Help Fund a Game

While browsing kickstarter yesterday, I came across a game that is in the early stages of development. The game, known as Blade Symphony, is a sword fighting game who's game mechanics are based on those of the Star Wars: Jedi Knights series. What is better is that you can help fund this game! The more you give, the more you get. One of the neediest promotions is if you donate $1000, you get named an Executive of the  game in the credits.  This game has potential, and is definitely worth donating to. 

For those of you who don't know what Kicstarter is, it is a website where people post their ideas for products. If the idea is accepted, then Kickstarter will fund their prototype and let them make a video about it. The person(s) then try to promote their idea, so as to reach their goal. When they reach their goal they go and start producing more of that product.

~Dave

Weekend Plans

Once again the weekend is here and I off course have some plans to get to. First, I plan on going ahead in my Objective-C 2.0 programming book. This is the 3rd Edition by Stephen Kochan, it is geared towards people who have no previous programming knowledge. I don't know how many books it will take, but I eventually hope to reach my ultimate goal: creating an application. Second, I am still looking an SSDs. Mushkin just introduced its line of Chronos SSDs. They are fast and cheaper then the Patriot Wildfire. Before I buy I just have to make sure that they don't have any issues working with Windows. As always, I will try to be patient with my decision, even though that can sometimes be tough. And of course, last but not least, I will be updating my blog (here). So that is just a brief overview of my weekend, hope you all have a good weekend out there!

~Dave

Humble Bundle 3 is Here!

Humble Bundle is back and this time sporting five new games. Humble Bundle, for those who don't know, is a charity promotion event that allows you to buy the five offered games for any price you wish, even free. This is one of the best ways I have seen to raise money for charity. Past Humble Bundles have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for charity, just by selling games for what ever price the buyer wishes to pay. In addition to buying the games, you have the choice of where your money gets to go. You could send it all to charity, or you could send it to the developers. Split it however you would like. This time around the games up for grabs are Crayon Physics Deluxe, Cogs, VVVVV, And Yet it Moves, and Hammerfight. All of these great games for what ever price you want. So what are you waiting for? Go buy some games!

~Dave

Why I am Waiting for a Windows SSD

In recents months SSD prices have been dropping to the point where I am considering buying one for Windows. I came very close to buying some of them, but then I strayed away. The reason being is that all the current drives that are SATA III are having issues with Windows. Many of the newer drives are having problems where they randomly get a Blue Screen of Death. This is a huge no buy point for me, as I don't wish to deal with any issues. I keep looking, but at the moment there only seems to be one drive that doesn't have any issues, and that is the Patriot Wildfire. With no issues, and comparable speeds, it is the drive worth buying. However, with a price point of $300 I am not ready to buy that yet. For 120GB I would like less then $200 to be spent on the drive. Until these issues are fixed, or this drive drops in price, I will be waiting to buy a SSD for Windows. Plus, I have no issues at the moment with my 1 TB Caviar Black drive.

~Dave

Dell Has Impressed Me

A while back I mentioned the new laptop I helped my friend pick out. Earlier this week it arrived, and as of yesterday we opened it. The Dell XPS 17 that he ordered performed much better then I expected to be honest. Everything was pre-installed, including all those annoying dell drivers, After booting up, we made sure to remove the annoying Dell drivers, as well as Mcafee and Roxio Creator. Freed up quite a bit of space.  We were a little disappointed with the fact that Steam was suppose to come pre-installed at no extra charge, but it would seem Dell forgot to do that. It only took us about half an hour to get the computer to where we wanted it to be. We installed the normals: Google Chrome, Pidgin, Skype, and Steam. Then, we updated the graphics drivers, and updated Windows itself. I usually use Microsoft Security Essentials, mostly because it is free and does a great job. My friend prefers to use Malware Bytes. I have never used this, but he says it is lighter (takes up less space) and does the same thing as MSE. In my opinion, what ever floats your boat. 

His specs were good, coming in with an Intel Core i7 processor, Nvidia 555M 1GB graphics card, 6 GB RAM, a Samsung solid state drive, and a half terabyte Toshiba. His boot time was about 12-15 seconds, which is still really fast. I have to keep reminding him that he has to install more stuff to the hard drive and less to the SSD as the SSD will get slower the more it fills up, as well as die quicker. The computer only really got hot when we started gaming, but that was no big deal as the ventalation took care of most of the heat. Overall this is a great product, and I am quite surprised at how well it performs considering Dell's track record. I would recommend this computer to someone looking to an affordable gaming laptop.

~Dave