Archive for the 'General Stuff' Category

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The hardest part

…is coming back and posting again. I took a long vacation from the blog and other activities, but I’m inclined to get back to my roots and do what I love doing.

When Chad and I decided to work on our game engine, we made a big mistake. We thought, “lets drop all our other projects so nothing gets in our way!”. Bad move. Dropping all our other projects just made the game engine a chore and we lost touch with what we enjoyed most… having fun :)

I’m cooking up some cool stuff… more on that soon to come.

Tips and tricks for fucking

So, I guess that’s what I have on my blog… I never knew. Thanks guys.

blog search results

Stuff Specs

At random intervals I have people ask me “hey whats your <some-item-here>?”. Not all the time, but it happens… anything from video card to mouse or whatever. I figured this could be a good place to sorta lay it all out and explain why I use what I use.

Keyboard


keyboard
My keyboard is a Logitech G11. At the time I purchased it, the G15 was already available but I didn’t see the need for the LCD display. I liked the idea but I felt it was a waste of money as I would rarely use it. I picked the G11 over other keyboards because after reading many consumer reviews, the back lit keys seems to be the most dependable and had the best visibility. I do most of my work on the computer in limited light situations and this was an ideal feature. Plus it had media keys and a toggle that disables the Windows Key, which always seems to get pressed during the most intense part of a gaming experience.

Mouse & Pad

mouse + mousepadSimple mouse is simple. Its a Microsoft IntelliMouse Optical USB. This was an easy pick. Wired = check. Scroll wheel = check. Mouse 4 & 5 = check. Optical = check. Cheap = check. Bingo.

As for the mouse pad (Rocketfish Gaming Mouse pad) I chose this because of the dual surfaces and the large size. I do not like material mouse pads, I strongly encourage metal pads and always have (well as long as they’ve existed). Material is so undependable and doesn’t have any continuity across several passes. I’ve always had more precise aim in games with metal pads.

Tablet

tabletI don’t have the biggest or the best tablet in the world, but it totally fits my requirements. Its a WACOM Bamboo Fun. Great price for a great starter tablet.

I use it pretty frequently and I very rarely run into occasions where I would need anything bigger. Sometimes for detailed areas the small tablet makes your hand cramp up because you’re trying to use such little movements.

Display

dual monitorsDual monitors… a fucking must. If you don’t run dual monitors you have no idea what you’re missing!

I have a 22″ widescreen as my primary and a 20″ 4:3 secondary. Not much more I can say about that, except I wish the Windows 7 Smartbar would extend across both of them! :(

Sound System

headset speakers amp bass speaker
My sound system is a bit tricky. I split the audio and feed one line to my speakers and the other line to my headset. The speakers are a 5.1 surround sound setup designed for a home theater running off a mini JBL amp. Having the center speaker close to me and the sub near my feet adds to a great gaming experience. Gunshots sound like their in my face and I can feel the rumble of bombs in the distance.

And speaking of feeling… my headset has force feedback too. The eDimensional Audio FX is not only a great sounded headset with a great mic… but it has rumble ability. So not only do you hear a gunshot from the left, but you feel it over there too.

System

computer towerI’m Running Windows 7 Ultimate on a ASUS P5N-E SLI motherboard married with an Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 Conroe 2.13GHz. I have 3 Gigs of OCZ Platinum DDR2 SDRAM and a EVGA GeForce 8800GTS 640MB video card. My ATX case and all peripherals are black, except for tray of my DVD burner. I use the onboard ethernet and audio which work perfectly. I have 3 hard drives, one is a high performance Raptor drive which I run my OS off, the other 2 are SATA 3.0Gb/s for a grand total of 450 Gigs… which isn’t all that much but it works for now.

Misc Stuff

misc computer stuffI plug so much shit in I had to recently get a USB Hub, which is a Rosewill 7 Port Hub, it can be self powered but I’m using so much juice I had to use the wall adapter. I also have an adapter to use my wireless Xbox 360 controller on my PC which is mainly for adding support to our game engine.

Phone

G1 closed G1 open
I have a T-Mobile G1 Google phone running the Android OS. I love this phone! Its my computer away from my computer. With a full web browser, YouTube viewer and countless+endless applications to get from the Android Market; it does everything I need and more. I recently downloaded an application that allows me to control my music on my PC from my phone, and even stream the music from my PC to the phone. It even has the ability to use the touchscreen to move your mouse and the keyboard to type on screen. Sometimes I lay down on my bed and control my PC from there… lazy fucker aint I?

I use it to Twitter all day long, chat, send/read emails, play games on the shitter and even take pictures. All the pictures you see in this post were taken with it… even the pictures of the phone itself.

In closing…

I don’t have the best of the best of anything… I do that on purpose. You save a fortune if you find the top of the line and then buy one below that, which is what I tend to do. Some of my stuff needs an upgrade but right now it runs any app and plays any game I want at awesome settings so I have no real reason to upgrade… yet.

I think I covered just about everything… if you guys have any more questions ask in the comments and I’ll try to answer them.

Disneyland…

This is my son Aidan’s yearly passport for Disneyland. Boy does he look excited!

Disneyland

He actually loves the place, just doesn’t like getting his picture taken. Oh well, these are the memories we’ll cherish. My wife took him there for the day because tomorrow he’s got to get his tonsils and adenoids removed, poor kid :(

New coffee mug

So… you may have seen a post where I briefly introduced Mr. Frosty my coffee mug. Like I said in the post; I don’t drink much coffee. I stick to green tea most of the time. On occasion I’ll have a cup of coffee and I use Mr. Frosty…

…only problem is… I’ve discovered you can’t microwave the cup. I normally drink the coffee almost immediately, but today I brewed a cup and forgot about it. When I put it in the microwave HOLY FUCKING ELECTROCUTING SHITBALLS OF FIRE!! I’ve known you can’t put it in the dishwasher, but now you can’t even put it in the fucking microwave?!? So its a coffee cup you can’t wash or put in the microwave. That’s like a car you can’t sit in or drive. Fucking hell. Mr. Frosty has been replaced:

New coffee mug

Introducing Tigger :D

I retired Mr. Frosty to a pencil holder in my garage. Sweet merciful crap.

What the absolute flying fuck

Another useless and non-informative blog update… but totally awesome. Please tell me what the hell the idea behind this amazingly epic video is?

I expect an explanation in the comments…

Just… fucking… wow…

Browsing the intertubes, I came across this… and it made me jizz in my pants. Its a near clone of Adobe Photoshop created in Flash. Layers, filters, adjustments… wow.

Hope someone else finds this as useful as I do.

Super excited

Working on the game engine has really got me pumped up lately. Yesterday I accomplished something I had previously thought I wouldn’t be able to do. When I finally did it I was so excited I couldn’t even sleep. I had to force myself to sleep before work but only ended up getting 3 hours of sleep.

I’ve always followed various Indie game developers, but lately reading their blogs and updates has meant a lot more to me. Instead of reading them and feeling like “I wish I could do that” I’m more inspired by it and excited to see what people manage to do.

Also, anyone know of a good antivirus that works well in Windows 7? My old one doesn’t want to update its virus definitions, seems jacked up by the new OS. Need something that doesn’t suck… willing to pay. (heh, most people are willing to pay for something that does suck… know what I mean? Wink, wink, nudge, nudge…? Termy’s mom? Ed’s mom… and dad)

Derailed!

I’ve been so fucking derailed from my normal tasks lately. The other day I was browsing an old website backup and I found the LuaBin folder.. which totally made me laugh. That thing worked well but was wrote like shit. Since it disappeared I’ve had a few (well more like several) people ask me what happened to it. I didn’t pay much attention to the subject until I found the code and realized how much better I could have made it. And so began my week long derail.

LuaBin has been revived. I rewrote it from scratch and restored the snippets I had in the backup. I went for a clean and easy interface and maximized the syntax highlighter. I still use Geshi but I’ve utilized it to its full potential and extended the keywords…

Oh…! I have to derail this blog about being derailed with a short derail: Is it just me or are some people complete fuck-faces and overuse the vote kicking in Left 4 Dead? I joined a verses server the other day on the infected team and spawned as a hunter at the start of No Mercy. The survivors ran down the stairs (of course) and I jumped down the glass sunroof. They encountered the other infected and killed them all. So this one douche is like:

WHAT ARE YOU DOING FOSZOR? ATTACK THEM! ATTACK THEM NOW!

So I’m trying to get to them but they’ve shut a few doors so I have to beat them down. What happens? I get vote kicked! They didn’t even give me time to explain the fact that they were stupid cunts… err… I mean that I was stuck behind some doors and wanted to maul their faces off like a pet chimp… err… was trying trying to get to the action. I could have explained myself quicker but my mic was broken…

Oh…! Time to derail this short derail with a different derail: So the other day my mic just randomly stopped working… I can’t figure out what happened. I tried messing with my system settings but I’m pretty sure its a problem with the mic itself because of the weird feedback I get and I tried my DJ mic and it worked fine. Fucking hell! So I went to order an identical headset (because I heart mine so much) only to realize the god damn things are still almost $100! WHRY!! They were $100 like four years ago. How can they still be that much? I mean I got these for free as a promo gift but still…

Battlefield HeroesOh…! This is a short derail to the previous derail: Speaking of free, have you guys tried the new Battlefield Heroes beta? They said they focused on the backend but its still pretty crappy at the moment. The game itself works decent. I mean I get a black screen when I join a game 50% of the time, and the matchmaking is worse than the Left 4 Dead system… but for a beta its cool. Seems like no one wants to be Royal Army and everyone is a National.

To sum it all up:

LuaBin == done
L4D players == idiots
mic == broke :(
BFH == cool + needs work
me == brack to wok on gadget

</derail>

Fucking shit

I still have Windows XP running on my laptop that I keep in my garage. One thing I hate about Windows is how it FORCES you to do things you DO NOT WANT TO DO:

force update

Media unrelated:

Problem