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Entries about nothing in particular instead they are just general entries

Out of the ashes, comes great television

June 27, 2011 0 Comments

With the large amount of TV shows that were canceled last season, is incredibly surprising to me how many decent shows have cropped up this season.

The issue I find now is more trying to figure out which of these TV shows actually want to watch. There’s just so many and I don’t watch TV all the time.

So far out of the new shows the ones I found to be the most entertaining our: the voice, falling skies. While there are certainly more than two shows that have recently begun, these two to me at least stick out as the most memorable of the new shows.

There are still plenty of returning shows they continue to watch such as: swap loggers, dual survival, American chopper, deadliest catch, how it’s made, Conan, and sons of guns to name just a few.

I know which might be thinking how I find time to watch all this television, the answer is I don’t really. I set my DVR up to record each one of the series and then I watched them when I get time. The only shows him he could point to watch live are the voice, falling skies, dual survival and American chopper. Those are by far my favorite of the ones listed above; even so I still miss some of these occasionally. Thank God for the invention of the DVR!

In addition, I found a series that started over in the UK and was recently ported United States; however, the series is fairly old. I am of course talking about Merlin; this show to me is absolutely fantastic. It incorporates all the elements that I enjoy science fiction, fantasy and good acting. Of course, I’m catching up using my Netflix subscription to watch the first two seasons, honestly, I am not even sure if it made it past two seasons.

There is of course when show that neglected to mention, this is because am not sure if the show is going to be returning or not. The show I am referring to of course is called Being Human; this is another show that originated in the UK. However, instead of porting the original UK version over they decide to recast with American actors. I never watched the original so I can’t say which one is better or worse.

What shows do you watch the season? Have you seen any of the shows that I mentioned? If so, which one of these shows do you like?

Let me know in the comments below.

General Stuff, Shows

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The TV apocalypse!

May 15, 2011 0 Comments

As I’m sure most of you are undoubtedly aware, this month in particular has been an incredibly bad week for television. I can count roughly 5 to 10 popular TV shows that were canceled and that’s just off the top of my head.

My question to my readers is this: What is happening with TV shows lately?

The figures have been able to pull up show that in the 2010-2011 season 82 shows were either ending or canceled. Some of these shows, showed actual potential, such as Breaking In, The Cape, Entourage, Human Target, No Ordinary Family, and V. This is just the tip of the iceberg, there were a lot of other good shows that were not renewed, due to the show ending.

It seems with the growing capabilities of companies like Netflix, and YouTube now offering movies, traditional television seems to be slipping by. I can’t turn the TV on anymore without finding out that one of the shows I planned on watching or had been watching was canceled. It’s not so much the show being canceled that really bugs me though, it’s when the show doesn’t have time to end the series properly. An example of this would be the Cape, the show ended with an online only episode that was absolutely by far the worst example of a series finale I have ever seen. Using the same logic, of course shows such as No Ordinary Family, saw the writing on the wall, so to speak, and so they made the last episode that aired sort of close a lot of the potholes. I strongly believe they did this because they had a strong feeling the show was going to be canceled and they wanted in to end in a way that had a sense of closure, but also had the hint that if the series got renewed. They would be able to continue on from that point If the show had been renewed.

Sadly, it appears the situation is only getting worse, people just don’t watch TV like they used to. I predict that as time goes on, the situation will only get worse, will we start seeing less and less TV channels? Will we start seeing more and more TV networks taking their shows online only?

Unfortunately, I don’t have the answers to these questions, it is likely, however, that networks are going to start embracing the Internet more as a delivery medium and who knows one day maybe we’ll be able to look back and tell our children," Yes, I was alive when TV existed, before you to, when the Internet was just starting out!"

So what do you, my readers think about this, do you feel like the traditional television format is an endangered species? Do you think that at some point in the near future, TV shows will be distributed online instead of the television?

Leave your comments below

Sources:

[1]

General Stuff

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Portal 2 Review – Single Player

May 4, 2011 0 Comments

Recently I bought in finished the single player version of Portal 2, which bared, a striking resemblance to the first version of the game. While the general style of the game and fundamentals were the same, it was a lot more voice acting in this game and I would say also more humor. While this game also offered a cooperative play version, I have yet to attend this version of the game mainly due to the fact that coordinating with my friends to play for a few hours it is rather difficult.

So you might be asking what makes Portal 2 different than the original? While generally speaking, the idea of the game was the same, the underlying plot was different driven by a humorous protagonist and often clueless robot “Wheatley”(voiced by Stephen Merchant).the majority of the old-style puzzles were still present, new types of puzzles and solutions were also included, such as three types of goo because various different effects which you can use to your advantage to solve different types of puzzles.

The robots to everybody sees on the box covers including the one in this post, are the two cooperative play robots which are used in cooperative play. Sadly, single player play through’s do not have the advantages of a companion to help solve puzzles. Instead, you get the occasional scene with the halfway named Wheatley which proves to be incredibly humorous and often times following his advice can get you into a bigger pickle.

While many of the reviews I have read claim this game doesn’t have much re-playability, I feel this can be incredibly enjoyable to play more than one time.I’m not sure if this was just my own personal experience or if other reviewers simply had a different idea of what constitutes re-playability.

Generally speaking, however there is usually only one way to solve a puzzle and I could see where this might hinder playing the game multiple times. GLaDOS of course makes a return in this game giving the main character chell a great deal of a hard time, without spoiling the game. I’m not going to go into specifics about exactly how GLaDOS played into this game other than to say if you played the first one. You know that she was deactivated, I will tell you that she accidentally gets reactivated but that’s as much as I’m going to reveal, however that much should be known already , if you watch the commercials.

generally speaking, the game is fairly safe for teenagers to play not having any realistic form of violence, in effect, nobody actually dies in the game. What you can expect however it is the occasional bit of crude humor, coupled with the sadistic personality of a few artificially intelligent robots. You do find out a little bit more about GLaDOS and her origins in this game but they leave just enough of a mystery that a possible third game could be brought up. They don’t however explain much about the main character, aside from what anyone who played the first game would already know.

Bottom line, I feel this game was very enjoyable and if you intend to replay the game at some point in the future, most likely starting with the original and then playing the second one in succession. The gameplay experience may be different on the consoles. I haven’t tried any of these so I can’t exactly speak for, whether it’s easier or more difficult, but given the sheer amount of positive reviews, this game is received I will be willing to say that the console versions aren’t too difficult in terms of controlling. I will say I tried this on the normal difficulty level haven’t tried any of the harder difficulty levels, from what I understand these greatly change how to solve the puzzles, making things more difficult. Hence the hard difficulty level, might give these a try little bit later, however I usually don’t do so well with a game set on a hard difficulty level.

Games, General Stuff

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Still Unemployed – why does credit have to affect an employment decision!!

April 27, 2011 0 Comments

Bad Credit = No Job!

It has been just over a year since we moved into this house, yet I’m still unemployed. It’s not that I’m not looking for a job, it seems to be a combination of my severe gaps in employment and the Lack of Necessary Credit. So far, we’ve been lucky enough to use money that was set aside, though not for this type of situation but still helpful, however as this money is slowly drying up I find myself in a tight spot. I honestly thought that finding a job would be fairly simple, especially if I’m willing to do just about any job I could find, this however would prove to be a foolish mistake as made evident by the fact that I’m still unemployed.

I decided it was time to look into why I wasn’t being hired, after applying for hundreds of jobs and not getting one interview, when I found out was credit as well as my gaps in employment were the two number one factors for me not getting a job. I should mention that a majority of that time that I was unemployed was spent helping to care for my terminally ill father-in-law, we’ve been living with my in-laws since 2004 but it wasn’t until late 2006 and my father-in-law started to take a turn for the worse. During this time I felt it was important for me to be available 24 hours a day, as my mother-in-law was not the best of health either (though she was not terminally ill). Sadly, my father-in-law passed away late 2008 at which point we continue to live with my mother-in-law for some time, about 1 1/2 years to be exact.during this one a half years we lived with my mother-in-law, she began to have financial trouble, and it was time for me to start looking for work again. well, no work came and my mother-in-law continue to have financial difficulties, so bad did these become in fact that we were forced to start looking for new place to live as was she.

Rushing thinking we had a limited amount of time to find a new place to live, we begin apartment hunting, only to find the price of bread and, way up since last time we were renters. With no disposable income other than the government disability money my wife receives, we had no income and next to nothing saved up.we did have investments and other assets which netted us an extra bit of money every month to help with the bills, but due to not having a job a lot of those investments have had to be liquefied, and the extra money we have every month is running dangerously low. Before I go any further, you might be asking why I’m so willing to share this much personal information, the answer is simple I have nothing to hide and it makes me feel better to get it off my chest. I will say right now, despite what you might be thinking this blog post is not leading up to me asking you for a donation so don’t even get that in your mind, what I’m truly hoping to achieve by writing this blog post is for employers that happened to be checking my social networking sites to get a glimpse a snapshot if you will of where I currently stand so that they can understand why I’ve been unemployed as long as I have. I have no preconceived misconception that this in any way will improve my odds of finding a job, but it was least give an employer perspective, something they may not have otherwise.

Fast-forward to the current day, things are starting to sort of look up, if that doesn’t sound too reassuring let me explain. I have made it no secret that my wife has cerebral palsy, while I consider us both blessed and lucky that it doesn’t hinder her to the point that it does some, is still causes her difficulty. In fact I would be willing to say that the only advantage to her disability to either one of us could see, would be the fact that it qualifies her to get Social Security disability, this is meant the difference between us being able to pay the rent and not being able to pay the rent. All that being said my wife is currently enrolled, or hopes to be enrolled in a program set up by Michigan called Michigan rehabilitation services or MRS for short. Now there are a lot of benefits associated with her being enrolled in MRS, I’m not exactly sure what they all are so not going to mention too much about it here, what I will say is that I’m pretty sure they have a program set up to aid her in finding work. As weird as it sounds for me to say this, she made be employed in a part time job before I can ever land an interview.

So you might be asking what if I done recently to help improve my odds of finding a job, I recently pulled a copy of my credit report along with scores for all three credit bureaus, without going into specifics here, let’s just say that my credit is not as bad as I thought it was, in fact my father who has been on the opposite end of the hiring table told me that these scores should not affect most employers decision to hire me.I can in fact see my credit report were several employers have queried the report, I seem checking my credit for pre-employment evaluation, or in my case the pre-interview evaluation. Something on that credit report must be spooking them because usually, after looking at my credit report the application process stops dead in its tracks. While I might not be able to do anything about the gaps in unemployment,I am hoping that I can do something about the credit issue, in the meantime I can only hope that my wife’s appointment with MRS proves fruitful.

Ok, I think that’s enough of me rambling on for one has to at least be two pages (or maybe not), was hoped this blog post at least as enjoyable for somebody to read. At the very least this blog post will give somebody better insight into me personally what my current situation is (if somebody’s actually interested enough to find out more about me which I doubt).

Comments are welcome, suggestions are also welcome, but please don’t be a jerk about it, in fact if your jerk about your comment will even be posted.

General Stuff

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My Life at a Glance–New CPU, Gaming, Windows troubles, Linux Troubles, android tablets and more!

April 20, 2011 0 Comments

Well it has been a while since I posted anything to my blog, and I thought I would rectify that by making one huge post updating everyone on most aspects of my life currently.

New Computer Hardware

Recently I upgraded my old AMD Athlon II x4 620 to a new AMD Phenom II x6 1090T Black Edition.

The upgrade was relatively painless (typical CPU upgrade) and I did not notice a huge improvement at first in performance, however once the computer ran for a while I noticed some changes in both speed and the Heat the CPU generated.

With my older Quad Core CPU idle CPU temps were somewhere around 38c which is relatively hot I have been told for an idle temp. With the newer six-core the idle temps dropped to around 28c that is a 10 degree difference!

While I primarily upgraded to solve an issue Windows was having with the CPU (mine in particular not necessarily the same for others with it ) where it would frequently spike the CPU usage up and then not fully release capacity as processes slowed. I had tried numerous times to re-install windows in numerous different storage configurations (RAID 0, Use a separate drive for all Data and one specifically for OS and Important programs, Installing a tweaked version where certain features were turned off mainly indexing and what not), while most of these worked one in particular kept causing me to scratch my head as tried to get Windows running on it (RAID 0). With out boring you by going into detail on what I tried I will just say it did not work and ended up causing a new fresh install of Windows 7 using the default installation (which ironically ended up having better throughput). The CPU proved to be a good trade off as it increased windows boot time as well as offered a 6mb L3 Cache where the Quad had no such L3 Cache.

I ran the windows performance scoring tool (just for the hell of it not a big believer in what it says other then to pinpoint what hardware is the current bottleneck) finding that now all areas rated 7.5 where the HDD was the remaining bottleneck coming in at a miserable 5.9. Now I know Windows may not be the best OS when it comes to efficient write commands, but that was a good indicator it was time for a faster drive or to make the plunge into a reasonable SSD.

The issue here is that even though I could move about 95% of all my data to a external HDD and use the SSD as the boot drive, programs would continue to load slowly unless they were installed on the SSD. All that and not to mention the sheer amount that SSD cost per GB, it just was not worth the price at present.

Gaming

This all lead me into my next issue which was stuttering (video wise not audio) in the game Dragon Age 2, I examined this further and found that DA2 seems to see the processor correctly but only sees one core as being available. I then spent about 2 hours talking to EA support via chat to try and correct this, even tried reducing the available Cores it had access to in the affinity setting for the game.

Long story short we were unable to pinpoint the exact issue, but narrowed it down to something to do with the CPU upgrade (seeing as it worked fine on the Quad). The tech was so down that he could not solve my issue that he proceeded to go into the back end for my EA account and enable a whole swarm of free content (not DLC, promotional items mostly) for Dragon Age: Origins and one or two for DA2!. I literally now have so much stuff that when I log into the Bioware User Entitlements area to see what I have access to I have to scroll 3 times, and that is on a 27” monitor at 1920×1080 resolution with the browser full screen!

Did I also mention that earlier this month I had an issue with the DLC authorizing for Dragon Age: Origins? Well EA gave me a $20 voucher for the EA store and so I used that on Dead space 2 which was already on sale for $31 (Digital download version) so I ended up after tax getting a $50 game for $12 dollars!

Linux

Now all of you reading this from the Fedora Planet are by now wondering “what does this have to do with Linux?”

The answer is that had nothing to do with it but the headache did make me want to leave windows and try to install Fedora again on one of my free HDD’s

This brings me to where I had the issue with Fedora, to be fair here I was using the latest build of Fedora 15 alpha so the issues are not at all the fault of Fedora just my own lapse in judgment.

Here is what happened, I tried at first to do a custom install (like I always do when installing multiple OS) but that just caused me a headache because apparently my boot order for my HDD was set differently in the Bios then the physical location they are in (where they are connected on the mother board). That being said I managed to axe the small system partition Windows 7 makes for some reason. I panicked and though If I could install Fedora I could at least boot from Grub into Windows right? Wrong!

Second time installing is where I made the big mistake of choosing use all space when I meant to hit remove all Linux partitions, well as you can imagine this went bad as it wiped now my entire windows drive. While I chalk this up to my own lack of focus, my friend claims it was a sign from the Fedora Gods that Linux did not want Windows anywhere on the system.

I ended up just wiping that re-installing windows (to many good games that do not work in Wine plus school work that requires Windows programs) and just throw Fedora in a VM. So far this has worked well though I miss my dual boot setup and being able to run Fedora natively. I might try it again but making sure to backup my windows install prior to doing so.

Android 3.0

While I myself have not had any hands on experience with Android, I want an Android 3 tablet badly!

I began looking into the options out there and found out that not only do a handful exist but they are all super expensive!!!

I did find one that would have a 399 model but the specs on it were less then acceptable to me. While I generally am not a power user when it comes to mobile devices I found that a 512mb 8gb nand ram drive device to be a little underwhelming! How much could you fit on 8gb now days even if on Android!?

The next model the one I am seriously considering is 499 and has 1gb of ram and a 16gb nand ram drive. This to me seems sufficient and would work nicely, provided I decide to get it. ASUS the manufacture of this tablet apparently has released everything but the device itself in the US as of the time I am writing this. Will  I have the funds to spare when they do release it is yet to be seen but lets hope it gets released soon.

Well that about covers it, that should get most people who care caught up with what has been going on with me (not a lot of people care I get it but a few readers I know who read this do Winking smile ).

Feel free to leave comments below

Android, BioWare, Components, Computers, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Origins, Fedora, Games, General Stuff, Hardware Trials, Linux, Non-Specific, Software Trials, Windows Trials

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Dragon Age II review – After two complete playthroughs

March 19, 2011 0 Comments

Dragon Age II Box ArtI loved this game it was a welcome change to Dragon Age
Origins! Do not get me wrong anyone who has seen my raptr profile or xfire
profile will see i ranked up the game play hours on that game, however this
game offers a much faster and fluid fighting system which I think is an example
of the effort put into making the game seem different yet have a DA:O feel to
it.

The plot line was a bit confusing to grasp at first since
the game makes a point to keep you guessing what is happening until the very
end of the game. The conversational system was overhauled allowing easier
conversations in a Mass Effect 2 similar fashion, this is not a bad thing (to
me anyway). Now you no longer have those awkward moments in the game where you
find you said the wrong thing and are now engaged in a romance with one of the
most annoying male characters in the game. Case and point Zevran from DA:O,
This character I felt was a death trap of same sex romance. I mean that if you’re
not inclined to romance him your best not talking to him at all as almost any
dialog option would enter you into a romance with him, showing no obvious way
out. In this new system icons are used to show what impact your choice will
have with the character, if you are going to select a response and that would
enter you into a romance with the character a heart will appear in the center
of the conversation wheel. On the other hand if you want to break a romance a picture
of a fractured heart will appear for options that would end the romance.

Aside from those changes the game seemed to be centered
around 5-6 maps which served as the grounds for multiple zones, what I mean by
this is a map for inside a cave could be used (re-arranged a bit but otherwise
the same) to show the inside of every single side quest cave in the game! This
to me felt repetitive after killing a Dragon in one cave only to find a quest
in a similar looking cave (the same map) and fighting a Vestral in the same
exact spot the dragon existed in the “other” cave. I understand why this was
done, it saves resources if you simply re-arrange items and close off some
areas while other remain open and shuffle the enemies around. This to me is the
reason I did not give it 5 stars, they just recycled maps too frequently,
enough so it was clearly noticeable.

On a upside main quests seemed to have unique maps or re-use
old maps less frequently then side or companion quests which helped. There were
a few main plot line quests that used the same maps as previous ones but for
the most part if you had to enter a house for X plot quest then the next house
you entered would be different enough to feel as though it was a separate map.

Yes, there is a very high Mass Effect feel to some aspects
of game play but to indirectly quote Mike Laidlaw (lead designer) and probably
not as accurately as I should “Mass Effect 2 was insanely popular and did very
well, if Dragon Age 2 can achieve the same thing by using similar elements,
then I do not see a problem. They are still very much different games and I
think that the real fans will be able to appreciate the difference and
understand why we chose to do things this way.” Keep in mind he may not have
said that word for word the way I have it but he has said in one of his
Developer Chats that he recognizes the talk about the similarity between the
two and explains why he did it.

Should you shell out $60 on this game? That depends on a few
things,

1) How much did you
enjoy DA:O?

2) Do you believe the negative reviews about the game? If so
then why even bother?

3) Are you a Fan of RPGs?

Feel free to leave comments below, I welcome any comments even if you hated the game just make sure to let me know WHY you hated it!

BioWare, Computers, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Origins, Games, General Stuff

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Local Government services fail to answer phones

November 10, 2010 0 Comments

OK I usually do not write about this kind of stuff, however this is becoming so annoying I had to write about it.

With out getting to personal My family relies on services offered by our government, they are assistance programs (not everyone is without need of such services). Recently we were awaiting the disbursement of some benefits that are associated with it, They never showed up.

Now the governmental department refuses to answer their phone, literally ever single # I have for them goes straight to voice mail or rings until there system drops the call. When I have actually gotten ahold of them in the past they claim they never received a call from me or my wife! I am not sure what they are talking about I leave at least 5 messages a week it seems.

At any rate it appears the government is not as willing to help those in need as they claim to be. If your in a position where you do not need assistance from the government then consider yourself lucky as I am now even more convinced that things need to change.

To this day I am still trying to actually get a real person on the phone and it is going on a week now that I have been trying.

General Stuff

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Computer issues resolved

October 4, 2010 0 Comments

Well alot of you might remember a post a while back about my computer issues, I have recently figured out what the issue was ! Let me recap the problem just for those not familar with it. I began having issues with my computer the video would frequently drop out and I would need to turn off and on the monitor to get the image back Well i immediately thought the monitor was bad so i got on the horn to Samsung. They ensured me that “Their monitor could not possibly be the cause of the issue” like a fool I bought it.

I then looked to the two low end cheap graphics cards i bought I called several tech support people was was assured that was not it. I asked a few friends and the Motherboard was point to as a possible but unlikely cause for the issue seeing as the cards were both solely bus powered. So a RMAing the board will go. The board was RMAed and still nothing!!! The issue was still there I then started RMAing the Graphics cards and with one on its ways to Powercolor to get swapped. I then decided to see if Samsung was accrate in their claim that their monitor could not be the cause.

Well they were wrong, the issue existed when i tried the monitor on a different computer. Was I annoyed? YES! I had decided before this I was going to upgrade the Graphics cards to more solid and powerful cards which i did. Now a replacement monitor is on the way. I decided to get this monitor http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=24-236-091&SortField=0&SummaryType=0&Pagesize=10&PurchaseMark=&SelectedRating=-1&VideoOnlyMark=False&VendorMark=&IsFeedbackTab=true&Page=4#scrollFullInfo

ASUS 27" LCD Monitor

ASUS 27" LCD Monitor

Some people may ask me what did I learn from this experience? I learned that Vendors will Lie like dogs to prevent their hardware being replaced

Components, Computers, General Stuff, Hardware Trials, Linux, Non-Specific, Windows Trials

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Installed a new Plugin – Need feedback

September 29, 2010 0 Comments

I installed a new plugin that promisses to make this blog easier on the eyes from a smart phone. I do not own one to test it so what I would like to know is if any of you can see this blog any differently then the Picture below on your smartphone.

scrnsht_20100929

If it does look different please let me know and the comments, better yet include a screen shot if you can.

Also I would welcome any feedback at all with regards to optimization for smart phones and other mobile devices.

Android, Fedora, General Stuff, Linux, Non-Specific, Ubuntu

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Open Letter to Google

July 19, 2010 4 Comments

Dear Google,

I have enjoyed your many different services over the years, I have grown to depend on several apps you make to simplify my life. Picasa manages my pictures, Google Apps my email, and Adsense helps pay the bills. I wish I could say this all makes me happy, but honestly I feel a little cheated when I find that Picasa is not natively supported on Linux.

I can understand time is an issue, I understand encasing the windows version in a WINE instance is a easy fix, but i do not understand why a company with its own Linux OS (Android) can not take the time to make a implementation of their apps such as Picasa using native Libs and tools.

This might seem trivial coming from one person, but Google I am sure others feel the same way, Google do you really wish to fix issues pertained to a Windows version of Picasa running in Linux on a WINE instance? I ask you would the developmental process not be more streamlined if you had a native APP?

I have had issues in the past with software running in WINE, and I ask why when a company that is clearly interested in Linux could make a Linux native client?

Ok Google I know what your going to say, We just don”t have time today! Well I say, come on lets go and make the code avalible to the community today!

Thanks for your time, sorry to waste your dime, I really must stop this rhyme before i do not have time, to send this Letter.

Thanks,

Andrew Jamison – Google user and Linux Enthusiast

General Stuff, Linux, Non-Specific

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