Juiced.

Yes yes y’all. Another satisfied customer rolling out their custom PC build. The overall goal was a PC that split gaming/productivity near 60/40. That means graphics that make a game enjoyable while still having enough horsepower to do some respectable computing. Unfortunately due to a shipping error the case didn’t arrive with all the other components but I have a spare steel case to assemble and configure new builds. Either way, here’s some pictures.

For the motherboard we went with one of my favorite brands Gigabyte. Specifically the GA-EP45-UD3P it rocks the Intel P45 Chipset and looks pretty damn cute.

Twitter.

I like Twitter. It’s a fun way to say nothing a lot and a whole lot of nothing. Occasionally it’s a useful way to mass update people and connect with people at large. I’m trying to find better ways of using twitter and here’s some things I like and use.

Fuck Sweden.

I never thought I would have any beef with Sweden. In the face of pressure though, it looks like they’re just cocksuckers like all the other countries. Stockholm fucking asshole judges hand out guilty verdicts and one-year prison sentences to four men accused of running and financing the popular site The Pirate Bay. Motherfuckers. I followed this trial the entire time. Reading the twitter updates of bumbling persecutors (don’t deserve to be called prosecuters), the reduction of charges to half of what they were originally, the prosecution themselves having trouble explaining why a torrent is as bad as a file hosting site.

OnLive.

PC gaming is really the only place for people who actually like video games. If you sometimes like video games, grab a console. Once you realize that you’re in for life or sometime near life, upgrade to PC gaming and you’ll never look back. The only reason that people should ever consider a console over a gaming rig is for the sake of simplicity. Any PC builder will tell you when game specs start changing there are loads of customers who either need help upgrading, or have upgraded and are disappointed that they still can’t play the latest games. Crysis did this to so many of my customers I still can’t play that game without getting a little mad at CryTek.

Downed Websites.

Every once in a while people will call or e-mail me with general computer questions. There are a few that tend to pop up more than others so I tend to have a quick fix handy. There are even more that just need a simple diagnostic tool and usually people can figure out the issue on their own. In the spirit of having more people aware of valuable tools on the internet I bring to your attention:

Headless Server.

What do you do when the hinge on your old Dell go out? Off with its head!

I got this laptop through a donation a while ago and I cracked it open to find that the right hinge was broken. It eventually led to the plastic case getting warped so I just detached the screen. Now I connect it to my main monitor or just connect through a remote computer.

I actually had a pretty fun spy-ish idea to set it up as a LAMP server and sneak it into the wall of a building somewhere, behind a ventilator or some such area. Then just splice into a power line and internet line and have it operate as a secret computer on someone else’s network. It’d be pretty easy to deauthenticate it or block it through different means, but if I can actively maintain it I should be able to circumvent certain blocks. It’s really a thought experiment right now, and most likely I’ll just end up replacing the hinge and painting this pink and giving it to a sibling.

Still though. Hax! Hax!

Jedi Concentrate.

Linux has Compiz and Mac has Expose, and now you can get focused on your windows box.  Jedi Concentrate is a neat little app that fades out all other windows except for the main window. This is supposed to be a way to concentrate on the main windows by dimming out any distractions. From the website:

“… mimics a feature that is found in OS X called Exposé. The mac users in the chat room showed me a screen shot and I loved it. Very cool. When ‘concentrate’ mode is activated, all windows except for the current active window are smoothly faded out. The purpose is to dim everything on all of your monitors when you need to get to work. The application resides in the systry and ‘concentrate’ mode can be toggled by using any of the following hotkeys: Ctrl-/, F12, Win-J. Customizable you ask? Sure are – just download the code and modify it. 😉”

If you scroll down and read some of the comments on the website you’ll see some people got busy on modifying it pretty quickly. I actually just use two monitors and my seperately mobile stereoscopic eyes to focus,  but I realize some people might need some help.

Vista Task Manager.

I’ve gotten an easy computer question at least 5 times since Friday so I’ll just splurt the answer here. If you’re used to Ctrl+Alt+Del linking to task manager in XP but are annoyed that in Vista it links to a blue screen and have to click to Task Manager. Just switch over to the new shortcut sequence.

Ctrl+Shift+Esc

Problem Solved.

Team Fortress 2.

I bought the orange box, played Half Life 2 and it’s subsequent chapters and was happy. Then I had to put it away for finals weeks at uni. After that I had some time to actually play Portal. I became a total fan-boy for the game and still download and create custom maps and color mods. Between these two games I didn’t really play much else on the PC as I was usually pressed for time so gaming hours were allocated between those two and flash games. I had Team Fortress 2 but the first time I played it, I thought it was too frantic so I didn’t really jump on board with it.

Man was I a stupid doo doo head.

A buddy of mine picked it up recently while they had a stand alone version for around $10 and that led to our circle of friends all jumping on board. We’ve been burning the image in our eyes with how much we’ve been playing and it’s a great time. Seriously, if you haven’t played it yet go jump on board. Read about it, find a demo, just get online. 

As of now I’m working on getting a dedicated server up. I’ve had a lot of luck using the Half Life dedicated servers under windows so I’m confident vista will cooperate and I’ll be able to post server info up for you blog readers.

Take home point from all this: Sorry I haven’t put up anything recent/worthwhile in a few days. I’m gaming.

 

My Steam Profile.

Gorillaface.

Recently I finished up helping a friend with his first computer build. This is a guy who by and large was a big fan of having things pre-assembled and didn’t have any experience with the hands on approach to computers. By the end of it though, he was definitely running diagnostics on his video card for overclocking and reading everything he could to start working on overclocking his processor. Another great testimonial both about the pride of having a custom rig, and handpicking components. We originally were looking at bundles for the savings, but in the end the performance drop was too much to take for the amount of money he was looking to spend. 

I’ll try to get some words out of him to shove up and the blog and see if he’ll do a quick photoshoot with his machine. Take my advice now though, build your next computer and learn how to maintain it. A bottleneck in getting to a more cyberpunk future is having more people comfortable with the hardware and software side of computers.

I’m not sure how many of you readers are much into computers but if you’re interested in the build details please post questions. If there’s enough interest my friend and I might co-write a post addressing your questions on why we chose what we chose or any other relevant questions.