Its been a long, long time…

It has been a long time since I last updated this site.  There are three main reasons:

1. I moved to NC and started a new job.  That has kept me busy, as you can imagine.
2. I started playing World of Warcraft again.  I played WoW 3 or 4 years back, but I stopped for a while.  Now I have a renewed interest to say the least, and that has take time away from other games and techie stuff.
3. I have been working on my new website, www.the26thdaily.com.  It is a site dedicated to WoW, specifically our guild progress, and some very specific class guides and articles.  I am also one of the main contributors to our guild website, diesirae.wowstead.com, so that keeps me busy as well.

With all of that said, I want to start paying more attention to this site again, specifically the tech and video game articles.  Since I have changed jobs, I do not have access to the same equipment as before (BigIP and Netscaler AppFW), so unfortunately those articles will not be updated.  I do plan on updating and creating other articles though, specifically related to Linux, scripting (shell, perl, ruby), and all things web.  Stay tuned for more updates soon!

Jerald

Dead Space Review

The last two months have been really good for gamers.  The PS3 finally has a contender in Little Big Planet (which is AMAZING), not to mention the release of several hyped games including Gears of War 2, Fallout 3, and Fable 2.  And then there was Dead Space.  Sure there has been a little hype, but nothing compared to the aformentioned games.  Game Stop did not hold any midnight launches for Dead Space.  They should have.  Dead Space to me is the hands-down winner of Game of the Year.  The only thing that comes close is Gears 2, but DS still wins that battle.  Anyone who knows me knows that Resident Evil 4 is my favorite game of all time, and that game is almost 4 years old, an eternity to some.  Dead Space is the first game that has even come close since RE4.  Sure there is no multi-player, no co-op, and it has its flaws, but all of that aside, this game is an instant classic IMHO.

I love the whole RE series, and I thought they were scary (at times), but I can honestly say that this is the scariest game I have ever played.  Most of the weapons are fun, I say most because there is one in particular that I do not like, but I will let you decide which weapons you do or do not like.  Either way, they are fun.  The game focuses on dismemberment, which is a fresh twist on blindly shooting at the first thing you see moving.  I have read that several people thought the story was weak…I personally loved the story!  There are several plot twists, and the ending left me wanting to play again, not to mention googling to see if I had the plot secrets figured out.

The game is not without its flaws though.  There are several parts that are frustratingly hard, and are just thrown in to mix things up.  While I don’t mind the change of pace, these parts can make you want to throw your controller.  If you can get past those parts, then you will love the rest of the game.  The other complaint that I read often is that people don’t care for the “fetch” objectives.  The majority of the games objectives are of the fetch variety, “go hear and fetch this part”, “fetch that access card so we can access the computer”, etc.  I personally do not mind these objectives, since they all directly relate to the main objective, get off of the ship alive.  A fan of the RE series will be right at home with these objectives.

If you can handle a scary game, then you should definitely give Dead Space a try, you will be impressed!  I know I was.  I know there is still one month left in 2008, but this game has GOTY written all over it.

its been a while, but I am back

I tend to post in bunches, and then unfortunately I disapear for a while, in this case a month.    It has been a busy month for me, but I will be posting this upcoming week.  Some specifics that I am looking forward to are game reviews for Fable 2, Fallout 3, Gears 2, and Dead Space.

mint.com

I was looking online for a cheap (preferably free) alternative to MS money when I came across mint.com.  My first impression was that the site was really clean and simple, very easy to use.  I did some research just to make sure they were legit, since I was giving them some financial info after all.  They have a really cool system for tracking transactions to show your spending history, as well as letting you setup some basic budgeting.  Overall I think it is a great site, and fits the bill for me when it comes to a replacement for MS money.  Best of all, its free!

Mint.com is not without its faults though.  After adding all of my bank accounts, credit cards, and investment accounts, I noticed that several accounts either do not show up, or have a $0 balance.  It appears that they are still working out some of the kinks, as the app is still pretty new.  Once all of those things get worked out, I would recommend it to anyone looking for a good personal budgeting and financial planning application.  With that said, I would still recommend you wait until they get some of the problems resolved, as the problems are really holding it back right now.  Still…give it a look, its pretty cool, really simple, and free.

www.mint.com

New Resident Evil 5 TGS Trailer(s)

A new RE5 trailer was released at TGS 2008 earlier last week. I have to admit, I am REALLY geeked about this game. I am still a little skeptical, but I am learning to trust the team at capcom. I was really skeptical about RE4 as well, and that turned out to be one of the best games of all time. I have some concerns about the open sunny atmosphere in Africa, as well as the fact that you have a second person (Sheva) with you almost the entire game, at least that’s how it looks in the trailer. I really hope you do not have to worry about baby-sitting her the entire game. There is actually another trailer floating around out there from TGS (aside from the official one that I posted), but it was shot with a hand-cam and the sound quality is not that good. Even still, it is an awesome trailer that is almost 5 minutes long, showing more of everyone’s favorite villain (Wesker). I still have some concerns, but these latest trailers have me more excited than concerned. Friday the 13th can’t come fast enough!

more about “New Resident Evil 5 TGS Trailer(s)“, posted with vodpod

 

all IT meeting

Yesterday we had our all IT meeting at the Troy Community Center.  It was pretty cool, because during the first hour (and the 15 minute break) we played Guitar Hero 3.  It was a little different playing in front of a lot of people (I am going to guess around 75).  I screwed up a bunch, and was no match for some of the other guys I worked with, who were playing on Hard and Expert, including the VP I work for who killed it on Hard, which was suprising.  I can 100% everything on Medium, but forget Hard, I am not there yet.  It was definitely a lot of fun though, and I think it was a fun way to start off our meeting.

compiz widget layer

One more post about my Ubuntu desktop.  I started using the compiz widget layer, which is pretty cool.  I like to keep my desktop pretty clean, and while I like widgets, I dont want them cluttering my desktop.  The compiz widget layer solves all of those problems.  I can pull up the widget layer by pressing F9.  Check out the pic below.

more of my new Ubuntu desktop setup

I was planning on posting a movie of my desktop, but for some reason I am getting horrible performance out of istanbul.  Apparently it is a common issue for people who have ATI GPU’s, or at least that is the impression that I get from the forums.  Instead I decided to post a few screenshots of my desktop, with some details.  Here you go!

Here is my desktop.  First off, the hardware.  I have a IBM thinkpad T60p with a Intel T2500 dual core proc, memory is at 2GB, and an ATI FireGL 5200 mobility.  This is my work laptop, and it is pretty much the bottom of the barrel IMHO.  Currently they are handing out IBM T61 laptops, which have a widescreen, which I really want.  For now my T60p does a good enough job.  Now for the software.  I am running Ubuntu 8.04 with the fglrx drivers and XGL.  I am also running compiz-fusion, awt, screenlets, and tilda.  In the screenshot above you can see the awt dock at the bottom of the page, and the tilda terminal which slides out from the right side of my desktop when I hit F12.

Here is a picture of the desktop cube, one of the more commonly known features of compiz.

my visio replacement for linux!

I am so excited, I finally found a decent visio replacement!  I am sure that many Linux users would agree with me when I say that the one thing that you need windows for is visio.  To date there is no perfect solution for us non-windows users.  Today I had to draw up a presentation, and I was stuck because I did not have any windows boxes around.  After fumbling around online, I came across an app that supposedly can decompress visio VSS files.  I messed with that for 5 minutes, but had no luck, and I didn’t really have the patience to make it work, so I decided to start googling again.  This time I came across gliffy.  I had never heard of it, but it looked promising, not to mention it is all web-based!  It was super easy to use, free, and can export files as jpeg, png, and svg.  The default templates were really good, and it worked surprisingly well for a web app!  One of the coolest features is that you can search for images online and drag them into your drawing.  You can also upload your own images.  The only downside is that you can only do 5 drawings per month.  That is fine for me, but others who require more can drop $5/month for full access.  If your a linux user like me, and hate having to go back to windows for visio, check out www.gliffy.com.

Here is an example of a simple drawing that I made:

A simple drawing created with gliffy.

my new Ubuntu setup

So in a previous post I talked about how I wanted to go to openSuse 11, but after some problems I ended up just going back to Ubuntu.  There is something to be said for things “just working”.  I am actually pretty proud of my setup, now that everything is working.  I am going to post a movie of my desktop once I am done, but here is what I am using:

Ubuntu 8.04 + fglrx + xgl + compiz-fusion

hydroxygen icons + awn w/stacks + Ubuntu Studio icons and wallpaper + tilda

It actually looks really awesome.  Here is a preview: