It’s not quite 8pm. I worked from home today because the kids were here for most of my workday. We had gone up to VT this weekend for my Mom’s birthday party. It was a mixed bag but I was a mess. My Mom apparently didn’t give anyone a heads-up so it was reintroducing myself a few times and having her do it fairly graciously (for her) a few. It was tough regardless and saw what I thought I expected a few times where it was not. One of my aunts who I completely expected to snub me did, but…
Logic: Power Series vs Pro Series
When I’m stressed, I hit the nicotine. I’ve never been a smoker since my lungs can’t stand it. I’ve also used snus on occation but the potential mouth/tooth rot potential for it scares me. I won’t say vaporizing is harmless, as cigarettes were harmless for a long long time. Perhaps sometime in the future we’ll find all the propolol-glycol we were putting into our lungs had a hidden impact. Out of all the ways to get a bit of calm-down in the day I feel it’s one of the least harmful.
Fallout 4 Season Pass 15% Off
PC Gamer has some pretty good deals this week: I thought the The Fallout 4 Season Pass was a pretty good deal, but I am still protesting DLCs so only when they’re really really good. It only recently came out and they announced the details last week? a.) Most people have not finished it yet. b.) Step 3.
Benchmarking Rumble! The 780ti 3G vs the 980ti 6G — both EVGA Classifies, who will win???
Ok, so we know who will win card on card, but what about in SLI? The extra memory is going to make scaling possible, rendering at much higher resolutions (4k? 5k?) and then scaling down for the display resolution of the monitor. Since my monitor was one of the earlier 120hz ones, I’m stuck with 1920 x 1080 but the 2 780ti in SLI have been MORE than enough, except… in VRAM. I am only now feeling the pinch with the draw distance of GTA V being the first indication. I regularly get upwards of 100fps with games cranked, and…
EBAY: USED 2 x EVGA 780ti Classified – 03G-P4-2888-KR
Yes that’s right, 2 780ti Classified cards by the best video card manufacturer! I’m currently selling the 2 of them in separate options up on ebay. Care to take a look? http://www.ebay.com/itm/-/172004536616? http://www.ebay.com/itm/-/172004540448? 5 and 7 days respectively, please share! ** update 2015.1123 ** Current Status: Both cards are up to about $200 currently — 1 day 1 hour left on one, 3 days on the other:
Contest! 4 Days Of WIN! Today: Win $10 Off @ LooneyLabs!
4 DAYS LEFT!! The countdown has begun, check back with us every day until 0 hour to win something cool! The heat is on… 4 days until you can watch all the fun happen in real time. You can connect with us on our G+ page. Join the hangout the night of and chat away! The action will all be streaming on twitch.tv\serinitism Now that the business is out of the way, how would you like to win a $10 gift certificate to Looney Labs? You can! Everyone who donates in the next 24 hours (starting 11/4/2015 9:15PM EST) will…
Musical Conundrum
I really want to buy these two albums. I want the artists to get one more purchase and show that I enjoy their work. Both of these albums are free to listen to with Amazon Prime. I don’t normally listen to anything not streaming. I listen to the music I own, but usually when purchasing I don’t even open them. I put them on the shelf (or I purchase LP and store it). I am purchasing with gift card credits but still… I can use that $20 for something else. What to do?? How about you buy them! Echosmith is…
Western Ma School Budget Meeting (live)
So I am here at the budget meeting for my kid, his school, his education. I didn’t quite know why I was here at first, as more people testify I understand what it is all about. They are looking to reestablish the baseline budget and how they evaluate how much a given school system needs to properly educate children. Budget for ESL kids, asked to double services, budget model has not changed. State allowed preschool education but based on previous year enrollment. So first year leaves gap. 11:42 Springfield: Foundation budget established in 1993. Extended services based on lvl4 recommendations…
Cyberlink MediaEspresso v7 is a CROCK!
JUNK! First I was unable to convert to h265 and then it can’t read my FRAPs recorded videos?!! For FSM sake, even Microsoft Movie Maker can read them. So lame. They call it “next gen” and “easy to use tool” Media Espresso v7 which is $39.99 “retail price” but it was so conveniently included with my $70 Cyberlink Power DVD v14.
Upgrade Time
This is a developing article, stay tuned for more details. Current System AMD @ 4.1ghz 4 core, 8 thread, 8G DDR3 Dual Channel 1600 New System Intel i7 @ 3.2ghz (4hz turbo) 4 core, 8 thread, 32 G DDR3 Dual Channel 2400 The video card will stay the same, so lets see how the base bits impact performance!
Superpoints
You know those things that promise rewards for basic things like surveys or offers? I found a legit one, for reals. You’ve got all that plus a wheel like thing you can try 10 times a day. So far I have gotten a ton of points, $10 amazon gift card and $25 target card, and that’s just off the wheel alone. Give it a shot, sign up, spin the wheel. Keep going if you like but otherwise there’s no commitment and always a chance to download an app or something else for some extra points redeemable for all sorts of…
When Next Gen Is Missing the Next
Detail, polygons, shaders… all very important. What I find most important are textures. Artistic and accurate textures can bring life to anything, even simplistic character models and environments. Water looking good — that’s a decent feat, trees with individual leaves, fire, rain, all these things are important little details — like the flipflops flipping in GTA V. They add to the immersion and life of a game. I can not fathom how these next gen consoles are coming out and not supporting 1080p across the board. It seems ludicrous that it wouldn’t be the driving force. My 4 year old…
SLi – Double V
Originally drafted August 2006: If you’re not a geek you have not heard about SLi. Even if you are a geek you may not have heard about QuadSLi. BFG fit 2 graphics cards on 1 PCIEx interface, allowing those who don’t have SLi to get SLi performance, and those that do have SLi to get QuadSLi performance. In order to take advantage of the image quality these cards allow, you need a big frikken monitor, but you will be gaming like never before if you have the money. Quad SLi – Where it Stands **2012 05 02** So a note…
>Stuff for Sale
>2006 Legacy GT – 3 good, 1 leaky struts w/ 30,000 – Best Offer2006 Legacy GT – stock shift knob – Best OfferNumark DJ Mixer DM1050 – $50AMDFX-55 2.6ghz Media Center PC – $300MAudio Keystation 49e USB/Midi Keyboard – $602 x nVidia GTX 280s 1G (for SLi) – pair for $300 OBONew ASUS 19″ LCD in Box – $12530″ Dell Dual DVI Monitor (2560 x 1600) (no usb/flash drives) – $750iMac 1ghz G4 (desklamp) – needs new power supply – $100 (1 copy OSX, 1 copy OSX 10.3)Full size (2.5ft”) Computer Case, black with front slide panel – $20Atari 800XL…
>Peggle – for iPod!
>You may have played “Peggle” on PopCap before, but now you can get it on your iPod – I just found Peggle on iTunes for $4.99
>Baby Got (Music) Back
>Oh… so nice. I just re-downloaded much of the old music I had purchased off iTunes. iTunes finally went full DRM free – 256k, not the best but almost. 320k is the most you can get normally and most pop tunes won’t fill that bandwidth on VBR (variable bit rate – adjusts the size to fit how complicated the music is). In any case there were a lot of tracks I had lost when the mac harddrive originally went – I had backed it up but I hadn’t gotten them all. At the time Pepsi was doing their promotion. 1…
>Burnout Paradise for PC
>I just downloaded the largest demo ever: 2.9 gigs, and it turns out that’s because it also has the full game in it. When you go to install it you are presented with 2 buttons: Install Trial or Install Full Game, naturally I chose Install Full Game where it presented me with a spot to put in a registration code from EA. I didn’t have one but I did see that it’s $39 at the EA store so you can download the demo and turn it into the full game. I thought game companies did away with this sort of…
>The time has come! You too can shop for groceries online in Springfield MA!
>Peapod has taken forever to come to the area… it sucks because I would love to order my groceries online and then have them delivered. The next best thing to that is ordering online and picking them up. Well the time has come for online grocery shopping as Big Y has BigY2Go in Greenfield and Springfield (Walpole too but that’s all Boston-y). I was able to go through our entire grocery list and order. You can search, or go through by category and choose what you want in your order. The best part was that it not only shows you…
>End of Fallout 3
>I beat Fallout 3 today – tried it ever which way to survive. Unfortunately the ending comes out almost the same, with a few changes here and there. I did it right the first time and then reloaded and went back to it. I reached level 20 and Max XP well before I got involved in the last battles of the game. All told it was great, story got even better and though it was slightly more linear towards the end I still really enjoyed it. I just heard the latest on the DLC which is coming out for both…
>Grand Theft Auto IV
>Yeah… I got it. I couldn’t help myself. I looked at the screenshots, I pondered, and after finding there was no demo to quench my thirst, I ventured to go get it before the stores closed. It’s installing now, and I’m enjoying the extra items in the box. I’ve got plenty of time to read it all – the game is 18g over 2 DVDs. I wonder if they’re dual layer. I guess they’d have to be, even compressed it would be at least 12 to 16g and that’s more then 2 4g DVDs could handle. The new social club…
>GOG.com (Good Old Games) Beta Goes Live!
>GOG.com has gone live, you can purchase Good Old Games for 5.99 or 9.99 depending.Descent 1 & 2 (or 3 & Expansion), Fallout 1, 2, and Tactics, Kingpin, Messiah, and Redneck Rampage – remember that one? I also found this little gem: Castles 2 No more trying to get Win95/Win98 working with your new hardware, or break out the old Pentium II in order to play these old gems – they’re all certified to play on XP and Vista (including x64!). Awesome.
>Google phone – G1 Review – First Glance
>Nicole got her G1 yesterday – the first and foremost “Google phone”It runs android – the open source phone OS developed by Google. At first glance it’s about the side of an iPhone (and that’s the exact demographic this phone is going for) though no where near as sleek. The screen swings out from the base and pops into place when going into landscape mode. The home screen has a clock widget with 4 basic icons at the bottom. It appears you can fill up the whole screen with up to 16 icons, if you didn’t have the clock there.…
>New SLi Comparison
>I picked up another card to do SLi this weekend. I wanted more, I wanted 2560×1600. I priced out what it would cost me to get a 9800GX2 including the trade-in from EVGA and it was going to be like $350+, so I instead spent $170 for another 8800 GTS – which were getting scarce so I moved on it. I tested using 3D Mark Vantage (for VISTA) as my existing 3D Mark 2006 is not working in VISTAx64 because it says OpenAL32.dll is not present (which it is).I’d rather use 3DMark 06 as it’s a more accurate guage given…