Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Final Fantasy is pretty much dead

Just a little rant this time, about one of my favorite video game series, well, pretty much ever. The Final Fantasy series seems to be lacking nowadays in everything they used to bring to the table. The decline seemed to start with XII, even that game wasn't really bad. Overall I found FFXII to be pretty enjoyable, albeit a much less satisfying experience than the previous non MMO or sequel title, FFX. XII lacked any sort of story that you could find yourself relating to, a quality that had sparked my interest in RPG's in general. Now, looking at the newer titles such as XIII and the disaster that is FFXIV, I realise that the series is on its last limb.

Thats all I can bear to say about that for now, but I plan on posting a bit more soon. I've been busy with all sorts of ventures, and my blog has been suffering because of it. Thanks for all the support of my readers, I hope you continue to read the stupid stuff I have to say, and I apologise for the neglect that is obvious In my blog currently.

peace

Friday, June 10, 2011

Yet again, another PC speed solution

I thought I'd share another little piece of free software that I think everybody should be using: Defraggler. I myself run this program multiple times a day to prevent my harddrive from becoming anywhere near fragmented (however you should note, I'm pretty anal about my computer, and you by no means need to run it that much).

An extremely common reason that a computer slows down is having a hard drive that is highly fragmented. To put in somebody else's words that I just found on google:

A fragment is a piece. If you drop a vase on a concrete floor, you get fragmentation of the vase. Lots of little pieces. Which is pretty much what your data looks like on your hard drive after you've been using it for a few months. Ever try to stick all the little pieces of a smashed vase together again? Well, that's kinda what your computer has to do to get that file that you just tried to open. It's first got to find all those little pieces and stick them all together again, and then present this stuck together file to you.

(Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/2207685)

Its obvious why that would cause your computer to run waaay slower than it really should. What Defraggler does, is take all your files, and puts them back together with all the other similar fragments, effectively getting rid of the fragmentation. You can set Defraggler up to automatically do this as frequently, and as thoroughly as you want, without ever having to worry about it. This is another one of those programs that's user friendly enough for a computer illiterate, while offering a variety of options that will satisfy even the most tech savvy.

There is a program in windows that will automatically defrag your drives for you, but honestly its not very good. Defraggler works faster, works harder, all while getting the job done better. And, well, its free.

More blogs coming soon, keep the comments and follows coming! 


peace

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Random post out of boredom

Currently listening to: 1991 by crystal castles. Just a little gem I'm not sure how I missed on my many listens of this album. And I'm loving the how ubuntu's main form of media is FLAC. Bigger files, but lossless audio is pretty awesome, and I recommend you check it out if you haven't already.

I'm currently watching Sony's press release from E3, so expect me to get bitchy about it in the next 24 hours or so. From what I've heard, Nintendo is about to get it pretty bad, but I guess we'll see when the time comes.

peace

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

E3 2011 (Microsoft) Opinion

 
Well I finally had some extra time to sit down and watch E3 ( I know, I'm like 3 days late on the E3 blog posts). The only part I got to watch completely so far was Xbox's kind of embarrassing last attempt to stay alive. Don't get me wrong, I'm Pro-Microsoft all the way, and I'm not even really an xbox hater (although you could call me a Sony fan boy at times). But their press conference was like an hour and a half of "BUY THE GODDAMN KINNNNNNNEEEEECTTTT.... oh and more sequels!". I can't really compare their skits with terrible actors playing football, or a really boring woman playing golf, or even the creepy children doing god knows what to any of the other conferences yet, but if all 3 major companies are that lame, I will be severely dissapointed.

Now, I really didn't hate everything I saw from Microsoft. Truth be told I was really impressed by the advances they've made with the kinect. The ability to make your avatar look exactly like you, down to your clothes and hairstyle, was pretty cool, and they also impressed me by being able to scan random objects and play as them in game. The coolest thing was probably the addition of finger recognition. The guy doing the demo was drawing with his finger, except he was drawing in literally three dimensions (not just a 3d representation of a drawing), and when he made a gesture he could change the perspective of the camera slightly to see where he had drawn behind himself.


After watching all the kinect hubub, I thought to myself, "would I buy this?", and I had to say no. I've never been a big fan of motion gaming. Buttons allow you to do many more things, simultaneously. Its like the difference in playing gran turismo 5, or flailing your arms and stomping your foot at the screen. The selection of games looked a little lame as well, except for star wars. I love star wars. But really, why do we need more games like Wii Sports? Also, when the kinect was first announced, its capabilities were extremely exaggerated. I still haven't really seen anything that could recognize your emotions, or carry on a conversation, so who knows what this update is going to actually do. 

My final complaint ( I really don't hate MS this much, I just REALLY hated their press conference) is about what a new and revolutionary product the kinect is...


Remember this guy??

Yeah, the kinect is just a souped up version of the eye toy that sony made, which I'm sure sony ripped off from somebody else. Instead of having Dance Kinect, you had DDR where you could wave your arms and look like even more of a moron than if you were just playing DDR. OK, I'm done bitching now... Instead of just listening to me, you can check the conference out for yourself, streaming here: Microsoft E3 2011 Press Conference Video


Sorry for all the delays:

Hey guys, I'm quite sorry I haven't updated in the past couple days. Long story short, was battling with a nasty virus, and instead of denying the privileges on my system of the file in question, I accidentally denied my own privileges to do absolutely anything to the virus. Don't do that. It was a very stupid mistake caused by a rushed panic and its very annoying to have to fix. Actually, I didn't even feel like fixing it because I planned on wiping my computer anyway, so I'm now a Linux man, just for the hell of it. (sidenote: Ubuntu 11.04 is great, I used to play around with it like a year or two ago, and got bored, but this new release has kept me very satisfied). I'm figuring out a little bit more on this OS, then my blog will be 100% back up in action. Also, sorry I haven't had the time to respond to anybody who has been leaving me comments or messaging me, you guys know who you are, and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.

Peace