Tuesday, October 6, 2015

The Little Computer That Could...

AMD is having a tough time, but that means it’s a great time to buy AMD. While it is generally true that Intel processors typically offer the best performance in any bracket it is always true that AMD is the cheapest in any bracket. I use both Intel and AMD processors and they both work just fine.

I’m about to build a new system based around the A6-5400k. The A6 series directly competes with Intel’s i3 processors. This should make a great little system for testing budget gaming options and demonstrating just how cheaply you can enter the PC Gaming scene if you’re a purely console player.

This is a comparison between the A6 I chose versus an i3 that is nearly triple the price (but not triple the performance)

Parts for my new Extreme Budget PC

Hi, been busy!

Hi guys. I've been a bit busy with a few things so I haven't had a chance to blog. I had a friend once that said my ambitions exceed my abilities...and that never sit well with me so I've always striven to do and be more. The problem usually ends up being though that there are only so many hours in the day and, whether I like it or not, even I need sleep occasionally. But I've been able to make a little more time to blog so it's time to try and catchup a bit.

I have a bunch of new videos that I'm uploading, it will just take a little time to tag and properly describe them, put them into play-lists...and hopefully get them in the right order. So look for them soon and enjoy.

2000 Subscribers

When I started my YouTube gaming channel I assumed only my friends would watch it. Apparently though I was wrong and today over two thousand fellow gamers subscribe to my channel. My channel is still pretty random, just me and my friends having fun. But the best part is that through the channel I've made new friends, and I'm always happy to have more friends to game with. I hope to hear from viewers about what they like, don't like and any suggestions they have for the channel. I hope people keep enjoying the channel.

Saturday, September 12, 2015

Solid State Drives

Solid State Drives (SSDs) are great because they can store lots of data and have no moving parts. As a result you end up with a device that can retrieve information very quickly because it doesn't have to spin up and look for it the way hard disk drives do. The only limitation is that SSDs have a finite number of writes they can perform before their flash can't be written to any longer so the applications they are best for are ones that read loads of data but write very little. This is EXACTLY what most online games do being that they load data for various game areas, save their data to the cloud, and only write and save locally generally when there is a client software update (patches, oh the non-stop patches).

Watched my channel and noticed everything seems to load really fast? You've been watching SSDs in action! SSDs can make your old computer feel like new if you set the up the right way...

You can read more about it in PCWorld's article:

Denigrating Gamers

Some people enjoy denigrating gamers as they consider us a safe group to disparage now that times have changed and there is swift and immediate punishment for maligning people for their race, religion or orientation. I just view it as ugly people looking for the current group they can be ugly to without consequence.

Jimmy thinks he's funny but in reality he's just a sad vestige of an old and dying media platform.

Jimmy may not like gaming videos but the gamers he heard from were correct (however colorfully they may have made their point), our media platform is the future and his is definitely the past.

Transcoding Computer 2

Recently I’ve been running into problems with video transcoding, specifically the amount of time it takes. We’re having so much fun that I routinely shoot about 3tb of video on a given play-day, but that takes the Transcoding Computer about 24hrs+ to chew through. There have even been a few days where the hard drives were filled to overflowing, so the 4tb capacity of the Transcoding Computer just isn’t enough. Mostly the fault lies with FRAPS which creates immense files than need to be transcoded to H.264 before they can be uploaded to YouTube. So I’ve been thinking of bringing another Transcoding Computer online!

It turns out I had another PC laying around that hasn’t been doing anything lately, a Gigabyte Brix A8-5545. All I needed to do was plug-in a USB harddrive that adds 3tb of storage and it’s ready to transcode!

This should alleviate the processing backlogs that have been building up as we have fun making videos so expect more craziness and a lot more of it!

This is a video of the Brix getting put together when I bought it a year ago:

Sunday, August 30, 2015

Joe's Value Gaming PC (AMD A10, August 2015)

I’ve talked with a few guild members that are looking for suggestions for how to build extremely inexpensive gaming PCs with a heavy emphasis on "inexpensive". This is about as cheap as it gets for a gaming PC with new parts, though I am always looking for ways to go cheaper while maintaining performance. AMD Accelerated Processing Units (APUs) are excellent for gaming on the cheap. When an AMD APU is compared to discrete Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) typically the GPU will always win on performance but the APU will always win on price, if you avoid super-expensive memory.


Save your money on RAM!

Recently I was chatting with a guild member about computer upgrades and he mentioned that he was considering paying for some very expensive overclocked memory in the hopes of realizing better performance in web browsing and gaming.

Don’t buy it! Outside of a few specialize applications/configurations memory speeds usually don’t matter much. Which ones you might be asking? If you’re using an AMD APU for your graphics and don’t have a discrete graphics card then memory speeds matter because that is now your video memory also (APU’s don’t have video memory inside the processor die). You might also see a benefit on workstations that perform heavy amounts of virtualization. For browsing and gaming though save your money and go with the budget memory.

The Dollar Menu Speed Run

One thing that many people notice when they join our guild is that guild chat is often very quiet. That’s because most of the action happens in Ventrillo (voice chat). If you want to join and have the most fun with us grab your mic and download Ventrillo. The software is free and headset mics are cheap. The one I use is just a little over $20!

Often people tell me, "my mic is broken" or "I don’t have one and can’t afford one" and so on. It’s okay if you don’t feel social enough for voice chat, just be honest. For everyone else here is the cheap headset that I use, the Logitech H340. For the price it sounds great to me.

If you’ve never heard of Ventrillo and don’t know where to get the client this is the place: http://www.ventrilo.com/

Saturday, August 22, 2015

Joe's Favorite Fan Films


Have you ever thought to yourself, “Ugh, Hollywood has run out of ideas” and wished you could find something more interesting to watch? I have, all the time. Thankfully YouTube seems to be filled with fan-films that are better than much of what I see in theaters. As I discover these gems I'll be adding them to a special playlist on my channel as my guess is that the types of fan-films I enjoy other gamers will also!

I'll update it from time to time and if you come across an interesting fan-film please let me know!

Hermes arrives!

My computers are all named for Greek gods and goddesses that represented most closely the functions my computers perform. Hermes, messenger of the gods, is my new/old notebook that now joins the team so I can keep this blog a bit more updated than it has been.

If you've been watching my channel for any length of time you know I'm always looking to save money and despise Microsoft Windows (mostly due to money). So I went out and looked for the best bang for the buck I could find and here is a video of what I picked up!

For the mere $180 this computer costs it is an amazing little machine that exemplifies why I am a believer in buying refurbished items. As long as they work it doesn't matter if they're pretty!

My new little friend runs Zorin OS 9 Core 64-bit and ran flawlessly the first time Zorin ran, zero driver issues! It's an example of why I have no problems with leaving Windows behind as Microsoft goes down a road of restrictive environments, privacy intrusions, continues to be unable (unwilling?) to deal with its security shortcomings.

If you didn't already know all of the videos on my channels are all processed by a trans-coding computer that also runs Linux. I've been very happy with its performance which is why I knew I didn't want a dual-booting notebook and instead was ready for a Linux-only notebook. I can't beat the price for performance ratio it offers! Windows would run rather slowly on a machine like this, but Linux runs great!

Now you'll get to see a whole lot more blogging here courtesy of Hermes, so I hope you enjoy it and thanks for reading my little blog.

Thursday, July 23, 2015

1000 Subscribers?!

I have 1000 subscribers? I still have trouble believing it. Now I feel like a real YouTuber. Welcome everyone, it’s nice to get to show you things from my gaming worlds. I feel inspired to make a bunch more videos now. :)

Friday, July 17, 2015

SkyForge

This is a first look at a free to play MMORPG I had thought of trying. Want to give it a try with me?


Sunday, June 21, 2015

Happy Father's Day

I hope everyone is having a happy Father's Day. I was able to get in a little SWTOR time today and enjoy some dailies and a flashpoint before I have to go off and spend some time with family. I'll be back later tonight. I hope everyone is having a happy Father's Day.

Friday, June 19, 2015

SWTOR Scripted Dancing with VBScript


I play SWTOR, probably more than I should…and late at night sometimes I get some strange ideas. This time just for fun on this night I was thinking as I typed dancing emotes that it might be nice to automate them. While online games like SWTOR have rules against automated game play they typically ignore anything that doesn’t offer an unfair advantage so I’ve used scripting in other games to automate all kinds of things that were just for fun. I created a VBScript to send emote commands to my character and dance through a pre-selected sequence. In this video I demonstrate how it looks and show how I did it. Below is a complete copy of the VBScript used in this video. You can copy it to a text file, call it anything you want and save it with the extension VBS and it’s ready to go. Run it as Administrator and set focus into SWTOR and you’ll be dancing the night away, provided you have all the same emotes unlocked that I do. Of course you can customize the script to whatever emotes you prefer. Enjoy!


msgbox("running")

EmoteThis("wave")

EmoteThis("flirt")

EmoteThis("clubdance")

EmoteThis("lepihop")

EmoteThis("backflip")

EmoteThis("holohoop")

EmoteThis("clawbirdkick")

EmoteThis("angrydance")

EmoteThis("dance")

EmoteThis("clubdance")

EmoteThis("drink")

EmoteThis("kneel")

EmoteThis("flex")

EmoteThis("superflex")

EmoteThis("toetouch")

EmoteThis("yippee")

EmoteThis("doubleguns")

EmoteThis("woot")

EmoteThis("drink")

EmoteThis("backflip")

EmoteThis("introduce")

EmoteThis("flirt")

EmoteThis("holohoop")

EmoteThis("clawbirdkick")

EmoteThis("angrydance")

EmoteThis("dance")

EmoteThis("clubdance")

EmoteThis("lepihop")

EmoteThis("backflip")

EmoteThis("boogie")

EmoteThis("getdown")

EmoteThis("nobones")

EmoteThis("thrash")

EmoteThis("whatup2")

EmoteThis("traditional")

EmoteThis("clubdance")

EmoteThis("backflip")

EmoteThis("toetouch")

EmoteThis("beachparty")

EmoteThis("scratch")

EmoteThis("bottlebreak")

EmoteThis("dud")

EmoteThis("laugh")

EmoteThis("kloo")

EmoteThis("kiss")

EmoteThis("bye")

msgbox("Done")




sub EmoteThis(IncomingEmote)

    Set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")

    WScript.Sleep 20000

    WshShell.SendKeys "{DOWN}"

    WScript.Sleep 1000

    WshShell.SendKeys "{ENTER}"

    WScript.Sleep 1000

    WshShell.SendKeys "/" & IncomingEmote

    WScript.Sleep 1000

    WshShell.SendKeys "{ENTER}"   

end sub

Tuesday, June 16, 2015

Roundtable Discussion: WTF Happened to WoW?

I used to play the World of Warcraft very heavily, and nothing else. For years I didn’t buy any other games and spent all my free time in WoW. Today the game just doesn’t have the appeal it once did and millions of players have quit. WTF happened to WoW?!

Want to join me for a roundtable discussion? Via Ventrillo I’d like to have a discussion with other gamers about what they enjoyed about WoW and what they feel is missing now. Have you let your account lapse (I have)? If so, why?

Let me know if you would like to join us for this discussion which will be recorded for YouTube. Feel free to plug your channels too.

We'll see how many people are interested and then set a date for the discussion.

Sunday, June 14, 2015

Time for SWTOR at last!


Today was a busy day so I wasn’t able to game this morning, but I’m finally home so it’s time for SWTOR! My Level 60 Imperial Agent finally made it to the Begeren Colony so I’ll be playing here today as I get reacquainted with her.

Anyone that wants an invite to my Imperial guild on the Begeren Colony can whisper Hyraxia.

SWTOR Sunday, Maybe Not Today

Hi guys, normally today would be SWTOR Sunday starting at 9AM PDT. These are the Sundays when I'm in SWTOR and having fun with everyone. But today I have some errands to run so I can't play until later this afternoon. But there will be other guild members online so have fun and I'll game with you when I can.

Saturday, June 13, 2015

Alien and Prometheus Combined

I was a fan of Alien, but the confused prequel Prometheus just seemed like a cash grab. I wanted to like Prometheus because it seemed to pay attention to many little details that appealed to me, but ultimately it had no story and was just a lot of running around and screaming for no reason.

Cinema Sins summarizes perfectly why overall Prometheus just sucks.


But what if you took just the best bits from Prometheus and combined them with Alien? A film student, Job Willins, has done exactly that having taken Ridley Scott’s films and combined them into Derelict. If you enjoy the Alien franchise you may like this mashup.

To be more dramatic this mashup is entirely in black and white.




Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Steam Machines and controllers are doing well on pre-orders!

Microsoft has demonized Linux for years doing its best to frighten users away from the free operating
system and to continue to pay for their Windows operating system and its associated software. With Windows 8 Microsoft became extremely belligerent and overbearing towards video game publishers and distributors demanding to approve anything that ran on Windows 8…so Valve threatened to start producing for Linux and Microsoft dared them to try. Many Microsoft-controlled media outlets denigrated Valves choice and ran stories (likely paid-ads) against Linux and Linux gaming and tried to laugh Valve. Well today with Steam machines selling briskly months before the launch of the Steam OS (a Debian Linux fork) the idea of Linux gaming isn’t funny anymore. In fact lately Microsoft has been doing everything to hype Windows 10 to try and upstage the Steam Machines. Well, good luck with that Microsoft. Linux is coming to desktop PCs in a big way soon and you’re just going to have to take it!

http://www.pcgamer.com/35-percent-of-valves-get-it-early-hardware-preorders-are-already-sold/

Sunday, June 7, 2015

DC Saves the Galaxy! (FanFilm)

Darth Vader has captured Superman to trade to Darkseid and only Batman can save him! If you're a DC fan you'll love this...


SWTOR Sunday!

It's time for another SWTOR Sunday and today I'll be playing on the Republic side with Blue October, as long as there are guild members to game with. Lately the Imperials have been the ones to show up in the greatest numbers though. But to ensure that the Republic doesn't feel neglected I'll game with them today until they get tired of it, then it's off to the Empire!

I'll be slightly delayed logging in today so I may not be on until 9:30PDT but I'll log in as soon as I make it home.

Friday, June 5, 2015

Infinite Crisis Shutting Down August 2015

DC is just a universe of sadness, on and off the big screen.

Infinite Crisis, a MOBA which just launched at the end of March and is set in the DC universe, is now officially slated to shut down in August. Holy flops Batman, that is one of the fastest fails I’ve ever seen!



While there is no official word as to why the game is shutting down I’m going to go out on a limb (and it’s a thick sturdy limb) that the game never really managed to attract an active player base. It’s a shame because it’s not a bad game, but with all the well-established MOBA’s out there it just never managed to attract much attention.

Hopefully you didn't spend any money on this game.
If you never played Infinite Crisis this is what it looks like:

Thursday, June 4, 2015

The Gigabyte Z170X GAMING G1 is coming!

It's stuff like this why I never have any money.

This is the most amazing motherboard I’ve ever seen for gaming! By now we’re used to dual network interface cards (NICs) on gaming motherboards but this thing doubles up on everything: USB ports, dual M.2 connectors, and nothing short of SATA connector madness is going on here. And as typical for Gigabyte the motherboard has dual BIOS plus throws in a few over-clocker features. We even get an Intel USB Type-C connector

Of course as usual Gigabyte can’t resist layering all the contacts in gold so electrical conductivity...so not a problem.

Below is an interview with a Gigabyte representative who appears to let slip some very interesting news too! The Gigabyte Z170X GAMING G1 will be socket 1151 so this motherboard will only be for Intel’s upcoming Skylake series processors, but Intel hasn’t announced when those processors will be released. But the Gigabyte representative mentions that the Gigabyte Z170X GAMING G1 will be available in August, "at the same time as Skylake". Sounds like the silicon cat is out of the bag. Devil’s Canyon’s been fun, but Skylake will be here by the end of the summer!

Gigabyte seems to have done it again with a fantastic motherboard for gaming. This board screams “gamer” with its outrageous amount of connectivity options! Ugh, I can not resist awesomeness of this magnitude. I don’t care what this thing costs, I’m getting one!






Tuesday, June 2, 2015

SWTOR: Skimpy Clothes for Female Characters

I play a lot of female characters, and I like to enjoy looking at them as I play. It is simply male nature and I am a very simple male indeed. So to better appreciate my female characters I’ve made a study of finding the most revealing outfits I can within SWTOR for them. This leads to some interesting conversations on the Fleet and in flashpoints and even warzones that is mostly positive but can be occasionally negative such as, "PUT SOME CLOTHES ON!". Mostly though people whisper me asking where I find these outfits, and I get tired of typing the same answers, so I made this video guide to help everyone else find them for their female characters. Enjoy.





Monday, June 1, 2015

The GeForce GTX 980 TI is coming! (Confirmed)



I’ve been seriously considering a GeForce GTX Titan X because, reasons. But the GeForce GTX 980 TI has arrived and its performance, all dedicated to gaming, matches the Titan X in every appreciable benchmark. Playing with the 980 TI I probably wouldn’t be able to see the difference between gaming on it and the Titan X. As much as I like the idea of getting a Titan X just for the heck of it the 980 TI seems to offer all the same bang for $300+ less bucks. Looks like I’m getting a GeForce GTX 980 TI instead of a Titan X.


Friday, May 29, 2015

Kung Fury

Bored? Need something to watch at work? (You know who you are). Wonder why I like old bad movies?

Well, this movie isn't very old, but it's made in the style of the 80's movies perfectly. A time traveling renegade cop goes back in time to fight Hitler and the Nazi's...and of course for some reason there are dinosaurs.


Monday, May 25, 2015

A Quiet Day in SWTOR

Today is a quiet day in SWTOR so I’m leveling my solo character, Agent Sixtey-Nine. I need a max level character to earn credits for my little alts so she’s on a mission to Level 60 by any means necessary. I’ll be playing her solo whenever I’m not in group guild events. If anyone needs a guild invite I’m here on the Imperial side enjoying some quiet leveling.

Server: Begeren Colony
Faction: Imperial
Guild: Red October



Happy Memorial Day

I hope everyone in America enjoys a happy Memorial Day. The freedoms we enjoy were paid for with the sacrifice of our fallen heroes we remember today. Cherish this and every day they bought for you.

Sunday, May 24, 2015

It's SWTOR Sunday! Time to login for fun.

It’s time for another SWTOR Sunday! Join us for the fun. Remember we have both a Republic and an Imperial guild and we play either side at any time. For now I’m going to login and work on my smuggler unless guild members want to group up for fun on the Imperial side. If you’ve enjoyed the videos of the fun we have, join us! All nice players are welcomed.



Wednesday, May 20, 2015

The Contraband Slot Machine Saga

I had high hopes for the Contraband Slot Machine which initially had such a high payout that it seemed like a good investment to feed it all of your credits…initially. This is the ups and downs of the Contraband Slot Machine Saga:

 
 
 

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

SWTOR: Voidstar Warzone (Blue October)

While waiting for other players to join us HopScotchTerror and I jump into a warzone and find ourselves on the infamous Voidstar! Will it be a day running for our lives or a day the Empire will long remember? Find out!



In this video I make reference to "The Charge of the Light Brigade", a poem. If you would like to read the poem yourself you can find it at:


If you would like to read more about the history of  the event that inspired the poem you can find information at:

You can never miss a dancing Chiss...

Female Chiss wearing as little as possible with a type 4 body are by far my favorite SWTOR characters.

What is your favorite type of character?

Monday, May 18, 2015

SWTOR: Character Transfers Down


Things have been great fun on the Begeren Colony over the last month and I’ve decided to go ahead and move everything there. So I’m transferring another character, loaded with everything I can stuff into her cargo bays, so I can finally wave goodbye to the Harbinger forever. But it’s never quite that easy of course.

Currently the Server Transfer service is down and there seems to be little if any information as to why much less any estimate of when it might come back. Ugh, why BioWare, why?!

You can read all about it in the SWTOR forums:


http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=812731

While I wait for the Server Transfer service to become available again I’ve been trying to clean out the credit balances, crafting materials, unsold Cartel gear/items from all of my characters throughout the Harbinger server, but I’ve had to deal with server outages.

I'm hoping to be able to finish up my preparations to leave, eventually...

WoW Selfie Scavenger Hunt

Blizzard Entertainment has sunk to a new low with the WoW Selfie Scavenger Hunt. After losing nearly 3 million subscribers in just 3 months they seem to desperately want to try and drive buzz about WoW.

Please don't quit WoW...PLEASE! You might win a prize. Probably not...but maybe!

Personally I’ve already let my account lapse and this contest arouses zero interest for me. But it is funny to see…



To learn more about this contest click:
https://blizzard.wishpond.com/photo-contest/

Sunday, May 17, 2015

It's SWTOR Game Day!

I'm online right now having fun in SWTOR on the Begeren Colony. Join us for the fun!


Thursday, May 14, 2015

Dual-GPUs

Hi guys, sorry it’s been an intense week and I haven’t had much time to post. I’m going to try to catch up this weekend.

This week I received a question from a YouTube viewer: What are your thoughts on duel grpahic cards?



Dual graphics cards running in SLI/Crossfire work great if the programs you want to use them with are optimized to take advantage of multi-GPU configurations. If they aren’t optimized then the second card just sits there and doesn’t do much of anything. To avoid worrying about which games will or will not support multi-GPUs I personally prefer a single powerful GPU that I’ll be able to use 100% of all the time.

Some people will buy two cheap GPUs and put them together hoping to achieve equivalent performance of a more powerful GPU for a cheaper cost, but this depends (and varies) entirely on the program/game you’re running. For the money I prefer a safe bet that I get all the processing power all the time so I still game with a single GPU.

 (This is me unboxing my current GPU)

Wednesday, May 6, 2015


I wanted to validate that an AMD APU-based gaming PC was the best value. Unfortunately it seems they aren’t and a discrete GPU-based gaming PC can do more for the same amount of money.

This is my build based on an NVidia GeForce GPU. What I like most about discrete GPUs is that it’s a common misconception that you have to buy a new PC every few years to continue gaming. In reality simply switching out your GPU every few years can often bring an old PC back to life.

The real limiting factor on an aging custom PC is usually the motherboard’s expansion slots. Once their interfaces are obsolete then newer and faster GPUs are not made for them. But until new slots come into wide use and only computer can be upgraded to keep up with advances in graphics technology.

Building an AMD APU Gaming PC

To play PC games you of course need a PC. I’m a strong proponent of building your own gaming PC because you get more choice about what goes into it, you avoid the PC assembler’s mark-up cost, and you end up with an upgradable computer you can use for years to come.

This is my PC build list for an AMD A10-based system. This PC is fine for entry-level gaming.



Welcome to my blog.

 I had started with a page on Facebook to share gaming information and invite people to some of the fun I was having, but that page is only visible if you login to Facebook. I kept hearing from people that wanted to read the page but didn’t want to sign up with Facebook to see it. I can’t really blame them being keenly aware of what Facebook does with any personal information they get. So I started this blog so that anyone can read my posts anonymously without having to sign in to anything.


This blog is about PC video games and technologies used for gaming. Random news, editorials and anything else gaming-related might pop up here too from time to time on no particular schedule.

I hope something here is interesting to someone. :)

Sunday, May 3, 2015

Want to play Borderlands 2 with me?

Borderlands 2 is a great game that I’ve enjoyed solo but always wanted to try with a group. Want to play with me? You need to have an account on Steam and have Borderlands 2 purchased on your account and you can join the team and game with me.