Thursday, June 30, 2011

Long Update

Hello!

Its been a little while, so I'll just hop right into some updates. :)

In tech related news, a few weekends ago I purchased an EVGA GTX 560 Ti Super Clocked GPU.
And all I can say is that its awesome. :D
I can play all my games at the highest levels of detail with little or no frame rate drop, I've tested most of my GPU intensive games and it works wonders compared to my 9800 GTX+.
One note I will mention is that the card itself is quite warm (probably because either the type of cooler used or because its factory overclocked to 900 mhz. But I have the fan speed fixed at 50%, so most likely that is the cause, usually I dial it up in more intensive applications. So far I am pleased with its performance and hope that it doesn't break. :)

As for school goes, same old same old. Just plugging along till summer semester ends and then I get a few weeks for a break and then its fall semester.

As for games go, I am excited seeing that Steam is having many games for super cheap, so I just got Garry's mod and Terraria, and probably will get more (I'm kind of a sucker for deals on PC games, my kind of shopping. XD).

Other than that a few weeks ago I went camping and it was refreshing, though some of the time it was foggy, then super hot, then cooler, then rainy, then lastly at one of our stops on our way home it was very cold. All around good trip, just waiting in anticipation for fall camping.

Also another interesting tidbit is that today at the firestation by our house, one of the transformer trucks was parked in the parking lot! Actually interestingly enough I met the guy who designed that particular transformer for the movie, and appartently he lives right in our town. Kind of random and cool at the same time, made sure though to get some pics.

That pretty much describes what I have been doing this month in June, and I think I covered most of the main events, so until next time!

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Summer School Anyone?....

Noooo, the dreaded summer school, well summer semester starts soon. Either I'm taking math or math, so it really doesn't matter. Its one of the last couple classes I need to take, then I can get my degree. (Yay!)

Just a realization but this blog seems to be hugely based (if not entirely) on tech related things in my life, but in the future I want to expand it to other things so it doesn't sound so... well.... you get the idea. :( 

In other news, I'm in the process of building myself a website (so much for a subject change...). The first version will be mostly for function (probably mostly static pages), and then later updates/versions will be more advanced. It will link to this blog as well. :)
I'm still in the process of figuring out what types of content to add to it. Mostly right now I'm making some abstract graphics for the banners and the backgrounds.

Anyways to get to some stuff unrelated to tech (finally), the weather lately has been wonderful (other than some storms), and summer is just coming around the corner. I'm looking forward to camping this summer up at the North Shore at the Tettegouche campground, hopefully this year I'll catch some fish. (last year was a total bust for fishing.)

Until next time!

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Light at the end of the tunnel...

Finally Spring Semester is done! (well, pretty much...)

I just presented a huge project on Tuesday, and tomorrow I have another class at the college.
For my project, I'm 99% complete, just need to submit my last assignment, write a quick class evaluation, and finish a little documentation. Then its a week or two and then I start summer semester. :(

For the record, I've starved myself of video games (and friends :)) for a while so that I could focus on this project. So I have broken out some of the newer games I had purchased. I've been avidly playing NFS: Hot Pursuit, I love playing Interceptor and Hot Pursuit missions. I feel like I should take it to the streets and "encourage" those breaking the law to pull over. But I'm sure the local police department will not agree with my enthusiastic endeavors.

Also I'm trying to figure out if I should upgrade my videocard (well more like which card I should get), buy FRAPS, or both (or none).
I've been looking on the Nvidia side of things the GTX 560 ti, GTX 570 (a bit too pricey for ATM, but I'm considering it).
For the AMD side 6870 and the 6950.

In short, I my current gpu is a EVGA 9800 GTX+, I would like to get a video card that will be a considerable upgrade from what I have so I can play more graphical games at higher settings. So I've been just doing a bit of price/performance comparision shopping to see my choices. I am more of an Nvidia fan, and I'm more partial to getting an EVGA card. But if the better choice is to go AMD, then I might just go with AMD.

Otherwise, everything else is blah. I installed unregistered FRAPS on my desktop to test it out.
Basically with the unregistered version you can only record 30 second intervals, and there is a small watermark on the top. But what I like about it is that in some of the other unregistered video capture programs I've tried is that it doesn't shrink the screen size of the output file. Some of the others had the time limit and they would cut the screen size down to 25% of the screen.
So in the near future I'll have the full version of FRAPS so that I can capture some cool or random gaming moments. So far I've just tested it on Minecraft, so I'm excited to see how it will look when recording other games.

Anyways, thats all for now!

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

School = Blargh

Not much has been going on, because of college. :(
I've been at the college pretty much full-time trying to wrap up a huge project that we (I'm in a group) present on Tuesday, May 10th; I don't feel ready for it.
Also I'm wrapping up a Javascript class next week, so after that I'll have some much needed relief from school, until the summer semester starts.
With my current situation, I haven't had time to do any gaming. I've played some Minecraft and some other games briefly, but not to regularly.
My cousin just gifted me a copy of Civilization III on Steam (big thanks!). I have an original copy of the game on disc, but nonetheless I like the game on Steam in case I lose the disc.
Also yesterday I bought three need for speed games: Shift, Undercover, and Hot Pursuit. On Steam they are having a special EA week, so I broke down and bought all three for about $24.
I always get suckered into these deals. XD
But probably I'll have some time next week to play, after finals and projects.


See ya next time!

PS: Also looking forward to Minecraft Beta 1.6, though it won't be out for a little while

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Portal 2

I just finished playing Portal 2, completing it at about 1:30 am this morning, and it was worth it.
I don't want to spoil any of the game, so all I have to say is I really like the game. I hope that in the future some DLC becomes available for it.
If you haven't played it yet, I definitely recommend it.

Now hopefully this weekend I will play through the co-op mode with some friends and see how that goes.
In conclusion, I really enjoyed the game, now I need to beat the challenges on Batman: AA (I have over 90% completion), so that should keep me busy along with playing on our private server on Minecraft.

(Also there's finals....)

Monday, April 18, 2011

Portal 2 Release

Just a quick update, I ordered Portal 2 early this morning and now I'm waiting for the release!
Right now its finishing installing the last bits to activate the game.
I'll post my review tomorrow. :)

Thursday, April 14, 2011

My Desktop Rig Specs

I was going to post this a while ago, but here they are:

CPU: Core2Quad 9650 3.0 Ghz (stock clocks)
Motherboard: EVGA 780i SLI FTW
CPU Heatsink: CoolerMaster V8
Ram: G-Skill DDR2 (forget exact model :/)
GPU: EVGA 9800 GTX+ (stock clocks)
PSU: Corsair 750w TX
Chassis: Antec 1200
HDD: combined -650gb

I had the cpu at a slight overclock of 3.3ghz, but removed them just because, also to note it has been stable @ 3.7 ghz, but again removed it because it wasn't really necessary. Same with any overclocks on the GPU, probably at this point it would be better to invest in a better GPU.

That's all for now!

Blaze