History Repeats
Posted by Ben | Filed under Geekin' Out
Yeah, you’ll look at the subject and go “duh” but I have a valid reason for picking that title. I was thumbing through my latest issue of Maximum PC, and came across a “budget” PC (pretty scary when “budget” PCs are $1500+) and noticed a striking similarity in the choice of components compared to a very similar shift a few years ago.
When folks were introduced to the DVD ROM spec, PCs hardly ever shipped without both a CDROM or CD RW drive and a DVD ROM drive. I was one of the folks who built one such PC from scratch, including both a CDRW and a DVD-ROM. Then the shift was with DVDRW drives, and once again I had both a DVDRW and a DVDROM (yeah, both drives can read DVDs, but I wanted one to write with “just in case” I needed to write while reading, and no, I didn’t do it to copy movies.) Then it happened again with BluRay drives, both readers and writers, though, to a lesser extent.
The reason I bring it up is that these PC vendors are embracing the “SSD Era” by copying the old habits of system makers and ye olde rotational optical media. This time, it’s SSDs and hard drives.
Opting to make the boot and primary OS drive an SSD, whilst adding a platter based hard drive for more mundane storage tasks, we’re going to see this shift into top gear, if it hasn’t already. Yeah, totally clairvoyant of me, I know. 
If you read one of my prior posts, you’ll know that I upgraded my laptop to an SSD, and I use the same one in my workstation at work. I never really truly appreciated the SSD’s benefits until last night however. Much like a former Maximum PC editor once wrote (thanks Josh!) he never really understood the hype surrounding multicore processors at the time of their introduction. He never really took advantage of them until he realized that he was still computing in “single core land.” I was still computing in “rotational media land.” For me, it was a last minute LAN party at a friend’s house. Normally I host them at my house, but I wanted to have one without having to ask everyone to come over at the last second, but there’s always a couple who are up for last minute ideas, and so we scheduled the LAN. Instead of lugging my heavy ass desktop power house and accompanying hardware, I instead opted for my laptop so that I could go setup and leave at the end with little fuss.
I always knew that SSDs would one day rule my life, I just never expected to be shown in such a powerful way. My laptop is a little long in the tooth now, having purchased it about 3 years ago now. It’s a pretty modest little laptop, sporting a Core 2 Duo T9300 processor running at a swift 2.5 GHz, 4GB of RAM, and sporting the very gray haired GeForce 8600 GT-M. I installed my own Corsair 120GB SSD to replace the 7200 RPM WD that was in it prior. The Corsair is nothing special, just the standard Sandforce (first gen) powered 120GB SSD that has earned a place of respect in many other system builders’ systems.
In that same room were people with an i7 920, and an AMD Phenom II. Both of them had standard 7200 RPM hard drives, and much faster video cards. Even the folks we played LoL with over the internet couldn’t have known what I was rocking. We started the game, and during the loading screen, I watched, in complete awe, as my little 2.5 GHz Core 2 Duo raced to the finish of the loading screen several seconds before even the local i7 or Phenom II. I was blown away. I had already been used to the Corsair’s prowess in Windows general environment tasking, such as with office apps and other things such as vSphere at work, or the IM software and mIRC I used at home. Little did I realize how fast that little SSD would be in that situation. My desktop PC uses a six-core Phenom II and two 150GB Raptor-X’s in RAID 0, and even they were ousted in my later testing.
One thing is for certain, I welcome our new SandForce based overlords, and will be seeing about replacing my dual Raptors come this Christmas. For me Ben? You shouldn’t have! Why, yes… yes… you should have! My Geeky heart thanks you!
Google Chrome is… not Chrome-y
Posted by Ben | Filed under FAIL, Geekin' Out
At the behest of a friend or two, I decided to give Chrome a try a few weeks ago as my primary browser. I had it loaded already, I just didn’t use it that often. I know about all the claims that say it’s supposed to be faster than IE9 or Firefox, and I know that Google gushes about it all the time for the other features. I loved the bookmark sync tool and for the first time in a decade, I made a valiant effort to syncronize my bookmarks between all the PCs that I use. It worked, and I was happy to be using the same exact set of bookmarks everywhere, even on my phone.
But then I got to know Chrome better, and some of the “charm” was quickly evacuated into deep space faster than you can say “Event Horizon.”
One of my biggest pet peeves was the fact that Chrome was supposed to be this lean mean social surfing machine. Sure, if you use it like 99% of the population SEEMS to. Facebook, Google tab or two, maybe your Email. Not here. This geek loads up his browsers in full-on browsing warfare. I build myself fast computers, and I expect them to perform as quickly as I built them to be, but Chrome was not helping the situation. It would spawn additional threads as necessary, which was nice, except that I ran into two issues with that. Firstly, the extra threads didn’t serve to do much other than eat up rows in my task manager and spike the CPU graph every so often. I didn’t ever see a tangible benefit to the “spawn more overlords” …er I mean -threads-, scheme. I looked closer at those threads and realized a more horrific truth. Those additional threads were eating up gobs of memory. I thought maybe I had an issue with my PC, so I repeated my inspection on two other machines – my laptop, and my work PC. It’s noteworthy here to mention that my work PC didn’t run with any extensions or addons, while my laptop and desktop at home did. Chrome ate memory up like a fat kid in a Waffle House on Chicken & Waffles special day. Odd. I knew Firefox could be equally as ravenous on RAM usage, so I fired up the same test pages with Firefox, and discovered that while the program did use a sizable chunk of ram, it still used 90-120 MB LESS than Chrome did with all of the spawned threads. What’s up with that?
The complete deal breaker however came when I noticed a behavior that was unbecoming of a browser. Maybe Firefox spoiled me, and this is how they are supposed to be, who knows. Chrome could not handle multiple concurrent tabs, especially if they were loading.
I love Break.com. I love the galleries they post of images from all over the web, it’s like a mini “best of imgur” in one place most of the time. So I got into the habit of, much to Break’s server admins distress I’m sure, opening the tabs all at once. I’d open a gallery page, and then either Control-Click or mouse-click on every link in the gallery to have it open in the background while I looked at the prior tabs. For some reason, Chrome handled it like a horse trying to choke down a Volkswagen Beetle full of obese clowns wearing skunk spray aftershave. Many times, on the smaller galleries, I’d only notice lockups and occasional freezing. But the larger galleries would bring the party crashing down in an instant. The larger galleries would cause extensions and even the core Chrome operating environment to halt. You’ve probably never had to deal with it, but the “dead man” face Chrome throws up when it can’t run for some reason sucks. Really sucks. And the glorious auto-recovery that both Chrome and Firefox have is useless in Chrome. You can end the program, but if you chose to open Chrome again, it tries to restore the same clusterfuck that you were trying to load in the first place.
I thought that last part was just me, so I had a friend try it out on his computer, with no extensions or addons to speak of. He used dual monitors, running on the same computer to give both browsers even more of a workout. Sure enough, when he tried to open the same assortment of tabs in Chrome as he did in Firefox, Chrome would spit up and spew binary bits all over the place. Firefox, through whatever magic the browser coders whipped up, knaws through the page loads without a problem, every time. I performed the same test on my system, where both browsers have a few addons installed (Chrome: AdBlock, Firefox: Adblock, DownThemAll, TACO) and it still ended the same way. One other problem surfaced as well – Chrome would have kittens on multiple tabs with flash content. Woah, wait a sec. I know Google, Adobe, Apple and Steve Jobs are all on the “I HATE UR GUTS” stage right now, but give me a break. It’s pretty obvious when a platform neutral company (Mozilla) makes a browser compared to one that thinks Flash should die a horrid death, reserved for those who try to choke down VW Bugs and clowns who masticate too much.
Google, WTFBBQ?
I should note that I don’t hate Chrome, I just prefer to use Firefox. Since I did all the hard work with consolidating my bookmarks, the import into Firefox was all the much sweeter. Firefox’s sync has been just as good to me as Google’s feature in Chrome was. Bummer G-Team. The bottom line is that you should use the browser that fits your surfing style, and just read this knowing that Google has to do some more fine tuning on their browser before I’ll give it another shot (and I will, in the future for sure.) After all, this is just a blog – who said my word was law around these parts? 
New Adventures
Posted by Ben | Filed under Geekin' Out
I’ve got some news in the realm of Windows Servers, and I’ll post those on a later blog post (Windows Small Business Server 2008, and Server 2008 R2 if you’re curious) but I thought i’d take a moment and report how happy I am with my Dell XPS M1530. Aside from going through three hard drives (laptop hard drives and I have never gotten along) it has been plugged in and turned on for almost 3 years non stop as of today. I thought that if I could keep it turned on for as much as I could, I would find any issues with it while the warranty was still in effect. I’m happy to say I think I bought a decent system in this little laptop. I did ultimately switch the hard drive out for a Corsair 120GB SSD, and it’s a move I don’t regret – I’m not filling it up as fast as I thought I would, and it’s given the T9300 CPU in the system new life. That and I get a big kick out of powering it on and letting people “listen” to the system. Unless the CPU/GPU heats up enough, it’s a silent machine. It’s so nice.
I remember when I first got into building PCs and how I’d always end up stacking them up with enough 80mm fans to make them fly away, but I always hated the noise. I’m grateful that manufacturers have introduced ways to move lots of air with slower spinning, and larger fans. Laptops have benefitted from the advancement too. The other nice thing about the M1530 is the ease of access to the CPU, GPU and RAM. One cover, and presto, it’s all there. We’re not quite to the era of interchangable laptop parts and empty chassis, but it’s getting better.
Just a little blurb tonight. More when I can sit down and devote the time to screenshots and substantial content.
*facepalm* I’m not dead, I swear
Posted by Ben | Filed under Geekin' Out, Random
Life took a huge turn right around the time of my last post. In April I started a program over at FXB, which you can find here. This week is week 10 of their 10 week kick boxing class, and I’m looking forward to Saturday’s check in to see where things are. I’m hoping that there are huge changes, and I admit, winning the $1k prize would go a long way toward helping my car payments, even after taxes are taken out. But I’m not in it to win the money, I’ve already made some good friends, and the results from my work are showing (muscles! *pokes* oooohhhh!) so that’s good enough for me. That, and impressing the hell out of people who didn’t think someone of my…stature could move as fast as I can.
It’s also been a time of growth both work and home. Got a pay raise, and helped a buddy get a new job as a coworker. Also working on getting myself a Small Business Server (2008) up and running so that I can learn more on that platform. I did actually have a server up and running, but due to a tree tangle mess by our neighbor’s house, and the ensuing power line touching snafu, the power spikes killed the lone hard drive in the SBS server I already had set up. I guess the test is over then – it’s time to “geek up” and buy the hard drives I had intended to put into the system to set up RAID 10. I actually just migrated the R2 box to RAID 10 from a RAID 5 setup, and the speeds went through the roof (thanks Brian.) SBS had a tendency to thrash the drive insanely, so I think a more robust RAID setup should help things out a bit. I also need to get a DynDNS setup going so that I can run updates, the other client I was using was pretty flaky, so I’ll just upgrade to something with more substance when I buy the hard drives.
I haven’t forgotten about the site – far from it, just haven’t thought of anything interesting to write. If you’ve been here before, you know I sometimes struggle with wanting the site and not, so who knows. I do like writing however, so I’ll stick around for a bit. It would be nice to have a following, I admit. Maybe some more aggressive updating on twitter & here will help that out. I’m not out to win any popularity contests (read: I’m no Ashton Kucher) but like minded folks every now and then could be fun.
More geeky posts forthcoming, promise. With this post however, I shall uphold my fine tradition of putting some kind of cuteness overload up after this post. Maybe a few, to make up for my time lost. Sorry ’bout that.
Subsonic
Posted by Ben | Filed under Geekin' Out
I’ve been a pro-home server guy for a while. Through the help of several friends over the years, I’ve built a robust and versatile server to which I use extensively every day. Primary uses include RDP, file sharing and remote web access (through which I am writing this blog post currently.) But more recently, I discovered a program that has fundamentally changed how I use my remote media services.
I had been a long time user of the WinAmp Remote & Orb services ( essentially the same thing) but was tired of the quirks and annoyances with the software. For example, with Orb I could stream music from my house, but if I wanted to pause the music, there would always be a problem resuming the audio playback. For some reason, it would crackle and distort and I couldn’t get it to play back normally until I had stopped the stream and restarted it.
For the most part, it served my needs pretty well though. A couple of friends had complained about excessive log file use (one even had a hard drive fill up on him, rendering the system unable to work) but I had never experienced those situations. The playback was ok, and I could live with the fact that my player of choice (either Winamp or WMP) would play the music, but it was useless in trying to figure out which track was playing. I almost always had to look at the player browser through the orb interface and guess, based on track position, which track I was listening to because the player would just show the IP address, port number and the stream’s randomly generated URL and extension.
Another annoyance was the buffer time that took place when starting a new track. It didn’t matter if that track was a new track (i.e. I hadn’t gotten to it yet) or if it was next in the playlist, there was always a lag between songs, even accounting for internet speed. I had assumed that would just be the way it worked, so I never looked for anything different.
Then something magical happened, a friend introduced me to Subsonic.
Subsonic is a free media streamer that does both music and video, has software released on just about every mobile platform (Android, iPhone, Windows Phone 7, etc*) and you can use it all within a browser, with your favorite media player, or enable what they call a “jukebox” mode where it plays directly from the media server.
The media player types
Subsonic is based on the Java framework, and though my opinion of Java isn’t that of svelte and slim, this software is mature and well thought out.
The tray agent is small, and has scant few options, which may deter some folks, but the real magic lies in the web interface.
Yes, I took out the server address, I'm a paranoid freak
From the web interface not only can I configure the types of media I want available (with NO indexing – you add the folder and BOOM, it’s there to pick from) but I can also configure other users and see how they are using the service on my box.
Configure new users or change existing ones here
Video playback is also amazing. Orb would stream video, but it seemed as though the transcoding process was sloppy and resource intensive. To compare, I played back my copy of How to Train your Dragon in both Orb and Subsonic, and while Orb would take up to 40% on my quad core CPU, Subsonic managed 20% at max, and looked better overall. Not to mention, Subsonic also has a bitrate drop down to pick from (and you can change it on the fly, without losing your place in the movie) and it will adjust the playback quality on demand.
You can even go full screen with the flash player here - quality sucks due to Jpg compression, it looks MUCH better than this, even at 1000 kbps, promise. 
Playlists can be configured in WinAmp and saved to a media folder (preferably the same folder as your music so you don’t have to fix relative and absolute paths) and it loads them expertly. You can even change the order from the web interface, and remove songs.
The big thing that gets me about Subsonic however is the response. I can open the web browser and immediately go click on a track to play, or be in the middle of one and click another one in the list (doesn’t even have to be the next track) and it starts playing INSTANTLY. Woah!
The software even includes server statistics, telling you what the host system is (useful if you’re using a friends system and are curious to see what kind of system they use to serve it up) or you can view usage statistics for yourself, including bitrate and bandwidth. You can also look at others you’ve given access to your system, and see how they are using it.
Another thing that Subsonic does is on the fly transcoding. It doesn’t really seem to matter which format you’re using, there’s a provision in the software to allow you to transcode those files on the fly and listen to them wherever you are. There are even guest tagging features, as well as the ability to change cover art and administrate podcasts. Heck, you can even allow your users to upload files to share.
The list of transcoding options goes below what I could capture here
Don't be scared by the setup here, you don't need a Server OS to run this!
*- Subsonic is FREE software, though you should know that the dedicated URL and video streaming features are only available to those who donate to the project. After seeing how awesome these features are from the start (you get 30 days to play with those features) it’s well worth the $15 (10 Euro) or more to help this guy develop the project further.
I’m not in Azeroth Anymore
Posted by Ben | Filed under Geekin' Out
I apologize if you subscribe to my site and have noticed an inherent lack of updates lately. That Statistics class was kicking my butt, and now that it’s finally over, I have more leisure time to do whatever I want. I’m taking a Linux class now, so things should be a little easier going forward (hopefully.)
A side note: I apologize for the blatant use of the acronym “WoW” in this post. It’s a tired parallel among the players of Rift, but I hope to be free of it after this post.
It’s amazing the things that can change in a few months. One of the reasons I maintain this website, updates or not, is to see where I was a week, two weeks, a month or more ago. The last time I posted to this site, I was raving about my love of all things WoW related. How times have changed since then. Mind you, I still hold a special place in my geeky heart for WoW, but there are other things that I am enjoying now.
But let’s rewind a little and take a look back at what has happened since my last post. I have been wanting to write about this game “Rift” for a while, but I wanted to respect my NDA with the company, so I waited until launch day today.
It happened to be that I was reading an issue of PC Gamer magazine last month and came across one of those ads for Rift. The bold caption that “We’re not in Azeroth Anymore” spanning across the page, I thought that the ad looked pretty good, and while I silently wondered if they could get away with the caption as it were without Activision/Blizzard going after them, I decided that I could use a change of pace. I applied to the beta, making sure to fill it out as completely as I could. When I hit submit, I was greeted with what I thought was an error, and thought that was the end of the road. I didn’t hear anything for a while, and then one day out of the blue, a Beta 6 invite came to my inbox. I jumped up and down excitedly in my mind, and accepted the invitation.
A Death Rift opens in Stonefield Mountains
First, getting the client downloaded and installed went relatively quickly, even taking into account my 22 Megabit Cable connection. The game downloaded, patched and installed without issue. Now I will make a striking observation here. The base install of the game is far smaller than my current WoW installation folder (which tops 30GB without accounting for screenshots) and yet still manages to look a hell of a lot better. WoW has their own unique engine, but Rift’s is just so much more breathtaking, and it is amazing that they do it in such a small footprint.
Pretty Effects!
Getting into the game was easy – I was online and playing within moments of the patching, and something was immediately clear. The game was as stable as a grand Castle built on bedrock. Not a single crash in the client, and not a single server went down unexpectedly while I was playing beta 6. That being the case, I wasn’t immediately impressed. The game played a lot like WoW, and I really wasn’t sure that’s what I wanted. For a while, I waffled about whether or not I would be buying the game. I had made a similar observation with Star Trek Online, and ended up quitting that game before my free month was over. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to take the same risk on Rift. If I was looking for a way out of Azeroth, could I really enjoy a game that used the same play mechanics as the Blizzard based MMO? The short answer is an enthusiastic “YES!”
The nice thing about Rift is that if you’ve played WoW, you can play Rift. The game throws you in with the assumption that you’ve been to Azeroth, your body experienced Permadeath and you woke up in the world of Rift. You can quite literally carry over your assumptions about the other game into Rift and still be able to make it. That being said, you should know that Rift plays like the other less “maintstream” MMOs. That’s not dissing the game at all, it’s high praise coming from this MMO geek. Gone are the days when your tank or paladin could take on 5 targets at once solo, and a lot of people seem to have forgotten just how easy they have it in WoW. You have to be tactical about the things you take on, and you have to have a strategy in case you get jumped by a patrol or someone dies near you and you somehow gain aggro. The aggro management system in Rift is similar to WoW however, so there’s no “training” like you’d experience in EQ however. You also can’t kill steal anything, and once the heath bar of a monster or enemy goes gray, you’ve lost the ability to gain XP or loot from whatever the target is. Folks seem to be keen to help kill things you’re targeting however, either from a “Oh I’ll help you kill that” stance to a “I can’t read the health bar and I need to kill that too.” Which can be frustrating, but most people are pretty nice about it.
Fortunately, the more I played, the more I fell in love with my Eth (both appearance and ability wise.) When the beta came to a close and the plans were still being worked on for the next beta, I can safely say I definitely suffered from what others in the game world have coined “Riftdrawals.” I couldn’t wait for beta 7 (public beta) to open, and when it did, I was one of the first ones to log in.
My Cleric's mug shot, complete with epic lighting effects
I had been doing research on my shard (server) and had found a great guild to call home. I was already signed up and posting as a member in their forums before Open Beta started.
Beta 7 came to a close, and once again the Riftdrawals closed in on me, and I couldn’t wait for headstart. Headstart has been remarkably smooth as well, and save for a few unexpected patching alerts from Trion, the experience has been amazing. I’m not one of those folks that gets annoyed when they bring the servers down during a headstart, so it was good to see that they were tackling issues before the official game launch.
The amazing thing about the folks at Trion is that they mean what they say, and they do what they say they’re going to do. I have never, in my 10+ years as an MMO player, seen a company move so quickly to address user complaints, feedback or compliments. Within days of suggesting a feature, it was in the next patch notes. Within hours of a major patch, it was obvious that their fixes were solid. Within a week, their customer service centered attitude had already beaten the likes of Blizzard, SOE, and Cryptic combined. There are those who can never seem to be pleased, but the company has always treated their player base with respect and understanding. I hope they can do it in the long term as well.
Iron Tomb instance with my guild
Now that I’ve glossed over everything about the game I love, let me say that this game has singlehandedly inspired my latest round of upgrades. I already had a pretty good system to play the game on, but I wanted to take full advantage of what their engine could do, so when my brother’s PC broke down and it was obvious that another round of hand-me-downs would become necessary, I jumped the goat.
Upgrading from a quad core CPU to the AMD Phenom II X6 1100T, and dropping another Radeon HD 5870 into my system for some CrossFire loving, I was able to crank the details up on this game. That’s not to say the game looked like trash with a single 5870, far from it. I’ve also played it on a GeForce 8600GT Mobile and it looks pretty good there too. Frame rates have been consistently good for me, and even in heavy battles where it dips into the teens on the framerate counter, the game felt responsive and did what I asked of it. Without crashing I might add. That was way back in Beta 6 too.
On to the specifics. The game engine I’ve already said, is beautiful. What you may not realize however are the things you miss out on when you’re used to the major MMO that is World of Warcraft.
I respect Blizzard, they’ve been doing their art for 20 years now, and they’re pretty darn good for a company that long in the troll tooth. But there’s something that they have taken away from the players by making their game so approachable to everyone. Realism. Strategy. and I’m going to go there – real teamwork. Everything in WoW is sissified compared to Rift. Rift is what I remember about MMOs. A realistic day/night cycle without it feeling like it was daylight all the time. Rifts and dynamic content that could make you jump if you weren’t paying attention. Real teamwork required to reach objectives, not just button mashing by prepubescent 12 year olds with a superiority complex. A truly dynamic class system that inspires you to explore unique builds without needing to change specs & gear sets all the time. Quest hubs that change over time based on player activity. Capital cities that feel truly grand and not like you’re being forced to roam the halls of a college dorm with a crowd of bulls. Real weather effects in the world, including some really stellar snow storm effects in the Realm of the Fae instance. Unique monsters and faction clashes. The ability of the rifts to fight one another. If you path one type of monster into the area of another, they will actually fight each other, even if you’re wailing away on one of them. Those are the kinds of things that will make your eyes pop when you’re playing the game. I had another “OMG” moment last night when I was fighting rifts and invasions in the Freemarch area on my cleric. I’ve spec’d her mainly as a healer, but since she has a tank soul in part of her build, I was amazed and very happy to see that I could take on the roles of Tank, DPS and Healer without missing a beat. It’s that kind of all inclusive play that makes the game a little more fun to play. I thought it would make the game feel like a giant cheat code, but it doesn’t. It’s very well rounded. Open grouping works very well for Rifts and other events taking place, and the ability to customize your UI down to the levels that were only possible with addons like XPerl in WoW, makes it very easy to make the game interface do exactly what you want, without needing outside help.
Aforementioned Snow Storm in Realm of the Fae - Name tags hidden (CTRL+U in-game)
I had always known I was giving up certain levels of realism when I played WoW. The quests however were stellar, and are still to this day better than what Rift has available, but for a new kid on the block, they keep my interest well enough. The realism, the special effects, the solid servers, and many other features of the game that make it feel like I’m once again playing an MMO and not merely a Disney wet dream, have made me believe in the MMO arena again for original content. WoW can still do lore and engaging quests, but they’ve had many years to hone their craft. The fact that Rift is 90% of those two areas (and so much more in others) is truly amazing.
One day I just got up and started runnin'
Trion Worlds has turned me into a believer. I can’t wait to see what they can do long term if they’re already firing on all cylinders now. I hesitate to call Rift a WoW killer. The developers may have an ad that says “You’re not in Azeroth anymore” but they aren’t trying to BE Azeroth like so many others seem to try. It’s hard to truly explain, you have to try it out for yourself. I’d also recommend that you play it to at least level 20 to get a firm grasp on what they offer over the other MMOs out there. Rift has many gameplay elements that I mentioned at the start of this post that I thought were annoying (Why would I want to play another WoW-esque MMO?) but the answer to that is that they’ve taken the elements that worked in WoW, added their own spin, and have made the game truly fun to play and interact in. If you don’t want to quest, go close rifts. If you don’t want to do either, go get a group and run a dungeon. If none of that sounds appealing, go open a rift in the opposing faction’s land and watch them scramble to close it. You really do have more say over the game than you do anywhere else. It’s completely true that you can log out in a peaceful quest hub only to come back and find that it’s filled with horrors to dispatch before you can turn in that quest you said “you’d turn in later.” People who go into Rift expecting it to be WoW and find themselves disappointed, are playing for the wrong reasons. Rift is another experience altogether. I am so glad I was accepted into the beta, and even more so that I can keep playing.
This great video sums up a lot of my favorite things about the game, so be sure you watch all of it.
http://www.gametrailers.com/video/exclusive-this-rift/711007
WoW
Posted by Ben | Filed under Geekin' Out
I’ve had my fair share of scoffs over the years. “You play what?” Back in 2000, it was EverQuest. Iin late 2004 when World of Warcraft was at the peak of its hype, and coincidentally its release late that year, I hopped on board. I’ve been playing it ever since, on and off over the years. Recently however, Blizzard has continued to polish the game, and add elements to it that you’d only find in other games, but with their own flair tossed in for good measure.
For example, with the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, the players received their first real dose of what Blizzard likes to call their “phasing engine” where quests and outcomes could have a real tangible impact on the world as they played it. In other MMOs that I’ve played (Everquest and Eve online for example) the player could interact with a given environment, but rarely were changes so consistent with how your avatar or character changed and shaped the world. Sure, in Eve online if you get into a skirmish with another corp, you can change the balance of power in a given area, but for the most part, doing missions doesn’t result in a game-changing atmosphere like WoW currently provides.
Blizzard continued to make changes to their phasing engine, and a newer, more impressive version launched with the latest expansion, Cataclysm. In Mount Hyjal for example, your actions are a direct result of the changes in that zone. When you first arrive, it’s a mess – some areas are on fire, completely dead, and infested with enemies to take out. As you progress, you do quests that shape the future of the zone, ultimately culminating in recovery of the area as time goes on. It’s striking to be walking through the same area on two different characters, where one has not done any of the quests, and the other which has completed the entire area, and seeing such massive differences in appearance and feel.
Another benefit to being a WoW player with the new expansion are the cutscenes. I don’t know who it was that decided to do this, but you guys have my appreciation. During quests associated with the Cataclysm expansion, whether they’re lower level (like the Goblin or Worgen starting areas) or the higher end stuff like Vashj’ir and Hyjal, the tangible differences in the game are appreciated as your character goes through the motions of questing and achievements. One of my favorite cut scenes in the game is the result of the Goblin ship incident where they get blasted to bits by the alliance. Blizzard’s penchant for humor is superb, and I laughed even when my poor ship was getting split apart. I’m sadistic, I know.
Cataclysm also continues the fine tradition of fun quests. This is the primary reason for most gamers playing, and I find that since I have several high level characters, I enjoy going back and experiencing these quests on each character. Not only are quests the best way to make money by yourself, but they also award more experience than you would get by simply grinding dungeons out (and the added bonus: you only have to rely on yourself instead of a PUG (or pick up group) or your guildies on their good or bad days.) Players who are concerned with gold cash flow in WoW should know that once you get to level 80, the quests award massive amounts of change, and between those quest rewards and selling the items I couldn’t use (auction house or not) I made a killing. It’s not uncommon for level 85 players to be able to afford the 4000+ gold flight speed once they hit 85. Unless of course you suck with your money and spend it on things you don’t need, that is.
Some of my favorite quests in Cataclysm are the Mount Hyjal quests, including the one where you launch the bears from the tops of trees onto a stretched-skin trampoline. More sadistic players of course toy around with the cubs by launching them into the surrounding mountain side (which doesn’t net you any goals on that given quest, but it doesn’t stop people from doing it) and I totally admit, I’ve bounced a couple cubs off the mountains. They’re just pixels
Another one of my favorite moments with the new expansion is the Alliance introduction quest to Vashj’ir (the underwater area). One of the first things you do is get on a boat with other soldiers with a nutcase who looks at just about anything that catches his eye, before he jumps off the boat into the ocean (but of course, this could be genius considering what happens after that).
Vash’jir intro, pardon the voice over review, but he’s got the best copy on YouTube right now.
Those are just a bare peek at what the expansion has to offer. Here is another one of the cutscenes I mentioned that I enjoy as well.
For the people that go “Eww, you play WoW?” Yup, sure do. What kind of game do you like? Is it the same old rehashed FPS nonsense that no one can seem to get away from? I’d rather play WoW than Call of Duty 69.5 or Unreal(istic) Tournament 45.
Technology Shout Out
Posted by Ben | Filed under Geekin' Out
Over the years, I’ve come into contact with various tools of geek trade, and as I thought about the various tools, I realized that I’ve never really publicly thanked those companies for coming up with these programs. They have made me who I am today, and I’ve had my ass saved by these programs on more than one occasion.
GWSCAN
GWSCAN was introduced to me back in 2000 when I worked for, as you may have guessed already, Gateway. GWSCAN is just a rebranded version of a Western Digital tool, but it has been utilized for many years in my library of apps as GWSCAN. There was even a time at Gateway where our supervisors told us that this program was the be-all, end-all as far as computer hard drives were concerned. If the user had a legitimate error code from the program, we could replace a hard drive on the spot without further troubleshooting. GWSCAN’s legacy has served me for over a decade. I thought it only fitting that I touch upon it first in this post, and that it was the inspiration behind me wanting to even make this post today. For IDE & SATA hard drive troubleshooting or low level formatting, there is no equal.
MemTest86
MemTest86 was introduced to me a year or so later, and is next up on my list. MemTest’s accuracy at detecting failed memory is second to none. This formidable application has helped me to isolate some of the most obscure problems with computers, and has helped me to diagnose memory sticks I have held on to over the years. This program has been invaluable in helping me keep track of dead modules, and ones that I can re-use in other computer projects, or to give or sell to others.
BartPE
When I worked for a middle school back in 2005, I needed to come up with a way to image 30+ computers at one time. We had a copy of Ghost 8, but I wasn’t happy with the implementation available at the time, so I stumbled upon BartPE. I was able to use my single tech workstation in my office half a building away to serve the image for more than 100 PCs in that building, all across a simple 100 megabit network. Since I was imaging Windows XP at the time, transfers were very fast for the number of systems I had to image, and the success rate was nearly perfect. (those times that it wasn’t weren’t even BartPE’s fault – just bad network connections or NIC cards). BartPE made me realize how awesome a lab full of identical hardware could be on the geek level. That being said, since it’s only fair…
Ghost 8
I had never used cloning software until I came across Ghost 8. Other than my displeasure with it by itself until I stumbled upon BartPE, it has been a phenomenal program. The hardware cloner I had in my office would only be able to clone one disk at a time, and as you can gather from my prior post, that would have taken an eternity with the sheer numbers. Many people are familiar with this app (and it’s subsequent revisions since then) so I’ll leave it at that.
Spybot S&D
Spybot S&D was being heavily used by me at the 2005 point in time, and it saved me and my systems from many infections. It was what I consider to be the first real answer to Malware software, and holds a special place in my memory, even though I don’t use it primarily anymore.
MalwareBytes
MalwareBytes was introduced to me by a friend and has since taken over 90% of all cases where I need to check a system for Malware. It has continued to demonstrate amazing ability at catching the rare and obscure forms of malware, even when I am running just the basic quick scan. That kind of ability does not go unnoticed.
CPU-z
CPU-Z is the result of the CPUID program that many years used to show people what their computers had inside of them without actually needing to crack open the case. I’ve been using this program since practically version 1.0, and it has continued to triumph at giving me the most important information about my CPU, RAM, motherboard (and now GPU) in a program that doesn’t even need to be installed. It’s always been helpful to me for calculating overclocking speeds, and what is inside the computers of friends halfway around the world.
Speccy
For even more information at a glance, Speccy has filled a niche that used to be only available via programs like Everest (which I loved at the time, I just hated that you had to pay for it to get information that Speccy gives you for free.) Speccy is great at reading temps, including individual core temperatures on multicore processors, and provides the most comprehensive set of tools available for remote diagnosis, without ever needing to buy anything. If you use this program, do what I’ve done, and support the authors for their efforts.
Microsoft Security Essentials
Without a doubt, the free antivirus landscape has been an interesting struggle since the PC broke the sub-$1000 realm. No longer are you required to purchase antivirus solutions when there are so many free apps that don’t take up as much of a memory footprint as the larger format ones. Even more surprising is that Microsoft themselves have come out with this program. Who better than the maker of your OS to protect your system though? I came across MSE after I was introduced to the enterprise version, Forefront Security, at work. I was so impressed with its ability to intercept malware before it even had a chance to run, and for its comprehensive and thorough scans, finding things that none of the other free AV programs could. It can even detect and remove malware, something that I was convinced the other free AVs would never be able to do correctly. As long as you’ve got a legal version of a supported Windows OS, it’s free. And seriously, it’s 2011. Windows 7 is here. If you’re using a pirated OS, grow up and get out of the “the world will do as I please” mode.
So for all of the application developers, programmers, managers and testers, thank you for your contributions to my arsenal. I am extremely grateful for your efforts over the years.
pfsense. Not just for geeks anymore.
Posted by Ben | Filed under Geekin' Out
- What kind of network do I have currently? Am I serving an internet connection to more than a handful of connected devices?
- Am I tired of replacing substandard hardware that was designed and purposed in an era with sub-megabit internet services?
- Do I participate in any kind of multimedia streaming or Peer to Peer transfers on a regular basis?
- Do I enjoy online gaming via either a PC or console, and am I tired of high latency and internet connectivity problems?
- Do I have the budget to build a purpose built PC or do I have the spare parts to build the system (both work!)
- Do I want more granular control over my internet connection including access to bandwidth monitors, Advanced QoS and even a VPN that just works?
- Do I want a solution that I can just set up in a corner and not worry about security since large businesses and corporations trust the software to host their internet connections?
One of the problems that I was having with my DSL at the time is that, for as nice as my DSL modems were from Qwest, they had a nasty tendency to die on me after a few months. I’m not talking years here, months. It was such a big hassle, and I had tried everything – from re-routing the phone lines in the house to get the shortest distance from the POP outside, to replacing the modem hardware with the higher end components, it was fast becoming apparent that the consumer grade modems just weren’t cutting it for me anymore. I found that the more I taxed my connection (and on this particular DSL line, it’s a 5 megabit downstream, 864 kilobit upstream) the more often my modem would exhibit behavior that would cause us all issues. It was especially bad when people would stream media content (Netflix and YouTube) while trying to play games – the modem would often just stop working, restart itself and give us a terrible experience.
Enter pfsense.
From the day that I set up the box, I noticed immediate benefits. The modem was set up for bridging, and I used pfsense to handle the PPPoE connection to my DSL provider. Stability shot through the roof, the DHCP server could be set up to use MAC addresses so that I always knew which computer has which IP address, so I could just memorize a chart, or go to look it up. P2P vastly improved, which was handy because everyone in the house plays World of Warcraft, which utilizes a P2P system to push patches to the game. It also improved streaming ability and actually lowered our ping responses, on DSL (even with inteleaving) a bit. It wasn’t a huge margin, but it was noticable over the long term.
Fast forward to today, and I run a 22 Megabit Cable line (22 down, 4 up) to the pfsense box using a spare system setup I had lying around. It’s vastly overpowered, but I know people with Athlon and Celeron 700 MHz (yes! MHz!) that are running the same connection speed as I am. I am omitting my specs at this time because I don’t want you to be afraid that you can’t get a pfsense box up and running. It’s such great FREE software.
In addition to being able to monitor my internet connection in real time, I can perform remote tasks from my cell phone’s browser, set up web hosting systems (more on that in a later blog post!) and improve the quality of internet life here at home. Here’s some screenshots to help you understand the functionality of pfsense and how it looks.
The Start page
General Setup, DNS Servers, etc
Traffic Graph showing idle bandwidth usage
Downloading a file using the full speed of my cable
Uploading using full speed of my cable
Backup or restore configurations
Integrated historical Traffic Timeline tracking
You can find more screenshots at the pfsense screenshot gallery here.
Here’s how easy it is to install pfsense onto your system:
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Download pfsense from official website here
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Burn the CD Image to CD and boot the system to it
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Set up the system using the on screen text prompts
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Assign an incoming (WAN) and internal (LAN) connection interface (you need two NICs or one NIC and virtual LANs)
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Set up the DHCP server and default IP (same as you would with a $50 Linksys or DLink from Walmart)
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Open the web interface of your new pfsense box and configure as needed.
The nice thing about pfsense is that out of the box, once you have the installation completed, you’re ready to go. There’s not a real need to configure it past that point, but if you want to tap more of the features, check out the integrated packages and add-ons for the OS.
The beautiful thing about pfsense is that you can use old computer parts to build a system. Even a system with a 700 MHz CPU, 256 MB of RAM and two network interface cards can do everything a home user will ask it to do. Complete system requirements for pfsense can also be found here.
If you’re tired of sub-par routers, would rather have more control and security over your internet connection, I highly suggest you give pfsense a go. You’ll be glad you did when you discover all the little tools and toys hidden within. If you decide to give it a shot, please let me know what you think of the OS!
Social Gaming™
Posted by Ben | Filed under Geekin' Out, Random
Hello ladies. Look at your profile, now back to mine, now back to yours, now back to mine! Sadly, your profile is littered with social gaming, but if you stopped playing flash games on a substandard web platform, your profile could be like mine. Look down, back up, where are you? You’re sitting in front of a 27″ widescreen LCD with a REAL game if you had a game like my game. Whats in your hand, back to mine – it’s a game time card for that game you love the most. Look again, the game card is now that computer upgrade you desperately need. Anything is possible when you say no to social gaming. I’m on the moon.
Copyright acutegeekitis 2010