I would be more ambivalent about, but I like it a lot. Google has made it very easy to drag and drop tabs outside the browser, too; a very nice feature for multiple monitors. Google has even built in some handy save-as-web-application functionality...

And this brings me to the "why is Google doing this" section: its about web applications. Google wants its own online Office alternative to grow. This could help that. A cynical part of me also knows that a Google browser is another step closer to a (more) Google dominated web, too. Much easier to sell ads (the point of everything) if you have the browser people use to access the web (more pointed ads, analytics, etc).

But I like this first step by Google regardless. Maybe it can light a bigger fire under the established browser players, too. I will play with it for a week or two at least.

Edit: Anandtech has a very nice expanded first impressions article here. It is not, objectively, as fast as I thought (the browser I mean). Interesting.

Bootcamp

2008-08-27T19:41:00.001-04:00

I got my new, new mac (the first one caught on fire) and got around to slip streaming and installing Windows XP Home Edition SP3 and everything works great. I can run full everything on TF2 (which is really the only game I play) and everything else runs extremely well.

The best part is that the mac DVD that comes with the laptop installs all the drivers and this nifty little background program that makes all the buttons on the keyboard work like they would on the mac OSX. I like seeing all the little volume up and down things pop up on Windows. Windows should ask Apple if they could do it in their own operating system to make it sleeker. (because we all know how ugly windows is)

Other than that the only weird thing is that to double click (because its a mac and only has one click button on the track pad) you can't just control click; you actually have to hold to fingers down on the track pad and then click. Not intuitive and stupid to do but whatever.

Off for some more TF2.

Best Games Ever

2008-08-11T02:20:00.001-04:00

Team Fortress 2 (PC, PS3, Xbox360(only the PC version is really worth it though))

I've been playing this game for, well, about as long as Steve. Three to four months of pure team working balanced (unless the other dudes don't talk and do what they want) awesome killing. Every couple of weeks the guys over at Valve update the thing too. New weapons, maps, achievements, there are always new things to do. This is on the list because most games just can't keep my attention for that many months. And the best part? It's part of the incredible deal that is the Orange Box or it's just 20 dollars on steam.

Zombie's Ate My Neighbors (Genesis, SNES)

Steve got to his list before mine and this was on there for me from the start. I must have rented this game 20 times before Steve up and bought a Playstation and gave me his SNES with this game. There are so many addicting levels, so much invention that is not present in games today along with the ridiculousness of men chasing you with chainsaws and shooting them with bazookas. It makes me wish that games could still be this way, but I know that main stream is not ready for this crap. It's awesome and if you can get a copy do yourself a favor and BUY IT.

Diablo (PC, PS1 but it was a joke)

My first true online game when I was 12 years old. This game had it all; dark characters, rich environments, a large user base, DOUPING, it was all incredible. I used to come home from school and play this game with my friend for many, many hours. Everyone was nice, everyone wanted to help each other, Diablo was a revolution. Now I know what a lot of people are thinking...Diablo 2 was sooooooooooooooooo much better! And you're right it was, but I spent hundreds of hours destroying the first game and the second was as fun, but Diablo started it all for me and will always hold a special place in my mouse clicking heart.

Chrono Trigger (SNES, PS1 (bad load times), DS (sooner or later)

The real gem of SNES, Chrono Trigger. It was the best JRPG ever made and everyone in the gaming world knows it. Yea Final Fantasy VII had its day, but Chrono Trigger was always far superior. What other game could you beat without the main character? What other game could you new game + and the the best sword in the game six times for no reason? I don't know but I do know that I have beaten this game at least seven or eight times because it had tons of endings. Games today don't even have different endings! It's awesome and I can't wait to buy it again on the DS sometime in the next year or so.

Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 (Arcade, Dreamcast, Xbox, PS2)

By far the most enjoyable and worthwhile fighting game ever created, Marvel Vs. Capcom 2. It has the biggest roster of any fighting game, (Maybe with the exception of Capcom vs. Snk 2 which was also very good.) blazing fast combat, three fighters at once, stacked special attacks, and so many un-lockables it would put most Final Fantasy games to shame. There is something about putting Akuma, Ken, and Ryu on the same team and dominating anyone that attempted to beat me. But really there was nothing and is nothing like Marvel Vs. Capcom 2. I had it for Dreamcast and now for Xbox and have beaten the living crap out of this game. Unfortunately none of my friends are even close to being good enough at this game for it to be worth while to play anymore. I need better gaming friends!

Dr. Mario 64(or new Wii version) (Nintendo, N64, Gameboy, Gameboy Advanced, Wii)

Dr. Mario 64, for me, is the best puzzle game ever created. Yea the original was great and all, but it came to its own in this version. My girlfriend is known to sit around and play this game for eight or so hours at a time. We have logged about 200 hours or so just playing this simple puzzle game. It's like Tetris with competitive multiplier. If you haven't played it, I suggest it. And the new Wii version is only ten dollars so there is really no reason not to play it.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (PS1, Saturn, PSP)

Easily the best platformer ever created, SOTN created the old schoolness of Castlevania, without throwing out the formula and actually making it more fun. All game previous were extremely hard and made the characters robotic almost to make the game EVEN more difficult. Mostly so that they could justify a full game price tag on what could really be about half an hour with enough hard work. But here they took that formula, got rid of the robot character, made the character anime sexy, put in some RPG elements and ta da; incredible game. I think I may have beaten this game about ten times and am currently working on another time right now on the PSP. This game really started it up for the games on the Gameboy Advance and DS that came after that are all clones, but never quite get the formula as good as it was in SOTN.

Honorable Mentions:

Civilization IV (PC): One of my favorite strategy games created.

Starcraft/Warcraft III(PC): Both games I have logged hundreds of hours in.

Warioware(GBA, DS, Gamecube, Wii): Easily one of the most creative games to date. So simple yet so awesome.

Some Favorite Games (Personal Crush)

2008-08-10T19:41:00.001-04:00

I like to play video games--always have and I suspect I always will. Luckily, I am not socially retarded in having this habit (I have met gamers who are powerfully weird), but I guess I am just lucky. Anyway, I felt like writing this post to highlight some of my favorite games over the last 10+ years. I could have made it simple and just picked some of the consensus best games of all time, but that would have been boring. Instead, what I have tried to do here is select games that, for whatever reason, meant a lot to me at some point. Some have held up very well, and others not so much. At least a couple are, in fact, very highly regarded still. Regardless, each one is more of a marker of what I liked and, loosely, who I was. So, in no particular order, here goes:

Fire Emblem: This gameboy strategy game, to this day, baffles me. I really have no idea why I loved it so much or why I played through it so many times. I think I was (am) enamored with its punishing difficulty; it is one of the few games to not allow you to resurrect fallen teammates. When someone dies, they die for forever. While it seems harsh, it really made all of the player choices matter, which is a real rarity these days.

Final Fantasy III (US Release): This is the game that made me ask for an SNES for Christmas when I was a kid. Being the hopeless dork that I was, I beat the game several times, too. I played it again on the gameboy last year, and it is as good as I remember. To this day it has the best storyline in any Japanese console game.

Zombies Ate My Neighbors: This was my first real taste of multi-player Heaven. I must have rented this game 5 or 6 times before eventually picking it up in a bargain bin. It is one of the few games that was just fun to play regardless of winning and loosing. Beating the game meant little, because we would just pick it up and play it again.

Metroid Prime: This is the only game (that I can recall) that caused me to buy a new console because of the how good the demo was. My girlfriend and I were passing by a Gamestop, played the prerelease demo and fell in love. I went home that day, packed up my PS2 and traded it in for a Gamecube . Several people called me crazy, but I never regretted it, even now. It was that good.

Elder Scrolls III Morrowind: This Xbox game dominated my life for a summer back in 2002. I had, until that point, only been acquainted with console RPGs, so this was a huge treat. To play a game that gave the player respect was immensely entertaining and rewarding. My hopes for the sequel were huge, but it never captured the magic I felt when playing this. It is worth noting, too, that I never went back to Japanese RPGs after this game.

Crono Trigger: This is, in my view, the pinnacle of SNES RPGs. I played through it more than 5 times, although the exact number eludes me. It was a great game and I hear it is being ported to the DS. I know how special the game was when I thought about picking it up again after learning this.

Grand Turismo 3: This was packaged with the PS2 in a special bundle pack when it first came out. I worked as an electronics salesmen at Sears when this came out, and I could not resist picking it up (with the PS2). Like some other games on this list, when a $50 game causes me to buy a $200+ console it says a lot. I was in college, too, and money was a lot harder to come by then. This game was a big deal.

Team Fortress 2: I have been playing this game since last October. Rarely in the last few years have I played a single game for more than 3 or 4 months. The game has great balance and is incredibly reliant on team work (which is why I want to smash my keyboard sometimes). Valve keeps updating it, too, which is great. The unique cartoonish visuals are a very nice touch.

So that is my list. This is by no means a "greatest" list--more of a crush list. I fondly remember them all. I am sure I missed some, so I anticipate writing future posts in perhaps greater detail then the quick summaries provided here.

Revo Uninstaller

2008-08-08T00:10:00.001-04:00

Tonight I downloaded a program called Revo Uninstaller. It does not just uninstall a program, but goes through and finds all the registries that are attached to the program and deletes those too. I just used it and found programs that I deleted months ago that still had registry files on my computer. I recommend it to free up some extra space on your hard drive.

Sites We Love (Part 2)

2008-08-06T01:02:00.001-04:00

Well it looks like Steve's list is pretty comprehensive in terms of finding content on the web. But like most users these day I am almost strictly about social networking. I feel like it just shows how much our generation loves ourselves, friends, looking at each other, building online personas, becoming who we are but what we add under our interest sections on facebook. Which is the site that I (and most 20 somethings) frequent multiple times a day. It's simple. I have over 500 "friends" on there and the people at facebook make it extremely simple to be able to do dumb things like draw penis's on some one's wall for no reason seem so important. Also with the open applications that come out by the thousands every day, there is just more ever expanding crap to waste ones time.

I always check myspace but never use it anymore. It has just become a crappy version of facebook except it is an extremely good tool to find music. I use lastfm but only ever look at my own stats. Digg is still my top site for finding things to read but after reading things like lifehacker (which like Steve is one of my favorites) you see is just a rehash of stuff from other sites, which I suppose is the point.

I constantly check 1up and gamespot for my gaming news. 1up is better for finding a lot of new things quickly. Their interface is far superior to gamespot's which has not changed in the past 5 or so years. But 1up uses a stupid grading system (A's B's C's D's and F's) which is even more arbitrary than the number system. Gamespots review's are top notch though. They give a good overview and often come with video reviews with some skinny or fat nerdy guy who talks in a monotone voice.

A funny site that I have been using for years (I really don't know why it is total crap) is movies.com. The reviews are crap, the web site is poorly made but for some reason I have grown more accustom to using it for looking at movie times or a quick look at all the reviews on whatever movie I want to see is out. Of course I spend hours on imdb as well just connecting the dots from one movie to the other. Along with that goes netflix which I spend hours finding strange movies that I have never herd of and adding them to my que (along with the other three hundred and sixty) or trying to find movies I have seen so I can rate them. It is creepy how accurate their recommendations are sometimes.

But those are the only things I am using these days. It is sad really. I know there are better things out there, but like most, stick to what I know. And when things change I get upset such as the new.facebook which just came out recently and am still getting used to. These days I just spend time working on my calendar and organizing my life via google. That's always fun isn't it?

Sites We Love (Part 1)

2008-08-05T19:37:00.001-04:00

I love the Internet...and so do millions (billions?) of other people. The tubes connect people to everything: places to shop, read funny stuff, news, play games, etc. Pretty obvious stuff. What I have noticed over the past couple of years, however, is that many people I know really do not know where to find good content on the web. Most people I know use the web in nearly the same way they did 10 years ago. What I mean by that is the average person relies on links from a classic homepage (Yahoo, MSN, etc) to direct them to "interesting" places. This is not counting chatting (meebo these days) and email. This is not necessarily bad, but it severely limiting (and it makes the web seem so boring). The web is BIG, and a few "popular" articles on a page is hardly a good indicator of anything and everything out there. Why limit the Web with an such Old Media approach?

With this in mind, Shane and I decided to put together periodic posts on sites we love. Shane came up with the idea, and at first I thought it might need more focusing. After some thought, however, I became content with just writing about sites we keep coming back to. These sites can effectively be anything: blog, shopping, comic, news, gossip. We find cool (and questionable) stuff that garners our loyalty all of the time, so why not share it?

Now, most of the sites I frequent are technology related. This is why I always check Read/WriteWeb, Ars Technica, and Lifehacker. There are plenty of others I will definitely bring up another time, but, if I am honest, I have to admit that I gravitate towards checking these first. What I love in particular about these sites is how varied they are. Lifehacker is a hodgepodge of cool and quirky things about computers and everyday life. A glance at the front page could have how a cool way to manage cords under a desk, take a new approaches to email management, or how to get over mid-day drowsiness. Read/WriteWeb is more about keeping readers informed on the evolving nature and uses of the Web. I do not want to make it sound more technical or cavalier, however. It is just that it more often looks at the future by what we are doing on the web today. Ars is similar in merging everyday news with technology trends. I like to think of them as snapshots in technology today.

Away from technology, I hit What Would Tyler Durden Do (wwtdd) for cheap celebrity laughs. I was on the Perez kick for a while, but he relies on line drawings on photos for laughs where Durden is just funny. I could categorize this as guilty pleasure, but I am not really guilty. The site makes me laugh. On the opposite end of the humor spectrum is Dinosaur Comics. It almost defies logic that this site uses the same 6 comic panels with dinosaurs to tell jokes on a daily basis. It always make me laugh because of how mental it is in covering nearly any topic.

For music I look to Last.fm: part social site, part music tracking and discovery. I love how it satisfies my neurotic urge to know what I (and my friends) really listen to and how it allows me to find new music. It recently had an aesthetic makeover, too (which I like).

Reddit is, on the surface, a Digg clone, but I have really enjoyed participating in voting and commenting on stories there for the last month or two. Digg has become (or just seems) very territorial these days. There is no secret algorithm working at reddit either: the code is open source, which makes it more prone to change and accountability. I just like the setup more, too.

The granddaddy of sites, though, is friendfeed. This is one of the great web ideas of the last couple years: aggregate all (or a lot) of the various web "personalities" and activities a person tends to juggle. Here facebook activity sits next to Netflix additions, next to twitter messages, next to blog posts, etc. The reason why I love this site is because it does not require any work, if a person does not want to use the commenting system. A person only has to setup their IDs across the supported sites, and then it is done. This person then does not even have to come back to friendfeed (although, what would be the point?) if they don't want to. The idea, though, is to center web activity around content. You are what you read, buy, listen to and laugh at. And this is the best way to collect it (and show, hence it being called a life-streaming aggregator).

So these are just a few of the sites I love and find myself going to day after day. Look for more in the days to come, though, because this is hardly all of where I spend my time.

On the side: I see Shane, that you finally collected some of your web personalities. Jeez, it took you long enough.

Design Issues

2008-08-05T08:30:00.001-04:00

I think the commenting may be broken on this blog, so some redesign is in order. This will be taking place shortly, and, hopefully, should not be too painful.

For now, I think I will be going with a generic template, but this can, obviously, change at any time.

Vista Can't Password Protect Folders.

2008-08-05T04:08:00.001-04:00

Is this for real? In XP all one had to do to password protect a folder was right click, properties, password protect folder. Is that really that difficult Microsoft.

I'm going to see if my mac can do it now instead.

New Writer...New Complaints

2008-08-05T01:24:00.002-04:00

Hello,

The other day I decided that I want to have not just one blog (www.shanegodfrey.com/blog) but two (shanegodfrey.blogger.com). I talked to my cousin (the starter of this blog) and he said "While you're at it help me out and make it three!" So I obliged and here I am to compare the problems with running new things on vista and Mac OSX.

Unlike most tech heads in this world, I am not biased towards any OS. If anything I love them all for different reasons and wished that at some point all of the big three (Mac, Microsoft, and Linux) could all work together and make a big awesome OS that could run every program ever, with the best security ever made and the easiest interface blah blah blah. But right now I am stuck with all three. And more specifically tonight I am stuck installing a new WD640GB hard drive into my PC.

I run vista 64 bit home premium with an Intel dual core Wolfdale processor, 4 gigs of ddr2 800 ram, 8800GT superclocked, and a 1000 watt power supply.

So I plug in my new hard drive, screw it in, attach the power and the SATA (neither cables came with the thing) and boot up. I get the refreshing single beep and know everything is still together and nothing was knocked out of place. Open up "my computer" and to my surprise (well only sort of surprise) no hard drive.

I have to go online and remember where the stupid disk manager is and then format and name the drive. Now all of that is fine. I get it. Things just do not work on vista out of the box. Microsoft is making things harder for people to figure out while mac is sitting pretty with its plug and play EVERYTHING laughing at me. After two hours (yes TWO) of formatting the drive I can finally name it. I choose drive "B" because its next in line after "A" and before "C" which are already in use. And my 640GB hard drive only gets to use 597GB of space. Awesome. Glad I used up 40 gigs on...? Formatting? Seems a bit ridiculous.

Now on my mac when ever I plug in anything new it just works. The stupid mac guy on the TV with the slightly shaggy but not so shaggy that he isn't a sexy nerd with just tight enough pants is right. Mac's OS is just easier to deal with for just about everything. Too bad macs are still grossly over priced, break out of no where and can't be fixed except by apple's genius bar (which I know more than most of the time) because it voids my warranty and all of that.

On a side note; the other day I shoved a three firewire port card into my PC and a wireless card and they both just worked. Like they were meant to be forever. Go fig.

My First Time Transcoding

2008-07-29T08:42:00.001-04:00

I finally started playing with converting movies to smaller formats. Previously, I have only ripped movies using DVDFab (which works great). The files are left as VOBs (video objects), which media players have no problem reading. They can also be burned onto new disks very easily. I never much cared about alternate formats (at least partially) due to laziness, until recently now that disk space has become more of an issue. Ripped movies are big. If I am lucky, I can knock a movie down to ~4 gigs, but anything over 2 hours is going to have video quality sacrificed. So, increasingly, I have been burning backups and then deleting the digital copies on the computer. This sucks, though. I like watching movies on my computer—my chair is comfortable, and I have a nice dual monitor setup (22 & 20 inch screens). This will only get better when I finally upgrade to a 24”+ screen. I don’t want to burn backups. I have flirted with purchasing more hard disks, but reason, luckily, has won out for now.

I should backup here a little, though, and provide the catalyst for this post: an email. DivX sent me a little message saying their software was on sale for half off ($9.99). A great time to jump in and try it out. But I didn’t even know if it was worth buying. So I turned to the internet to read up on DIvX in general. And this pointed me to Xvid encoding, which led me to the (free) AutoGK.

So: I read the tutorial after installing the software. The application is simple looking enough: essentially 4 steps. Identify files to convert, confirm audio, define desired output size, and (optional) tweak advanced settings. Click “Add Job” and then “Start” and it does the rest. A few hours later a whole new movie format/size is ready. Again, the tutorial explains it all excellently, so I highly recommend it.

Side note: running this all with my Intel Q6700 was cool, because I was still able to play TF2 and Titan Quest. The cpu usage was 70-100% the whole time, too.

I did the basic setup by converting a ~6 gig movie into a 2 gig one, and it worked perfectly. I had to get the AC3 Filter for audio, because playing the movie in Media Player initially left me with no sound. The cool part is that the bottom of the tutorial contains very helpful links for troubleshooting.

This is a first step for me. I plan to try experimenting with smaller sizes/transcoding techniques.

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New Antec 300 Case & Computer Fixed

2008-07-21T10:19:00.001-04:00

My family had computer woes last week that I was informed of at 10 PM on a week night. Ugh. The computer, apparently, was turning on okay, but was just shutting off at the log in screen. This was at best, because sometimes it was not even getting out of the BIOS screens. It sounded like a power issue, which may have meant buying a new psu. I also thought that the room the computer is in needs some new electrical outlets, though, so maybe no new parts would be needed. Maybe it was not a computer problem at all.

Regardless, I was not too bent out of shape about it. I went to the house on my lunch break to see if I could immediately "solve" or at least diagnose the problem. I was partially successful, too. The power was cutting out and it seemed random, which was initially troubling. I checked to make sure the problem was not the outlet by switching where the power strip was connected (in a different room). This did not make a difference.

Then I cracked open the case and check the connections--all fine. This is when I noticed that the processor heat sink (an intel e6600 cpu by the way) was not connected properly; the unit was hanging off. Oops, it looked like it became dislodged (kicked case?). I reconnected it, fired up the computer again and, voila, it worked. The computer was shutting down because the processor was overheating. This is why it initially got to the log in screen but then would not even make it that far--it was getting hotter and hotter.

Yippie: a quick fix with no cost. Or not. The computer was very sluggish when it booted into Windows. I checked the resource use and saw the processor at a continual 100%. I left this running for about 20 minutes and saw no deviation. <Sigh>

I grabbed the tower and put it in my car to bring home. Later that evening I tried shutting down every non-essential service and process and it did not make a difference. I uninstalled various programs not in use. I cleaned the disk, defragmented it, ran several different scans and saw nothing wrong. All of this took hours, because the cpu could spare very few cycles to do anything I wanted. The BIOS settings were fine. I even ran a Windows repair, which did nothing (when does it ever?). I thought a last resort was restoring the system to a date 2 weeks previous, but that did not do anything either. I then left the computer to the weekend because I did not want to deal with it.

Saturday I decided to buy a new case for the computer (give me something to look forward to). Working on the computer was not fun with the ancient hunk of metal it sat in (the old style that was not condusive to tinkering). I went to Microcenter to look for something between 30 and 60 bucks. Luckily they were having a sale on a variety of cases and I walked out of the store with an Antec 300, for the low price of $59.99. The case is great: love the open front mesh that houses 120 mm fans x 2. The psu sits on the botton and the top of the case has a 140 mm fan. Antec was nice enough to provide the top and rear fans, and both of the them have speed controls. The case is nice--my family loved the look of it too when I brought it back on Sunday. And looking cool, but not gaudy, is all that really matters with a case. I relocated all of the parts into the new case that night, fired it up and saw the same maxed out cpu problem.

I decided to forget searching anymore, though, and simply formatted the drive, reinstalled Windows and Office (and a few other programs) and, voila, it worked perfectly. Why search for a nasty virus when all important data is backed up? I keep learning that lesson over and over.

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Users are Weird

2008-07-09T09:55:00.001-04:00

I just realized that somewhere in the last 12 months I have become the kind of person who uses the word "user" and that I often am annoyed while using it. And I am not a program developer. I just have to do the documentation and interpretation for what those people do or what I need them to do. I am a techie middle man.

In doing this I now know that the average user has little patience, little desire to learn, and is lightning quick to demand help (I am talking about software/hardware here). Oh, and It is always the program's fault. This may sound disparaging, but I am not trying to be insulting, just honest. It is true: the average person does not give a shit when it comes to learning how to use software. This, by itself, is hardly surprising, but what really gets me is how detrimental this attitude is to getting work done. People almost gleefully do things the long way, the manual way, and/or the crazy way instead of just using the built-in functionality of a program.

Examples:

Excel functions are anathema despite nearly the entire free world using Excel.
Any program that does not have buttons, or does not stress them.
Using any productivity software not made by Microsoft in the years 2000-2003, and/or software that does not have roots 10+ years old.
Hot keys are dark magic

I could go on, but why would I? I used to have a very messed up theory that people over 40 were worse, but I do not really think that is true anymore. Working with people that have like 30 windows open on the screen, fumble through Outlook tool bars, manually key in hundreds of values in a spreadsheet--these things freaked me not so long ago. But I have since worked with people right out of college just as technically oblivious. This makes it really clear, to me at least, that education is not stepping up to the plate to teach people what they need to know to function in the business/office world today and tomorrow.

<Insert lengthy, nauseating diatribe on American education woes>

Ah, now that I have that off my chest I feel so much better.
Oh me.

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Family Tech Support Made Easy - CrossLoop

2008-06-30T09:13:00.002-04:00

My mother calls me now and then to ask about weirdo problems on the family computer. This does not happen a lot, because I tend to get irritated with phone support (among other things). What is funny (and I mean not really), however, is that I often ask her how the computer is doing and, obviously, have to hear about one thing or another being wrong. This compels me to try and help. Now, I try to diagnose/fix a problem over the phone, but that hardly ever works (I talked my Mom through installing an optical drive once, though, which made me happier than logic dictates). At work, tech support does not even really bother: they use webex. But that costs money.

Usually, in the end, I just say I will come by the house soon and do whatever needs to be done.

Last night things were a little different. My wife's father called to talk to her about various stuff not related to computers. The conversation somehow got onto to how he was getting ominous pop-ups on his desktop with words like "expired" and "security" in them. My wife valiantly tried to provide phone support, but it really became apparent it was not going to go anywhere. One question kept leading to more and more questions.

That was when I remembered an article some time ago on the howtogeek about an application called CrossLoop that looked pretty cool, but which I never tried.

I told my wife to give me the phone and then I explained to him that I was sending him a link for a download. He downloaded it, set up a user name and password and then we were off. The Geek explains how incredibly easy it is to fire up and get running. It really is as simply as he says, too. I took control of the computer and went about gutting trialware, installing an anti-virus program, altering his startup items, etc. He had a lot of things running all of the time and the PC needed a little optimization and fine tuning (the usual deal with prebuilt computers). I also cleaned his disks and then even installed Vista Service Pack 1 at the end. The fact that I was running 64 bit Vista and he 32 did not matter at all either.

It was so easy I was floored. Even now, the next day, I am thinking about it (hence this post). It was so cool and easy! I am definitely going to use CrossLoop in the future with other people.

Note: The only additional step I had to take with her father was disabling his UAC. I did not initially want to, but the problem was that everytime I tried to remove a program it would kick me out of his computer and give him a permissions prompt. Disabling it was the only way to allow me to get off the phone and simply work on his PC without constant connection interruptions. I should note, too, that he is the only user on the computer.

EDIT: Some of the network guys at work told me about TeamViewer, which, essentially, seems to provide the same sort of service. I may check it out, too, but I do not yet have any complaints with CrossLoop. I also read on the Simplehelp blog that CrossLoop accounts can be altered to Helper accounts. The potential for money making or annonymous altruism/experience exists as well. This is very intriguing...

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Expanding Social Services - Head Explosion

2008-06-27T12:19:00.002-04:00

Friendfeed has a way of getting in my head. I see the services it aggregates and then want to try them out. I read, or have read, a lot about them all, but it is easy to blow through RSS feeds and not think twice about some service the people on the nets were chirping about 6 months ago. But then I see them on Friendfeed, get bored and sign up for them.

For example: The other day I got on Library Thing and Reddit. Libary Thing is pretty cool. I already had a model for it in my head with Shelfari, a service I signed up for a long time ago. I was actually able to import the 300 sum-off books in "my" library from Shelfari into Library Thing. I liked that. I also like how quick it is to add books and move around the site--very responsive and "light" feeling. Unfortunately, I am getting this annoying "max size" message now that is trying to get me to buy into some kind of premium service, though. I would look into it, but I really don't feel like it. I may give Shelfari another shot, but it has been so slow to load pages whenever I go on, which is retarded because it's book covers (give me a break). I am sure there is some complicated code behind it all, but that does not concern me. I do not want to stare at page while it loads forever.

Reddit is great. Digg has been wearing off on me, and, for some reason I cannot articulate well, this feels fresher. The site is the opposite of flashy, but, again, the page loads things quick and draws attention to the stories. I read some time ago that Reddit opened its code, too, so there is not mysterious Digg-effect at work with shadowy power users gaming the system. I'll see how much it sticks with me.

This morning I also started a facebook page. I really don't know why. I read so much about how it is trying to be the internet's operating system, so I have always been curious. I suppose I want to try all of the services it is offering, or will offer. I hear they have a Friendfeed-like thing going on. I'll take a look at the application plug-ins and feel my way through it over time. I suppose at the very least I can use it to say what I am really into (blogs, outside applications, random stuff).

So, little by little the web continues to take over my life. Does being aware of it make it any better?

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New Camera

2008-06-23T15:07:00.001-04:00

I find it incredibly painful to go to an electronic retailer like Best Buy to buy anything anymore. I may have written about this when researching laptops a few weeks ago but I cannot help myself: the stores are not set up to showcase kick-ass products or inform shoppers of anything. I suppose the idea is to let a product speak for itself, which it hardly ever does. How can they when displays are not functioning (mp3 players), not there (monitors) or have such limited functionality as to be more frustrating than anything else (computers)? Or, more commonly, the displays are cramped and poorly designed so that buyers are forced to practically stand on each other to just try something out.

My wife and I bought a new digital camera yesterday, which is why I have this rant on my mind. People were all over the digital camera section yesterday, which is little more than a thin twisty island on the edge of a major store walkway. Looking at items on one side means you block through-traffic and have people bump into you. And what is with the myriad accessory stands everywhere blocking everything? I was just irritated because I could barely take time to play with anything without someone else breathing down my neck or just not getting out of the way. This is besides the fact that, aside from a couple features, virtually nothing is documented to compare, say, a $200 camera to a $400 one. Again, the camera is supposed to show itself off. We actually left the store and just went home and bought a camera on Amazon.

We liked the Fuji FinePix Z100fd in Best Buy for no other reason than it looked cool and I found it on Amazon for $26 cheaper with free shipping. I also picked up a 4 gig memory card and the total cost came to about $20 less than if I had purchased the camera alone at Best Buy. We also got the color we like (the coppery one) that Best Buy did not even carry in store. The recessed 5x optical zoom was nice, too, and the slide cover is nice. It feels sturdier without the lense poking out. It also has a good sized LCD with easy controls.

Physical retailers need to wake the hell up with electronics and start designing stores with some functionality and style. The warehouse old model sucks because it looks cluttered and makes it shitty to actual browse selections. I won't even go into how shitty the service is (except, generally, for cell phones because I think they may be getting a commission). This, among other things, is why Apple stores are such a hit--they have lots of room and actually allow the products to take center stage. They have real music playing on quality headphones. They feature computers running software that grabs at people. And all of the products work. I don't even like Apple stuff all that much because the prices are retarded and the products court people more for their looks than anything else. Back to Best Buy: It just seems so ghetto when I pick up a camera and try to turn it on and then have nothing happen. I've also seen too many computers frozen (with 24" monitors that I am actually interested in buying but can't until I can see something on them to make me drop $500). And places like Best Buy and Circuit City have the shittiest websites, too. I don't even feel like going into it except to say that there is way too much going on in a given page; it may actually be harder to buy something on the sites than in person.

I'll just keep buying from Amazon (real warehouses) or Newegg until things change. I have a feeling that Amazon is going to keep getting a lot of my money over the next few years, too. Places like Best Buy are too retarded to actually want to cater to their customers' buying experiences: it would make too much sense.

PS: this is the second time in nearly as many weeks that I have gone into Best Buy willing to spend a few hundred dollars only walk out with nothing and then go and drop that money on the web. I think that says more than this whole post.

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Mid-Range Video Card Battle Continues

2008-06-20T10:57:00.001-04:00

I am always checking on the state of PC gaming with regards to hardware. In recent history (or forever) the big knock on PC gaming has been that it costs too much money to simply play current games or plan to play games even in the immediate future. That new Dell your parents bought (or you bought)? Oh, it can't play any games newer than 2-3 years old. Why? No dedicated graphics card was put in the machine. Why? Because major US OEMs (Dell, HP) do not push graphics in PCs because it raises the price to consumers and the leading thought is cheaper is better. They certainly offer them (the amount of choice and how confusing and difficult it is to navigate/research is for another post), but without proper explanation other than it costs $100 or more to add one. This line of reasoning is questionable, however, in light of Apple's continued rise from the computer grave since Apple does not, excluding the mini (I mean, really), offer a sub-$1000 machine to the public. What they do offer, however, is superb performance and reliability (oh and style which most OEMs think means gaudy lights and space ship designs).

The average Joe can, if he is enterprising enough, go out and purchase a video card on his own, but, and I'll be the first to admit it, this is challenging without a hell of a lot of knowledge about the current market (or just an understanding of what the technology is). My thought is that it is hard enough to buy a TV--you don't have to worry about whether a DVD player will work, or whether the satellite can be hooked up to it either.

This, obviously, turns gamers away and dissuades potential future gamers from digging into their PC cases when it is so much easier to drop $300+ dollars on an Xbox 360 with some accessories and not have to worry about the hardware for another 4-6 years. The alternative is to drop $200+ every year or 2 just to keep up, let alone get ahead.

I am very pleased, however, to read that AMD's brand spanking new Radeon 4850 is an excellent video card that meet or beats NVIDIA's 9800 GTX at $199. Why am I pleased as an owner of a 9800 GTX? Because it means that NVIDIA has to keep up by keeping their prices low and their development honest. I am actually really psyched becuase the whole competition only benefits enthusiast consumers. And I also didn't pay full price for my card because I had a gift certificate. So maybe I'll pick up a second 9800...

In fact, the market has never been better for budget-minded PC shoppers to pick something up. I checked Newegg and now the 9600 can be had for under $140, the 8800 GT for less than $170. Either of those 2 cards, run in tandem (SLI), easily handles most games. Actually, the only game on the market that defies current technology is Crysis, but that is hardly worth mentioning. The idea, too, that "mid-range" cards can only handle medium setting or that they cannot really run the games is slowly fading, too. PC games still offer many levels of graphic intensity, but now low does not mean god-awful, and medium does not mean pretty crappy. Crysis on medium is still one of the most amazing looking games ever.

This is not an appeal to ditch consoles: they are too convenient and reliable (I won't even mention the red-ring of death...) and will only get bigger in the future. I suppose what I am saying is that, for existing PC enthusiasts and dabblers, or those thinking of dabbling, things keep getting better and better cost-wise. For years it has been easy to build a sub-$1000 PC, but it has definitely gotten much easier to do it with excellent parts that will stay excellent for years.

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Way Behind

2008-06-19T12:22:00.001-04:00

I have not been blogging as much lately. No real reason either. The weather has been great, but I've still been at my computer a bunch. I have not been "surfing" as much, however. My time has been sucked into one PC game or another, and books mostly. I go through spurts of intense gaming and voracious reading, which is what the past few weeks have been. So I figured I would put together a summery of geeky-type stuff from the last couple weeks.

All the internets were on fire the other day from the Firefox 3 release. I jumped on and got mine. It's cool. I have not dug into it too much, though. The default Vista theme is pretty cool. Nothing Earth shattering. But it is a snappy browser and I know there are a lot of tricks up its sleeve. I'll get to checking it all out sometime soon.

Nvidia released their 200 series cards a couple days ago, too. Big price tags. I, like any follower, am a bit disappointed at the price for the performance. The 280 is weaker than the existing GX2 but costs $150 more. Ugh. I will only salivate when a true succesor to the 8800 GT comes out: a powerhouse, affordable, single-slot card. I want to run SLI but with my 750i but it would mean removing my Razor soundcard, which I like too much...

My parents need a new case. Well, they don't need it, but the one they had me put the new components in is ugly and boring. It's an old off-white case from the comouter-should-not-look-cool days of yore. I wonder if I should pick up a cheap new case or try and mod the existing one. Maybe both?

I've really been into Team Fortress 2 lately. The Pyro update is coming today and that makes me want to play it more. I still have not acheived the Medic weapons, though. They require too much time. And I like switching onto offense, too. Eventually I will get them.

I have not been playing with any new peices of software of note (I think?). Twitter has been annoying me a lot recently with "over capacity" or just general nonresponsive-ness. But I keep coming back. Too hard to start over agin on, say, Pownce--although I like Pownce better. I hear del.icio.us will get an update (one day) and Last.fm has a new design in the wings. The would both be gravy, but the way they are now is fine, too.

That is it.

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New Notebook Followup

2008-06-12T18:47:00.000-04:00

That HP never happened. My wife and I scouted out notebooks at Best Buy, among other things and 17" is BIG. Too big when it truly is being carted around all day, everyday. We ended up coming home and buying a Dell direct: Inspiron 1420. The pink one. With the configuration tweaks and additions it came to $820ish with tax/shipping. Not bad. Got the T5750 2 GHz chip with 2 gigs of RAM and a 250 gig HD. We actually passed on a 3rd party GPU because for under a grand the selection is underwhelming and stupid expensive. Oh and my wife flat out told she would not play games on it. It was a decent deal on Dell with their 10 days of deals for grads and dads, or something like that.

Department stores have decent deals I should note, but there in store setups suck and too many of the brands are carbon copies. And, frankly, it just sucks to try and figure out which notebooks are actually worth it when they advertise/push shit that does not anything--if they advertise anything other than the size of the computer. The notebooks all seem the same except for how they look. This has to factor in to how selections are skewed towards price polarities: lots in the ~650 range or +1000.00 but little in between. And I can't help myself here--Sony rips their PC customers off by charging shoppers hundreds of dollars for nothing. So many of their +1000.00 notebooks have such average specs.

If it was a purchase for me I would probably have spent ~250 bucks more--minimum. I was so smitten with an ASUS I found on newegg--this one--that I started to get carried away. So easy to be seduced into bumping the expenditure up higher and higher. For me anyway.

I am happy that that is out of the way. I'll write something when it actually arrives. There will surely be something more to write about.

Hunt for a Notebook

2008-06-08T12:30:00.001-04:00

Since thieves stole my wife's notebooks several weeks ago she is now in the market for a new one. I have been scouring the Nets for a couple days and have come up with some modest minimum specs:

2 GHz dual core processor, Intel preferably
2 gigabytes of memory
Dedicated, non-Intel graphics
> 6 cell battery
<$1000.00

I have found a couple that may do the job: a 14" Dell and a 17" HP. The HP is a knockout at $900.00 with 64 bit Vista Home Premium and 3 gigs of RAM and an NVIDIA 256 MB 8400M. It also has oodles of extras: web cam, fingerprint reader, microphone. I really think that is the one actually. It is from HP direct and has a of couple deals applied to drop it so low.

It just sucks that it is 17"! Really wanted to find something a little more portable.

We are going to check out Best Buy and Micro Center today and see how the notebooks actually look and feel first at different sizes. It was two years ago that we last bought a notebook and the biggest selling point than was price. Now? I want her to be comfortable with it--to like it, more than be okay with it. And who knows, maybe one of those places will have something comparable that we could walk out with. That would be a bonus.

Fallen in Love (with Mass Effect)

2008-05-29T19:24:00.001-04:00

I bought Mass Effect yesterday, loaded it on my PC, attempted to fire it up, watched it crash several times (wanted to throw it out the window), got it working and fell in love after a couple hours. I thought about it all day at work today, actually.

Can I love a PC game? If it were a woman, I would be fucked. My wife would stab me because I would have made love to it 2.5 times (I don't have the stamina anymore). I would look at it with puppy-dog eyes and think of mental mix CDs to send it to convey the complex (read: simple) feelings I have for it. I would send it stupid text messages and then later find out those records would be used against me in court during the divorce. I would get distracted at work and get chewed out by my boss and then have a Fight Club moment (think about it anyway) where I beat myself up because of some hazy misplaced epiphany about the meaninglessness of office work (blah blah blah). If it were a woman I would blow money on cheap motels with outdated wallpaper and crusty sheets and then feel guilty when the act didn't live up to some vague image I had because of the movies I watched growing up.

Boy! I'm glad Mass Effect isn't a woman!

(Buy this game)

New Kindle Owner

2008-05-27T10:19:00.001-04:00

My wife bought me a Kindle for my birthday, which is awesome because it satisfies my hunger for gadgets and books. In a nutshell: I like it. There are already a bazillion reviews on it, but I thought I would add my 2 cents to the inter-web noise. A series of highlights:

love the built in (free) Net connection: book delivery is quick and easy
it looks much cooler in person
questionable "back" button placement has messed me up a couple of times
to be fair, I have yet to settle into how it will rest in my hands without thinking about it
book prices are great
proprietary format almost scared me, until I learned that amazon will convert other formats for free. I tested it, too, and it worked like a charm.
space: no more books to shove into corners, closets and shelves.
I actually enjoy reading on it

Hardly a comprehensive review, I know. A couple people I have shown it to ask what else it does. I can see why they would ask; the price tag is a little high. But I don't need another MP3 player and web browsing with e-ink is crude at best. And I already have things that do those things better. I figure about a $100 goes right into wireless fees (I think they are paying Sprint?), which makes the cost more reasonable. And the book prices are very fair (I hope the selection grows rapidly). It may seem retarded, too, but I like the environmental benefits of not chopping trees down for cheap books that will disintegrate in the coming decades.

I do think the shape of the thing is weird. Why the slope to the right? This is only a cosmetic quibble, however, because it is comfortable in my hands. The keyboard ain't the prettiest thing either but it works. The next version should try to increase screen real estate, though. The black leather cover packaged for it works well and doesn't look bad.

If I have one real complaint, it is the fact that it didn't come with at least one voucher for a book. It's an ebook reader: give me a book with it!

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tuniq Tower 120 is Awesome

2008-05-21T21:27:00.001-04:00

I totally forgot how dramatic the shift is when moving from Intel's stock heatsink to the Tuniq Tower. When I had the e6600 it was running at a cool ~21 degrees (average across cores). My current Q6700, when I connected it stock, was sitting at ~43 degrees at idle, which is far from terrible, but not great. Like I've mentioned before, it just sucks to have to yank out the mobo to connect the Tuniq.

Earlier this evening I decided to bite the bullet and just do it. The difference? Wow: down to ~30 degrees!

This thing really is awesome.

And this marks the end of my '08 build. Do I have designs, however faint, for anything else this year? Eh, maybe a new DVD burner. My Lightscribe burner has started to ignore me when I ask it to open. But that is really the only thing that comes to mind.

I am sure that makes my wife happy to hear.

Computer Sleeps Again!

2008-05-20T08:58:00.001-04:00

I have the new computer setup almost finished. I still have to test the printer and install a couple programs, but it the process is just about over. It's all working well, too. I wanted to mention that the Sleep function works again. I tested it out yesterday; I hesitated before I had everything golden because I wanted to tackle things one at a time. On my last computer setup it didn't work. Well, it did work but then it just stopped one day--went into an endless reboot loop. I never bothered to go crazy over it, though. It was only for convenience anyway. I changed the button functions to disable it and stopped thinking about it.

I'm happy that it's back now, though! I forgot how much I liked it. Pulling it out of sleep is so much quicker than starting the whole thing up again.

I wonder if it'll stop working again one day?

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Family Computer = Success

2008-05-19T18:50:00.001-04:00

I was very antsy at work today about putting the computer together for my family this weekend, so I just decided to get a jump on it and do it after work. I was fully prepared to find the motherboard dead. I didn't write about it earlier much because I get superstitious, but last week I scratched the board when I removed the Tuniq Tower while switching over to my 750i. On the back of the board under the cpu. When it happened I thought, oh shit, but I guess I got lucky because everything appears fine.

The build went without a hitch.

The worst part was that I used an old case they had in the attic and it was dirty as hell. Cleaning it was okay--more annoying than anything else. I haven't given it the stress test, but I am happy that it booted into my old Vista setup with no problems. Now my apartment is dirty and cluttered with old computer parts.

At least they have a sweet computer now:

Gigabyte P965-DS3; 8800 GTS 320; 2 gigs of RAM; Seagate 500 gig HD

Now they just need a keyboard and mice. And I have to help with the setup of passwords, programs, etc. But that's all cool with me.

Computer Updated

2008-05-19T09:59:00.001-04:00

A couple days removed from the Saturday Computer Setup Disaster and I feel good. It helped that yesterday I did roofing work; great way to wear me out and forget about geeky computer stuff. As it stands now I only have to go back and connect my Tuniq Tower. This would normally be irritating as hell because I have to remove the entire motherboard, but, seeing as how I've become quite familiar with this board over the last few days, I could care less at this point. It will help to have my wife there to hold it on with I screw it down, too. The temps of the cores average out to ~43° when I check in Windows now. This isn't really that bad either. I am curious to see how much better it gets, though.

The 64 bit Vista I slapped on the system is quite snappy. I am pretty happy with everything now.

Here is a snapshot of my computer at this moment in time:

EVGA 750i FTW
Intel Q6700 with Tuniq Tower 120
4 (2x2) gigs of A-DATA Vitesta RAM
EVGA 9800 GTX
Razer Barracuda Sound Card
Western Digital 640 gig HD (Secondary Seagate 250 gig HD)
Thermaltake 700 watt Modular PSU
Vista Ultimate 64 bit OS

So, until the next disaster.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Flock 1.2 beta

2008-05-19T08:24:00.001-04:00

I'm currently playing with Flock 1.2 beta. Some pretty neat features like web mail integration, twitter support and a built in blog editor caught my eye. I know none of these things are really new, but I liked how nicely packaged it all is. I've played with Flock in the past, but I never had a reason to stick with it; I never played with any real social, or pseudo-social, networks before. I'll see how this goes.

I have to find my digg info, too, because this has native support for that site, too.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

New Computer = Less Suck

2008-05-18T00:40:00.001-04:00

I'm writing this post from my new computer.

The 750i evga board was not quite DOA. Inexplicably, it had a problem with my Q6700. It wouldn't boot with it. I had to go get my E6600 and fit it in, fire it up and then flash the BIOS. This was the first time I've flashed a BIOS. I had to use my wife's Eee PC connected to a huge external DVD drive. First time I've used Alcohol 120, too. It worked like a champ. This whole thing makes no sense, though, because this board is less than 2 months old. This solution also took me hours to figure out.

But that wasn't the end of my troubles. The board didn't like my RAM. It wouldn't POST with a 2 gig stick from A-DATA because they need 2.1 volts of juice. I went and grabbed a Wintec 1 gig stick rated at 1.8 volts, fired up the BIOS and overrode the RAM voltage to 2.1. And then it worked.

Sort of.

I loaded vista 64 bit and installed 50+ updates (Service Pack 1 didn't come through though so I got it on my own). When I restarted the OS I got a DISK BOOT ERROR. This annoyed me, so I put in the Windows disk and repaired the OS. Fine, gravy, awesome. Everything fired up, installed more updates/drivers and then got the SAME error when I restarted. And it wouldn't stop. I wanted to burn the apartment down. And then the repair wouldn't work because it didn't see my vista installation, which really got me going.

More research, brainstorming and seething anger. I disabled everything but the HD with Vista and it still wouldn't work. I tried booting with the Vista disk a few more times and no go. Then I thought, let me to try and replace the SATA cable (joke) and then moved the order of the SATA cables around for the hell of it. Magic: it worked. With this board, the main HD has to be the first one connected (I think it is A0?). Course this makes sense, but none of the previous 3 computers I've built did this and the manual does not mention it either. Why should it matter where it is connected if I set the boot priority separately?

After this it was routine: more drivers, programs, etc. But this took me all day today. I am really exhausted from wracking my brain, but really, I'm just glad that it all worked in the end (fingers crossed).

New Computer = Suck

2008-05-16T14:49:00.000-04:00

Put the new motherboard/cpu into my case, plugged in everything and it didn’t work. All of the lights go on, the fans have no trouble spinning (loudly), but nothing pops on the screen. Evga thought it fancy enough to put a 2 small screen on the board to display post errors: I get “FF.” Looked it up and it should mean everything is great. That is, under normal circumstances, this is the code that pops up after the board cycles through its normal deal. Here, however, it comes up instantly when I flip the power switch. I looked it up and there are other people out in Internet-land with the same issue. And I read about everyone’s crazy attempts at “fixing” it: cpu swap and BIOS update, memory swap, barebones setup, CMOS reset, etc. I tried them all. I even felt good about my memory test because I had different sizes (2x2 and 2x1) with different voltages (1.8 and 2.1). I even reseated the cpu heat sink—and working with the Tuniq Tower just sucks when I have to work with it more than once in a day. I have a few other ideas to try—the old cpu, being what comes to mind first. But I know that is probably a waste; the Q6700 is hardly new. A guy on the forums had a very similar situation, though, and it worked out for him. And now I want to really eyeball the pins under the chip. I may as well try anything I can because Tiger tells me they don’t have a replacement at the moment (I’ll try again on Monday). They will cross ship, though, which is nice.

Of course, I worry that I busted my old 965 board, because I scratched it trying to get the Tuniq off. So I am cynically confident that all kinds of stuff is broken and will stay broken without resolution for a while. I’m not in the best mood. I get my apartment burglarized early in the week, my wife is all kinds of sick in the middle (even now—she got paranoid that she had Meningitis, of all things ) and a screwed up computer situation right this moment. Cool. Awesome. Excellent.

I want something to feel good about this week.

PC Gaming

2008-05-14T12:33:00.000-04:00

That was the best title I could come up with, but it is hardly what I am really writing about. No fancy graphs, sales figures, and the such here. Plenty of other articles our there with those. Although, I question the accuracy of any game sales tracking because none—that I know—take digital downloads and subscription-based services into account. And that is where the market is moving more towards. And while I’m at it, I may as well complain that tracking figures never really capture PC gaming accurately because they never include hardware sales. Conversely, console game tracking always owes a lot to hardware money. Strange? Not so much. An easy (but lame) argument could simply ask how to track PC game hardware, which would be a good point. Sort of. I would make the counterpoint that any aftermarket video card purchase (outside of explicit workstation cards) should be treated as gaming hardware, but I am straying away from my intended point…

Plenty of other professional blogs the past few days have been chatting about Dell discontinuing their XPS line in an effort to bolster Alienware sales. This lead to people yapping about PC gaming dying, about being in trouble, yadda yadda. I think it is all true somewhat. Anyone that thinks consoles don’t have a stranglehold on gaming is just delusional. PC gaming will always be around, but it isn’t the focus of major publishers across the industry. Not that I care: most video games in general are terrible. The few annual gems that come out on the PC are excellent, and that is enough for me. As an adult, I don’t have the time (or the inclination) that I once did to play dozens of games a year. It is funny, however, to note that I can afford to now when I never could before. But this is also getting away from my intended point here…

Serious PC gamers tinker and tweak their PCs. They often build them, too. They monitor performance to see how the PC is behaving. They like to squeeze out every last bit of performance. This, in my mind, is often more important than the game itself. Playing a console game, however, is a totally different experience. It is about the game, and only the game. Is this good? I could care less either way: it just is. I think, however, that the average consumer (let’s be honest and talk in terms of dollars) wants to focus on the game and not on the machine running the game. This is a good supposition, too, because hardware sales for consoles have never been stronger.

This is my queue to go off on the lack of a mainstream DIY spirit; I don’t really believe that though. I think of it like this: the guy that doesn’t tinker with his computer isn’t any different than the guy that doesn’t really tinker with his car. The argument for one works for the other. I don’t get under my car hood. Both things are needed to do modern jobs (mostly). And most people interact heavily and rely on the two daily. And the cost reason holds up for both, too. People, myself included, would save a boat-load of dollars repairing their own vehicles—like their PCs (or building them)—instead of paying an outside professional.

Where was this post going? I suppose I wanted to write about how PCs aren’t new; when they were a niche population liked the idea of shoving their hands in them. The discovery of it was tantalizing, intriguing, exciting. But as time goes on, less people get the urge because it just feels…what is the word? Boring, I suppose. Or ordinary.

New(ish) Technology

2008-05-10T13:46:00.001-04:00

I finally got around to assigning programs and functions to My G15 keyboard. I really have no idea why I waited so long. One of those weird things where I just don't think about it. I am writing this post on my Live Writer assigned to G5. Oh me! I already have Firefox, Winamp, Twhirl and my QuickCam assigned too. Now I just have to think of some advanced functions to utilize. Hmm...

I am also happy to write that my friend and I have been paid in full for our recent side work (painting, etc). I just bought a new motherboard and chip: eVga 750i FTW and Intel Q6700. Now I am in the land of the quad core. Also purchased a 2x2 memory kit of DDR2. Why? Because my mother is cool with taking my old computer for a family computer. Finally! A family of five needs a computer! For years they've been using the one in my mother's room. Crazy. I should have the new build(s) up within the next couple of weeks. Just in time for my birthday...I am sure to write some posts on the troubles I'll face (lol). If not with mine, I am sure something will come up during the transfer of my current rig to my family. Oh, and now I will finally jump into 64 bit OS land with Vista Ultimate. I've had a retail OS disk waiting for months, but I could never justify arbitrarily "upgrading" and then loosing my current OEM disk. But now I don't have to because my current computer (with the Vista OEM) will go to my family.

With the computer purchase out of the way, I may look into a modest surround sound system for the TV.

Make a Family Tree

2008-05-09T12:23:00.000-04:00

I often feel compelled to document my lineage. I worry (randomly) about loosing history. When I think about how much I know about my family--names, dates, places--I feel bad. I don't know anything is what I think. So I pretend to try and put a family tree together. I've played with Ancestry's Family Tree Maker (offline) program, and I like it. But it is too much work. I have to look everything up, talk to a million relatives (eh). And I don't really want to do that.

That's the background for why I think all these slick web apps for taking the "work" out of family tree making are so cool. I was going to try Kindo, but then out of nowhere my mom sends me a link to a tree she started on itsourtree.com. I thought that was awesome! Totally left-field. Later she told me that I had sent her a story on it, though. So it really just came back around.

SO, onto the site. I like it. Adding and then inviting people is incredibly easy. There are tons of details to fill out, but they all lurk in detail sections. The tree can be as superficial or thorough as a user wants. And I like that. The whole thing banks on people collaborating, and, from what I can see, the site is conducive to team (or family) work. The presentation is easy on the eyes, too. The look of the whole thing does not seem scary or complex. Little features work well, such as how the tree reorganizes around a selected individual, or how you can see a relationship circle that highlights direct ancestry or a user.

I first logged onto the site a little more than a week ago and 6 active members have contributed already. Nice. And I (we) have around a hundred relatives mapped out to some degree. I want to stress, too, that very little time and/or effort went into this; a few minutes and there only. I don't know how niche this sort of thing will turn out to be, but it works for me. I hope others jump in.

Vista Themes

2008-05-07T21:27:00.001-04:00

I found this earlier today and it hooked me. How did I miss this last year? I just played around with a bunch of Vista themes on DeviantArt, too, and I am impressed with how skilled people are at skinning Windows.

Little things like this make Windows fun now and then.

“Spare” Cash Indulgences

2008-05-05T13:45:00.000-04:00

These past few weeks I helped a friend with a painting job. The work wasn’t bad, but it the job kind of got away from us (or from me anyway) and kept getting bigger and bigger. That sort of thing isn’t inherently bad, but this time it got to me because it made making plans challenging. But now it is “over” (although how true that is I don’t really know).

And I have loot coming my way (someday?). To validate my efforts, I feel the impulse to be a good American and consume.

But just what to buy? I thought of a TV, although that felt too much. I do, however, think I will pick up a simple surround sound system. The Vision LCD we have hardly has the best integrated sound. Okay, so I suppose that will be ~300 bucks. I also figure to buy my wife something nice (she has a thing for purses). And I suppose I can’t help but upgrade my PC again. Why not? Last year I showed restraint only to have money fall into my lap later. So why not buy something I want now with the extra cash I made?

What I do know is that I want the eVga nForce 750i board. And the Western Digital 640 gig hardrive is looking sweet, too. The thing that keeps nagging at me is the cpu. The recent drop in the Q6700 down to ~280 makes it very tempting…or do I bump up to the impossible to find Q9450? Or the mid-range Q9300? Even more complicated is the e8500—really the fastest thing out there. All of the quad-core options bank on future program usage, as only a handful of applications utilize 4 cores (although video encoding would be much faster!). Consumer dilemma. Oh me.

Total wildcard: a 24” monitor. That may be too wild for me though.

Home Tech Support

2008-05-05T11:18:00.000-04:00

One of my coworkers asked if I could take a look at their computer and I (who knows why) said sure. I am always curious about what people do to their machines, and, honestly, relish the idea of trying to resurrect a bum machine. So I took her old HP (the model number eludes me at the moment) home on Friday to see what I could do.

I immediately pulled up the system specs at a glance and saw that at the core the thing has too little memory (256 megs) running on an aging processor (Celeron D). The processor is serviceable. The memory, however, is far too low considering the amount of stuff installed on the PC. And most of it garbage. I dumped a lot of programs including Norton which was running too many utilities at any given time. I replaced it with Avast Free Home Edition. I ran Ccleaner and then checked the disk defrag utility to see if it was needed. It was not. I thought that odd until it hit me that the computer isn’t even used anymore because of how annoyingly slow it has become.

After this I installed Revo Uninstaller and started gutting programs (much of it silly trial software). I also installed GPUZ and CPUZ to see some more detail about the system. I got the memory standard (PC3200) and noted that only 2 slots physically exist. Tomorrow I’m going to pick up some more, which should help general responsiveness. Funny, too, the Asus board the thing runs on is codenamed "Guppy."

Next I cracked open the case because I knew that it probably never had been before. Inside it was full of caked dust. The processor heatsink/fan was totaled covered. I got a can of compressed air out and blasted out everything.

When I put it back together it dawned on me that Service Pack 3 was out (although not through Update), so I downloaded and installed that as well. That was when I crossed my fingers because I never really know with a major update on an old machine. But it booted fine. I ran Ccleaner again. The last thing I did was a deep scan with Ad-Aware 2008, which only pulled up some tagging cookies.

As it stands the computer runs fine—but not great. I think the memory will cause the most dramatic change. The computer could use a dedicated graphics card, but with only a PCI lane to work with, I can’t find a compelling reason to make the case to my coworker. Hell, even with a AGP/PCIe lane, I would have a hard time convincing them. They only use it for basic word processing and web browsing. I'll try to update this post when I am totally finished. I wonder how much money I should charge? I'd feel bad if the computer didn't run measurably better. I'll see.

In the Web Loop

2008-05-02T10:53:00.000-04:00

I work in an office in front of a computer for most of the day. This makes it very easy to latch on to web services and programs. I juggle projects and slide time in between tasks to peak at various stories on Google Reader. This is the only reason (outside of my inherent interest) that I stay in the web loop. I listen to music on Winamp (flirt with Songbird), post tweets on Twitter (look in FriendFeed), tag items to del.icio.us, update my Amazon wish list compulsively, keep my computer neat with Ccleaner, and endlessly tweak Fire Fox according to my mood. This is, to say the least, among many other things. I like doing these things. I like keeping up with web trends, seeing and looking for the new thing. Sometimes I think it is overkill but then I realize that I barely watch TV these days (a black hole for time), but I do have shows running on Hulu all the time. Playing on the computer is, obviously, my biggest hobby outside of reading.

I just wish more of my friends and family would join me--at least a little. Most people I mention Twitter to (as an example) gets me blank stares. When I explain what it is, what it is used for, I almost always get “why?” as a response. And this is very difficult to explain. Explaining the “why” is very hard, I find, with the web. At least, it is if trying to convey a meaningful answer above “because it’s cool.”

Of course, sometimes things stick. My wife, a couple friends—even my mother (!)—use Twitter to some extent (I did lobby for it, though). And I was shocked the other day to see that my mother had started a family tree with itsourtree.com, which was very cool. And to see so many people using gmail is pretty awesome as well. Small triumphs, which is really all I am looking for. I would not like anyone to become a web addict, but I do think the web is so much better than just watching television.

Why settle for something so passive?

Flirted with Desktop RSS Reader

2008-04-21T18:26:00.001-04:00

I got bored the other day and decided to give a desktop reader a chance to woo me away from Google Reader. I had a lot of choices, including FeedDemon and NetNewsWire, but ultimately I went with Blogbridge. Why? No particular reason really. I saw some screen shots and liked the triple pane view and it was enough to grab me.

And I liked it. I liked the setup, the customizable nature of the folder icons, the onscreen text, and the (somewhat) easy hotkeys. The fact that it could sync up multiple computers with a free account was a nice perk. The features put it ahead of Google--easily. I really loved taking RSS off the browser and I liked the feel of the application in general.

Sadly, I am not sure it will stick with me. Already, the absurdly convenient nature of Google Reader has pulled me back. Hell, even my wife has come over to RSS because of Google (and I didn't shove it down her throat). She started to follow some science feeds and I know she likes that she does not have to do anything extra with synchronization when moving between her 3 computers (home/work/lab).

I totally see how the desktop reader is dying. Weirdly, I feel about it, too.

Oh me.

Web Cam

2008-04-09T09:41:00.000-04:00

I jump on and off gadget bandwagons all the time. I could care less about a device (or overall technology) one day only to turn around and buy one the next. A lot of people are like this--saying this makes me feel better for my impulses. I think it really just has to do with exposure. It is hard to want something I have no prior experience with (or apparent use for). This can change immediately after playing with a cool toy though. It becomes much easier to manufacture a "reason" then. This is how I’ve been with everything from cell phones, to mp3 players to computers in general.

I bring this up because of my weird urge to buy a web cam. I honestly have not cared about them until recently because I have not seen any reason to get one. What would I do with it? This thing is, I still do not have a good answer to that question. I really only want to play with the myriad video chat web apps that are popping up now. OoVoo comes to the top of my head really. I also have my eye on Seesmic now that Twhirl has been snatched up by them. Even this, though, seems retarded by itself.

This brings me to an overall point with me and technology: good reasons do not often exist. Sometimes I just want something despite not having any logical reason for it. Does a child need a good reason to want a toy? Adults aren’t any different; they like toys just the same. Okay, I really mean I like toys just the same.

Edit: Amazon sent me a $50 coupon for purchasing a Toshiba A3 HD-DVD player last year. They felt sorry for me, I guess. I took that and applied it to a Logitech QuickCam Orbital AF. Very nice camera with eerie follow effects. A am pleased with it, although, like I mentioned, barely use it for anything other than quick still shots for updating web profiles. Worth it? Who knows--but it totaled 45 bucks so I am happy.

Back on Keepass

2008-04-07T20:55:00.001-04:00

So I've always had this nagging feeling that something bad is just waiting to happen to me because of my excessive web use. Why? Because my security precautions are sub-par. And I know better. I use lame passwords, which is not that bad, but when coupled with the fact that I join everything under the sun it feels like I've strapped dynamite to my gasoline-soaked chest.

So, I've finally come around to doing something about this. I was going to buy Roboform because everyone on the webs goes crazy for it, but then I remembered that for a brief, un-lazy, time I used this little app called Keepass and liked it a lot (this was one or two PC builds ago). So I re-downloaded it again recently and proceeded to catalogue my crappy-ass passwords for everything under the sun. It was painful, but I knew that going into it would suck. And there was the obvious fact that it would only get worse if I waited.

Anyway, long story short (is it really long though?) I am golden now. Or at least I feel better about these inter-webs I crawl all over. Now to convince my wife to join me...ah, that is the real challenge.

9800 GTX

2008-04-04T20:26:00.001-04:00

I couldn’t help myself: I bought the 9800 GTX. I read the reviews, scouted out the prices, and still did it. I know that it is essentially a volt-modded 8800 GTS 512, but it is compatible with triple SLI (ha: like that will ever happen with me) and will get better (?) updated driver treatment, too. Plus, I had a $100 gift certificate, so the damage was not bad at all! Sure, objectively, it is not the best bang-for-buck card, but whatever?

I have also heard the rumors of a 9900 GTX in July, but who cares? New cards come out multiple times (at least twice) a year. For me to wait would be to wait to hear another rumor about another card six months from then. With PCs there is always something new right down the road.

So am I happy? Yes, it eats all my games for breakfast (Crysis excluded). And I hear it can overclock very well, so I’ll try that out soon, too. So, it brings a smile to my face. It is a BIG card, though. Compared to my GTS 320 it is nearly 1.5 inches longer. This is hardly a problem for my full tower case, though. And, strangely, it needs 2 pcie connectors, but, again, this was not a problem. It was nice to see a reasonable price for the card; also nice to see that the old GTX finally had to drop in price, too. 16 months was a long time. I really have nothing to say about the naming convention either. Does it really make sense? No, but I don’t care either (to read all the screaming comments on the web makes me scratch my head: get a better topic to vehemently rant about).

Maybe the card will tank and in a couple months the price will drop. And maybe I pick a second one up then. Or maybe I’ll win the lottery and sail around the world.

RSS Mainstream?

2008-04-04T20:19:00.001-04:00

Nearly every day I sift through a few hundred stories on Google Reader. It occupies anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours depending on where I am and what I have to do. I find interesting stories about everything from the web app du jour to what Britney did at Starbucks. I see what’s going on in the pc enthusiast market (maybe too much), check retail prices on books and things, and even check movie reviews. It would not be a stretch to say that the vast majority of my web life is funneled through Google Reader. And actually, if I step back and look at how I spent my off-work hours on the PC in general, Google Reader occupies the top overall spot.. Easily. Aside from Steam, Winamp, Twitter, and Blogger now and then (via Live Writer) I am most always sifting through stories on the web. This happened for me in Fall 2006.

I probably spend more time on Google Reader than the average user. And there are many others that spend even more time than me (although professional bloggers tend to fall into this camp). I know this. It is obvious. But it got me thinking: what about others? What do other people think about Google Reader? Does the average person even use an RSS reader of some kind?

I asked around the office and I asked some friends and family. Hardly a scientific study, but I just wanted to see what people I know thought about RSS readers. It only took a couple people for me to see that most people have no idea what RSS is or what I was talking about (most people didn’t even realize that Google did anything beyond search and gmail)—let alone the difference between offline and online readers. On a slightly separate note: my boss asked me a couple weeks ago what the “RSS Feeds” folder was in Outlook 2007. My explanation and examples, I could tell, were wholly unsatisfying to her. In the end she just didn’t care. This is actually part of what prompted this blog post: were most people in the same boat?

Why hasn’t RSS caught on in the mainstream? I don’t really know. Or maybe I do more than I think. Most people use the web in exactly the same way they did in 1999—email & retail. They just do it more: more shopping, more email communication. Outside of this, people love web portals—because portals started with mainstream web use. And people have become used to the idea of navigating through the pot luck of a Yahoo home page because it’s a single page with a bunch of different topics handed to you.

Is this “bad”? I don’t think so; of course it will take people many years to get away from thinking about and using the web the way they did 10 years ago. Hell, a lot of people I talk to still don’t trust looking at their checking balance on the web. It takes a long time for things to change. It often takes nudges from big companies too. Or maybe RSS will never really catch on in the most-people-use-it sense. Who knows? I just know that I love Google Reader.

MS SharePoint Thoughts

2008-03-20T22:53:00.001-04:00

I had the pleasure of being exposed to MS SharePoint earlier this week at work. The IT department opened it up to me to see what I thought. I suspect they knew I would see the utility of it and hoped I could nudge people with what little influence I have, which is fine. I love technology that makes my job better. And the guys in IT can be really encouraging.

SharePoint made me think of using Blackboard back in college a few years ago. It's like Backboard times 1000. I mean that as a compliment. It is an awesome collaboration tool. Create a workspace, bring users in, set permissions and off it goes. It can be a robust staging hub or a now and then reference area for important documents. SharePoint's power, I quickly saw, is in its flexibility. Users can post bulletins, draft tasks, create links, etc. And it can do so much more.

It is extraordinary how well it syncs with Office 2007. Within moments I had Shared Documents fed down to Outlook; I was able to instantly feed documents to my workspace; I changed the workspace layout, posted an announcement and created a quick project plan (with a gantt chart). And I kept seeing how useful it could be if departments within a company were all on board. No excessive email tracing and catching up; no more meetings to clarify those emails; just an intuitive system that is limited only by administrators' visions.

I actually feel a little dorky about how much I liked it. I think it has to do with my every changing role now: how I am moving between groups, projects and responsibilities so often now. I am helping someone with a program error one minute only to then write up a file spec a few minutes later and then test some changes a programmer made to different application in between. It makes it hard for me to understand exactly how far along a given project is. And I am always thinking that someone is waiting for something from me, that I am missing something.

If all my colleagues were using--truly using--something like SharePoint I really believe redundancies and inefficiencies would be cut down. It just makes sense. Everything would be in one place. Everything and then some.

FriendFeed the Next Logical Step

2008-03-18T20:42:00.001-04:00

Funny how lifestreaming is such a big web trend. Or is it? We all spend so much time on these nets, that it makes sense. Of course, it makes more sense when the social networking tend is factored in. And, if you consider how it (FriendFeed) works on people's inherent need to collect/organize and it makes even more sense. Too much sense, really.

That last part may seem cryptic, but it's really pretty simple. People (me included) love to collect, to have things nice and neat and organized. This is why people collect everything from DVDs to antique plates: to show them off so carefully. I don't even really mean that we are all vain (which is partly true); it is about organization. The thing doesn't mean anything unless it is displayed carefully--in just the way that seems right. And maybe it is only for my (or your) viewing/piece of mind. Maybe it is one of those weird human brain ticks. Who knows?

This brings me back to FriendFeed. It satisfies so many current web trends--seeing all my web activities (at least the ones that matter), and seeing other people's. And all in one nice, neat site. So smart, so simple--so obvious.

If only I had predicted it.

All about Twhirl

2008-03-03T17:43:00.001-05:00

So now that Adobe has the popular chick right now with AIR 1.0, I decided to check it out again. Last time I tried was with beta Pownce, which I found slick, but largely did not care about. I installed the new AIR though because I always come back to stuff to see how it has progressed (see: Joost) and also because I am a sucker for Net-hype. Installation was easy, but the hard part was finding a little app that I cared enough to use. And I found Twhirl. It is a Twitter client, and one done really well. There are reviews for it, although I see lots more people talking up Snitter (which is slicker, but I found too buggy right now with a couple freeze ups and weird error messages).

Twhirl hasn't acted up at all and it has actually gotten me to use Twitter again--and I mean a lot. Pretty cool.

I'll keep a look out for other AIR apps as well.

Another Launcher

2008-02-06T20:58:00.001-05:00

Humanized > Enso

I thought Launchy was cool (and still think it rocks), but I couldn't install it at work.
Enso I could though.
Why? Probably because Launchy has a more robust indexing system (I think).

Regardless, this little puppy has some nice little features.
The instant calc & word count, while both simple, are easy to use and get used to.
And the "hold Caps Lock to activate" functionality is very easy to get accustomed to as well.
And it is easy to get it to recognice new programs to "learn"

I'll keep playing with it and see if it holds me.

new burning software

2008-02-06T20:53:00.001-05:00

BurnAware -

I was happy with image burn.
But then I found CD Burner XP, and I was happy with that.
Today I played with this, however, and I like this one best of all.
It has a very nice, clean, interface that makes burning quick and easy.
I don't even know if it is as full featured as the other two, but I only used them for DVD burning anyway.

I'm sure I'll find something else before the year is out, though.
I always do.

Video Card Calls

2008-01-22T20:01:00.000-05:00

Well, it is early in the new year and I am hot for a new piece of computer hardware. I did just recently set up 2 monitors (22" Samung & 20" Sceptre), but this is hardly enough to hold me. I want horse power. I want some parts that set fire to the desk, that make me want giddy. So this naturally makes me look at processors and video cards. Processors, though, are not great outlets cause i see minimal gain in the "next best thing" (aka quad core cpu). Why? Because the current offering, the Q6600 is basically 2 e6600s taped together. I, of course, have an e6600. So what is the next best thing? A video card. This means I stare down an 8800 GT, which is one of the greatest cards ever, but unfortunately I have an 8800 GTS (old version), so I cannot justify it. The 8800 GTX is at the end of its life, too, so I have to wait and see what the 9800 GX2 does. And it not there...the 9800 GTX.

Return

2008-01-06T00:12:00.000-05:00

Back from year end job hell. Stopped writing because of the increased work load/hours. before I get too boring though, I should say Christmas was awesome. My wife got me a Samsung 22" Monitor (226BW) and it is gorgeous. My friend got me a 5.1 Logitech Speaker system for the computer, which rocks. And I also received the new G15 gaming keyboard with the fancy lcd on it. It was a geeky dream.

I have to say on a further tech note that I am deeply disturbed to hear of what appears to be beginning of the end for HD DVD with Waner's exclusive deal with Blue Ray. I just got an A3 with a bunch of moives! And I liked the player! Oh well. If it does die I am not wasting my time with anymore formats--it will be all digital. Fuck Sony: I will build a HTPC and leap into the REAL future.

But that is off the top of my head. I should start regularly posting now.

Onwards and upwards!

Eee PC

2007-11-25T21:55:00.001-05:00

Amazon.com: ASUS Eee PC 4G Notebook PC (7", 512 MB RAM), Pearl White: Electronics

I tried to ignore this device even though I knew it was brilliant. It is a sexy little thing that does a few things, but all of them very well. It is over priced--300 would have been optimal--but it has charm. See, I went to a local Micro Center yesterday with my wife and fooled around with it and liked it more than I did on when it was just on paper. And my wife loved it, which really threw me for a loop. At that moment I knew this thing was gold. Despite the mediocre specs it can handle what people actually do with a PC (web browsing, word processing, and spreadsheets) with ease. I love that people are snatching them up and getting acquainted with linux (Xandros in this case). Even better is the fact that other manufacturers are going to jump on similar low cost notebook alternatives now. Good work Asus, very good work.

eBooks & Kindle

2007-11-19T12:16:00.001-05:00

Amazon Sets eBook World Alight with Kindle

I have been fascinated with the idea of the electronic book for years, but I never took the plunge into actually buying one. Why? I have a few reasons. The easiest is that (excluding the Sony Reader) there was never a reasonable device to read the things on. I refuse to read books on a computer screen, and I never owned a PDA to fiddle with either. I came close to picking up Sony's device, but the price scared me away. Price of eBooks too, has scared me away in the past. I've been buying used books at great low prices (new ones as well) on Amazon for years and to see eBooks going for 15+ bucks annoyed the hell out of me. It was just greedy--zero manufacturing costs and store shelf space to pay for should mean less money. The Kindle may be ugly--and I won't pretend otherwise--and kind of pricey, but I love the book pricing structure, the internet connectivity, and Amazon's support. This whole thing intrigues me, really. My wife likes the idea, too, because we live in a small apartment and space is running out (and no, I would never throw books out). To have them digitally, though, without fear of wear and tear...well, that it exciting. And for traveling it is a wonderful idea. I know some crazies will always turn those noses up if they can't hold the thing, run their hands down the spine, or show them off in big wooden cases, but not me. I like the space savings benefit (not to mention the environmental savings).

But I have one main reservation from the past: format. I hate, really hate, having to do research on an electronic book's format and seeing what works with what. I'll be honest, too, and say that I have only taken cursory looks at eBook formats in the past. But it was enough to scare me off. It is really simple for me: if I simulate a buying experience and don't really understand what I'm getting--even with a little research--then I get scared that I'll get screwed. Which means nothing gets bought. This push by Amazon looks to squelch my fears, however, in much the same way iTunes did with people buying digital songs online (and I don't even use iTunes). Hell, most people still don't really know the difference between AAC, MP3, WAV, etc. But they don't care because what they buy just works.

Maybe this will happen with eBooks, too.
I hope this is the beginning of something new (and good) in the book industry.

Vista Service Pack 1

2007-11-12T11:45:00.001-05:00

» More signs of a new Vista SP1 build waiting in the wings

Am I the only person that does not really care that much about the first service pack? Unless any new features are added, it won't mean much to me (and from what I know, nothing new is). The changes are all "under the hood," which is great but nothing to set timers to. It will be nice to get all of the hotfixes at least. But of course I will keep tracking it.

Game Season

2007-11-07T13:57:00.000-05:00

This Christmas is shaping up to be another time to choose from several quality games, especially if multiple gaming platforms are an option. This is both good and bad: good because there are so many great games out and coming out; bad because I can’t buy them all. This post serves as a sort of roundup of what my tentative game plans are (as of now—but who knows what I’ll really do). Most of what I am interested in are PC games, but there are a couple Wii and DS games. And, for good measure, I’ll bring up a few tempting pieces of hardware.

But first the games:
1. Crysis (PC): this is a no-brainer. The makers of Far Cry (one of the great FPSs ever) seem to have done it again with a ridiculously demanding/intense shooter set again in a island/jungle setting that has super-suite clad players battling North Korean troops and, later, aliens. I know I am a mega-dork because I have been waiting for this game for well over a year. This is a must buy.

2. UT3 (PC): I loved Unreal Tournament 2004, so this appears to be another no-brainer. Downloaded the demo weeks ago and I was impressed with how smooth it ran on my computer. The only drawback I saw was that too many weapons were the same. I may or may not pick this up—who knows?

3. NWN: Mask of the Betrayer (PC): seems to be a quality follow-up to last year’s Neverwinter Nights 2. I only regret that my original game for NWW2 got lost in a system reformat some time ago. This is a stand alone, though, so I am not too crestfallen.

4. Call of Duty 4 (PC): this is getting rave reviews. I was never a big COD fan (too much WWII!) but the modern setting here intrigues me. I just read recently that this will be available through Steam, too, which would make it very convenient. Again, though, will I ultimately pick it up?

5. Gears of War (PC): I was so jealous that this was only on the Xbox for the past year! I hear it got a great update for the PC though, so I am really interested in this one.

6. Fire Emblem (Wii): I played this on the gameboy advance for hundreds of hours (college train commutes). I regret missing the Gamecube title, too.

7. Final Fantasy: Revenant Wings (DS): Hard to pass up a FF game that is portable…

8. Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords (DS): this one is hardly new, but I am a sucker for puzzle games. My wife and I both are, really. Most recently it has been Peggle—what a fantastically simple, yet addictive game. And, again, these things are even better on the go.

On the hardware front, the newly cheapend PS3 for $399 is intriguing if only for being a Blu-ray player with gaming potential. I say potential because the price is a joke if all you want is gaming--there are nearly zero quality titles now. And there is this deal from Dell, which is a very good buy (I cannot stress that enough). To come with the best game on the sytem with an HDMI cable and a feature movie for the standard price of admission? Wow.

I am sure there are other things out there I am interested in, but those are the biggest that come to mind. The funny thing is that even if I get none of these there is still the Orange Box, which I have been playing like crazy.

More Desktop Fun

2007-11-02T13:16:00.001-04:00

Translated version of http://www4.point.ne.jp/hiro/ThumbWin/thumbwin.html

I really like this program in addition to the Outlook on the Desktop. All open program/windows are relegated to thumbnails on the desktop. Each of these has nifty little controls for size, scale, and organization, too. Cool stuff that is really just eye candy, but sometimes seeing all of the open programs in their entirety (miniature-ized) is easier than looking to the taskbar. My only thought would be that it would be even cooler to have these moved to the tray in addition. Although I hear programs of that sort are out there, I have yet to try any.

Desktop Fun

2007-11-02T13:10:00.001-04:00

Michael Scrivo's Personal Site - Outlook on the Desktop

This program is so cool. It takes your Outlook and embeds it in the desktop background--with transparency controls, size and position adjustments that are easy to use. I love it, although I question how useful it really is (let's be honest). But when did useful have anything to do with screwy little programs?

Nvidia: Shout-out to the Mid-Range

2007-11-01T13:44:00.001-04:00

AnandTech: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT: The Only Card That Matters

Thank you, Nvidia, for a return to making mid-range enthusiast PC parts. I cannot be too thankful, though, because you took your sweet time (1.5+ years) to bring it back, but at least the 8800GT appears to be the best mid-range card in several years. With performance gains over the 640mb GTS for 100+ bucks less it looks like a nice return to form. Although, that 200 dollar price point is not quite there yet (a look at Newegg is obvious) it should come down in a couple months. Now, if this is what you get at the mid-range now, then I cannot wait to see what upper mid-range will be come Spring/Summer. Mmmmm.

Online Deals

2007-11-01T13:16:00.001-04:00

Coupon codes for thousands of online stores - RetailMeNot.com

This website is awesome. I have no idea how I never came across it before. I buy a lot of items online so this is going to become a pitstop in the future. Thanks to Lifehacker.com

Near Computer Disaster

2007-10-29T11:55:00.000-04:00

This past weekend was an interesting weekend for computer hiccups. It really started on Friday night when my computer started crashing at start up with no specific blue screen. This troubled me, but I was particularly surprised that a few restarts got me through to the welcome screen. Strange. So, I started hacking at software—uninstalling various extraneous programs, disk cleaning, and defragging—and, voila, that seemed to work. Still strange, though.

I had a wedding on Saturday (which was nice, despite the morning rain) so I didn’t start the computer until that evening. And everything was fine when I did—until later that night. I downloaded and installed the Crysis demo (which is pretty awesome), and a few other things happened. The game installer let me know that Vista had an available hotfix patch to specifically help with how games handled virtual memory that it recommended. I installed that. And, Nvidia came out with new beta drivers designed specifically for the game. I installed that, too. I played the game fine then until about 30 minutes in when the computer froze entirely. And I wasn’t able to boot into Windows at all after that. Blue screen after blue screen.

I thought: power problem or memory problem. After attempting to research several different error messages (DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_EQUAL_TO_OR_LESS_THAN; MEMORY_MANAGEMENT; REGISTRY_ERROR; PAGE_FAULT_IN_NON_PAGED_AREA; among others) I simply removed the last 2 memory sticks form the machine and, voila, it booted fine (the kicker was when it wouldn't boot from the Windows DVD). Everything worked fine then.

Or so I thought. Here is the weird part: none of the internet services would turn on. Any attempt at locating a network, turning on a firewall, or diagnosing a connection were met with: access is denied. Subsequent restarts didn’t do anything. I found this support article, which seemed dead on, but it didn’t help me (and I never figured out why—why did this mysteriously turn off forever). My ultimate solution (suggested by my wife really) was to system restore to a few days before. And this worked. Although now I do have a few programs that the computer thinks are still installed, but really aren’t. But at least everything “works” again. Strange, but computers are always that: strange.

Songbird

2007-10-25T10:29:00.001-04:00

Songbirdnest.com | Songbird Media Player

This is another one I meant to write about a long while ago but never remembered to. I just installed it again and thought now would be just as good a time to write about it as any other. It is, essentially, another media player but (I know, I know: another media player?) it has browsing functions that make it stand out and distinguish itself as something "new." Music blogs you visit allow you to play files as though they were your own. Really, this is an excellent way to sample new songs, groups, etc; actually, this is better than any other method I have yet seen. Other features include extensions and themes (a la Firefox--Mozilla is behind this) that may make it appealing to setting tweakers out there (of which I get addicted to). Overall it is an intuitive, fun, music program.

Songbird is only in "developer preview 0.2.5" but it is already shaping up nicely. When the file version is released it will be very interesting to see what kind of crazy stuff people do with it.

The Phone Wars

2007-10-25T09:44:00.001-04:00

Free My Phone | Mossblog | Walt Mossberg | AllThingsD

This is a great articulation of what most, if not all, of us want. Cellphones are shackles. I have a Verizon contract through next November and that means I'm S.O.L. if I want to switch providers or get a new phone. And I get it when people say that the networks are too fragile for the system to be "unlocked"--the problem is that providers want it to remain that way. The big telecos use this as their naysay card of choice. Technology is accelerating too fast for this backwards model to exist anymore though. Something has to be done. To the savvy and gutsy politicians: I cry freedom.

IMAP & Gmail

2007-10-24T08:17:00.001-04:00

Gmail gets IMAP - Download Squad

This is really cool. I checked my account a few moments ago and I don't have the option, but when I do it will be sweet. Then I can utilize my excellent Outlook 2007 that has been sitting in my programs waiting to be utilized...bravo to Google for finally getting on IMAP (this is my tentative excitement--until I actually have the option in my account)!

LightScribe

2007-10-23T09:54:00.000-04:00

I have a Lite-on LightScribe DVD drive in my PC that I never really used. I bought it early this year and only tested it to see that, gee-whiz, it really works. But the software that comes with it is kind of rinky-dink and I was too lazy to seek out better (free) alternatives. I know Nero has some kind of compatibility with it, but I think Nero is terribly bloated and packed with way too many features I just don't care about. I had a pack of Lightscribe disks in my drawer (because you have to buy special disks), though, from when I just got the drive because I wanted to save them (who knows why). Well, last night I ran out of regular 'ol blank DVDs and thought, why not Lightscribe? I had to re-install the Lightscribe labeler. This was easy enough, but the cool part was that the labels that come with it were so much better! I was impressed and will now burn everything with Lightscribe (until something unexpected happens as usual to change my opinion!).

X38

2007-10-20T12:36:00.001-04:00

I see that the new X38 Intel socket 775 motherboards have come out. Yikes, they are pricey, but oh so cool and fancy. When I first heard about them a while back I thought, "what makes these special?" Here's what grabbed me: they support PCI Express 2.0 (which doubles bus bandwidth)! And they are made with the soon to be released 45nm chips in mind (January '08). I may be in the market for one of these in the next few months--if they come down from the $300 range. I can stomach $200ish.

Twine

2007-10-20T12:31:00.000-04:00

These interents have been abuzz with Twine, supposedly the first semantic web application. What is the semantic web? See what wikipedia has to say; basically, it is the intelligent web that evolves. Or something like that. I just signed up for beta access--I'll report back when I play with it (if).

Live Writer

2007-10-17T19:18:00.001-04:00

Heard about Windows Live Writer released by Microsoft a while back--a desktop blogging client--but I only recently installed it (earlier today). I am actually writing this post on it right now. I like it, too. Very intuitive set up, and the program reminds me of Word, which is a good thing, because basic writing is smooth and easy on it. MS tried to con me into installing a million other things with it, which was annoying, but I think I am going to stick with this for a while--that is if I forget about Scribefire...

Hunt for a New PSU

2007-10-12T18:49:00.000-04:00

I caught this new power supply bug a couple weeks ago and it won't go away. I've been doing the research, but it is difficult. For as important as power supplies are (for enthusiasts anyway) it is really hard to find good reviews (or many). But here are a few I have heard good things about:

Siverstone Decathlon : the name is good (great really) and I am intrigued by the single +12V rail putting out all of that amperage!
Thermaltake 700W: this one grabbed me with the 4 rails and excellent cable management; I have to admit that the modular psu is grabbing me. I read a great review for this somewhere too.
Corsair 620W: this one is by far the least beefy of the 3, but it has garnered the most praise. by all reports it is very stable, and has great cable management.

The only thing holding me back with picking any of these 3 is price: I have placed a $150 limit on whatever psu I buy, so if one of these drops it will be shipping very soon.

Linux

2007-10-12T18:43:00.000-04:00

I am seriously close to building a budget pc in order to mess around with Linux. I want to play with something new and different and not be worried about any ramifications. It will happen by the end of the year. I'll probably experiment with Ubuntu, but I'm open to others. Hell, on newegg a few minutes ago, I got everything together (including case/psu) and it came to less than $300. How can I ignore that? I would try the dual route but if I don't have one stable PC at home I'll tear someone's head off. And besides, I like to game, and there is really no reason to screw with something stable, right? If only I beileved that...

Switcher

2007-10-12T18:40:00.000-04:00

Wow, this little program is impressive. Thanks to downloadsquad (and my Google Reader obsession) for this one. Runs excellent on my Vista machine; most impressive is that it doesn't even cause the slightest hiccup! Very pleased to stumble over this.

The Orange Box

2007-10-12T18:34:00.000-04:00

I was hesitant to write about this, but to ignore the release of the Orange Box--Valve's greatest game package of all time--would be criminal. Why? Because I really believe that it is the best deal ever (5 games!) and fun as hell. See the picture? That is the game that has taken over my nights for the last 6 days. Deceptively simple, but endlessly fun; I run around killing cartoonish characters thinking, "this is fun" and then realize that I've been playing for 3 hours. This is not a review--only an endorsement. Buy it, play it.

Computer Disaster

2007-10-07T21:57:00.000-04:00

This past week was a bad tech week for me. First, it was my cable service. I have Comcast and I use their triple play service with HD and DVR. When it all goes smooth, I love it. The problem is that I live on the 3rd floor of an old apartment building that has awful wiring. Now and then my signal strength plummets and I get pixel-y HD television and internet signals getting dropped. It really sucks when this happens. It was on and off last week, but then on Thursday it just totally took a dump all together. I had no TV or internet. I would obviously be pissed, but it was worse because it was game 1 of the Yankees/Indians series and I had just got home from doing the laundry. But anyway...this was resloved Friday when the cable guy came and boosted my signal, but left me with the obvious "the cables need to be updated downstairs" message.

This was annoying problem one. Worse, my computer decided that it did not want to boot into Vista at all when I turned it on. It wouldn't even go into safe mode, which creeped me out. I tried a repair, but my operating system wouldn't show up either! So, knowing my important documents and music files are backed up, I thought, screw it, I'll reformat. Here is where it gets weird. Windows wouldn't let me. I formated the drive and chose it as my primary to install to...and got the following message: "Windows could not reinitialize the deployment engine." This baffled me. I thought my HD might be bad, too. Bad I wanted to check everything. So, I did the following first:

reseated every cable and cord in the case
removed the other 2 HDs (and when this didn't work...)
I reset the BIOS by popping the battery
I even read somewhere that it might be a bad SATA cable, so I changed that out

But none of this worked, which made me mad. But then this funny thing happened: my friend point out that there was one other option in install phase--"delete." For Vista, you can delete previous partitions when installing and create new ones if you want. The thing was, I had no partitions but one solid 500 gb HD. He said try it anyway. I deleted the HD and then formatted it new and, voila; it just worked.

Now as to why this happened (or why my computer didn't boot before hand, I can't say. But I know it was weird...