Speaking Of . . .

. . . Time

2012-01-25T15:42:00.004-05:00

"Both young children and old people have a lot of time on their hands. That's probably why they get along so well." -- Jonathan Carroll

Among his many talents Jonathan Carroll is a novelist and author who is perhaps best known for his treatment of the subjects of magic, slipstream, and modernfantasy. He knows a thing or two about the problem presented by time, though to some degree we all do, right?

No writer -- at least no freelancer -- complains about not having time with any seriousness to the complaint, because not having time means that they are working -- that they are earning... And that is not a subject that freelance writers joke about.

I just wish that there was a way to obtain more time... Or swap the free time that is available in the middle of Summer with the times in the Winter when there is not enough time.

Time Travel Happens . .

The idea of time travel has been a staple for science fiction and fantasy writers since the genres were invented -- and maybe even before that.

The Time Machine by H. G. Wells is often the first story that comes to mind when the subject is raised, and it is a great story that arguably was created by a writer who was way before his time. Then there is the classic novel Bid Time Return by Richard Matheson that was turned into a movie called Somewhere in Time (that starred Christopher Reeves) which was a good one.

My all time favorite time travel novels have to be Time and Again by Jack Finney, and Robert Heinlein's The Door Into Summer, a story whose protagonist, an engineer named Daniel Boone Davis, has a pet cat who is also his best friend (named Petronius the Arbiter) who features rather prominantly in both the plot and the endearing quality of the story. In fact it is fair to say that the observation by Heinlein's wife Ginny that prompted him to write the story was, more or less, about that cat.

I cannot read that book without getting near tears at Heinlein's description of the emotional crisis that the cat, Pete, is thrown into when the protagonist is placed in a position beyond Pete's ability to either rationalize or deal with -- which leaves him with only the option to cry.

Heinlein belongs in a very exclusive group of writers whose ability to cause you to think without realizing you are doing so, while they take contemporary issues and wrap them in the thin veil of the story that they are telling, is so powerful a gift that we should consider ourselves fortunate that these men and women chose to tell stories as writers rather than to enter the field of politics, where their natural talents would have easily permitted them to manipulate not just the system, but each and every one of us as individuals.

. . . Just Ask the Experts

As the plot to a novel time travel is an interesting concept, but the idea that it could actually be possible strikes most intelligent people as not simply unlikely, but when the notion is being presented by another (presumably) smart person, a primary tip-off that the person doing the talking is trying to sell you something.

That being the case it is not really all that surprising to me that there is a decided reluctance on the part of some of the smartest people in the world alive today to admit that they believe time travel is possible. In fact it happens all the time. Every day. Right now. Says who?

How about Dr. Stephen Hawking?

While he is reluctant to discuss the matter because, as he points out, invariably the listener will grasp at much of the hypothesis and apply it to elements of the notion that for personal reasons they want to believe, that sort of conversation rarely ends well or heads in the direction that was intended. That is an irrational but predictable given...

So what do people like Hawking mean when they say that time travel is possible?

If you apply the very strictest sense of what is and is not observable phenomenon, every time you look at a star you are traveling in time, because what you are seeing is an event that is thousands -- and in some cases perhaps millions -- of years old. That it is happening right now but originally occurred all that time ago certainly meets with the generally accepted definitions of time travel, right?

If you got into a space ship (whose technology we do not at present possess) and headed out into space at, say, twice the speed of light, and you traveled for a good long time, if you then stopped and you tuned your television receiver to the right frequency, you could watch the live broadcast of Elvis Presley appearing on the Ed Sullivan Show. Or you could perhaps tune your radio to the right frequency and listen as Adolf Hitler gave his opening address to the world while standing at the podium of the 1936 Summer Olympic Games in Berlin... That would qualify as time travel wouldn't it? After all, they are both live broadcasts...

. . . Observers and Participants . . .

Albert Einstein (14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) hinted that time had many aspects, and that the passage of time and actual events were more relative to the observer rather than the participant, since the observer could see elements of a tableau that were concealed from the participant. That is an over-simplification of what he actually said, the details of which include speed, the sun, the nature of the physics of time, and some very complicated mathematical formula I do not even pretend to understand because hey, I don't.

What I do understand is that there are things Einstein daydreamed about that are way out of reach for me even when I am focusing upon and concentrating upon an idea. I am just saying...

One of the examples of how Einstein's daydreams often turn out to be realistic assessments of actual phenomenon is the International Space Station (commonly called the "ISS" by the smart people at NASA). As part of my job as a newspaper columnist who writes about business and technology I have the occasion to learn things that most people do not. For example when there was a problem with the ISS, I spent a few weeks learning about it as I followed the developments that, fortunately, turned out to be much ado about nothing.

The disaster was not a disaster, nothing bad happened, and so there was really nothing to write about but -- and this I think of as the cool bit in all of this -- I walked away from the experience having been briefed by some of the smartest people in the world including NASA engineers whose business it is to operate and fix the ISS, and now know a lot about it. Cool that.

For example I know that the COSPAR ID for the ISS is "1998-067A" -- and I know that a COSPAR ID is the International Designator -- alsoknown as COSPAR designation -- which is the international naming convention that is used for satellites, the ISS being technically a satellite.

Naming things is an important task, especially things that go up into space with the potential for coming back down to earth, since you have to fill out insurance forms when your roof is destroyed by an object falling out of the sky and insurance companies like it better when you can say "pieces from the object formerly known as 1998-067A re-entered the atmosphere and struck my roof, destroying it," rather than "this big metallic thing that is I know not what came from I know not where and crushed my roof; and now I need you to fix it please, thank you!"

A working example -- in fact the very example that the NASA engineer used in explaining the convention to us at the briefing, is object "1990-037B," which translates to the Hubble SpaceTelescope. That happened to be the 37th known successful launch world-wide in1990, and you may be interested to know that actor and comedian Jack Black's mother is Dr. Judith Cohen-Black, is an engineer whoworked extensively on the Hubble Space Telescope Project. Isn't it a small world?

The official Radio Call Sign for the ISS is Alpha, and it has a maximum crew compliment of six people. Its Operational Window is roughly the years 1998 to 2016 but it is possible according to the experts to extend that by affixing booster motors to the ISS changing its orbit to a higher one to correct the roughly 2km a month that it degrades (falls) which would have the effect of allowing it to stay up there longer. Of course doing that would require dis-assembly of much of the external structure such as the solar power arrays and other stuff so it is not likely. But they could do it if they wanted to...

The ISS has an approximated mass of around 450,000 kg (990,000lb), a length of 72.8 m, and a width 108.5 m. Its height c. 20 m (c. 66 ft), and its pressurised volume 837 m3 (29,600 cuft), and it has an atmospheric pressure 101.3 kPa (29.91inHg, 1 atm). The most important fact for the purposes of this article is the fact that its average speed is 7,706.6 m/s (27,743.8 km/h, 17,239.2 mph) allows it to orbit the planet every 91 minutes.

This is important because it demonstrates another aspect of time travel Hawking talked about -- the fact that wristwatches worn by astronauts who spend time on the ISS lose time uniformly -- that is to say at the exact same and identical rate, which is proof that time for the people on the ISS passes slower than time on the surface of the planet, so you could say that the astronauts are traveling backwards in time every time they visit the ISS.

I need to go now, I am out of time...

Badge Collections

2012-01-19T08:33:00.002-05:00

Ordinarily I do not think of myself as slow to adopt new tech but in the case of Apple's iPhone I resisted moving onto that platform for a very long time for complicated reasons. Last year I made the move to the iPhone out of necessity rather than independent choice -- one of my jobs required it.

Around that time had you asked me if I would be getting an iPad the answer would have been a very forceful and emphatic "Hell No!" but probably not for the reasons you might think...

In my mind the iPad -- like the iPhone -- represented a form of tech that I felt violated some of the unwritten rules by which I operate on a day-to-day basis. Have you ever watched the TV show NCIS? One of the primary characters and protagonists in that television show is a character named Gibbs -- and among his many quirks and notable elements are a set of numbered rules by which he -- and by the simple extension of group-think his team -- operates.

I too have a set of rules, and like Gibbs they are, for the most part, unwritten but also inflexible. Rule #14 is "never combine essential tech with entertainment."

If you take a closer look at Rule #14 it translates to the simple -- and I feel eminently logical -- position that placing entertainment temptations on your primary communications device is simply asking for trouble.

Just prior to making the switch to the iPhone my standard go-kit consisted of my Blackberry Smartphone, iPod (30GB Video Model), notebook computer, and various rotating kit like thumb drives, earbuds, and depending upon the story I was working on, other personal electronic devices. When I travel I often used my iPod to listen to audio books (by way of audible.com), music (in the form of MP3's and songs from Apple's iTunes, games like Mahjong, and the occasional TV show saved to the device for later consumption when stuck on a train, plane, or automobile. The point is that it was a designated entertainment device that had no other role among my kit.

After I made the transition to the iPhone the idea of carrying both an iPhone and an iPod made very little sense. The iPhone replaced both my smartphone (Blackberry) and my iPod; this only made sense -- and immediately violates Rule #14.

When you spend battery time listening to music or audio books, playing games, or availing yourself of any of the myriad other entertainment opportunities that can be had on the iOS platform you are in essence using up potential talk time on the cellphone side of the device. What happens when you need to make one or more calls and you have already burned through a major percentage of the available stored charge on the device? Simple answer: you don't make many calls.

So the choice is either carry a second iOS device that is dedicated to entertainment, or you resist the call to entertainment on your iPhone because there is no middle ground. Adding insult to injury the iPhone is engineered with an internal battery that is not accessible to the user -- so you cannot simply carry extra power in the form of fully charged replacement batteries that effectively extend its capability. Oh, there are external battery packs that you can carry with you and that can be used to both power and recharge the internal battery on the iPhone, but these are both inconvenient and bulky to some extent, and require you to carry additional kit in the form of their charger and cable.

In simple terms that is not a win-win situation.

The solution to this dilemma is a simple one: resist the temptation to avail yourself of the easily accessed entertainment potential in the device. Yeah... Right.

Last year about the time that I was making the switch to the iPhone, the 'net-based audio book service Audible dot Com rolled out its own dedicated iOS App that, in addition to making it very easy -- and dare I say convenient -- to access your library of books on the service, comes with a built-in recognition program in the form of a Badge Collection that celebrates your activities in entertainment on the service.

I was doomed.

Even having voluntarily limited myself to the use of the entertainment side of the iPhone to carefully planned and restricted circumstances, and exercising harsh self-imposed discipline, like the bell that has been rung or the genie that has escaped the bottle, the simple knowledge of the existence of the stats portion of the Audible iPhone App was sufficient to cause me to check those stats whenever I used the device to listen to a book.

At this very moment there is a book loaded onto my iPhone -- The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson -- when I find myself on the T or commuter rail, on a plane, or simply stuck as a passenger in a vehicle commuting, the temptation to check my "stats" on the app is simply too powerful to resist. "What are they, anyway?" you might ask...

There are in fact several pages on the app related to stats. The first page, entitled "Listening Stats" depicts my iPhone Listening Level -- which at this stage could be much worse than it actually is, which is the very first level of AppNewbie (achieved on 1/12/2012 in fact). The next level up from AppNewbie is AppNovice, but to unlock that I will have to have listened to an additional 77 hours of audio books!

Above that in the mountain you climb is AppProfessional (+477 more hours), AppScholar (+977 additional hours), and finally the lofty level of AppMaster (which is the highest rating and would take an additional 1,977 hours of listening -- and my reaction is "Really?!"). My relatively low consumption rate -- a logical examination of the system suggests that at some point in the nearly 24 hours of actual listening I have unlocked the first level only -- simply because I do exercise discipline over my use of that side of the device; because after all it is a cellphone not a media player. But still...

Listening Stats: The Badge Collection

At the moment there are a total of 15 Badges potentially available to be unlocked in the app, and each has several levels -- bronze, silver, gold etc. -- that can be unlocked. Each badge has a unique title and image, is rimmed with a metal band that is used to display the level of progress in the activity that is associated with the specific badge (I believe it actually goes as high as 'Diamond' level) and when you touch the badge, it offers a description to you.

So in addition to providing a difficult to resist pseudo-achievement and recognition gesture, the Badge Collection for the app is also tied into the social networking world in that with the flick of a finger you can, if you so desire, cause the App to post news of your progress and current badge level to Facebook or even Twitter. This is truly an evil element to this app...

A brief examination of my standing in this very shrewd motivation system reveals that I have unlocked:

(1) Audible Obsessed -- You've used Audible for iPhone at least 7 days straight." (Silver)

(2) Weekend Warrior -- You've listened for at least 5 hours total on a weekend." (Silver)

(3) All Nighter -- You've listened for at least 8 hours at night." (Diamond)

(4) Undecider Badge -- "You've listened to at least 3 different titles in one day." (Silver)

(5) High Noon -- "You've listened for at least 2 hours during lunchtime." (Silver)

(6) The Stack -- "You have at least 50 books in your library." (Silver)

Right then, that is all of them for the moment...

On the next page of the Stats Section of the app is called "Listening Statistics" and it contains a running count of the time spend using the app to listen to the books that I have purchased over the years (I became a customer of the service in 2000) that is divided into tabs for Today, Daily, Monthly, and a running Total.

The Daily consists of a bar graph that shows how many hours were spent each day in the past week -- and if you could see my stats you could easily decipher from it that I have been using it to occupy my mind during my commutes.

The fourth and final page in the Stats Section of the app is a timeline for the "Titles in your Audible Library" that tracks what the system arbitrarily decides are epic moments for me. Bearing in mind that, having been a customer since the year 2000 it is not really a shock to discover that I actually have 150 titles in my library -- or that some years (it divides this time span up in years you see) are more book-filled than others...

Before you start to speculate that I use this app more than I am admitting to based upon the number of books, bear in mind that the primary platform that I used in the past for this book listening was split between my notebook and iPod -- though I do not actually have the app on my iPod since I have a video iPod and not an iPod Touch -- but I am getting off track here.

In the end I can only conclude that the combination of the excellent selection of books that are available for purchase on the Audible service, combined with the very shrewdly targeted system of encouragement that the company uses to get me to listen, and well... I can only conclude that I am in fact the target audience for the service. Sigh.

Still, if you find yourself needing to fill in an hour here or there on commutes, or the long hours of a plane ride, well you could do much worse than to find yourself lost in an audio book... That is all I am saying...

. . . Farmville

2011-11-03T11:39:00.002-04:00

Everything that I ever needed to learn about modern farming science I learned from playing Farmville...

OK not really, but one really important lesson that I did learn by playing Farmville is this: No matter how much time in a day that you think you have, allowing yourself to get sucked into any Facebook game that involves farming, a form of competition vs. your friends that is very subjective, and the ability to decorate a farm is a simple recipe for disaster that has a physics-defying capability for sucking away time like the center of a black hole... I am just saying...

The most recent time-sucking nastiness to appear in Farmville is the Halloween festivities, at the heart of which is the need to collect treats (candy), and the building components for Duckulas Castle -- which for the most part consist of Haunted Bricks, Knockers (of the door variety) and Buckets of Goo (glowing green goo at that).

Some free and very useful advice for you -- if you have not yet been seduced by the deceptively innocent appearing game called Farmville, save yourself! Run Away!

. . . Murphy's Law - Sword of the Stars II

2011-11-02T01:12:00.010-04:00

Sword of the Stars II and Murphy's Law

Murphy's Law is an adage or epigram that is typically stated as: "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong."

Like a lot of gamers I was looking forward to the launch of the next game in the Sword of the Stars series, being something of a major fan of space combat and space trading games... Let me be clear here though, I am speaking as a gamer and fan right now, not as a game reviewer or games journo.

When the game released, and it did release, really -- The Sword of the Stars II released -- it launched -- they tell us that it is out -- but when it released on Steam the version that was uploaded was a Beta version rather than the completed game, and it made it into the distribution channel on Steam before anyone realized what had happened.

The version that was uploaded was the Beta client that was stable prior to the actual Beta test -- in other words with all of the bugs that were later identified by the testers and, presumably, fixed...

Once the mistake was recognized and the Beta version of the game on Steam was pulled, the correct version was supposed to have been what replaced it. But when that new version was examined by gamers who had already purchased the game, what was supposed to be the retail build turned out to be yet another Beta build...

A close examination of what is supposed to be the retail release is a game whose version number still contains the 'B' designator that is used to identify Beta clients suggests that it is not what was expected -- the 1.0 retail build -- but the bottom line is that only the developer can ultimately say -- and so far all that they are saying is this: It is what it is.

Add to that the fact that large sections of the game in what is supposed to be the retail build are not actually accessible and the only logical conclusion that can be drawn is that something is very wrong here but nobody can say what exactly that is...

The Options Menu on the build that is purported to be the correct retail build is grayed out; it cannot be accessed. Many of the sub-menu's are either non-functional or contain miss-identified labels. Still, I have seen videos of the game being played and it is beautiful -- but I do not have a copy myself to play because the PR's notified all of the games journos who requested review copies that they will be delayed until the end of this week -- minimum -- while the developer creates and applies fixes.

Martin Cirulis, the C.E.O. of the game's developing studio Kerberos Productions, posted what is essentially a mea culpa plea that exonerated Steam, publisher Paradox Interactive, and the team that worked on SotS2, essentially accepting all of the blame for the misfire that is its launch attempt, or as many pundits are saying, the Space Combat Game's Failure to Launch.

What Does It Mean?

That is kind of difficult to answer since what information that we do have is vague, but what I think it means is that we need to wait a week, give Kerberos Productions the benefit of the doubt, and not jump to conclusions.

Speaking as a gamer and fan of the genre that is what I am doing. Speaking as a games journo though, I have sent some emails and I am looking into this, so check back with me next week and I may have more to add -- but hopefully it will be an enthusiastic endorsement, since we all win when a game starts rocky but pulls out and shows you its shiny side!

A Good Reason to Wait and to Hope

I have already admitted that I am something of a fan of the whole Space Combat and Space Trading genre, and that is true... To put this in perspective for you, let me tell you about the very first space combat and trading game that I ever played and how addicted I was to what, when you see the screen captures from it, you will probably be shocked and surprised by... But I assure you that I was not alone in finding it to be an awesome and entertaining but very addictive play.

Elite Privateer and the Commodore 64

When we typed the name of our computer it was C=64, which was a shorthand text version of its logo. Let me first tell you about the Commodore 64, of whic h I owned two: one to play games and do my school work on and one that I operated as a Bulletin Board System (BBS) that was in its own right an amazing machine.

This was 1984 mind you, and at the time as near as I can remember only the IBM PC had hard disk drives as a normal accessory, and even those did not come stock, you paid extra for them. The C=64 was made by Commodore, and before I owned it, I originally owned the previous model, which was called the VIC-20, a computer that had a massive 5K of RAM and ran the Commodore BASIC 2.0 OS.

The Commodore VIC-20 - had a massive 5K of RAM and a 1.02 MHz CPU

The C=64 did not have a hard drive, not even as an option, rather it had just the single-sided Model 1541 5.25" Floppy Drive -- which was something that did not come with the base model and you had to pay extra for! At the time most users had a cassette tape player/recorder that they used to save their programs on, if they had any mass storage at all!

When I decided to create a BBS with my C=64 I ended up buying a used 1541 floppy drive at a flea market to add to the new 1541 I already owned, and using one to hold the BBS software and chat boards, I used the other to hold games and programs that the visitors could download. When they wanted a program that was not on the data drive, they had to "crash" me system mail asking me to put the correct floppy into the drive, and yeah, that was cool.

What I ended up doing -- with the assistance of my Sisters then boyfriend, was scratch-building a hard drive controller that connected to the C=64 via its parallel port, to which I connected a 10MB MFM hard drive that my dad gave me after his office upgraded their PC's mass storage to 30MB drives!

It took us two weeks to get the controller built and debugged, and then get the hard drive to be recognized, but once it was let me tell you, I had the largest BBS New South Wales and Queensland combined! Of course it still only had one phone line coming into it, and the users were limited to 20 minutes a day, but man I had my ENTIRE file library online at the same time! Not only that, but it still left me over 9MB of free space on the drive, and I could not imagine EVERY needing more space than that massive 10MB hard drive could provide. I had not better need more space anyway because those things cost almost $3,000!

With my computer dedicated to being a BBS and not needing the second 1541 drive anymore but wanting to play games, I ended up buying a used C=64 at the flea market that I originally bought the floppy drive from -- there was a bloke whose thing was buying, selling, and trading computer parts, you see. So I bought a second C=64 and, when I did the bloke gave me a handful of games to go with it as part of his "service." At the time we did not think of this as game piracy - and if you had told us that what we were doing was illegal we probably would have thought you insane. It was just how it worked back then -- you shared games by making copies for our mates!

One of the games he game me was called Elite Privateer, and when I got home, got the system set up, and ran the game, I was hooked. I spent the next 24 hours playing it before falling into an exhausted state of coma...

To put this in perspective for you, in interviews the senior producers of CCP Games held out Elite as one of the main inspirations for their acclaimed MMORPG, EVE Online!

Here is what the game looked like:

What you are looking at above is the game's loading screen -- see that object in the center, the white object in the center? Yeah, that is your ship! The bottom center area is the radar sensor display, and the "gauges" on either side gave you lots of info about your ship...

When you started the game you initially controlled the character "Commander Jameson," and started the game at Lave Station with 100 credits and a lightly armed trading ship, a Cobra Mark III as they began the process of seeking out ports in order to purchase a cargo which they would then take to another distant port around a distant planet to sell, making a profit, and then do that again!

In the process they had to contend with pirates, hostile aliens, and things like navigational hazards, and docking with a space station to trade or upgrade your ship had to be accomplished by HAND, getting properly lined up with the docking port and then matching the spin and velocity of the station before you could dock, a maneuver that was not for the faint of heart!

Most of the ships that the player encountered in the game were named after snakes or other reptiles, and the odds were that the captain of that ship that was approaching yours was a pirate, and wanted you dead!

Trading was not the only way to obtain credits in the game -- credits could be accumulated through a number of means including piracy, trade, military missions, bounty hunting and asteroid mining, and if you had a fuel scoop you could even resupply your fuel by flying close to the sun and scooping up magma from around it!

The money that you earned by whatever of the methods you chose -- or a combination of them -- was used to upgrade your ship with better weapons, better shields, a larger cargo hold so you could carry more trade goods, and if you were a total wimp one of the first things you probably bought was an automated docking computer!

As I sit here thinking about those long ten-hour game sessions and the fun that we had playing this game I feel compelled to go search Ebay for a C=64 and a copy of the game... And you know, I must might!

Yeah, I can wait for Sword of the Stars... I am just not sure how long I can wait!

. . . The Gaming Season

2011-10-29T15:11:00.006-04:00

In addition to being the periodical of recreational reading preferred by people whose interests include investing, finances, and business, Forbes Magazine fills a number of niche interests, from defining just what it means to be wealthy and who is, by those standards, wealthy...

It should not be much of a surprise that the subject of video games and gaming -- as well as gamers -- has slowly ninja'd its way into the magazine as, after all, the world of games and gaming easily fits into that special interest publication thanks to it applying among several subject headings -- from investment (a lot of game studios and some of the major game publishers are publicly- held companies) to recreation.

A lot of wealthy people (and people who would like to be wealthy) happen to be gamers -- I am not going to make hay on the notion that following the stock market and the process of investing in and speculating on stocks is often referred to by the participants as "playing the game" -- or the connection between competitiveness among gamers and that typically encountered in the world of investing and brokerages. Acknowledging it here should be sufficient to bring it to our attention.

In the Tech Section on the web-version of Forbes Magazine yesterday there is an article whose title is "Nike Says Video Games Like 2K Sports' NBA 2K12 Helps Sell Basketball Shoes" by games journo and contributing writer John Gaudiosi that, within the body, mentions the past performance in sales for the game and its expected sales, which have been severely impacted by the player strike in the NBA presently underway.

This is interesting largely because it demonstrates the relationship between what most people think of as regular seasons with the unique and completely unconnected Game Season, and specifically how the fiscal side of it relates to real-world events.

In the world of video games when a games journo references the 'season' they are not talking about the four divisions of the year (spring, summer, autumn, and winter) marked by particular weather patterns and daylight hours, or even the Financial Seasons that are typically defined as Financial Winters -- a period in which money is in low supply, Financial Springs -- a period in which there is money but its flow is reduced, Financial Summers -- a period in which the flow of money is increased, or Financial Falls -- a period during which cash flow and investments in a company tends to be increased.

The Gaming Season is defined as a standard 12-month period -- independent of the calendar year -- within which there are three distinct sub-seasons: The Holiday Season, Prime Season, and Summer Doldrums. Based upon their names you should be able to deduce with some accuracy the thematic score for this trio of sub-seasons, but to fully appreciate them it really is necessary to dedicate some effort in understanding -- and appreciating -- their unique natures.

Breaking Down the Sub-Seasons of Gaming

The first thing you should accept is that the gaming season violate the calendar, which we can loosely define as a typical year which runs from January through December, contains 52 weeks and any number of holidays, and is a logical way to define time, dates, and within it, seasons. The Gaming Season does not begin in January, it begins in September, with all of the events that take place prior to the magic date of September 1st being part of the previous Game Season.

We are presently in the 2011/2012 Game Season -- that is how we identify them by the way, using the two regular years in which they take place in order to indicate the package that we call the Game Season and that contains the aforementioned trio of sub-seasons.

The Gaming Sub-Seasons consist of:

The Holiday Gaming Season
The Prime Gaming Season
The Summer Doldrums

The Holiday Gaming Season
September 01 thru December 24

As the name implies the first sub-season in gaming also comprises the first four months of the New Gaming Year, and is neatly divided into a pair of ranges, with the first half consisting mostly of games being released partly as a celebration of the end of the traditional final sub-season of the previous gaming year, and partly as a result of time -- more on that n a bit.

The second half of the Holiday Season is just what it sounds like: the period of time in which games that are being intentionally positioned for Christmas sales are released, and promoted.

A question of Time is what largely determined the designation of September as the kick-off point for the New Gaming Year. Several events occur in September of each year, starting with the wholly unofficial but still easily identified rebirth of the working year, the resumption of the education season (which incidentally shares a lot of common characteristics with the gaming seasons) and the cessation of the many elective activities that largely occupy the typical person's weekend leisure activities.

As the physical season winds down and Fall approaches, there is a perception that gamers have more time to play games, and that more than anything else is behind the designation of September as the star for the New Gaming Year.

Games that actually completed the development process in the first Quarter of the previous year have sat on the figurative shelves waiting for the new gaming year to begin so that they could make their way into the traditional starting point and, with luck and judgement of their merits, hopefully find there way into gamer hands, be the subject of much buzz, and claw their way through the cadre that makes up the short list for the competition for the title of Game of the Year.

Around mid-October the pre-release PR process begins for the games that have been held back for release with an eye on the Christmas shopping season emerge from their warm and safe cocoons, and the emphasis in presentation is largely geared towards appealing to the people who buy presents each Christmas (parents, grand parents, that sort of consumer) whose interest is largely limited towards comprehension of the potential value of a game as a gift -- and that translate roughly to convincing them that Junior or Sissy will really like this game!

Throughout this first sub-season there are sprinkled a handful of AAA titles that are cross-marketed to obtain the attention of the Xmas crowd (who we just discussed) and the gamers themselves, who naturally use a completely different criteria for judging the advisability of purchasing a game and, subsequently, receive a very different focus and pitch from the PR's.

That presents the basic picture for the first Sub-Season of the New Gaming Year and Season.

The Prime Gaming Season
January 01 thru May 31

This is the core of the gaming year -- and it is during this period that the major titles are released, as well as the games that the studios expect you to spend most of the Summer playing. Naturally the games that are targeted for release during the Prime Sub-Season tend to consist of the more complex and deeper (think large) games, and those that have a bigger-than-average online side to them.

The entire focus of PR efforts during this period is directed at gamers, not parents or grand parents, so there is a much more enthusiastic approach to the process.

These five months tend to be the period in which the major share of profits are obtained for the game studios and publishers, and it is during this period that most of the gamer poling takes place that will translate into DLC expansions in the next Game Year.

The Summer Doldrums
June 01 thru August 31

That unfortunate period in each year in which, typically, annual personal holidays take place and during which the majority of gamers have less time and pay less attention to gaming because there are a lot of other things that they do.

The less that is said about these three months the better.

Most gamers spend the Summer Doldrums catching up on the games that they own that they never finished for whatever reason.

Interrupt Driven

Web definitions:

Used to describe someone who moves through the a workday responding
to a series of interruptions rather than the work goals originally set...

So welcome to the New Gaming Year!

As we progress into the hot-phase of the Holiday Sub-Season, you will be happy to learn that the 2011/2012 Gaming Year is shaping up to be a good one!

Here is what you can enjoy now, and what you have to look forward to for the 2011 Holiday Sub-Season:

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marines (6 Sept) PC /PS3 / Xbox 360
Dead Island (9 Sept) PC /PS3 / Xbox 360
NHL 12 (13 Sept) PS3 / Xbox 360
Resident Evil 4 HD (20 Sept) PS3 / Xbox 360
F1 (23 Sept) PC /PS3 / Xbox 360
FIFA 12 (27 Sept) PC / PS2 / PS3 / PSP / Xbox 360 / Wii
Resident Evil Code: Veronica X HD (27 Sept) PS3 / Xbox 360
NBA 2K12 (04 Oct) PC / PS2 / PS3 / PSP / Xbox 360 / Wii
RAGE (04 Oct) PC /PS3 / Xbox 360
Dead Rising 2: Off the Record (11 Oct) PC /PS3 / Xbox 360
PES 2012 (14 Oct) PC /PS3 / Xbox 360
Spider Man: Edge of Time (14 Sept) PC /PS3 / Xbox 360
X-Men Destiny (14 Sept) PC /PS3 / Xbox 360
The Sims 3: Pets (18 Oct) PC /PS3 / Xbox 360
Batman: Arkham City (Oct 20) PC /PS3 / Xbox 360
Battlefield 3 (Oct) PC /PS3 / Xbox 360
NCIS (Oct 31) PC /PS3 / Xbox 360
Puss in Boots (01 Nov) PS3 / Xbox 360 / Wii
Call of Duty: MW3 (08 Nov) PC /PS3 / Xbox 360
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (11 Nov) PC /PS3 / Xbox 360
Assassins Creed: Revelations (15 Nov) PC /PS3 / Xbox 360
Saints Row: The Third (15 Nov) PC /PS3 / Xbox 360
LEGO Harry Potter: Years 5 - 7 (18 Nov) PC /PS3 / Xbox 360 / Wii
Need for Speed: The Run (18 Nov) PC /PS3 / Xbox 360
WWE '12 (22 Nov) PC /PS3 / Xbox 360
The Lord of the Rings: War in the North (25 Nov) PC /PS3 / Xbox 360

There are more of course, but the above is the highlight of the AAA titles that are set to rock your New Gaming Year.

. . . Fearful Computing Events

2011-10-21T04:03:00.004-04:00

Most of the time computers are something that we use for work and entertainment, find fun, and explore the vast world of online media and social networking... When everything is going right, we rarely even think about the inner workings of our computer, but when things start to go wrong, we have no choice but to think upon it and worry.

The worse thing that can happen is for your PC to die...

Conventional wisdom suggests that as long as you have a recent backup, having your PC die is no big deal. Yeah, right... No big deal? You still have to replace it or have it fixed (or if you are me, fix it yourself), and then there is the dreaded process of first installing the OS and then every... Single... App... and... Game... again. Gah.

Insurance

Which is why when I replaced my main PC last year I constructed what I considered to be the best high-end system that I could manage, starting with spending a bit extra on an ASUS motherboard with robust RAID support. I then bought a matched set of 2TB hard drives and used them to create a single 1TB mirrored array.

If you are not up on the tech -- RAID means Redundant Array of Inexpensive Devices -- which basically means you take two or more hard drives and install them into a system that has a RAID controller in it, then create a system with built-in data backup because it maintains a copy of the entire contents of the main drive in live mode. If that drive fails, the second drive in the array automatically becomes the boot drive, and you lose nothing.

Knowing that you have that sort of protection means that you can reduce your backups to once a week instead of daily. Considering that the hard drive is the most common failure point in a system, it also means you have insurance mates!

Once the system was built, all the apps were installed, and it took its place as my main work machine for graphics and video production -- two critical resources that are important to my work -- I had nothing to worry about. Until...

Degraded

On Monday when I booted my system to shoot some game videos for a guide I was working on, I saw something that I had never seen before -- a warning screen during the boot told me that my RAID Array has degraded. The system booted and as soon as I logged into Win 7 I got another warning -- the RAID is Degraded!

What does that mean? It means one of the drives failed. Yeah, that is not good. But thanks to the magic of RAID I still had a fully-functioning system and was able to work. But now I had no insurance -- and I did not have a backup drive ready to go into the system. Jumping instantly into action, I checked the model number for my drives and ordered two replacements, with overnight shipping -- two because one needed to go right into the array, and the second, so that I had a drive on-hand in case I get another failure.

So I had two forms of insurance on the way. As expected, on Tuesday afternoon the drives arrived, but I couldn't actually do the repair until last night because of the video shoots I needed to do. Time is the enemy, and missing a few hours of sleep to fix this problem is worth it.

So how hard is it to replace a failed drive in your RAID mirror?

Easier than you might think -- as all that was required was to remove the bad drive, replace it with a good drive, go into the RAID Controller Boot Menu and tell it to add the new drive to the array and rebuild it, and then boot Win 7, at which point the system automagically detected the rebuild order and commenced to do it!

Well, not instantly... Initially the status message said it would take 25 hours to rebuild the array, but once it actually started doing it, the timer corrected down to 7 hours. Hey, 7 hours is not bad compared to 25!

So as I write this, the array is rebuilding, there is a spare drive in my closet, and all is right with the world. How was your week?

. . . Steve Jobs

2011-10-06T14:05:00.002-04:00

Steven Paul "Steve" Jobs was something of a legend in many circles -- computers, music, movies, animation, and the phone phreak scene. Being a phone phreak myself, that is where I know him the best, and it was his zest for exploration, tech, and turning a buck, that he is most remembered in that scene.

His death at such a young age is regrettable. He clearly had more to offer the world and, had he had the time in which to do it, I am absolutely certain that his vision for consumer tech would have easily opened up entire new lines of technology. He was, in the words of John Perry Barlow, "lightning in a bottle."

Can't really sum it up better than that. I never respected Steve's attraction for mind-altering drugs, which I have long considered to be his major weakness. But I really liked his NeXT hardware design and I am happy to have the memories of those conversations.

Anima eius et animae omnium fidelium defunctorum per Dei misericordiam requiescant in pace.

. . . Judging Video Games

2011-10-01T20:30:00.005-04:00

Considering that part of what I do for a living is judge the relative merits and the "goodness" of video games, you would think that being asked exactly how I tell whether a game is any good or not would be a question that I should be able to instantly snap off a brief answer that is to the point and easy to understand, right? Well... Not so much, really.

This morning among the two-dozen new email messages that I usually get on a Saturday was one that asked me simply how I can tell when a game is any good? I should explain that I have a fairly complex set of filters and scripts on my email program so that the messages are sorted before I ever see them, with games related mail going in one folder, email from friends and relatives (and flagged as such) into another, with a cascading list of other folders sorted by the information in the subject line.

That filter system is why I always instruct the readers of my game guides to include the name of the game in the subject, since otherwise my email program is very likely to put their email into the "general > unsorted" folder, which is also where a lot of the span and unsolicited mail goes and which is the last folder I read each day, if I read it at all...

Back on the subject, the email was from a regular reader of my newspaper column, but they also read my game reviews and my articles on Gaming Update, and they mentioned that they liked my guides on SuperCheats and GameFaqs, so I either have a stalker or they really are simply following my writing...

As I sat and re-read the question I felt the urge to giggle in a very unmanly way. How do I tell if a game is good? How do I tell if a game is good?? To be fair that is an interesting question. It is also a difficult one to answer as I soon discovered.

If email was like writing on real paper, what you would have seen if you had come into my office this afternoon was me sitting at my desk surrounded by crumpled up balls of paper that represent the dozens of attempts that I made at trying to answer the question. Of course it is not like real paper, so there were no balled up torn-off sheets of paper surrounding me, but you get the idea.

How do I tell when a game is Good?

The easy answer to that question -- and a total cop-out -- would be to paraphrase United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart in his answer to the question of how to describe his threshold test for obscenity, which he wrote in his summary of Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964): "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that."

That explanation has become one of the most famous phrases in the entire history of the Supreme Court, and even distilled down to a bare quote of "I know it when I see it" leaves it easily identified as Justice Stewart's infamous words.

It would be so easy to say I know a good game when I see one and leave it at that, but doing so would not only be disingenuous but it would also be avoiding answering the question at all.

Judging a Games "Goodness"

While it is by no means an official road map to the determining if a game is good, the right place to start is always with evaluating the story, plots, and the sub-plots that make up the story portion of the game. A good, well-constructed main story line is always a plus, even for games whose story is not its strongest point. Characters and their development is next -- obviously we are not very likely to end up immersed in a game when there is nothing for us to care about in it, and liking the character that you play (the protagonist) is a great place to start.

The next obvious point is the challenge level of play. It should be interesting, it should be original, and it must not simply recycle the same basic play over and over because that is the fastest path to boredom that I can imagine.

Every game is not going to have the depth of Final Fantasy XIII or the immersion of Fallout: New Vegas, but that does not mean that it cannot find its own way towards those two goals. It is interesting to note that sometimes when a developer is making a game that they know will not be able to hold up any story or plot using the foundation of its characters, the most obvious alternative is to find a gimmick to rely upon.

Take Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball as an example (AKA DOAX) and you have a game that relies almost completely upon a gimmick (near-nudity) as its primary vehicle. That it is a complete and total departure from the games in the DoA series that proceeded it to the point that it is largely viewed with rampant speculation by gamers the world over as something of a scam, and who not surprisingly, are convinced that its release as part of the DoA series was really a bald attempt at capitalizing upon the previous successes of the series to take what would otherwise be a lackluster beach volleyball game whose only attraction when it is judged purely on its own is the very well-drawn umm... Scenery?Well, you see the point?

It should be noted that the DoA series is a game series solidly embedded in the Fighting genre, and its following was largely teenagers into fighting games. Viewed that way, it makes complete sense for Tecmo to take this sexually-focused beach volleyball and present it to the traditional audience for the Dead or Alive games! The fact that DOAX is the first game in the series to obtain a Mature rating from the ESRB pretty much tells the rest of that story.

For the record what little actual nudity there was in the game occurs very early in the opening scene and is not an interactive part of the game. The ability of the player to zoom in and out, and position the center focus of the screen where they like when combined with the characters of the game who, save for a few exceptions, all pretty much sport uniforms that consist of the skimpiest of bikini’s pretty much illustrates the prurient focus of the game.

So here we have a game that uses a gimmick -- sex and scantily clad young girls -- and whose focus is not what the previous games in the series focused upon. It has a story -- the player selects a character and plays them through the two weeks of the fake tournament that the focal character Zack has organized in order to surround himself with scantily clad women athletes, and whose plot largely comes in two parts -- the awkwardness of the situation that Zack engineered followed by surviving the eruption of the volcano on 'Zack Island' immediately following the end of the fake tournament.

Is this a good game?

Well, reviewers and players overwhelmingly thought that it was! I never had the opportunity to review it because our reviews are reader-driven, and the readers evidently did not see the need for it to be reviewed and so never requested it, but games journo Aaron Boulding writing for the website IGN gave it a rating of 9.2 out of 10 with the note "Amazing" while Gamespot gave it a less enamored 6.0 out of 10 with the comment that it was "Fair."

A quick and dirty review of the reviews that the game received that contributed to its Meta ranking as well as its cumulative ranking on the website GameRankings.com reveals that the title was one of those games that tended to get favorable reviews, with most of the reviewers agreeing that it was a pretty good beach volleyball game. Add in the nearly nude girls and the guns, and it is pretty obvious that the International Amateur Athletics Union that oversees the criteria used to judge the standards for games in the Olympics has clearly missed a sure thing. Yeah, that was rather sarcastic humor...

Still this is a good game to use to illustrate the question -- because it was a game that gamers (and critics) either really liked a lot, or despised. When you read the negative reviews that it received very few of them actually addressed the game play, simply because they could not get past the near-nudity and obvious objectification of women to see the game play.

The critics that were able to see past the obvious and offensive nature of the presentation of the characters agree that it is a pretty good beach volleyball game -- though of course this was in 2003. I played it recently and I can say without reservations that the stilted and very simplistic game engine would instantly get this game slammed by players and critics alike, and thanks to modern video games like the last few games in the Grand Theft Auto series, the last Duke Nukem game, and even the last few Tomb Raider games, the near-nudity of DOAX would simply not be enough even as a gimmick to save the game rating today.

. . . I Judge . . .

Since the end of the Summer Doldrums there have been some really good games hitting store shelves and gamer consoles, not the least of which are Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Driver: San Francisco, and Gears of War 3, and some notable DLC expansions like The Lonesome Road (for the established dashingly successful Fallout: New Vegas) and a few interesting expansions in the form of additional cases for the cult classic L.A. Noir.

With respect to the DLC, these were good game expansions laid on top of good games, though just because a base game is classified as a AAA title does not necessarily mean it is a good game or is going to be one.

One interesting system for determining whether a game is good or not is the system that is used by one of my good friends Jeremy Clark -- a veteran games journo who has been writing about and reviewing games for nearly 30 years. His personal system is very simple:

"If I have a hard time saving and quitting the game, then it is a good game. If I cannot bring myself to stop playing no matter how exhausted I am, it is a great game!""

Sadly that system and most of the one I use largely brings us full circle to the words of United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart: I know it when I see it.

And there you have it. Now if you will excuse me I am going to get back to finishing up The Lonesome Road so I can write the review for this very good DLC Expansion to a Very Good Game!

. . . in Flight WiFi Revenue

2011-09-29T20:58:00.004-04:00

By way of explaining what may on the surface appear to you as a rather odd subject for this blog, I like to mention every now and then that . . .

This Blog --> Speaking Of . . . <-- This Blog

. . . you are reading what is both a blog in the most common sense and purpose of the title (it exists for the purpose of sharing my ideas, thoughts, and observations) and a place of great convenience where I am able to write about the things I stumble upon that either (A) I find interesting enough to want to think upon, mull over, and write about, that (B) nobody wants to pay me to write about or that (C) I choose not to write about for pay because I find it amusing to write about it simply out of the desire to write about it. Confused? Yeah, me too.

In-Flight Wi-Fi Revenues to Surpass $1.5 Billion in 2015, Says In-Stat

A recent article by In-Stat (the market intelligence unit of NPD Group that is often used by stock traders, investors, and those who evaluate events, businesses, and companies with an eye towards investing their own or other people's money... I read its output largely due to the fact that every now and then it examines a subject I am interested in -- say one in every 30 email articles or so being the average) that examines the revenue being earned by airlines and the technology companies who provide in-flight Internet access -- places the income from that small sector at something about to surpass $1.5 Billion with a 'B' dollars.

Initially the market for in-flight 'net access was a small one for a couple of reasons, not the least of which was that getting travelers to spend money on the service initially meant convincing them to alter several habits that are ingrained into travelers because it is how they have been traveling for the past 20 years or more.

Specifically you needed to get them to break their habit of carefully packing their computer bag into the overhead bin and convince them to put it under the seat instead. In addition to that, you also needed to break their habit of not using their computer in flight; but you have the airlines help with that to some degree in that on the newer airline hardware and specifically mostly everything Boeing 737 and above -- there are now power outlets installed into the bulkhead or each seat that conveniently allow users to use their personal computers in-flight...

Another major factor is the increase in truly portable computing devices and our willingness to make use of them as a form of entertainment while traveling -- and now I am specifically talking about the iPad, tablet computers, and basic book and text reading devices like the Kindle which also have basic net surfing capabilities built into them.

As these habits are changed we see profits rising for in-flight 'net access companies -- and the airlines -- and this is food for thought... Both industries undertook extensive research to get a better handle on understanding their customer base, and the results were more than a little bit of a surprise...

Some of the research findings include:

Take rates have increased significantly, moving from an average of 4% in 2010 up to 7% in 2011.
While in international markets in-flight broadband is just entering the competitive differentiator stage, In-Stat believes it will rapidly transition to a competitive requirement in these markets as it did in the US.
Combined, smartphones and tablets are now the predominant devices, in terms of percent of connects.
In-flight broadband providers are beginning to introduce new revenue opportunities, including additional passenger services (video and voice) and operational services.

The research pretty much verifies my own assumptions -- and it is always nice to have someone else spend their money verifying my own analysis of a situation.

The tech has caught up with the desire -- users are doing a lot more than simply checking their email or reading and replying to chat boards.... They are splitting their time between work activities and play, which I find fascinating...

The airlines learned that offering the service is no longer an optional thing -- customers expect it to be there and a growing percentage will actually avoid airlines who do not offer it on flights longer than 2 hours. Travelers in the forward classes (first certainly, business increasingly) not only expect the service to be present, they expect it to be free or at least included in the price of their tickets.

Many airlines are combining their Internet access capabilities with the onboard entertainment systems -- Virgin America is a good example of this trend -- not simply spreading the capability throughout the aircraft but making good use of it themselves as the heart of their news and entertainment systems in the send of payment systems more than anything else.

For example, when a passenger orders food through the video touchscreen built into seatback in front of them or installed in the arm of their seat, it used the Internet to accept and process the payment using a credit card that is "swiped" through the same card reader that is used to activate the airphone at each seat. It is not simply food that this system is used for, but movies, TV, and the skymall as well to the point that the cabin crew no longer accepts cash money.

This all bears further contemplation... And perhaps a closer look at Boeing's Connexion and why it failed to take off (yeah, bad pun), what GoGo did right, and why Southwest's satellite-based service had so many issues.... More thought indeed.

. . . Routines

2011-09-24T06:10:00.001-04:00

Like most people I am a creature of habit and routine; each day I follow a set of patterns that begins with waking up and checking my email over a cuppa, answering the messages that require my attention immediately before breaking my fast, and then dealing with the rest of the email on an as-needed, as-deserved basis.

Along with those answered messages are invariably a few new messages that I must create to deal with the things that need to be dealt with, and this first pattern of habit begins both my personal and my working day.

What follows is a pattern of routines: I read and review the wire service reports, prioritize the press releases that I have received as email directly from the PR's, and compare those to the report that is maintained on a pair of industry websites before selecting the stories that will make up the morning video game news contents for Gaming Update.

In addition to the above activities, I also review and select the various news pieces that have been submitted by the other members of the site's growing staff of talented writers, selecting and approving the pieces that are destined to be included as the day's gaming news feed from the other writers, performing these tasks and making these decisions in my capacity as unofficial sub-editor.

With all of that managed, I then depart IRL for work, where I perform the work-like things that the physical space is reserved for at that place called work, and at some point in my day I have Skype conversations with the other staff writers/interns for GU, during which we will discuss the topics for their upcoming pieces / coverage, and participate in the social side of those relationships.

This can mean anything from simply gossiping and exchanging links to the websites/pages online that have most recently attracted our collective attention, to participating in organized social activities -- for example we have our own small group on the Facebook social game Farmville within which we often pursue group-oriented efforts such as growing specific crops for crafting and the like.

By mid-day the bulk of this set of routines is completed, not to be repeated until the following morning when it all begins again and anew!

Randomness that is Not Random

Following the completion of that small element of work-mixed-with-socialization I fall into the next regular set of routines; completing outstanding assignments for the other publications that I work for, taking care of research for upcoming columns and articles, and organizing my list of Things That Must Be Completed and Acted Upon™ and, once those are finished to my exacting standards, I break for lunch, eat it, and spend some time visiting the websites and pages that I normally visit at that time of day (and thus performing yet another of the many routine activities that collectively make up the varied but regular subroutines of an average day).

Friday, September 23rd, 2011 meant popping-open my bookmarks folders, navigating to the one whose title is "Blogs" and paying visits to:

(1)The Daily Girl Attack Panic Super HD Remix Blog, where I catch up on what Lauren has to say since my last visit. Lauren is, if you are not aware, an incredibly intelligent and observant girl gamer who, though temporarily seduced by the Dark Side (PR) is nevertheless in the foundations of her soul and, most important, in that moment before hitting the Start Button, a committed gamer and games journo. One of us, in other words.

In addition to being a genuine gamer, Lauren is also a freelance writer and her observations on the pink weapons skins for Gears 3, light musing on Dead Island, and her observations on immersion (or rather immersion-breaking aspects) in Deus Ex: Human Revolution (A) interest me, (B) cause me to agree, and (C) feel like she was somehow inside my head and thinking the same thoughts as I was on that subject.

(2) My weekly visit to Audra's Australian Adventures Blog where I quickly catch-up on the thoughts of an interesting young American woman (now technically Australian-American since she took the plunge and legally became an Aussie not too long ago), which is always worth the time spent visiting and reading the pages.

(3) WWdN: In Exile, my third blog-site stop of this particular subroutine of my routine is always where I am happy to see the advice that opens every visit: "Don't be a dick!"

This is of course the blog-slash-wisdom-and-observational-offerings of actor, author, and all-around interesting fellow Wil Wheaton, a man who has spent so much time in my bedroom on one screen or another that I almost feel as if we have some sort of relationship.... And interestingly enough of the three blogs that are part of this subroutine, Wil Wheaton is the only person/blogger involved who I have actually met and spoken with IRL...

While some of the dedicated Trekkies out there say that they dislike Wil's character in STTNG, I simply cannot see how they could possibly have reservations about or concerns over a writer who is also an actor and who IRL not only writes and acts, but also (A) brews his own beer/ale, (B) is a seriously dedicated gamer, (3) regularly speaks and/or/as well appears at PAX Prime, PAX East, This Con and That Con, and (D) would find my mixture of alpha-numeric points amusing. I am just saying...

GIGO: an Acronym that has Nothing to do with the TV show Weeds

One part of my daily routine that hardly ever varies is my need to discover factoids and stories, history, and other bits of largely useless and trivial information that somehow relates to my life -- or I can convince myself that they do -- often in very loose and hard to link ways :) Thoughts about some aspect of life in Chez BF is often the motivating factor, and of course the Internet and the Web are just about the perfect vehicle for that sort of hit-or-miss digital joyride. Often these trips begin while I am searching for information about a piece I am writing, but just as often they can be a subject casually related to games, gaming, or my dog.

In my home office resides my collection of video game consoles which lay about in various positions of attention, parade rest, and sprawl upon the broad and flat top of the oak armoire that is the one piece of furniture that Yvonne owned (along with an ancient but fully-functioning 1951 model RCA Victor 45 self-contained turntable) when we moved into our first flat together in New Haven -- the one that was just across the street from Saint Rafe's -- in the bad old days of the early 1990's when if we were not off at an SCA event, we spent our Saturday afternoons pwning Yale underclassmen from Psi Upsilon, KASY -- and the odd Spizzwink -- at our regular weekly AD&D game.

You may find this amazing (I know I do) but those Saturday AD&D games took place each Saturday afternoon (well yeah) starting at 15:00 GMT -5 and ending at 20:00 GMT -5 (or thereabouts) in the very dorm room that was once the home of Rear Admiral Grace Brewster Murray Hopper (December 9, 1906 -- January 1, 1992) but at the time of our gaming sessions, was the lawfully registered domicile of one Gregarious Root (not his real name but actually his genuine 'Nym) -- and yes, his last name does mean what you think it does and, together, the two names do mean what you fear that they do; as many a formerly chaste young lady from the nearby seat of higher education Albertus Magnus often discovered.

Now, in addition to rising to the rank of Rear Admiral, and having the United States Navy vessel U.S.S. Hopper (DDG-70) named for her (which BTW you can get a 1/350th scale plastic model kit for from Trumpeter Models), Admiral Hopper is famous for a number of reasons, including the fact that she is the person who coined the phrase "Computer Bug" when, in 1946, while serving as a research fellow atHarvard University's Computation Laboratory, she worked on the U.S. Navy's Mark IIand Mark III computers, inventing the term "computer bug" when sheremoved a dead moth from the switching contacts of the Mark II that was preventing the program run from completing properly.

We were playing our weekly game of Dungeons and Dragons in the rooms that the female version of Einstein basically conceived and drafted her doctoral dissertation: New Types ofIrreducibility Criteria, and where it is probably safe to assume she formulated many of the ideas that eventually lead to her theories on simple platform-independent computer programming languages and COBOL, and how cool is that?!

. . . a Good Read

2011-07-02T12:37:00.006-04:00

The 4th of July Holiday is upon us, which means that the relatives are set to arrive -- have arrived actually -- motoring up from Connecticut to spend the week with us and the kids.

I don't know about you and your in-laws but I am always happy to see Yvonne's mum and da -- I genuinely like my in-laws and I enjoy their company -- plus whenever they come up for a visit Yvie's mum always brings me a stack of books, and that is mostly a to-be-looked-forward-to event to be sure!

This time she delivered some most excellent entertainment in the form of:

Agatha Raisin and the Case of the Curious Curate by M.C. Beaton (ISBN 0-312-20768-9) a mystery and one of the Agatha Raisin series.
American Son - A Portrait of John F. Kennedy Jr. by Richard Blow (ISBN 0-8050-7051-6) a biography.
Murder in the House by Margaret Truman (ISBN 0-679-77435-1) a mystery.
Rebel by Bernard Cornwell (ISBN 0-06-017713-6) historical fiction.
Spider in the Silk by Celestine Sibley (ISBN 0-06-017515-X) a mystery and part of the Kate Mulcay Series.

I often find it difficult not to grab a book and dive right in, because usually by the time they visit us I have already burned through the books from the previous visit and, unless there was a recent trip to the library or Hyannis, I don't have a "current" book to read.

At the moment thanks to the readers over at Game On the list of games pending play for review (and sitting in a stack on my desk) includes:

Alice: Madness Returns (Xbox 360)
Crysis-2 (Xbox 360)
Dissidia 012 (PSP)
Duke Nukem Forever (Xbox 360)
Dungeon Siege III (Xbox 360)
G.R.A.W. (Xbox 360) an oldie but it was requested
L.A. Noire (Xbox 360) -- the DLC as we already did the main game
Naughty Bear Gold Edition (Xbox 360)
Shadows of the Damned (Xbox 360)
Trucks & Trailers Sim (PC)

Most of the books I have read from Cornwell consist of his Sharpe's Rifle sereis, which I was turned on to by Geof, but Beaton, Sibley, and Truman are all solid entertaining writers, so those will be good. Not too sure about the JFK Jr. bio -- the bloke who wrote it was one of the editors at George, so presumably he has some personal experiences to add to the mix in addition to the usual bio-matter...

The video games are something of an eclectic mixture - but that has more to do with the fact that we do not actually pick the games that we review for Game On, where unlike the vast majority of review sites we are guided entirely by the readers, who email us with their requests for games to be reviewed. I actually think that is a better system anyway since it is more responsive and serves the community rather than dictates to it.

It is not like I don't have anything to do, if you see what I mean? No, there is plenty to do, so I had better go get to it!

Happy 4th of July and 235th Birthday USA! I hope you have a safe and satisfying holiday and you don't lose any fingers, toes, or limbs when you play with your illegal fireworks!

Cheers!

. . . Osama Bin Laden

2011-05-02T01:13:00.002-04:00

All of the news channels on TV are fixed upon the news that Bin Laden is dead. The paper's site has the news, and my phone has been ringing all evening with calls from colleagues and mates who just want to talk about his being killed.

A quick check of the wire provides the details -- or rather the details that have been released so far. A SPEC-OPS team of Navy Seals went in, they took out Bin Laden and his bodyguards, and in that well-planned, well-executed raid has rid the world of a man who is clearly a threat to all.

What does his death mean? That is the question that everyone is asking.

The question I keep getting asked is, what do you think this will mean?

I confess, I have given this a lot of thought and not just in the last few hours -- I have been pondering this for much of the past decade. To understand what it means really comes down to asking the question -- who was Bin Laden?

The easy answer is that he was a leader -- perhaps not THE leader -- of a terrorist organization that has had tremendous luck and success in its attacks. People tend to forget that Bin Laden was not just responsible for planning and funding 9/11, he also masterminded attacks on a US Marine Barracks, two US Embassy Compounds, the U.S.S. Cole, the bombong of subway trains in the UK, the bombing of a train and bus in Spain, and those are just the attacks we know for sure he orchestrated.

There is speculation that the Philippine Bomb Cell, and a dozen small attacks all over the world were his operations. The thing is, nobody knows for sure -- or if they do, they are not talking.

The question is who was he? The easy answer was that he was an intelligent and charismatic man who was able to attract other smart -- if misguided -- men to him, who helped him plan and carry out attacks against the west. He was a wealthy man who used his wealth to fund the terrorist operations that were executed in his name.

The news that he is dead is good news. But his death is not on the same level as the death of Hitler -- because Bin Laden's mission does not die with him. It is important to remember that.

The months after 9/11

When it came out that Bin Laden may have been responsible for 9/11 it was disturbing that the government could not get their hands on him. It was not until 2004 that he officially accepted the responsibility for the attack, admitting on camera that it was his operation.

After 2004, when it was an established fact that Bin Laden was behind the attacks, the failure of the government to bring him to justice was disturbing. By 2008 I began to wonder if the man was still alive -- he had stopped making his monthly videos and no new photos were appearing.

Then I recall the fact that the part of the world he was thought to be hiding in was a low-tech environment, which makes it a lot harder to gather intelligence. Add to that the fact that he was in an area that was full of people who wanted to protect him, and it gets a lot easier to understand how he could have not been captured.

But that does not explain the fact that Pakistan -- a nation that is supposed to be a cooperating partner with the US and that accepts large amounts of aid from the US -- has been harboring the man for at least the last 6 years and never said word one to the US about where the man was.

The house -- sorry -- the mansion -- that Bin Laden was killed in was not just some old house, it was a mansion Bin Laden paid to have built almost six years ago. A mansion he lived in the whole time. I will never believe that the Pakistani government did not know that he was there...

A Future Without Bin Laden

With any luck his death will at least derail the currently planned operations of his organization. With any luck the US Government will continue to pursue his lieutenants and the infrastructure of his organization -- because the death of Bin Laden is not enough.

The fanaticism of the men who followed him is powerful enough to make it almost a certainty that they will retaliate for this. Hopefully not with great success.

Is it OK to feel good about the death of a man? In this case, yeah, it is.

. . . Vice

2011-04-27T22:16:00.006-04:00

–noun

1. an immoral or evil habit or practice.

2. immoral conduct; depraved or degrading behavior: a life of vice.

"The Internet made the world a smaller place..."
~His Royal Highness Prince William Arthur Philip Louis of Wales

Fair warning: This is actually going somewhere, it is just going to take a while because it is a big garden with lots of paths down which I am compelled to lead you.

Speaking of Vice, like a lot of people my dependence upon the Internet, and specifically the World Wide Web, often appears to me to border upon vice, but not for the reason that you are probably thinking...

Addiction might be another word that applies, though a case might be made that, in view of the fact that I also make my living partly from the Internet, an automatic dispensation applies... Or maybe not.

I live and work on Cape Cod, a chunk of land that is arguably an island off of the coast of Massachusetts but that, clearly, is not actually part of the United States, even if we use its money, its postal service, follow its laws, and display its flag most of the time.

It is very common to hear residents of Cape Cod refer to a trip off-Cape as "going to America" and just as common to hear the Cape Cod Canal and its two bridges (which save for the various ferries that provide transportation between the Cape and Plymouth, Boston, and Providence, Rhode Island) referred to as "The Border" -- as in "I crossed the border today, it took me two hours."

Despite appearing to be a very large place to the people who live here, in the grand scheme of things the Cape is not really a very large place at all, this I willingly admit. It is a community of communities, and a really nice place to live and raise a family -- and while it is too big to entertain the notion that you know everyone in your neighborhood (I don't) -- it is so small that it barely appears on the national version of the maps you can buy at Exxon stations. I am just saying...

Among the many different social, fraternal, and service groups that I participate in as a member, I belong to an informal group called the 4th Estate Rod & Gun Club (which is intentionally not what it sounds like), a private but informal club whose reason for existing is to provide an excuse for men and women who happen to be employed in the profession of writing to come together to chat and be social over cups of coffee at the local Dunkin' Donuts.

Membership in the 4th Estate Rod & Gun Club (or 4ER&GC as we like to call it) does not involve the use of fishing rods or guns, and in fact only has one basic requirement for membership: you have to also be a member in good standing of the National Press Club.

We meet once a week on Wednesday mornings -- because Wednesday is Hump Day -- and it gives us something to look forward to on Monday morning when we haul ourselves out of bed and gird our loins to face another week...

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,
adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines."
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The established routine of the 4ER&GC is very simple in that we meet at the same Dunkin' Donuts every Wednesday morning -- I cannot tell you which as I am sworn to secrecy -- and, after we stand in line individually and in small groups, clustering together to follow the herd instinct that is a product of urges prompted by the reptilian brain, that oldest and most influential of our thinking structure, we sit together in still more complex groupings -- clearly for mutual protection should a Boston Cream Donut jump off of the shelf behind the counter and go postal -- and we talk.

Not wildly,with great enthusiasm, or all at the same time, though it can happen...

What we talk about is different each week -- but there are things we never talk about because they are forbidden subjects. Like religion, politics, the most recent antics of the Cape Cod Commission, or how truly horrible Joe's wife is as a cook. We are permitted to discuss the weather, but that only happens if the weather is uncooperative to the point of being worthy of discussion...

No, what we discuss -- the topic that we have each separately as individuals spent the past week mentally masticating since the previous Wednesday -- is whatever it was at the last meeting that we decided would be the subject of discussion for the next meeting.

We are highly motivated to carefully consider what we will say about the topic of discussion, because whoever makes what the majority rules as the most interesting contribution to the topic at the meeting wins a dozen donuts, which are paid for by the other members of the club, to take away with them at the end of the meeting. Very highly motivated, I assure you.

"Sprinkles are called "Jimmies" in New England."
~ Y.M. Boots-Faubert, Ice Cream Philosopher

At today's meeting the topic for discussion was the question "Is our growing dependence upon the Internet a vice?"

The simpler answer would be "Yes" and the clever answer would be "No" but the problem with that is that simple or clever never wins the fancy box of gooey donut goodness that is the prize for delivering the best response to the Question Du Jour.

Is our growing dependence upon the Internet a vice?

During my week of random thought on the question... When I had the time... I came to the necessary conclusion that as I did not have the time to properly think it through, I was better off relying upon the wisdom of someone who did have an opportunity to mull over the question of vice, and I arrived at this quote, which expresses my heartfelt answer:

"Every vice is only an exaggeration of a necessary and virtuous function."
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

My considered reply, based upon my faith in Mister Emerson, is that our growing dependence upon the Internet is in fact a vice, but a vice with virtuous and necessary function.

I won.

. . . Free Media

2011-04-22T04:05:00.003-04:00

You do not often find something that is free and valuable at the same time, but the huge collection of free eBooks, Audio Books, and media not to mention Sheet Music and digital copies of historic documents that can be had online for the asking are certainly a valuable resource.

Here, in no particular order, is a list of links for free media resources:

eBooks

Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org)
Project Gutenberg Australia (http://gutenberg.net.au)
Project Gutenberg Canada (http://www.gutenberg.ca)
Project Gutenberg Consortia Center (http://www.gutenberg.cc)
Project Gutenberg Germany (http://gutenberg.spiegel.de)
Project Gutenberg Europe (http://pge.rastko.net)
Project Runeberg (http://runeberg.org) Nordic Studies
Reading Rooms (http://readingroo.ms)
The Online Books Page (http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu)
Many Books (http://www.manybooks.net)
Wiki Books (http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks)
Munseys (http://www.munseys.com)
Mobipocket (http://www.mobipocket.com)

Audio Books

Literal Systems (http://literalsystems.org)
LibriVox (http://librivox.org)
The Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org)
Audio Books for Free (http://www.audiobooksforfree.com)
Books Should be Free (http://www.booksshouldbefree.com)
Open Culture (http://www.openculture.com)
Learn Out Loud (http://www.learnoutloud.com)

Sheet Music

Classical Archives (http://www.classicalarchives.com)
Free Scores (http://www.free-scores.com)

Television & Movies

Hulu (http://www.hulu.com)
PBS (http://video.pbs.org)
ABC (http://abc.go.com/watch)
CBS (http://www.cbs.com/video)
NBC (http://www.nbc.com/video)
USA Network (http://www.usanetwork.com/series)
Discovery (http://dsc.discovery.com)

I am not endorsing any of the links above -- I make them available to be helpful, as these are the links that I use when I am looking for free media and to be entertained. YMMV.

. . . Pokemon

2011-03-30T20:03:00.008-04:00

The 5th Generation

When Pokemon Black and Pokemon White were released on March 6th they ushered in the era of the 5th Generation of the series, the significance of which has more to do with the stories and the world of Pokemon than any real differences in the games. I should explain that before we go any further into this post I suppose...

Most gamers think that the Pokemon series began with the anime TV show Pokemon, but that is not what happened. The question of the chicken and the egg is no question at all in the case of Pokemon -- as the original game that started it all, Pokemon Green, came first -- but Pokemon Green has a unique story to it in that it was only ever released in Japan.

The media empire that Pokemon turned into began with a simple game for the Nintendo Game Boy - the original one mind you, the black and white one not the color Game Boy -- called Poketto Monsutā, or Pocket Monsters.

Pocket Monsters was initially released under that title, but a conflict with another game of the same name made it necessary to rename the game. To avoid any confusion the folks over at Game Freak -- the studio that created the game -- decided to rename it Pokemon, which was a combination of Pocket and Monsters, and so it was released as Pokemon Green.

The original plan for the game was to release two color-coded versions of it, with each of the versions having a slightly different collection of Pocket Monsters -- Pokemon I mean -- in order to encourage gamers to seek out each other in order to trade the ones that were not in their version, thus completing the "Pokedex" that is a foundation element of the games. The Pokedex is a sort of electronic encyclopedia of Pokemon that the player is completing at the request of the Pokemon Professor who plays a central role in the games.

When the games unexpectedly caught on like wildfire, nobody was more shocked and surprised than Nintendo, who really only published the game because Ken Sugimori pushed for it. With the initial sales figures being very modest, the directors of the portable games division at Nintendo thought that they understood the games and their limited potential, but then something unexpected happened -- a Pokemon named Mew.

Pokemon Red and Green

When the games were initially released players were made to believe that there were 150 unique Pokemon in them, though in fact there were 151. The first 150 were standard Pokemon, while the 151st was a Legendary Pokemon. The existence of that 151st Pokemon, whose name is Mew, was held back from the public because originally Game Freak had planned to do a marketing campaign surrounding Mew, but this event never took place for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the lackluster support that Nintendo gave the game with respect to promotion.

At some point after the games were released on February 27th, 1996, a gamer accidentally discovered the existence of Mew. This information spread quickly, and resulted in the magazine CoroCoro announced a "Legendary Pokémon Contest" to distribute Mew to twenty very lucky entrants.

It should be no surprise that the exclusivity of Mew and the very limited quantity were just the push the games needed, and sales went from modest to hotcakes literally overnight.

There were several elements to the game that explain its popularity -- its competitive nature, the collectible aspects, and its use of the game cable that allowed players to connect to each other and play with and against each other all contributed to its popularity -- and then of course there was Mew, so it was not long before gamers outside of Japan learned of the game and wanted to play it.

When it came time to make the game for regions other than Japan the decision was made to create the export versions based off of the the second game -- Pokemon Red, which had slightly improved graphics over Green, so Green was abandoned, and the two new versions that were released worldwide became Pokemon Red and Pokemon Blue.

The Game Evolves into a TV Series

About the time that all of this was happening, the huge popularity of the games in Japan made the creation of an anime-style half-hour children's TV show a natural choice for Game Freak, and it was the combination of that show and the games that solidified the brand as a media empire.

The games evolved with Nintendo's Game Boy, with Red and Blue soon complimented by Yellow, which more closely followed the TV show in that Ash's Pikachu could follow along behind him outside of its Poke Ball. When the Game Boy Color was released, Pokemon Crystal and then Silver and Gold followed, comprising the first two generations of the games.

The events on the TV show closely mirrored those of the games, which made a wonderful media combination in which gamers could watch on their TV screen the same places, characters, and adventures that they were having in their games.

The third generation of games was built for the new Game Boy Advanced console, and began with Pokemon Sapphire and Ruby, establishing the third "bridging" game format that presents the elements of both of the first pair in a series as one collective adventure, which for generation three was Pokemon Emerald.

The change to a new physical format for the cartridges and the lack of connectivity made trading for earlier generation Pokemon impossible in the new games, but the issue was fixed by the release of Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen, which made the first generation Pokemon available to players.

The fourth generation of games -- Pokemon Pearl and Diamond with the bridging game Platinum -- were made for the new Nintendo DS platform, but unlike the previous console change included connectivity that allowed Trainers to transfer their 3rd generation Pokemon into the DS games.

The series was nearly restored; the release of Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver finally provided a complete source for all of the Pokemon in the current National Pokedex, and the adoption of a WiFi-based system for trading and for the distribution of special Pokemon, which nicely leveled the playing field when it came to completing the Pokedex -- and this brings us full circle to the 5th Generation of the games!
Pokemon Black and White

The release of the 5th Gen games came less than a month before the launch of newest Game Boy console version -- the Nintendo 3DS -- though the games were not created specifically for the 3DS platform. That makes a lot of sense, considering that the Nintendo DSi will likely remain the dominant portable console for Nintendo fans, at least for the foreseeable future, due to the high cost of the 3DS.

When Black and White released, the first WiFi-based Wondercard was literally a day-one event, bringing together the last three special events from the 4th Generation and the new 5th Generation, with Trainers able to obtain the Liberty Ticket that gives access to the first Legendary Pokemon within minutes of starting to play.

Pokemon Black and White are a huge leap forward for the games, with a deeper and more complex game world, and an interesting story providing the foundation for what is already being declared the best Pokemon game ever by gamers.

The games fully embrace the Internet in a way that goes way beyond what the 4th Generation managed -- and considering that Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum were about as connected as you could want, that is saying something!

At this point I am most of the way through Black -- and as I am also writing a walkthrough / guide for it, my first play through has been very complete. Black is my XX guide -- I also did walkthrough guides for Pokemon Emerald, FireRed, LeafGreen, and HeartGold -- nicely covering the modern takes on most of the generations of the game!

The newest generation of Pokemon are a unique bunch, though because the games retained the well established 17 major types the differences are mostly appearance and the strength of their abilities, so no real surprises. Having said that though, even if this generation does not contain the cutest Pokemon, or the most ferocious, it still has more than a few stand-0uts that are sure to be fan favorites, though surprisingly these are not the starters!

The trio of monkey Pokemon that match the three starter types -- Fire, Water, and Grass -- are real stand-outs in that respect, but we will have to wait and see whether the starters begin to gain popularity on the same level as those of previous games.

The differences between Black and White are pretty profound, with the games each having a specific are that is unique to them -- that is a departure from the previous traditions, which generally only extended to the Pokemon and not he lands. There is a significant difference in how the world is viewed between the two, and it will be interesting to see how those two facets are addressed in the bridging game that will likely be released next year.

So far the 5th Generation of the Pokemon series is everything that we could have hoped for -- and with the TV series well into adventure now, the overall media experience is there. So send me your Friend Code so we can battle, right?

. . . Unemployment

2011-03-30T19:00:00.001-04:00

My best mate in the whole world is unemployed at the moment, and despite the fact that he has this very broad and very deep pool of skills to draw upon, the area of the country that he is in -- Western Oregon -- is not what can be kindly thought of as a job-rich environment at the moment for codeslingers.

The whole idea of being unemployed in this economy scares the hell out of me. Being a writer I know that it is not easy to get work -- not without first putting in a lot of effort and building a contacts list, all the while taking anything you can get to tide you over until you get something regular. That is not to say that it is hard to get work as a writer because it is not -- it is just hard to get a good permanent gig as a writer, freelancing being the obvious path you take until you get something permanent.

Codeslingers don't usually work freelance -- but when they do they call it temping, not freelancing, and when they temp the pay is really bad and the jobs tend to be short. They only keep you long enough to accomplish whatever it was that caused them to look for a temporary codeslinger.

My discomfort with his situation has caused me to start encouraging him to look for work as a freelance writer -- in spite of the fact that he is a codeslinger, his degree is in English and he has solid skills as a writer, even if he has not written anything more complicated than code documentation in the past twenty years. That is not the point. The point is that he could write if he chose to, and there is work out there for writers.

I mentioned this on one of the community boards I am active on for writers. The general reaction was one of disbelief with comments like "you are telling him there are freelance writing gigs? There are not!" and other comments to that effect.

It was at this point that I asked the question their reactions prompted: aren't you guys working?

It turns out that I am one of a handful of writers on that particular board that is constantly busy -- and I just cannot figure that out. In the many conversations that ensued I learned that despite being writers very few of the people on that board know how to find jobs. Query letters? Not so much. It blows my mind that they actually sit around waiting for writing gigs to come to them! That is no way to stay busy, that is all I am saying...

When I get an idea that I think I would like to write about, I put out the effort to find an editor that will pay me for writing that piece, and then I write it. It turns out that a lot of the people on that board do it the other way around, putting out the effort to write the piece and then try to sell it, often failing. To me that makes no sense at all... It is a lot easier to write a good query letter and then the piece then the other way around, and nine times out of ten the editor that buys the piece wants a slightly different piece than the one I proposed, so if I had written it in advance I would have to start over anyway...

You gotta write -- it is what you do -- but writing on spec or worse yet, writing for free? That is no way to make a living.

So how was your week?

. . . Video Game Retro Uberness

2011-03-06T10:18:00.002-05:00

We were at the mall in Hyannis where we were visiting specifically to obtain cloth from the cloth store for Yvonne to make (A) Autumn's costume for Anime Boston in April, and (B) Peter's costume for PAX East (which is next Friday) I wandered into the GameStop both because it was there, and because I do not do craft stores as a general rule, including those that sell cloth, but that is another story for another time.

The point to this is that into GameStop I wandered.

I was not there specifically to pick up a game, because I will not actually need to do that until two days later on Sunday, March 6th, when the new Pokemon games launch. So I was not specifically there to purchase a game, but you know how it is...

While I thumbed through the bargain bin with an eye towards finding a game from the distant past that I had meant to play but, for whatever reason, never did, my thumbs stumbled upon an ancient copy of Hitman: Blood Money for the PS2, which if you are keeping track, was released in 2004...

The PS2 was originally what I played the game on -- and in theory I could have bought that copy and played it on my PS3 since it is rated for PS2 game play -- but the reality is that even though my PS3 is capable of playing PS2 games in native mode, they do not always play as flawlessly as Sony would have you believe.

I sighed and frowned because I would actually have enjoyed playing it again, and was struck by a thought. Once I had the attention of the bloke behind the counter, I inquired as to whether they had a copy for the XBox 360?

They did! One copy. One slightly scratched and beat-up, well-used copy that looked okay. It was by no means pristine, but the scratches did not look to be the sort that would cause the game to not play...

Besides that all GameStop games -- even the used ones -- have a 15 day no questions asked warranty, so I decided what the heck, it is only $19 and if it is bad I can take it to the GameStop in Mashpee and exchange it! Besides that I really wanted that game.

Elite Retro Uber Gaming

If you never had the fun of playing Hitman: Blood Money you are really missing out mate. Yes I am aware that it is a game from 2004 - but bear with me for a moment and I will explain -- It may be a game from 2004 but it was also the game of 2004 -- and if you were playing games back then it was a hard one to have missed!

You have to remember that 2004 was back when they still made games without the Hollywood FX of today. If there was nudity in a game it was generally non-sexual unless the game was explicitly a sex game. This was back when men were men and protagonists were really men!

I am holding Blood Money in my hand with the sure and certain knowledge that I have one day -- one day -- that is totally free and that I can play any game that I want to play without any concern, and that day is Sunday. Why?

Because I will have finished the long-overdue Pokemon Emerald Guide on Saturday evening and will be uploading the last videos for it along with the guide itself on Sunday morning, and I can not start Pokemon Black until Monday afternoon because that is the soonest I can get a copy since Nintendo (unlike pretty much all of the other studies) does not give freebies to any newspaper smaller than the New York Times.

I decided right then that revisiting Blood Money -- after an absence of almost exactly six years -- was not imply a good idea, it was a great one!

Those Hot and Humid Hitman Days

The Summer of 2004 was a hot and humid one, and it was back when my son Peter still thought sitting in the room and watching me play video games was cool. For three weeks that Summer we shared a fascination with Agent 47, and my son watched me play and helped me to develop strategies for obtaining perfect Silent Assassin Ratings in its dozen-odd missions.

We had our cooler full of iced down glass bottles of Coca Cola, bags of Andy Capp Hot Fires and Doritos, and an overpowering urge to figure the game out on our own, without the help of game guides.

At the time Blood Money was cutting edge -- or as near to it as you could get on a PS2... And it was that memory in my mind's eye that held sway as I awoke this morning and without even thinking about it, slotted my new copy of that old game and booted up.

As my 360 hummed to life and the so familiar notes of its start screen music filled the room it was almost like time travel. Almost.

A Little Age on It

As I watched the familiar CS unfolding and took my first steps in over half a decade as Agent 47 the first thought I had was that something was wrong -- though I could not immediately put my finger on what it was.

The games of today -- and sacrificially the FPS titles that are made to feel the same no matter what platform they are played on -- barely put a strain on the modern generation of console hardware that the PS3 and XBox 360 represent.

If we are being completely honest about it, the PS3 and XBox 360 are not exactly "modern" in most senses, as the newer generation of console that will replace both of these aging dynamos are way past the drawing board stage and are already in their respective beta test stage, leaving us to anticipate their release if not any month now than at least within the next 12 months . . .

When I say that modern FPS titles sacrificially exist, what I am referring to is the almost 'McDonalds' like feel to them that -- I am not exaggerating here -- gives them the cohesive sameness that the studios desire so that no matter what platform you are playing on, the experience is much the same.

The reason for that? Because modern games are platform independent when it comes to online play, so it is important for the shared experience of play to be much the same.

It only takes a brief glance at games like Heavy Rain and Alan Wake to get an idea of what the two consoles are genuinely capable of -- but the mainstream FPS titles do not even come close to that level of hardware-straining depth because the idea is to make games that are entertaining and fluid. The jaw-dropping impact of pushing the envelope is not part of that process.

It was not long though before it clicked.

Back to Blood Money . . . The graphics seemed so old and yet. And yet. Not.

Agent 47 moved like his spine was fused, and both the aiming and movement while crouched in sneak-mode felt somehow off. Reconciling the game mechanics I was now seeing with what I am used to seeing today -- comparing it to GTA IV and the leap forward from that to games like Mass Effect and Dragon Age made it seem somehow older than it was.

It took a few minutes for the control scheme to pop back into my head -- but once it did it was like the intervening years had never happened -- I was quickly back in the groove; Agent 47 did my bidding without complaint, and I suddenly was Agent 47 again, just like it was back in that bad old Summer of 2004.

A little more than an hour into the game and that awkward feeling that the stiff movement gave me at first also seemed to melt away, gulped down by a combination of excitement and palm-smacking as the often disastrous results from simple mistakes made themselves known.

Being spotted with a weapon in plain sight transformed the otherwise peaceful infiltration into a running gunfight of epic and bloody proportions, and half-remembered strategies made it almost feel like a new game due to the genuine feelings of not knowing precisely what to do next. All of this helped to reassert that awe and satisfaction of a gamers feeling for a game that is genuinely fun...

. . . to be continued

. . . Vegas Stories

2011-01-12T03:25:00.006-05:00

If you spend any time at all watching prime time TV you have seen one of the series of commercials paid for by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority that feature the tag-line "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" at least several times.

One of the commercials features what appears to be a wealthy man who abuses his chauffeur, having him tattooed, frozen in an ice bar, and thrown from a mechanical bull, only to see that half-way through the evening the pair trade places, implying that here is one more facet of the oddness that comes over us when we visit Las Vegas.

The series presents a typical cross-section of society, and the implication is clear: come to Vegas, get your freak on, and do not worry because nobody at home will ever know about what you did.

The implication is clear, and actually plays into another much older and broader series of tourism advertisements from the 1980's that give an impression of Las Vegas as a place where anything can happen -- that of the "Vegas Story" that everyone who visits is destined to experience.

Some odd or memorable event will take place while you are there, something profound with a unique but colorful impact that will, we are assured, give us a story to tell for the rest of our lives.

A story that we will want to tell.

2011 CES Stories

Yesterday I returned home from Las Vegas, where I was sent to cover the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Often called Geek Mecca, the show is arguably the largest and most important trade show for Consumer Electronics in the world. At CES we get to see the devices and products -- the technology if you will -- that is destined to be in the hands of consumers over the course of the next 12 months.

It was not my first trip to Vegas, and being a Vegas Veteran I fully expected to have some sort of experience there that would qualify as my Vegas Story for this trip -- but the first three days of the show quickly passed in a blur, with nothing even remotely resembling a Vegas Story taking place.

On the 4th and final day of the show I had a brief encounter with a woman who was obviously a man in the elevator at the hotel, but as that consisted only of the man/woman commenting on the crowd of CES attendees making it difficult to get a seat in a popular restaurant, it hardly qualifies as a Vegas Story.

My traveling companion and colleague on this trip was a long-time friend who is like a brother to me -- hey Geofry! -- and between the two of us we have probably been to Vegas two dozen times in the past 20 years, so there are stories to tell, but it seemed that this time, for the first time, we were going to have a trip to Vegas that did not include anything odd at all. Nothing memorable. No story to tell. The clock, you see, was ticking.

Monday morning arrived, we took our bags downstairs -- we stayed at the Sahara for this trip, one of the original nine hotel/casinos on the Strip -- checked out, and stood outside in a relatively balmy 55 degrees waiting for our shuttle bus transports (we somehow ended up taking two different services from the airport so we were not riding back together).

"There is still a chance for something to happen," Geof allows, but then the Bell Tran bus arrives for me and I am loaded up and take off to the airport.

I have time to check in at the counter inside -- I flew Southwest Air this trip -- and I have my bags checked and my boarding pass printed out before Geof even arrives at the rather busy airport. Geof arrives, gets his bags checked, and we then head to the TSA security checkpoint, a common barrier that we all must negotiate in order to fly these days.

"Maybe we will get strip-searched?" I suggest, glancing at the attractive female blond TSA Agent at the checkpoint. Geof follows the direction of my gaze and then laughs out loud.

"Yeah, you wish!" he observes.

We joke about having T-Shirts made that say "I got to Second Base with TSA" but we readily admit that we would not have the guts to actually wear them in the airport. As we are joking about this we reach the head of the line, and for the first time ever we literally breeze through the checkpoint, being given only a cursory examination that largely consisted of a few basic questions. No Vegas Story here.

Inside the secure area where the gates are located we arrive at the hub between the two main wings -- Geof is departing from a gate in the C-Section, while I will leave from a gate in the B-Section, and we intentionally arrived in time to have a leisurely lunch together before boarding our separate flights -- me to head back east to Cape Cod, Geof west to Oregon.

We eat at Chilies Too, and the food is great (but expensive), nothing exciting happens. We do not see or sit next to anyone famous, there are no brawls, no army of transvestites appears, and Wayne Newton does not dance singing down the wide corridor outside.

I go with Geof to his gate, as his plane departs an hour before mine, we say goodbye, and I head towards my gate.

What Happens in Vegas...

I reach the gate with nothing to report other than a crowded corridor and a near-collision when a melon-headed tourist cuts in front of my power wheelchair. At the gate I check in to be sure that they will have someone to come and take my chair below, where it will be loaded into the belly of the plane, but they are already ahead of me on that, having been tipped-off by the counter when I checked in two hours ago.

Knowing that Southwest has no food service on board I had saved some of my lunch, wrapped in tinfoil and tucked into my carry-on bag, to be eaten later. I have a book to read on the flight -- a gift from Geof called Whiskey and Philosophy -- but I need to grab water and gum so I head to the Hudson News Stand in the concourse.

Having made my purchase, and with just 10 minutes to go before they call me to board, I roll towards the bathroom back up the corridor, safe and secure in the certainty that there is no longer any time or opportunity for there to be a Vegas Story this trip, and maybe just a little disappointed at the prospect of returning home without a story to tell.

As I approach the bathroom I see that someone has left a mechanical wheelchair partially blocking the entrance, and to get around it I have to cut in sharply around the corner. As I roll around the corner a half-seen body lunges at me, kicking out at my chair...

The heavy smell of alcohol assails my nose as the control display on my power chair begins bleating its alarm -- someone has disengaged the motor on the left side, which causes it to warn me that the automatic braking mechanism is no longer engaged. The man who attacked my chair must have kicked the yellow lever on the left-side motor I realize.

He backs away at this point, and someone with him starts to apologize to me...

"Sorry man, he thought you were trying to hit him with your chair. It's okay -- you aren't hurt are you? Andy, come on!" they say.

"Something is wrong with my chair," I note, leaning down on the left side to reset the lock-out lever on the left motor.

Before I can do that, the drunk makes an unpredictable high-speed approach.

"Lemme help!" he slurs, and then loses control and falls on top of me, then begins to flail around as his sober companion tries to get him off of me. With the assistance of another man who is entering the bathroom they get this drunk off of me, and I finally get a good enough look at him to recognize him. I don't know him personally, but I know who he is.

"Sorry, really sorry man, Andy is a little drunk. Come on Andy!"

I forgive You Andy

The story of my encounter with comedienne Andy Dick did not end here, and in the earlier version of this post I gave the blow-by-blow of the events... But later I realized that the events that took place, though they are my Vegas Story, are also the blueprint for a personal tragedy of a sort that I just cannot wrap my mind around.

I was never a Police Beat reporter, and I never covered the Family Courts. I have not worked for the Social Page and I have never covered the celebrity beat -- my specialty is Business and Technology folks, and the only drunks you encounter on that beat are the reasonable ones who can handle a three-Martini lunch.

There is never loss of control; there is never inebriation to the extreme. There is absolutely never the sort of personal humiliation that this man was subjecting himself to in so public a forum.

Drunk on my beat is really just a warm and pleasant buzz, a fact that leaves me ill-equipped to understand... To comprehend... The enormity of whatever it is that has caused this man to allow his life to run off the rails, and folks it has, clearly it has.

After I arrived in Providence and then home, I spent a few days decompressing from the trip, in fact I spent most of the time either writing, filing copy, or asleep. There was no time to think about anything other than the assignments that I was working on -- but once I managed to catch a breath, once the more pressing deadlines had been met, I had time to actually think about what happened in that bathroom.

My journalistic inclination took over, and I began to dig out the details and to reconstruct the previous 72 hours of the life of Andy Dick -- to obtain a snapshot of that brief moment in his life in order to try to make sense of what happened in that bathroom -- and I did not like what I saw.

In the course of the previous three days -- a weekend in the life of Andy Dick -- he was thrown out of CES, the Adult Video Awards, and two different clubs on the Vegas Strip for being drunk and obnoxious.

He had propositioned a porn star and a transvestite, if reports are accurate, and he may have made a more than indecent proposal to a waitress in a casino, but that report was more official than gossip, and it appears that Mr. Dick will not be welcome back in that casino any time soon.

Perhaps it is true that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas when it happens to mortal man, but not when you are a Hollywood star -- or perhaps more accurately not when you have once been a star and are now fading into the distance, which is an accurate description of Dick.

Andy if you are reading this, you need to find the people in your life that actually care about you and surround yourself with them so that you do not find yourself vulnerable to the temptation of drinking and then venturing out in public. I am not going to tell you to get help, because I know from my research on you that you have tried -- and failed -- repeatedly.

At this point your best hope is to manage your problem mate, and that means putting the sort of people around you that care enough about you to prevent you from making this sort of mistake.

I do not grok LA -- I do not know if you even have that sort of support network where you live. Where I come from your neighbors are your friends, and there are a lot of people I know I could count on to help me if I showed so serious a lapse in judgment. You need to find those people in your life and get them to help you, mate.

Like Fate, Vegas will collect what it is owed; nobody gets to leave without a Vegas Story, it seems, and if you try delay it, or God forbid if you try to avoid it, when Vegas notices -- finally notices -- that feckless gesture it delivers a story in spades. Or Dicks, depending upon how you look at it... That is the sum total of my Vegas Story.

. . . Logitech Revue

2010-11-27T07:35:00.006-05:00

Have you seen this video on YouTube??

Yesterday the Fed Ex man dropped off a package that I have been expecting -- it contained the Logitech Revue unit that I am supposed to review as it is one of the feature gadgets in this year's Gadgets and Gifts for Gamers feature piece.

If you do not know it, the Revue is a device that turns your TV in to a fully net-connected web and media browser as well as providing access to Google TV, and other online TV content. One of its stand-out features is that it really displays YouTube videos well.

I have to admit that I was not expecting much -- I remember WebTV and while that may be old tech, it left me with a very hard to defeat opinion that TV's do not make good web surfing interfaces. OK, so I have to change that opinion now, because the Revue is the bomb! It is not just amazing, it is -- combined with its keyboard with touch pad interface -- simply amazing. I fully expect to see these as standard equipment in hotels all over the world by this time next year, that is all I am saying.

Back to my story -- so I set it up, patched it, and used the Revue for a few hours yesterday, just to put it through the basic paces, and a random search of videos turned this up:

Every now and then I come upon a video on YouTube that causes me to go glassy-eyed and sort of all hit with a hammer stunned -- not so much that someone thought of it, but that they made it in the first place. This is one of those videos. It is so self-depreciating for the bloke that made it, and at the same time so funny, that I feel bad and amused at the same time. Conflicting feelings aside, you really need to watch this one...

. . . Fall Feelings

2010-11-24T07:06:00.002-05:00

I woke this morning to the sound of the wind blowing against the side of the house, rattling the screen just enough so that I was able to identify the sound, reminding me that it is once again time to pull down all of the screens and store them in the shed, and put up the storm windows that will add a layer of glass and air between the inside and the outside. There was a chill in the room... I was going to need to turn the heat on.

That was the thought floating in my head when I realized from the number of warm lumps pressed against me that, at some time in the night, my dog Calvin and our three cats, Pixel, Midnight, and Lightning, had joined me on the bed.

They were each curled up in their own special way, reluctant to be disturbed in their warm furry sleepy goodness. Commander Calvin had burrowed under the covers and had assumed his "I am a doughnut!" shape pressed against the backs of my knees, while Pixel (a 19 year old American Shorthair cat) had somehow managed to position himself between my pillow and shoulder, partially covered by a fold of the down comforter.

The two sisters, Midnight and Lightning, occupied the end of the bed by my feet, and were curled up together for shared warmth -- an unusual position for them as they are more cat-like in their aloof haughty ways. They must have really been cold to share the same few cubic feet with Commander Calvin willingly...

Clearly sensing that I was now awake, Calvin emerged from under the covers, the still-sealed package of Jack Links Premium Cut Teriyaki Beef Jerky chunks in his mouth. After he negotiated the cat pile he made his way to my pillow and dropped the package in my chest, clearly saying: "Oh good, you are awake now. Would you mind terribly opening this package? There are treats inside and I want them."

At this point Pixel noticed the package too -- though the jerky really is treats for Calvin, our dean of all things Cat is not above having a taste or two when he can, and this morning he decided that was a good idea. As I struggled with the package, which was wet and slippery from someones drooling on it all night -- it was with the insistent thwap-thwap-thwap of a tail smacking me on the arm, and a dachshund nose pushing my fingers this way and that, you know, to "help" me in getting it open.

Pixel stretched in this amazing transformation move that somehow makes him twice as long as he normally is, paws stretched in every direction, big yawn, blink, yawn, blink, then an inquisitive "Bleeerrtt?" which roughly translated means "Why is this taking so long?!"

I get the package open and give them each a piece of jerky, and they happily munch, the distinctive aroma of the teriyaki making me think about a Burrito Supreme from Taco Bell, but as we do not have a Taco Bell conveniently nearby it will have to remain simply thought. The girls are ignoring us -- they do not want jerky, they want my wife to wake up, and until that happens they are content to stay right where they are, curled into a warm pile of cat.

Suddenly the bump on the other side of the bed moves, and it is as if time suddenly freezes. Four sets of animal eyes lock onto that motion, as I become a thing to be ignored. I can actually hear the mental telepathy based conversation between them...

"She is awake?"

"I believe that she is!"

"Oh most excellent! The life giver will present us with feasts. The smelly one has served its purpose!"

They move as one to the other side of the bed and begin prodding, poking, and making friendly noises to the lump.

"Good morning!" my wife says.

"Indeed it is," I agree.

. . . Fallout: New Vegas

2010-11-22T04:40:00.003-05:00

One of the strange aspects of playing Fallout 3 was the way it made you feel nostalgic for an era that came and went long before you were born. I do not know how the developers managed to do that, but they did it in spades.

Even allowing for the fact that as a child of the 70's (OK technically I am not really a child of the 70's because I was one of those kids who was sort of half-in the 70's half-in the 80's, but I was there man, I remember the 70's) there is a tacit connection to the era of the 1950's. What am I talking about? Well, there is an established trend in our culture with respect to fashion, TV, and to a lesser extent, cinema, that looks back 20 years.

The streets of New Vegas -- go armed or go home!

In the 00's the 80's were the nostalgic era -- though having lived in that era I have to wonder about how the writers of TV shows chose to reflect upon that decade. Of course they focused upon the Breakfast Club stereotype, but the truth is that the 80's was a cold and vicious decade that is best summarized by one word: Greed. But I am getting off-track here.

In the 1970's the era of nostalgia was the 1950's, which goes a long way towards explaining why Happy Days and Lavern and Shirley were major hits on TV, why retro TV was Andy Griffin and The Honeymooners, and why a number of 50's staples in the comic book world made a reappearance. Suffice it to say that the adult TV watching generation at whom this nostalgia was targeted got to see the best parts of an era that otherwise can be defined by one word: Fear.

The developers who created Fallout 3 dialed right into that vibe and then nailed it like a Malibu surfer on a glassy 5 foot noon-thirty swell on an otherwise flat day. In the process of building the atmosphere they picked iconic music, images, and perhaps more significant, cultural fears and combined them into horror entertainment.

Fallout: New Vegas takes this perfect combination of elements and doubles its impact, its effect, and its ability to haunt you long after you turned the power on your console off and try to do other life-related things. It does not help that anytime a song from the 50's pops up on the radio or TV you are reminded of the game, practically everything reminds you of the game! Spooky.

It started slow but...

When I first slotted the game it started slow, but very quickly ramped up the tension when I found myself being executed by a gunshot to the face. Not the best way to begin your day, clearly, and yet there you have it. I would not want it any other way.

Now to be fair, a bullet in the face is not always fatal -- even in real life -- but you would think that a bullet in the face followed by being buried in a not-so-shallow grave would prove to be a fatal combination, and yet... Not so much.

Let me be candid here -- having you "lose" your memory as a result of your injury is a slick way to handle the start of this epic adventure. Bear in mind that last game we began by being born, and then observing some of the character shaping events of your young life before jumping in at adolescence and taking over, but then in the last game we were born and raised in a Vault, and that is not the case this time around because -- this is so cool -- the area of the country we were born in was not so badly ravaged as the east coast was by the nuclear war!

Now that is not to say that the Great War did not have any impact at all -- it did, whoa baby! Having traveled through that part of the country, and even on those roads, through those towns, it is painfully clear to me just how destructive the war was on the region, and yet once you get past the rubble of the urban landscape and reach the center of what used to be the casino district -- or as the locals refer to it, the Strip -- you are left with a very vivid and clear impression that you are in Las Vegas!

That is really as far as I have gotten in the game at this point. I am getting over a very bad bit of illness -- about a week of which I was not in my right mind -- so you should probably take that into consideration as far as my warm and fuzzy feelings about the game go. Still, fever or not, I am impressed!

This promises to be a long and interesting journey.

- - - - -

Standard Disclaimer: No ghouls or mutant were harmed in the filming of this video game.

. . . Subscription Fees

2010-11-09T21:18:00.002-05:00

In the past 24 hours I have received -- at last count -- 43 email messages from readers who are concerned with the new pay-access plan that is now in place at the Cape Cod Times. I understand the concern that this is causing, but it is not as bad as it may seem.

First, it is not completely restricted to pay-for-access -- there are actually three levels of access:

(1) Unregistered Access -- visitors who have not registered an account at the paper are allowed to access up to 3 articles a month for free, based upon the computer that they access the paper from. So if you access the paper's site from your work system, you get three articles, and then if you access it from home, you have three more.

(2) Registered Access -- Visitors who have registered an account at the paper's site have access to 10 articles every month. Registering for an account is free, but requires you to provide a valid, working email account from which you can verify the registration.

(3) Subscriber Access -- Visitors who have registered a free account and then chosen to subscribe (pay) have unrestricted access to the online version of the paper each month.

That basically sums up the situation. The subscription service only applies to the newspaper content on the site -- the articles and content that are from the print version of the paper -- and not the regular online content, like the Blogs, and the chat section.

It may feel like this is a hassle, but the reality is simply that charging for access to the content on the site is a necessary evil -- in this economy there are more people accessing the online version of the newspaper than there are people who subscribe to the print version, that is a reality. The Cape Cod Times resisted moving to a pay-for-access format for a long time -- much longer than most papers in our region.

On the flip-side of the coin is the fact that a paid subscription base also means that they will be able to expand the content that is published in the online version to be more in parity to the print version, so in that respect, this is a good thing.

Change is often a disturbing element of life, and like a lot of people, I am not a big fan of abrupt change -- and this move felt to me like it was abrupt despite the fact that I knew it was coming a month ago. Still, I am hoping that it turns out to be a good thing! Anything that improves the economic health of the paper is a good thing in my eyes, and honestly, I can see the day coming when most newspapers are not newspapers, but websites.

With the increasing popularity of digital electronic publishing, hand-held book and newspaper readers, and the inevitable expansion and refinement of that technology, it really is only a matter of time before the printed newspaper disappears from the American landscape. I will be sad to see that day come, and I do believe that this change is the first harbinger of that change, but as a wise man once said, you cannot stop progress.

. . . How I became a Webmaster

2010-11-07T03:04:00.004-05:00

In 1994 if you asked me my profession, I would have instantly answered that I was a Network Security Engineer.

If you asked me to describe what it was that I did for a living, I would have said that I design and secure networks, test the security of networks, and advise companies on methods that they can use, and policy that they should adopt, to keep their business network secure.

At some point in the Summer of 1994 that all changed.

At the time I worked through an agency that provided technical expertise -- for a price -- to mostly corporate clients.

XYZ Corp might have had a bad security compromise, and be in need of an expert to come in, trace the compromise to its source, and implement whatever changes had to be made to protect them from it ever happening again. In the process they usually also asked for a complete security profile of their network in case there were other holes that they did not know about. In a nutshell, that is what I did -- and I liked it!

The first two weeks of the month I might be commuting to Boston, and the last two weeks I might be in Denver or LA. Business sometimes took me overseas -- mostly Europe and Asia -- and it was very cool... Until I learned that we were going to be parents. As I contemplated the idea of being on the road two to three weeks out of every month, while my pregnant wife sat at home waiting to have our baby, it was no longer as appealing as it had been.

Then I thought about how much I would not like it that I would be traveling instead of spending time with my family, because my wife would not be able to go with me on trips anymore -- once you have kids it changes the way you have to live.

I realized that I needed a regular job; a place to work where I went to the same place, and where I worked predictable hours, so I told my agent at the company that represented me to the market, and she went to work looking for a gig that fit the bill. A months after the New Year she called me and said she had something -- maybe.

It paid a little more than I was averaging on the road minus per diem, and while it was not network security per se, it did require a strong background in that area.

"What is the job?" I asked.

"Webmaster for a game company," she replied.

"Web what?! What the hell is a Webmaster?!" I asked, and she told me.

Webmasters -- The people behind the curtain

Back then a Webmaster was much more than the person who organized and oversaw the creative side of a website. You have to remember that in the Summer of 1994 the World Wide Web was still pretty new, and the position of Webmaster was not a formal and well understood job.

At some companies the Webmaster was only responsible for writing the code that was the website, while at others they were also responsible for overseeing the web server, securing the companies net connection, and anything else that a resource manager responsible for what was really a new communications media could be convinced was part of their job!

The company that had contacted her was looking for more than just a person who understood how to configure a web server, or new how to build a web page. They needed someone who could do all of that, sure, but also put together a team of people to help construct what was, arguably, the first fully-automated web-based platform for Fantasy Sports.

The company was called Replica Corporation, and prior to moving toward a web-based platform, they provided their gaming service via computerized phone systems. The gamers would call the number for their "service" and using the standard phone keypad, log in, negotiate a series of menus, and make the choices they wanted to make for the game that they were playing, which for Replica meant either Fantasy Sports like football and baseball, or Fantasy Stock Market games.

It sounded like a good fit for me -- I had an advanced knowledge of web servers and the daemon, and a fair bit of experience with building web sites -- but mostly they were either personal, or volunteer efforts, because at that point the web had not caught on and simply was not the destination that it would become only a year later.

She set me up for an interview... The company created Fantasy Sports and Investing Games, from Sports Illustrated Fantasy Football to the Fidelity Investment Challenge, and it sounded like an interesting place to work!

My Introduction to the Web

In April 1991, I found myself backpacking on the Franco-Swiss border and badly in need of a place to stay the night. I had failed to make reservations at the youth hostel where I thought I was going to stay, unaware that in that part of the world reservations were a necessity, and the cost of a hotel for the weekend would have rivaled the price I had paid for my plane ticket to Europe!

Fortunately I remembered that a friend from university had managed an internship at the Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire -- also known as CERN -- or what is now called the European Organization for Nuclear Research. After a few false starts — CERN is more a city than it is a facility — I managed to track her down.

Grace is a physicist, and a kind and gentle soul who was happy to put me up for a few days in her flat and be my tourist guide that weekend. It was a Friday morning and she needed to be at work, so we met in front of the market and she parked me in her flat, showed me how to operate the TV, the espresso machine, and the water closet, and hurried off to do that physicist thing she did at CERN.

Bored, I turned on the TV, but every show was in French, which I do speak, but rather slowly and not with a vocabulary suited to daytime TV. The folks on the telly were speaking so fast I got about one word in three if I was lucky, so I made myself an espresso and searched the well-packed bookshelf for something to read, certain that I would find a book more entertaining than the TV.

Everything in the bookshelf that was printed in English related to physics — except for one shelf full of bodice-ripper romance novels -- and I was not that bored!

Among the shelf after shelf of books in languages I did not read at all, or at least not well, I finally found one spiral-bound book that was in English; entitled "Information Management: A Proposal" by a bloke named Tim Berners-Lee, who it turned out worked at CERN.

Tucked into this book was a packet consisting of a proposal for use and notes from what I believe was a presentation on the use of this new software. As I read the book I experienced my first epiphany of my life — the book was about building a hypertext standard and a client-server model that would be called the "World Wide Web." When I finished reading it, my first thought was, "This will change the way people use the Internet!" My second thought was, "I cannot wait to see what this looks like!"

That weekend I had the chance to see the Web on one of the NeXT Slabs (a workstation computer that could also function as a server that was designed and build by Steve Jobs after he left Apple). The Web Server was a NeXT Cube, and both the server and client software was created at CERN, largely by a man named Tim Berners-Lee, who moved from CERN to a position at MIT later that year.

I did not get to meet Berners-Lee at CERN -- though I would have the opportunity to meet him a few years later at MIT and during the 4th International World Wide Web Conference in Boston, where I was a member of the MBone Team.

The point to all this is that I learned about the Web in that tiny flat in Switzerland, and a few years later after I acquired my own NeXT Slab, I actually ran my own web server, and created a few web sites. Did that qualify me to be a Webmaster? Well, sort of...

The Interview at Replica

As is often the case, there was more to this job than was instantly obvious. When I showed up for my interview it was with the company CFO and CTO, who sat me down in a meeting room and told me all about what they did there -- Fantasy Gaming -- and what they hoped to do on the World Wide Web very soon. They asked a lot of questions about my background, but what surprised me was that they seemed to be more interested in my abilities as a Systems and Network Engineer than as a Webmaster...

As the conversation moved towards the end of the interview I grew a little suspicious -- there was nothing concrete that I could point at and cry "foul!" but there was something slightly off. As we were shaking hands and saying our good bye's I asked them point-blank: "You are not in critical path on anything, are you?"

"Oh no, not at all," they lied, with sincerity.

I went away thinking that the interview had gone well. I knew that they had a dozen other people to interview, so I did not expect to hear from them any time soon, but the following day I got a call from my agent: Replica wanted to hire me.

"They want you," she said. "But not as a contract. They want you as salary, and they are willing to pay us our buy-out fee," she added. I whistled, then clucked my tongue. The buy-out to hire talent away from that agency was $50,000 and even in 1994 that was a lot of money.

"Are they serious?" I asked.

"They want you to start tomorrow," she answered.

My First Day at Replica lasted 336 hours

After all of the paperwork was signed -- my contract, my salary papers, insurance and other legal papers that included a stack of NDA's, I was shown my office, and asked what I needed as far as computers were concerned, both for myself, and for my staff. What staff? I asked. Why, the staff you will need to hire -- you have to do that, it is part of your job, they said.

As I sat at my mostly barren desk making the list of the kit we would need, I also made a list of the staff that I would need to hire, and I only just finished that when the manager in charge of the database section came in and dropped a bomb in my lap.

He wanted to interface with me on how soon I expected to get an Internet Connection in to the building, and whether or not the existing network would work for that, and would we be hosting our own email? I must have looked odd, I am sure I looked confused -- and then he said, "Man, I don't know how you are going to manage getting that game built and deployed in less than 6 weeks! You must have brass balls or something!"

A few targeted questions revealed that not only was Replica in critical path on a project -- it was now MY project, and they had a contractual obligation to a major Financial Services company to get that game up and running in one day less than 6 weeks! They had known that for half a year, they just only got around to hiring the Webmaster that week!

I was in trouble. I instantly understood that. I went directly to the CTO to get the true word -- how bad was the situation? Very bad.

I needed to put together a game that had precisely Zero lines of code already written, test it, get it online, and then make sure it worked under load. But before I could do that, I had to get them an Internet connection -- they had no Internet services. Oh, and I needed to get staff as well, to actually build the game!

That night I went home for the last time in the next two weeks -- when I showed up for work the following morning I had my sleeping bag and a duffel full of the things I would need, and I lived in my office.

I slept under my desk, and I ate take-away food from nearby restaurants. The space that we were in had previously had a gym attached to it, so there was a large bathroom with showers down the hall, and it had a decent lunch room, but not the sort where you could cook anything more sophisticated than a microwave meal.

I was hired on a Tuesday. Using connections from previous jobs and contacts at Verizon, I was able to bypass the usual roadblocks that are put up by the provisioning office, and get an order for a full T-1 line and Internet connection fast-tracked for installation three days later on Friday afternoon. I quickly revised the list that I had written on needed hardware, and I also revised the list on needed staff, changing it from what I wanted to what I knew I needed.

The server I chose was a Sun Netra Server, which had to be ordered through an authorized Sun Computer distributor, but that too was fast-tracked for delivery on Friday. I put the orders in for the PC hardware, expediting that through the CTO's office, and then I drove over to U-Do-It Electronics and bought the tools I needed, and a box containing 500 feet of CAT-5 wire, a dozen surface-mount boxes and all of the kit that went with it.

I spent Thursday wiring the office that I had been assigned -- a room about 30 feet by 40 feet in size sectioned off into six cubicles of varying sizes. Mine, for instance, was a little larger than the others, and had my desk and chair, and a love seat style couch, coffee table, and single matching upholstered chair in it, ostensibly for meetings. The couch was too small to be used as a bed, so when I slept it was under my desk, in or on my sleeping bag. I did not sleep much.

The PC's arrived late on Thursday, and I spent most of the afternoon and evening evening getting them installed on their respective desks, and hooked to our network, which was itself connected via a fiber backbone to a new switch in what was destined to be our server room -- a small area that was adjacent to the servers being used by the database and programming departments, and the client systems belonging to the IVR department.

At that point, Replica had about 200 computers on tables running the length of the building in four rows, staffed by part-time college students who would take the calls of the customers, and using the computer in front of them, enter their "moves" into the system. That was in addition to the automated telephone input and response system that was in the process of being phased out, to be replaced by the Internet.

Friday Arrives

When I woke up under my desk on Friday morning, I had a fully-functioning department with a staff of one -- me. On each of the six desks were two computers each -- one running Windows, one running Linux.

At the time I was partial to Slackware, so that is what was installed on the systems. We needed both -- the Windows boxes to interface with the existing network, and the Linux boxes for development. I was not sure what the staff would prefer -- Windows or Linux -- so I figured that having the option was the way to go. The Linux boxes were all configured for X11, and although we did not have an Internet connection at that point, could talk to each other and the DSN Servers I had put together using Slackware and deployed in the server room just fine.

The T-1 crew showed up early, and by 1 PM we had a fully-functioning Internet connection sitting behind a commercial grade firewall, with a DMZ containing our DNS servers and connections for our Web Server when it arrived. There was much rejoicing.

The folks from Sun showed up an hour later, and by 4:30 PM we had our web server deployed, tested, and functioning, but not connected to the Internet because it needed to be hardened and have the unnecessary services and ports closed. I could not do that immediately, because I had somewhere that I needed to be that afternoon.

-- 2600 The Hacker Quarterly --

At that time, in Boston, on the first Friday of every month, a colorful collection of characters gathered in the food court at the Prudential Center for the monthly 2600 Meeting. 2600 being 2600 the Magazine -- or 2600 the Hacker Quarterly as it was officially called. From all over the Boston area and points covering most of Eastern Massachusetts, parts of Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Maine, computer and phone hacking enthusiasts would gather to chat, view impromptu presentations, and be social.

After grabbing food and beverages, the meeting would come together in the far rear corner of the dining area, and while it was half social and half serious, it was all fun. We played games like Spot the Fed, and talked about more than just the latest issue of 2600 or what the people were up to in our group and the groups within our group. It was a different era -- much different than what you find today -- but more important than that, it was where I needed to be, because it was where I was going to recruit the core members of the Web Staff for Replica!

The first person that I "recruited" was Sean Hamor -- AKA Sciri -- one of the smartest and most capable net geeks I know. As soon as I arrived at the meeting I sat down next to him, and I asked him how he liked his job -- at the time he was working for the City of Boston or maybe it was the MBTA? Anyway, he was working as a temp -- and he hated his job.

"Quit," I said. "Today."

"I can't quit, I need the money," he explained.

"Quit. Come to work with me. I can get you three times what they are paying you -- maybe more," I said.

I am not sure if he believed me right then or not... I called the CFO and told him that I had found the first member of the Web Staff, and I needed to have him in the office, first thing Monday morning, ready to start, and what would that take?

He had to be interviewed. He had to fill out some papers. It was mostly formality, I was told. And that was true. Sean started to believe me as the call progressed. On Monday instead of showing up for work at the City, he showed up at Replica, had his interview, worked out what he wanted to be paid, and moved into his desk that day.

The second person I hired was a young woman named Window Snyder, who was a genius at code and fully grok'd the World Wide Web. Based upon their recommendations we hired a coder -- a bloke named Steve who would have been right at home on Haight-Ashbury Street in 1968 -- and Replica had its Web Team!

After Replica sold its online gaming assets and closed up shop, the team scattered to the four winds -- Sean went on to work for Lucent Technologies, and eventually ended up as Operational Systems Administrator for Canonical USA, which I understand is a place and position he likes a lot. Window took the job as network security boss at Mozilla, where she hardened my favorite browser, Firefox, before moving on to Apple Computer, where she is the Senior Security Product Manager. I do not know what happened to Steve... But that, in essence, is the story of how I became a Webmaster!

The team that I assembled pulled off a major miracle, building the game from scratch from outline to finished code in less than 5 weeks. We did the Sports Illustrated Fantasy Football game, the Fidelity Investment Challenge, and a half-dozen other projects before the company was shut down, having sold-off its game business for serious money.

That introduction to the world of All-Area Utility Webmaster served me well, and the skill and knowledge that I acquired in the process has proven useful at other jobs, and in the volunteer work that I have done and continue to do.

What is a Webmaster?

To this day I am still not sure what the answer to that question really is... Despite the fact that the World Wide Web is nearly 20 years old, the reality is that the position of Webmaster still means many different things depending on the company.

To my way of thinking the easy definition is this: The person who is responsible for the day-to-day operation, planning, content, and content deployment for a web server and site. That sounds about right.

. . . Wiki's

2010-10-26T12:51:00.004-04:00

Most citizens of the Internet think of Wikipedia when the subject of the wiki is brought up, though to be honest Wikipedia is a site that is viewed by most members of the media as a rather suspect and unreliable source of information. In fact it is often used as a zinger or joke when an editor asks for the source for a particularly salacious or damaging quote -- the sort of thing that you absolutely must be able to reply upon being accurate or risk a lawsuit -- to which the writer will nonchalantly reply: "Oh that? I saw it on Wikipedia!"

All joking aside, Wikipedia has done more to make the Wiki platform the success that it is than any other site or community, and that says something worth noting! If you are not familiar with what a wiki is, in a nutshell it is a program that is usually deployed on a web server that uses a database or databases that are filled with user-submitted information -- or pages -- to collect and present information on a given subject.

Specifically it is an attractive and easy to use front-end that serves as both the major element of the sites design, and its structure. The users of a wiki create an account, and then they are free to post pages to the wiki -- and of more significance -- edit the pages posted by another user. Why is that important?

In the case of Wikipedia -- which is an online interactive user-driven encyclopedia -- it means that if you come upon a page on that site that has incorrect information, rather than send an email to report it, you can if you choose, log in and correct the information yourself. Quite a powerful tool indeed, especially because the web browser itself is the basic tool by which the contents of a wiki are read and created!

Wikipedia

The story of Wikipedia is one of those Internet success stories that are often brought up whenever a project is being pitched on an approach that has never been tried before. "This will be our Wikipedia!" is a phrase I have heard often in the past.

The site itself was not the first to implement the wiki as its structure -- that honor was pioneered by Ward Cunningham, who developed the first wiki in 1994. He used the wiki for his personal site and several sites that represented projects with which he was associated, but major success for the platform followed the creation of Wikipedia by Rick Gates, based upon the concept that was first proposed by Richard Stallman.

Originally conceived as a vehicle by which recognized experts in a given field or subject could generate content for the website Nupedia, the unique construct of the wiki format and its accessibility very quickly eclipsed Nupedia, and caused Wikipedia to spin-off as its own online encyclopedia site, as well as caused the creation of other related sites.

A side-effect of that success was the attention of the web world that was paid not just to the site -- which was wildly popular with surfers -- but also to the format, indirectly creating its own industry as individuals and groups set out to program their own take on the wiki with the improvements that they thought it needed. Today there are literally hundreds of different wiki programs -- some are naturally based upon the more successful offerings, while others are scratch-built to fulfill specific needs.

The idea behind the wiki is sound; it is one of the most efficient and best methods for creating and relating information, while allowing a large community to participate. While that is certainly one of the greatest strengths of the wiki as a platform, the fact that it is equally useful for a small group or even a single person to use to document and link information, and that it will run on any client that can use a web browser, well now there you have significant strength.

A Personal Wiki

The idea of a personal wiki -- of leveraging all of the advantages of the wiki platform for the management of personal or business data -- did not occur to me until quite recently I am embarrassed to admit.

Over the course of the past year I have been struggling with devising a way to manage what has become a large amount of diverse but related information in a manner that was not simply able to store it, but also make it instantly available to me. I needed to be able to create documents and then naturally link them together so that I could smoothly transition from one to another along a chain, a chain that often is very long.

I needed to keep track of information like the details on a video game, and then link that to my data on its publisher and developer, along with notes I take while playing the game to prepare for reviewing it. But I also needed to be able to associate the PR Representative -- whether they were an in-house employee of the publisher or worked for an agency, and there again was another galaxy of information that needed to be linked not just to the game but to other games. Add in what amounts to a dossier on the PR people that includes everything that I know about them, reports of meetings at events, phone call logs and reports, and more.

Initially I tried the traditional route -- notes taken on pads and notebooks, file-o-fax, and the classic address book -- but the simple enormity of the information quickly rendered that unusable as a system for information management. Sure, I had the information, but I had to remember where it was written down and then access it.

My next stab at it involved using Excel Spreadsheets as the focus for tracking the status of the different projects, linking documents to the entries and then linking in the address book functions from Outlook. Microsoft Office is a very useful suite of programs, and they do talk to each other -- but then Microsoft pulled the rug out from under me!

I was using Office 2000, for which I had paid a pretty big chunk of money back in 2000, and it still worked just fine for me. All of my data was in various formats used by it -- but when I bought a new notebook computer and went to install it to it, I discovered that at some point in the previous year Microsoft had declared Office 2000 dead, and they were not just not supporting it anymore, they actively killed its key registration system online, preventing owners of the product from doing ANY new installations!

When I contacted them about it they told me I had two choices -- buy a newer version of Office, which they were happy to sell me -- or find an alternative office productivity suite, and oh, have a nice day sir!

Do I have to tell you that my reaction was unpleasant? After having them kick my knees out from under me there was no way I was going to invest $500 in getting into bed with them again, because the day would come when they simply did that to me again. The following day I switched all of my systems to Sun's OpenOffice -- which is free -- but that does not have all of the components or interoperability that MS Office did, so while it solved my need for an office suite, it did not solve my information management troubles.

One of my editors, when they learned of my predicament, sent me a copy of Act for Windows, which I admit is a great program for management of contacts and documenting my interaction with them, but it only does that well for small bits of data. It is, to be accurate, a lightweight weapon in a battle that required a WMD.

I struggled with this for months, missing some release dates and losing contact information only to find it again AFTER I no longer needed it, and I finally sat down and declared that enough was enough. I needed a solution.

I happened to be looking at Wikipedia, reading about the development delays for a game that I was reviewing, when I said to myself -- what you need is a personal wiki.

In the past I have experienced what is called epiphany, but never had I experienced it on that level. It felt like being physically struck in the psyche. The blow was rapid and acute and stunning, and as I sat there, glaring at my video display, I repeated the words.

"What you need is a personal wiki!"

Getting there is half the fun. . .

I immediately sat down and began researching the wiki, and learned that there were hundreds to choose from, but not all of them were free. There were also options -- I could pay to lease a hosted wiki, or I could put together a server and place it on my network and install my own wiki. I could get a stand-alone wiki that will run under Windows and just stick it on my notebook, or I could get what is called a Workgroup Wiki and install that to my desktop, which would offer a limited service to my home network.

After carefully considering the matter I came to the conclusion that I would need a wiki that I could access from any machine in my house, and that I could access when I was away from home and office. It had to be web-accessible, and it needed to be robust. It had to have built-in security and access control, and if at all possible, I wanted it to be free.

With that criteria established I went looking for a wiki and, no real surprise, I ended up choosing MediaWiki -- the same software that Wikipedia uses.

There were plenty of cons -- for one thing I was already used to using that, and I was familiar with its markup code. For another, it was robust and war-tested. It was available as a package installation for Ubuntu Linix, which happened to be the flavor I use these days, and best of all, it used skins, making its presentation flexible.

MediaWiki it was!

Deciding on what to use turned out to be the most difficult part of the whole process.

I pulled my old notebook computer out of storage and installed Ubuntu Server on it, then put it on a shelf on one of the computer racks in my NOC, and tuned the LAMP Package to meet with the requirements of the wiki. Then I installed and configured the wiki software, and in a very brief single afternoon I was up and running.

I imagined that it would be very useful, but of course getting the wiki up on my network was really the beginning of the deployment process. It had no information, you see, so despite the fact that I had an operative Wiki it was not useful without information!

Where I started was with the stacks of notes, notebooks, and post-its that were the primary debris that littered my world. I took each note, created a page for it in the wiki as needed or added it to another page, and then shredded it. At the end of every evening I backed up the wiki so that if anything happened to the system, I could simply redeploy it to another computer and nothing would be lost in the process.

I then sat down to create a cron job to automagically back up the wilki twice a day so that I would no longer have to think about doing that, sending the back-ups to both of our NASD's for a mirrored arrangement so to speak, and the following day I resumed the operation.

Over the course of a week I transferred what amounts to five years of notes, information, contacts, and resources into that wiki. When I was done with the major part of that -- what I call the Information Alpha Build -- I sat back and started to use it.

Being able to search through all of that data using a web browser and the search button was, to be blunt, freaking awesome! All of the data was linked, and none of it was redundant. I no longer had to duplicate information because the information was associated with multiple subjects being covered. I could instantly and conveniently access what I needed, and if what I needed was elsewhere, why there was a link to it! It was only a few mouse clicks away!

My wiki quickly became an indispensable tool of my work-flow methodology!

Real Life Too

One afternoon I was looking for a digital photo that a relative asked me to email them when I thought -- man, here is a task that would be made so much easier by having it all in a wiki. But it is a photo, you cannot wiki those. Or can you?

A quick check of Wikipedia proved to me that indexing and organizing photos was one of the things that MediaWiki did well -- in fact you did not even have to FTP the photo to the wiki -- you could do it with a mouse click from your regular browser! And how cool is that?

While transferring the notes and data was time consuming, it paid off immediately. Building a database of photos however, well, that is not something I will manage in a week. No, that is a long-term project, best completed by making sure that all the new pictures are entered that same week that they were taken, and entering old ones in batches, when I have the time. But still, it is a workable project!

And there is no shortage of projects to be wikified! I plan to once and for all create a complete and accurate catalog of all of the CD's, DVD's and books that I own, with notes as to where they are located. Maybe I will even use the Dewey Decimal System -- I don't know. What I do know, though, is that the catalogs will be conveniently available from the landing page of our Household Wiki!

I plan to transfer all of our recipes to a Kitchen Section on the wiki -- and install a disk-less network computer on the counter in the kitchen to make accessing the recipes painless.

I am going to be inputting all of the vet records for our pets -- and for that matter, while I am at it I should scan all of the report cards my kids have brought home over the years -- maybe work on a graphing system so we can examine their progress (or lack thereof) in a given subject. And then there is our Coca Cola collection -- that clearly needs to be wiki'd.

I really love my wiki!

. . . Final Fantasy XIV

2010-10-17T08:57:00.006-04:00

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

The months, then weeks, and finally days that had to come and go before the release of Final Fantasy XIV were often filled with stray thoughts like "wow it sure will be nice when I can actually play that game" because, and I am being honest here, I missed the original FF based MMO (Final Fantasy XI) that I used to play a lot with friends but that I honestly do not have time to play today, or tomorrow, or really whenever.

That is sort of the point, really. Total lack of time. But when something is new and shiny and has that new MMO smell you will be surprised at how much time you can MAKE to play it. Plus there is the added fact that several of my best mates live a long way away from me, and the only time that I get to spend time with them, as well as having an excuse for rambling hours-long VOIP sessions, is when we are playing MMO's.

OK, so where was I? Oh yeah, looking forward to playing FFXIV...

So the game arrives via Sir UPS, and I pop it into my PC and load it -- the PS3 version will not be arriving before March 2011 at the earliest, so it was PC or nothing -- which meant that I also had to locate my PC gamepad and plug that in. Then I had to find the drivers for it because (surprise) I have not actually used that device since before I made the switch to Windows 7.

Once FFXIV is installed and I have my gamepad plugged in with the drivers installed, I go to run the game and... It has to patch.

Three Hours Later

The patch is finally downloaded and installed -- and it only took 3 hours! How cool is that?! I remember patches for FFXI taking 8 to 12 hours, so this one was not bad at all! With the game properly patched, and even though I know that my best mate has not finished installing his copy yet, I go ahead and run the game. I create my character, I do the appearance edit and decide on the basic stats, and finally I am ready to play. I hit play.

I appear in the game, and wow, the graphics are WAY better than those from FFXI. There is an almost haunting realism to them, and as I have created a Mithra, my human-like cat chick, or maybe cat-like human chick... I am not sure... Whatever! Stands at the entrance to a long avenue in a city made of stone, and there she stands. I cannot move. The gamepad is not working.

The lights on the gamepad that are lit when it is properly loaded are lit; clearly the drivers are there, so it should work. And yet not. A quick web-search and I know why! I need to actually configure it to work for FFXIV, which means quitting the game and loading a separate config program. I do that, and five minutes later I am once again standing at the entrance to this long avenue made of stone. There are NPC characters around me, but oddly no player characters.

I push forward on the right joystick and start to walk -- Cool! The gamepad is properly configured!

I take three steps.

The game freezes.

A message pops up: The Server is now going down for Maintenance.

Oh man!

I check the message board on the official site and learn that this "Maintenance" will take 8 hours. I go to bed.

The Next Evening

The soonest that I can log in and play is late the following evening, because as much as I want to play, there are all these other things that I have to do, like work, and family, and you know, stuff. But here I am, and bonus! My best mate has installed and patched his copy, so I get to do my initial exploration of the city with him! Very awesome.

This is NOT Final Fantasy XI...

It is sort of like FFXI, but not. A lot is different. For one thing the leveling system and the jobs are much more complex and require a great deal of careful study of the conversation dialogue that I am having with NPC's. Confusion is everywhere, but slowly things begin to make sense.

I spend an hour and a half exploring this new city, but I am unable to locate the player housing area. I know -- I KNOW -- that there has to be one, and yet I cannot find it. Finally in a fit of desperation I Google it, and I learn that the reason that I cannot locate it is because it is not there. There is NO player housing in this game. The good news though, is the proper way to express that fact is: "There is no player housing in this game... Yet."

OK, so there will be. There is also no follow command, and the help button leads to a notice telling me I should load a website whose URL it provides. That was not optimal. Ideally when you are looking for help in a game, the help should be IN the game.

My first impressions of FFXIV

This game was published before it was finished. So much is missing that I am actually in a slight panic as to why they released it at all... Of course that just means that it can only get better from here, right?

When the game was originally announced years ago, I was still playing FFXI at the time, and I remember thinking that a new MMO would ruin FFXI because it would draw players away. But then at the time I did not realize that I would be one of the players who would stop playing FFXI due to time and life issues, so I sort of imagined that I would still be playing FFXI at the time, which would have made picking up a new MMO almost unthinkable. Now not so much.

First impressions... I like the crafting system better than its implementation in FFXI but I do not really understand the finer points of the crafting system here, so I am not sure how valuable that opinion really is...

I really like it that you no longer have to find a moogle to change jobs -- that your job is totally dependent upon the tool/weapon you have equipped. That is very cool. But I do not understand the different jobs other than the obvious ones -- I mean a fighter is a fighter, but what I think must be White Mage actually feels like a combination of Blue and Black Mage... Obviously if you are not familiar with those classes that does not mean much to you, but there you have it.

There is a strong feeling of a tighter information density here, and a distinct and almost painful lack of community cohesiveness. In the previous MMO you had this definite sense of belonging to your home city -- which was like in this mew MMO pitted in a pseudo-war against the other cities. But the other cities are largely unknown quantities at this point... And still there is this glaring absence of any sense of identity and community.

I am hoping that this is just that fuzzy period of time in which you are just getting to know a new environment and not a true lack of cohesiveness, because that identity factor is a very special part of what made playing these games so attractive.

The other players in the game are a LOT less chatty than those in FFXI... Perhaps it is simply that everyone is new. The game has been publicly available for only a week, and I am clearly overwhelmed by the newness of it all, so I have to presume that so are the other players. Sure, some of them have been playing for almost a month if they bought the Collector's Edition (I did not), because they got early access to the game. So at least SOME of the players should be confident enough to start to be chatty... But no.

One pleasant surprise is that Mithra have tails! That may sound strange, but you see some of the early information that was released about the game two years ago and that was a subject of conversation in FFXI was that Mithra were losing their tails in the new game. I am happy that this is not true, but I cannot explain why that makes me happy.

With games like this you really cannot write a review for months because it takes months to really get a sense of the game -- so if you are expecting a review to appear in Game On you will have to be patient.

My first impressions are that I need some more first impressions. But there is a lot here to like, and assuming that they get busy adding into the game the things that should already be in it, this looks like it will be a very cool MMO home for years to come. They just better get housing in before Christmas, because I am looking forward to the traditional Christmas Quests and setting up my tree, and oh man... Must resist MMO....

. . . MPCU: Power Supplies

2010-10-17T04:11:00.012-04:00

Modular PC Upgrade Series Part 5
(from the Cape Cod Times Digital Grind Column)

A Brief Foreword on this Series

This post is part of a multi-part series on the subject of Modular PC Ownership.

The system of Modular PC Ownership espoused in this series follows a green conservation approach to technology that is intended to reduce your individual carbon footprint, save you money, improve your computing satisfaction, and increase the value in many respects that you receive from your personal computer. Each posting on this blog has been created to support and enhance a related column published in the newspaper.

Today's posting supports the column: Upgrading? Now's the time to seize power, which is the August 3rd, 2010 Cape Cod Times Digital Grind Column.

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Table of Contents

Part 1: Speaking of MPCU -- Introduction
01: Preface
02: Introduction
03: The Economics of Modular Upgrading
04: Introduction Conclusion

Part 2: Speaking of MPCU - Keyboards
05: Introduction
06: Connectivity Options
07: Keyboards Conclusion

Part 3: Speaking of MPCU - Controllers & Sound
08: Introduction
09: Controllers
10: PC Sound
11: Controllers & Sound Conclusions

Part 4: Speaking of MPCU - Computer Cases
12: Introduction
13: What a Case Should Do
14: How to Begin Building your Foundation

Part 5: Speaking of MPCU - Power Supply Units (PSU's)
15: Introduction
16: Selecting a Power Supply
17: Quality vs. Cost

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Power Supplies

15: Introduction

The history of the Personal Computer can trace its origins to a complex collection of parts that were packaged with an instruction manual requiring more than a passing familiarity with a soldering iron, multi-meter, and firm grasp of Ohm's Law. In fact the establishment of the PC as a legitimate piece of office equipment -- let alone a device for the home -- owes a considerable debt to a common device found on most business desktops: the calculator.

Arguably the first true personal computer -- called the Altair -- was created as a product of desperation by a man named Ed Roberts, who owned an electronics assembly kit business whose principle line was largely electronic calculators. The invention of the Integrated Circuit (IC) fomented a radical change in the manufacture of calculating devices, which up until the mid-1960's consisted largely of the masterful engineering of moving parts. These largely mechanical devices -- whose output was invariably printed on narrow strips of white paper that were clipped to the document being totaled -- were a product of a conservative approach to the process of number manipulation, created for industries that were thought to be resistant to change.

The bulk of Roberts' business consisted of hobbyists who assembled electronic calculator kits, but once the manufacturers of calculators embraced the IC and began to produce product lines that were centered around it, Roberts' found his customer base drying up. In what might be described as a defensive reaction, Roberts looked for other devices that might appeal to the electronic hobbyist and concluded that the personal computer was the answer. Shortly after he created the Altair kit, Roberts found himself unable to keep pace with demand because the public was clearly ready for the personal computer, and his success with the Altair did not go unnoticed.

In just a few short years other manufacturers recognized that untapped market, and Roberts soon found history repeating itself, as his competition used innovation and their established manufacturing base to move the PC beyond a device that consisted of a complex system of switches to the more recognizable keyboard based computer that we use today.

Along the way other devices were integrated into the design of the PC, starting with the video display screen, which in early PC's was built into them rather than connected as a peripheral. Next came the removable disk drive, and eventually the fixed disk (hard drive), sound circuits, and upgradable components like serial ports, parallel ports, and pointing devices. All of these optional add-on devices altered the basic power needs of the PC, which previously were served by a fairly simple built-in power supply that provided a clean source of single-voltage power that the device used.

As the PC grew more complex and capable its power needs also altered, until we find ourselves with the current state of the PC, with an average requirements of three different voltage requirements that all come from the same power supply. Building this as a kit is no longer a practical approach, and not simply because it can be done cheaper and more efficiently by way of mass production, but because the power requirements for the modern PC are exacting, with a list of needs that include clean power in specific voltages that must be consistent.

The power supply for early PC's was, like its case, an integral part of the system design, and was not easily swapped out; when a power supply on the IBM PC went bad the usual course of repair was just that: a technician replaced the part in it that was bad. Modern PC's are built upon a modular approach, and the low cost of their devices promotes a different approach -- when a piece of your computer goes bad or breaks, you replace that piece rather than repairing it, both because it is cheaper to do it that way, and because the skilled repair infrastructure no longer exists in the market.

With that approach to PC components being the standard, it should not be a surprise that the power supply industry began to specialize in the 1990's, producing different models of power supply for different purposes. The general-use PC with its limited needs required what is today considered to be the basic power supply, while the high-performance gaming rigs currently popular have a more specialized set of requirements, which created a highly competitive market for user-installed power supplies and replacement power supplies.

This change in how the device is considered has had the effect of elevating the power supply from a minor factor for a PC build to the level of a core consideration, with most PC builders and owners giving the power supply as much importance as the motherboard or CPU. The end result of this is a market that includes branded power supplies with product lines with so wide a variety of features so that choosing a PSU is now almost as confusing as the process of choosing a CPU! The result for the end-user is similar to what has happened with motherboards, CPU's, and video cards -- the process of selecting the power supply is one more compromise in the build that often comes down to the issue of price rather than features or tech.

16: Selecting a Power Supply Unit (PSU)

At last count, when you consider the different models of PC created as boxed offerings as well as the variations of PSU that are offered for new and original PC builds, there are an estimated 25,000 different types of PSU on the market. If you narrow the selection just to PSU's that are suited for consideration for a new custom PC build, that number still surpasses 4,000 and that does not take into consideration the units that are designed as part of the standard case in a generic build.

A quick check of websites like Newegg, Tiger Direct, Geeks.com, or Fry's -- just to name a few -- turns up around 97 different manufacturers of PSU's, and each maker has an average of 6 product lines, within which are often a dozen different models per product line. With numbers like that it is not just the average consumer or hobbyist who is contemplating a custom PC build who end up confused and struggling to make sense of the market -- professional PC builders also find the choice of PSU to be an often confusing proposition!

The major difference between the professional builder and the average hobbyist however, is simple enough: the professional knows that there is a certain minimum level of features that must be maintained, and invariably makes their PSU choice using that standard combined with an estimate of the future power needs of a system based upon what they know the end-user will do with it, and where they think the future of PC hardware will develop.

Replacement PSU's

The process of selecting a replacement PSU for a damaged unit is perhaps the most simple choice when power supplies are the part being replaced, because the choice for general-use PC's is often simply the same model that has gone bad. Replacement for a system that is used for Computer Assisted Design / Computer Assisted Manufacturing (CAN/CAM) is a bit more complex, while replacing a unit in a system that is used for gaming is even more complex. Often the process of replacing a PSU is viewed as an opportunity to expand the capability of the PC in ways that the original equipment manufacturer did not consider when they spec'd out the original design.

The first major consideration in replacing a PSU is whether the user is considering an upgrade of their video card. Only three years ago the vast majority of video cards drew all of their power from the PC bus, which means that plugging the card into the PC expansion slot was all that was necessary in order to power the video card. That is no longer the case -- most modern video cards today require additional power using special cables that are part of the modern power supply -- but having one of those cables as part of the PSU is only one element to consider.

Video card technology is moving in new directions today, with the standard being built-in components on cards that duplicate or replace processing responsibilities that previously fell to the PC itself. Modern cards now feature onboard RAM that is often faster than the system RAM, and often include multiple CPU's that are built into the card to take over processing graphics. These two expanding technologies represent pivotal methods for increasing both the capabilities of a PC and its speed that is independent of the computer!

Manufacturers of graphics cards try to address the needs of the software companies whose products best utilize their cards, with video game studios being the greatest demand source for graphics card technology. An office productivity suit is not going to stress a video card, but a modern video game that uses complex layers of graphical display will, and often to its limits. The result of this has been a movement to combine the inherent capacity and processing abilities of multiple video cards in a single system!

Multi-Head vs. Multi-Card

In the past when a user wanted to add additional video displays to a single computer the choice usually involved adding an additional video card. Most modern high-end cards can usually support more than one display -- and on a general-use PC that is often enough -- but when the system is used for gaming or graphically-intense engineering or design programs, hanging more than a single display off of a card can actually degrade performance of the system.

In that case adding a second or third video card is absolutely required, with the configuration in that situation largely dictated by the desired effect. For graphics rendering, design, and using programs like Adobe Photoshop, the configuration is usually independent, meaning that each display is connected to its own graphics card, and given sole control over that cards resources.

High-end gaming and certain types of computer assisted design often require a more flexible use of the graphics resources in the PC, so in those circumstances it is preferable to have all of the cards in a PC linked together, their resources shared, and the utilization of their processing power and RAM shared out among the displays.

Ultimately the installation of multiple high-end video cards means a much higher set of power requirements on a system, which means that this potential draw must be taken into consideration when selecting a replacement power supply! A general-use PC might never require more than 500 watts of power, which means that selecting a 650 watt power supply is more than adequate for the current and future needs of the PC, but at the other end of the spectrum it is often necessary to over-compensate for power needs in order to provide the foundation for future expansion.

After tallying up the current needs for a system and arriving at 800 watts, the builder may be tempted to pick an 850 watt power supply for the build and call it a good day -- but if that build includes three graphics cards the simple act of replacing them at a later date with newer more powerful models could easily push the minimal system needs above 1,000 watts. That means that the 850 watt PSU that seemed more than adequate when it was chosen as a replacement PSU now must be replaced not because it is failing, but because it fails to meet the minimum power needs of the system! In that case a 1,250 watt PSU would have been the correct choice, even if it seemed like overkill at the time.

Balancing Price and Capability

The difference between the price of an 850 watt PSU and a 1,250 watt PSU is considerable, and though we do not like to admit it, price is often the higher measure of consideration when we are contemplating replacement, or selecting components for a custom build. The old saw that you get what you pay for applies here -- that $250 savings in selecting the lower wattage PSU at the time may end up being a total wash; the original savings of $250 ends up costing the PC owner way more in the end, because they are out the $300 spent on the original PSU plus the $550 that they now have to spend on a properly powered unit, so the cost of saving $250 at the time of the replacement or build turns out to be a whopping $850 in the end.

When considering a replacement PSU or picking one for a new build, the first step is determining the current power needs for the hardware that has been selected or is already present in the system. The second logical step is to estimate what the worse case scenario could be for future power needs. How many devices are in the system? Take a look back at the development cycle of these devices to see how big the power needs changed between versions going back two or three generations.

If the jump in power needs for a video card of the type that is used in the system averaged 100 watts, use that number to estimate the potential future needs -- but multiply that by three, because you may end up adding two additional cards to your system. Use the same approach for the storage devices, and do not forget to factor in devices that receive power from the bus, in particular USB devices. Once you have that new total, add an additional 20% just to be safe, and you now know what your base power need may be for the future.

The most popular form of custom-built PC today is based upon the Bare Bones Systems that are offered by practically every PC and parts website on the Internet. Many PC manufacturers offering out of the box systems also have lines of Bare Bones Systems that are sold via third-party vendors, because this approach removes most of the headache of spec'ing out a system.

Most generic builds -- what are called Bare Bones Systems -- consist of a medium grade case and power supply rather than a high-end case and modular PSU as a result of the basic economics of the product. Bare Bones Systems are created to permit the average PC owner to select a system using a key set of criteria -- CPU capabilities, motherboard, and basic RAM. It is fair and accurate to view these systems as "kits" to which the user will then add components to complete and customize them.

A Bare Bones offering usually includes a minimum level of RAM, the CPU and motherboard, a case and power supply, often a keyboard and mouse. Usually the graphics capabilities of these systems is represented by whatever card is built into the motherboard, and for general-use builds that is often perfectly adequate. Some offerings include a hard drive, and it is common to find a discounted selection of Windows OS included as an option.

When the user is putting together a more specialized system -- a gaming rig for example -- they will be upgrading and adding components to the purchase. More RAM, hard drives, a better CD/DVD or BluRay drive, and a better graphics card that will replace the onboard graphics. The one thing that they rarely every consider, let alone upgrade, is the PSU.

Medium Grade PSU's

Identifying the quality level of a PSU is not a difficult process. The medium grade PSU's that are usually included as part of a Bare Bones build have a distinct appearance.

The unit illustrated here is typical of the medium grade modular PSU that is used in these builds. The dimensions are uniform, and the quality of the cabling and connectors typical of that pictured here. One aspect in particular is that the cluster of cables is hardwired into the unit -- whether you use them all or not, they are present. Devices that require special cables can only be used with these PSU's if a form adapter is available. This type of PSU is the perfect example of how a component is built when the specification is for the cheapest cost possible.

Medium grade PSU's will get the job done, but that describes the entire approach to these PSU's from quality to form factor. They are less than a compromise, but fortunately like their higher grade cousins they are built using a standardized system of attachment, which means that they can be easily replaced.

Pictured here is an example of a high-grade PSU. The differences between this and the previous example are immediately evident upon inspection, with the appearance and the system of cabling being the most obvious. The cables that supply primary power for the motherboard are the only cables that are hardwired to the PSU, while the cables that provide power to the peripherals use a modular plug-in approach that is color-coded and based upon unique plug forms in order to prevent confusion.

Supplied with the PSU is a set of modular cables, allowing the user to install just the cables that are needed, which cuts down upon clutter in the case, and permits proper cabling without the use of adapters, which often represent the weakest point in a power scheme. The dimensions of the PSU are similar to those of the previous lower grade, and while larger capacity PSU's may be slightly deeper than the average sized units, they will still fit easily into most Bare Bones cases.

Upgrading the PSU for a Bare Bones build, or selecting a higher quality PSU as a replacement unit is a sound approach for several reasons. The cheaper grade PSU's often have very limited warranty coverage if any. If any flaws in the PSU are not apparent within the first 90 days of ownership, chances are the maker will not replace the unit after that time period, because 90 days warranty coverage is typical for this grade of PSU. The higher grade units like the Toughpower 750 watt PSU pictured above come with 5 year warranty coverage, and their manufacturing process is structured to include a much higher level of quality control, which means that they are much less likely to develop problems related to manufacturing.

There are other equally obvious benefits to using better grade components, but not having to replace a bad unit is a major plus in my book. The quality of design in the higher-grade models includes better thermal management, which means that these PSU's are often nearly silent, as they do not require a built-in fan set at its highest revolution to provide cooling. In addition to that, and acknowledging that the effect is superficial to the consideration of PSU tech, these units simply look cool!

Part 17: Quality vs Cost

When phrases like "higher-grade" are raised with respect to computer components both for replacement and as part of a custom build, the average user presumes that there is a cost to them. In many areas of technology that principal holds true -- you get what you pay for. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Quality costs. While that may be true in most cases, personal computer tech is often an exception to the rule, or more accurately, the cost is often less than you might suppose.

A good example of quality and costs

If you visit the website for Tiger Direct (http://www.tigerdirect.com) and select Barebone Computers from the main menu, and you are presented with a selection of the Bare Bones Systems that they offer for sale. Pick a mid-range general-use system with your emphasis being economy that is intended as a Home Entertainment PC -- for our example we will use the B69-1205 Kit -- which is a fairly common design for multimedia home entertainment PC systems.

The base cost of the unit is $189.99 and for that relatively low cost here is what you get:

Biostar G41-M7 Motherboard
Intel Pentium Dual Core E5300 Processor
Kingston 2GB PC5400 DDR2 Memory
Power Up Black ATX Mid-Tower Case with 450-Watt Power Supply

That is a pretty good starting point for a general-use build. The CPU is actually a bargain unit considering that it is a generation old, but it is perfect for general-use computing and can even handle most modern games, including MMO's as long as the system has a decent video card installed in it.

The system comes with 2GB of RAM, which is perfectly adequate for a 32-bit version of Windows 7 or Windows XP. To this you would be adding a hard drive, CD/DVD drive, and a good video card, which will add anywhere from $325 to $700 to the cost of the build, but you end up with a very nice system for less than it would cost to purchase an out-of-the-box brand name model with similar capabilities.

Now let's say that the PSU failed after the warranty expired on the purchase. This is a standard 450 watt medium-grade PSU, and to replace it with a similar unit will cost around $49.99 for a generic 450w PSU. Or you could replace it with a high-grade name brand unit like Coolermaster's Elite Series 460w PSU -- for $8 less. That is not a mis-print, the cost of a Coolermaster Elite Series 460w PSU is $41.99, $8 less than the cost of replacing that PSU with a generic 450w PSU!

Now let's say that you want to add some extra watts since you plan to upgrade your system later anyway, and as you have to replace the PSU you may as well install some extra capacity in the process. For a little more than twice the price -- $109.99 -- you can replace it with one of Thermaltake's TR series 800w PSU's, which comes with their standard 5 year warranty and modular cabling system.

There is truth in the saying that you get what you pay for, but it pays to shop around. Often it seems to me that I am proselytizing when it comes to the modular building and upgrade approach to PC ownership -- and perhaps I am -- but the benefits to this approach so outweighs the drawbacks, and it is such a logical means of maintaining computing power that it is worth the effort.

Computers -- and specifically the Personal Computer -- are often part of the relationships that we have in our life. I don't mean to imply that there is a reciprocal relationship present such as that which exists between two sentient beings -- obviously a computer cannot return your affection. But that does not stop people from identifying with their computers! Most owners pick a name for their computer that has subtle but significant meaning to them. Most owners feel a sense of pride in ownership, and care that their PC can meet their computing needs. Like their automobile, most owners have a minimum level of expectation for their PC, and considering that they spend a great deal of time sitting in front of and using it, that makes sense.

I am an observant person -- in fact people watching is one of my hobbies -- and one thing that I have noticed among my friends, relatives, and acquaintances, is that rarely ever do they get rid of their old PC when they replace it with a new one! Invariably it is either placed elsewhere in the home as a second system, or re-purposes to preform another function, as a file server, print server, or entertainment system. With the addition of another hard drive and software many of my friends turn their old system into a digital DVR to record their favorite TV shows and movies and offer basic web surfing capabilities to their living room entertainment center.

Those who do not re-purpose their old computer pass it on to some other family member -- it is fairly common for a parent to give their old PC to a child when they replace it. Why do they do this? I am sure that part of the reason is the value that they feel for the PC, and for its inherent and intrinsic value, but there is also the question of the emotional attachment that they have for the PC. After all, it gave them years of useful service, and was their gateway to the online world.

When you adopt a modular ownership system, instead of replacing your PC you upgrade it, replacing the various parts and thus its capabilities. By doing this you not only save money, but you get the full measure of the value of what you spent on this system, which for most people is a very attractive element in the process.

Replacing the case and the PSU for your system with a more robust and option-rich case and powerful PSU is the first logical step in the process of shifting to modular PC ownership. If you read my column and blog entries on cases, and do a little research of your own online, you are certain to find more than just a few case designs that lock-in to your idea of what a computer should look like, and what its basic capabilities should be.

We are constantly reminded of adopting a green lifestyle, to recycle, and to reduce our carbon footprint -- this modern day era of conservation is not simply an extension of the earlier notion that material responsibility is good for the planet, but is a logical extension of the bad economy and the very real need to save money. Modular PC ownership neatly fits into that scheme and approach on multiple levels, and offers not just the opportunity to save money, but to increase the value of the money that you have already spent on your PC.

So far this series has covered the basic introduction, keyboards, controllers and other input devices, peripherals for enhancing the sound and music in our PC's, the cases, and now the PSU's. There is still a lot to cover in the series both here on the blog, and in the column, and you can expect me to address motherboards, graphics (video cards), media and storage, thermal management, and the many types of peripherals that attach to our computers, as well as the different kit that we can use for networking them together to give us a wired house and shared access to the Internet.

Each piece in this series will include an updated entry in the Table of Contents -- so you can jump to the top of any entry in the series and navigate to the next, or to the one covering the tech you are interested in, even when there are other blog entries that appear in between the series pieces. While I have previously touched upon it, I want to remind you that these blog postings are intended to compliment the columns from the series that appear in the Cape Cod Times -- and remind you that to best use these posts, you should start with the related column in the newspaper -- the online version of which can be easily accessed from the paper's site, or through the link that appears at the beginning of each post on the blog.

As I conclude this section of the series I want to thank you for reading the paper, thank you for reading the series, and thank you for considering Modular PC Ownership as a viable and green solution that lets you save money while improving your overall computing experience!

Thanks!

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CM Boots-Faubert is a freelance writer, author, and columnist. He writes the Digital Grind Column for the Cape Cod Times, and the Game On: Cape Cod Gaming Blog at the paper. He writes extensively on video games and gaming, both as a freelance journalist and as a walkthrough writer, reviewer, and previewer. His books include the soon to be published title Games Journalism 101, that discusses how to establish a career writing on video games, and his title in the Hand's On Series, Hand's On: Home Networking which is a complete guide targeted at the average PC user on how to design and build a home computer Ethernet network.

. . . MPCU: Computer Cases

2010-09-20T09:57:00.009-04:00

Modular PC Upgrade Series Part 4
(from the Cape Cod Times Digital Grind Column)

A Brief Foreword on this Series

This post is part of a multi-part series on the subject of Modular PC Ownership.

The system of Modular PC Ownership espoused in this series follows a green conservation approach to technology that is intended to reduce your individual carbon footprint, save you money, improve your computing satisfaction, and increase the value in many respects that you receive from your personal computer. Each posting on this blog has been created to support and enhance a related column published in the newspaper.

Today's posting supports the column: A couple of case studies in cool computing, which is the July 6th, 2010 Cape Cod Times Digital Grind Column.

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Table of Contents

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Computer Cases

12: Introduction

The computer case is the most visible part of a PC, and is often what determines how a system is thought to place in terms of power or how modern it is. This is odd, considering that what is inside the case and largely hidden from view are the key components that relate to those questions, but it is also understandable; as consumers, how something looks is often as important to us as how something works. Automobiles are the perfect example of this: a Ford Mustang from the 1960's is faster than a modern Japanese sports coupe, but the modern cars simply look faster due to the design of their body and carriage work, and so to the casual observer, they are faster.

Carrying that relationship further, in the world of the modern PC there are two distinct areas of concern with respect to computer cases, the first, which we just touched upon, is utilizing the appearance characteristics to imply different values with respect to performance or value. The second, which is a much more important consideration, is the underlying functionality of the computer case, including aspects such as materials, quality, and function.

Large PC makers employ engineers whose job that it is to design the outward appearance of the computer -- its case -- and who do so with a set of goals already in mind. Usually the criteria that is used to determine the appearance of the computer has nothing to do with performance or function, and everything to do with image. Making the computer look appealing, making it look powerful even if it really is not -- especially if it is not!

The design engineers are fulfilling an important role in the process of creating a new computer model -- a role that is essential for the sales process. Their goal is to make that new model stand out, and instill in the viewer a sense of what the manufacturer is trying to sell to them. That may be confidence, in which case they go for a solid-looking design that suggests reliability and strength, or it may be speed, in which case they make the case look sleek and fast and sexy.

Lately the big-names in mass-produced PC's have come to recognize that the PC gamer represents a very significant piece of the market, so they are superficially copying the design elements that have been created by custom case makers, like windows in the side of the system that allow for a view of the motherboard and internal components, or fancy lights that make the PC stand-out at LAN parties. These are features that are often found in custom case designs, but like other aspects of case function, the big name PC makers have lost sight of -- or never understood -- the purpose of those style elements in the first place.

Speaking plain, when you purchase a brand-name PC, if you are lucky what you end up with is a system that will work to the specifications on the box. For the most part the cases are not designed to the same exacting requirements as those made by custom case manufacturers, they are simply part of the package. That they fail to perform in areas that are critical to system safety, and also fail to provide the controlled environment that is key to longevity for the high-end PC is not the point; those big name makers expect you to replace the entire PC in a year or two anyway, which is why those concerns are not part of the process in creating their products!

So what is it that the custom case makers do that is different? The most obvious difference is in the engineering process that is applied to case design -- specifically the function of the case, which is not simply to house the internal bits of your computer, but to function in specific ways, and provide a specific set of functions that are critical elements in maintaining a cutting-edge system.

You may have the best CPU in the world inside your name-brand PC, but your investment in that often expensive piece of hardware has a limited shelf life by design, and even though you may feel a sense of brand loyalty because it delivers performance that makes you feel good about it, the idea of selling you your next computer is never a distant concern for the company whose brand you identify with, and that fact alone should be a considerable concern to you!

13: What a Case Should Do

Considering that brand-name PC cases are just there to hold the internal bits, and look good doing it, while at the same time projecting the image that the maker desires, you may be wondering what a case should do beyond those?

The most important function of a modern computer case should be managing heat. The process of controlling and removing heat -- what is called Thermal Management -- is the single most important element in the design and engineering of any computer case. Considering this, it is often shocking to realize that for most name-brand PC manufacturers this is the last concern that they have, if they worry about it at all beyond the point of ensuring that there is enough airflow to keep the system from overheating.

Let us be clear here: "enough airflow to keep the system from overheating" is a completely inadequate approach to thermal management in the personal computer!

Consider that the heat that is created by a PC -- and almost every device and subsystem in a PC from the motherboard to the hard drives generates heat -- also happens to be the element most often responsible for system or component failure, and you should be able to understand why the first concern in the design of a good case should be to manage that element. But why is heat a bad thing? What does it do that shortens the life of your PC?

When a system sits idle, with the power on, it is generating a base level of heat. When it is in use, it generates more heat, and when it is used in a way that stresses its subsystems or demands peak performance -- for example when it is being used to play a modern video game -- its thermal signature can triple!

When the PC is turned off after being given a heat-generating workout, the system and its components rapidly cool to room temperature. Almost all of these bits are out of sight inside the case, and even if you could see them, you would not notice the physical manifestation of the changes that are taking place -- the changes that eventually lead to a failure of one or more of the internal bits of your PC.

For a simple demonstration of this process and the damage that it causes, imagine in your mind a stack of quarters that are connected to each other by solder. When electricity is applied to the stack, it heats up -- and because each of the quarters -- and the solder that binds them together -- are metal, a natural side-effect of that is that as they are heated, they expand slightly. When they are cooled, the metal contracts, but because the quarters are made of different types of metal, pressed into layers, and the solder is also a different type of metal, they do not cool at the same rate, so one part of the stack size does not conform to the others.

Eventually as the stack goes through hot and cold cycles repeatedly, the layers of different metal inside one of the quarters begins to separate. Even though a small gap has appeared, the quarter still functions, passing the electric signal through the stack, but as the process of expansion and contraction continues, eventually that gap grows too large, and the signal can no longer pass through it efficiently, and so that component fails. That is what happens to the subsystems of your computer.

A circuit might separate from the motherboard, or a capacitor or resistor might break its connection -- this can happen on the motherboard, on a hard drive, even on one of your memory sticks. The end result is that that subsystem fails, and its failure is an event that would have been prevented with proper thermal management.

The engineers who create the different bits that make up a PC design the different bits to compensate for this effect, adding in heat sinks and fans to moderate the process of thermal build-up. They try to design the parts so that they heat and cool at uniform rates, and so that they do not over-heat. The cooler that they can keep a part running, the less likely it is that it will fail due to effects from heat. In an ideal world that should be all that is necessary to guarantee that your motherboard continues to function properly for years, but we do not live in that ideal world.

When a motherboard is placed inside of a case that is smaller than what was used to establish the base line of thermal management, or it is placed in a case that has a less than ideal amount of airflow, the likelihood that it will suffer a heat-related failure grows. Considering that most PC makers try to use as little material as they can get away with in making things like the case, it is easy to understand why their cases do not handle thermal management very well.

Custom Cases

The custom designed computer case industry was created partly as a result of this problem, and partly to provide the components needed by custom PC builders. The cases created by companies like Coolermaster and Thermaltake are not simply cool looking cases (okay, they are cool looking cases but that is not the point), but are in reality carefully engineered for performance.

You might think it odd to apply a word like performance to something that just sits there, but make no mistake, these cases do have a level of performance that is not only important, but is key to the health and longevity of your PC!

Where a name-brand computer might have a single fan on its power supply, a small fan on the heat sink that is installed on the CPU, and a case fan to suck air in, custom designed cases are created with thermal management as one of the key criteria in their design. It is not unusual to find a custom designed case with six or more fans, all moving the air in a specific pattern.

Some of these fans will be dedicated to ejecting hot air from the case, others to pulling cooler air into it, and still others that are positioned specifically to cool an area of the motherboard or one of the devices in the system. Hard drives can generate a lot of heat, so it is common to include a fan or fans that pull air into the hard drive bay and push it across the drives, to help them to run cooler. This is important, because hard drives are not built to dispose of their own heat!

The heat sink that comes stock on most CPU's is a slab of metal with fins on it that is attached directly to the CPU using a layer of thermal paste to bond them into a single unit. Often a small fan will be attached to the top of the heat sink, and attached to the motherboard, which regulates its speed to help keep the CPU from overheating. Under ideal conditions -- in an air conditioned office for example -- this is enough to address the basic cooling needs of the CPU. But when you are using the computer in a room with poor air conditioning or the computer is placed in a restricted area -- under your desk for example -- this is no longer an adequate solution.

A wide range of after-market heat sink and fan combinations exist, and most serious PC owners and the folks who build high-performance PC's use those. They are large -- often six to eight inches high -- and they will not fit into the inadequate cases that are built for name-brand systems. To use this sort of cooling product, you have to replace your computer case -- but you should be doing that anyway, as keeping the stock case is just not an option when it comes to properly managing heat.

As a result of this, the custom computer case industry was created, and they offer a wide variety of case designs that address specific system types. A gaming system using the most current of the cutting edge hardware available has different thermal management needs than say, a system that is used for CAD/CAM or graphics rendering. Though the design of a case for these systems has similar concerns, the appearance of the cases and their features are distinctly different.

Filling a Need

In the process of building two computers -- a General Use system, and a high-end gaming system -- we developed different basic requirements for our case needs.

For the General Use system we needed to control heat, but we also wanted features that would add to the usability of the system. Backing up data is a concern, and the use of extra hard drives has become one of the preferred methods for doing this. The case that we chose from Coolermaster includes a SATA mounting slot on the top, covered by a plastic door, that permits the user to slide a hard drive into the top of the case and have the system recognize and use it.

To perform a back up, all that the user needs to do is take the hard drive out of their desk drawer, slide it into the slot on top of the case, and power on the system. Once it is booted, they simply copy the files that they want to back up to the temporarily installed hard drive, and then shut down the system and remover the drive, closing the cover of the mounting slot. For the average user this is a twenty-minute chore once a week, and this built-in capability makes restoring data just as easy!

For the gaming system we had other concerns that needed to be addressed -- among the most important was expandability. We needed to be able to add four to eight hard drives, plus optical drives and a fan monitoring and control screen, and still provide proper cooling to the case. For that we went with a gaming case from Thermaltake.

Each of these cases are well documented and easy to install to, each is readily available online or through the makers, and each provides a solid foundation from which to begin the process of Modular PC ownership!

14: How to Begin Building your Foundation

Regardless of whether you are building a PC from scratch or are just beginning your journey into Modular Ownership, your first decision is going to be what case you use. Ideally this will be the last computer case you ever need to buy for your PC, because the modular nature of their design means that it will accommodate new hardware -- including motherboards and CPU's that have not been invented yet!

The case that you choose should meet all of the requirements that you have for your PC, from expansion slots to the number of external bays for your devices. After you sit down and decide what you need by making a list of what you plan to have now, and perhaps have down the road, you will have a better idea of what you need. Then you can spend some time looking at the case technology currently being offered by reliable custom case manufacturers.

To start with, take a look at the current lines from Thermaltake and Coolermaster, two of the biggest names in the industry. Both of these companies design and engineer cases that address all of the important points, starting with thermal management all the way to expansion, and they both tend to build into their cases small conveniences that have created a loyal following. Coolermaster's SATA dock is a good example, and the built-in light and fan controls on some of Thermaltake's cases are another.

If you are building a system or are converting a system that you own for gaming, adding a little bling to the project is not a bad idea. Windows that allow you to view the internal components are not there simply to allow you to add neon lights to the inside of the case and highlight the fact that you have three video cards in your system, or fire-engine red cables -- they actually serve a practical purpose. They allow you to visually verify that all of your internal fans are functioning properly, and that all of the wires are connected where they should be. They also look good, too, and provide you the opportunity to customize your case with details like cut glass with your initials or personal emblem, and artistic metal fan slot covers -- two ideas that are popular among the LAN gaming set.

Decorating and customizing a case are valid parts of the process, but the underlying foundation that you are building when you go this route is one of taking control over your computing tech. It allows you to hand pick the components that you use, control the quality of your PC, and the cost.

Getting your feet wet

The case and power supply are your starting point when you are converting an existing name-brand PC to a Modular PC. Once you decide on the case and PSU, spend some time familiarizing yourself with how the different components are installed in the system -- read the manual for the case, and then go on to YouTube and watch some of the hundreds of videos on the service that illustrate exactly how the components are installed.

You do not need a tech to do this for you -- with a little study you can safely and properly do this yourself. Just make sure that you have the right tools, and enough time to do it properly. Moving your motherboard into the new case, then the expansion cards, and finally the devices is only the first step. Once you have everything transferred and properly functional, you have in effect completed the foundation.

You can use your system now, and take your time to begin improving it as your budget allows. A new heat sink and fan for your CPU is the best first step in the process, and there are plenty of styles available so that you should be able to find one that both appeals to your tastes and budget, and also provides the cooling level that you need. With that in place, a heat sink and fan set for the motherboard chipset, or cooling fins for your RAM might be the next place to look -- all of this is possible because you now have the foundation -- a properly engineered case.

A year or two down the road when you need to upgrade your motherboard and CPU it is simply a matter of swapping them into your case, rather than spending thousands on replacing your computer. The benefit of this approach is not just in savings, it is being able to hand-pick the brand and type of motherboard and CPU, and in not having to deal with getting rid of your old computer. The control that this method of ownership provides is paired with the satisfaction of learning more about your PC, knowing how it works, and what each type of tech does -- in many ways it becomes an adventure itself.

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. . . MPCU -- Controllers & Sound

2010-08-04T20:48:00.015-04:00

Modular PC Upgrade Series Part 3
(from the Cape Cod Times Digital Grind Column)

A Brief Foreword on this Series

This post is part of a multi-part series on the subject of Modular PC Ownership.

The system of Modular PC Ownership espoused in this series follows a green conservation approach to technology that is intended to reduce your individual carbon footprint, save you money, improve your computing satisfaction, and increase the value in many respects that you receive from your personal computer. Each posting on this blog has been created to support and enhance a related column published in the newspaper.

Today's posting supports the column: The right accessories make all the difference, which is the May 25th, 2010 Cape Cod Times Digital Grind Column.

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Table of Contents

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Controllers & Sound

08: Introduction

This posting covers and expands upon Part II of the multi-part column series on the modular upgrades approach to personal computer ownership, "The right accessories make all the difference" in the Digital Grind Column (25 May 2010, Business & Technology Section, The Cape Cod Times) which covers Controller and Sound upgrades.

The first half of this part of the series addresses controller upgrades that expand the gaming capabilities of a system, while the second half addresses sound, and specifically personal sound choices. This article contains expanded information in addition to that covered in the newspaper, and additional choices in types of hardware under these subjects, and it serves as both a companion to the column and an expansion on the issues. Due to the limitations for print publication there is not always enough room to fully cover a subject and this blog series is meant to help address that limitation.

09: Game Controllers

Video game consoles like Microsoft's XBox 360 and Sony's PlayStation3 are a very popular choice for casual gamers, but most serious gamers still consider the PC to be the best platform, especially for games in the shooter and RPG genres and games with strong multi-player elements. When the subject is flight simulation, the PC is the only cookie in the jar when it comes to realistic simulations, hands down. A smaller percentage of gamers consider the PC to be superior for sports-based games as well, but regardless of what genres you prefer on the PC, the fact is that -- save for shooter games -- the PC mouse and keyboard are invariably the least enjoyable and effective method for play!

Controls: PC vs. Console

It was not that long ago that the PC was the only choice gamers had when it came to online multi-player gaming. Consoles like the Nintendo 64 and PlayStaiton1 had limited multi-player abilities largely restricted to split-screen play, which while fun, lacked the challenge, excitement level, and unpredictability that true multi-player online play brings to the table. It would be easy to simply ignore this history and immediately jump to the present state of tech, but doing that deprives us of some historical aspects that are key to understanding why the game controller is the magic solution for PC gamers -- so let us ponder the connection...

The first true online multi-player gaming console system to reach mainstream gaming was the Sega Dreamcast -- a console that was clearly before its time despite the fact that it had a production run that lasted from its introduction in 1998 to 2001. When we say that the Dreamcast was "before its time" what we are really saying is that it was a concept that was not viable due largely to connectivity speed restrictions, and not flaws that were inherent to the gaming system itself.

The hardware in the Dreamcast was sufficiently powerful enough to provide an engaging and enjoyable game-play environment, and the inclusion of a modem to permit it to support online gaming was a great idea, but it came at a point when broadband was still an idea and not a reality for 99% of the gaming public.

In 1998 online or multi-player gaming invariably involved a PC and an Ethernet connection to the Internet, not a modem, and the gamble that Sega made turned out to be winnable, just not for Sega. Most gamers are not aware of this, but Sega was not the only company that equipped their console with a modem -- Nintendo released a modem adapter and later an Ethernet adapter for its GameCube console, but these, like Sega's modem, simply never caught on.

It wasn't until the pairing of the 56K modem and Sony's PlayStation2 (and later the PS2 Ethernet adapter) that allowed online multi-player gaming to be successful on the games console, with Square Enix's Final Fantasy XI cementing the future of that console gaming style. Once the average connection speed to the Internet reached 56K online multi-player gaming and MMO gaming became sustainable on consoles, an advent that shaped the nature of the generations of games and the consoles that followed.

Microsoft's Live Network for the original XBox, and later the expanded XBox Live for the XBox 360 set the standard for what it meant to be "online" with respect to consoles, and Sony's PlayStationNetwork (PSN) followed in that path, providing a similar gateway for online multi-player gaming that remains popular today.

Even with these changing interfaces and the evolution of what online gaming means, with each generation of console there were certain aspects that remained a set standard, starting with the game controller.

Regardless of the manufacturer and model (until the Wii arrived on the scene) game controllers were very similar in layout and design, allowing gamers to quickly master game controls no matter what console they were playing on. Whether your controller came with your console, or you purchased it from a third-party manufacturer, it included dual joysticks, a D-Pad, four primary buttons, and some type of trigger buttons on the front, all of which were part of the standardized controls used by every video game.

The full-motion controls of the Wii created a fork in the controller road, but as far as gamers were concerned that fork applied only to the Wii, as the XBox 360 and PS3 continued to use the traditional style, and a traditional controller could also be bought for the Wii... This goes a long way towards explaining both why the game controller for the PC follows that layout, and why most serious gamers consider having a game controller (also known as a Game Pad) as a required PC peripheral device.

Game Port vs. USB

Prior to the invention of the Universal Serial Bus (USB) most game controllers used the PC Game Port -- a 15-pin D-shaped plug that was either built into the motherboard (after 1994) or more likely part of the sound card (from 1990 onwards). Up until the release of Microsoft Windows Vista, most computers included a Game Port, and early on this port was used for joysticks, some flight controllers, racing wheels, and early game pads, but the invention of the USB port standardized connectivity and expanded the capabilities for add-on controllers, allowing them to preform many more functions with a single connection!

Unlike the digital connection of the USB port, the Game Port was an analogue connection, which limited its capabilities considerably, with its most obvious and annoying weakness being that devices connected to it had to be calibrated frequently in order to maintain their accuracy. With analogue joysticks and early game controllers this often meant calibrating the device to work with the OS every time it was plugged in, and in many cases, required the additional step of calibrating the devices for each individual game each time the game was loaded as well.

When Microsoft released its Windows XP version, regardless of the type of connection, game controllers only had to be calibrated when they were first plugged in to the system, and then re-calibrated if they were removed and re-plugged in, as the OS passed the calibration data to the games and programs that you ran. Modern USB-based controllers use a self-calibration system which takes place automatically and usually does not require any user interaction, save for more complex joystick and flight-control units, which still require manual calibration by the user.

Selecting a PC Game Pad

Other than minor variations in features, most PC game pads are similar in their function and their capabilities, providing a predictable set of features and function. Unless you have an older PC or notebook computer, chances are you do not have a Game Port, so you should be looking for a USB-based controller.

If you own an older flight control system, game pad, or joystick that uses the 15-pin Game Port all is not lost -- you can pick up a Game Port to USB conversion kit at most games retailers and online for around $8 that allows you to use your older controller on newer systems!

Deciding on a game pad or controller for your system can be a complex task as there is a wide variety of devices to choose from, so concentrating on the better engineered and feature rich models is the way to go. For most gamers, that means one of the following:

Saitek Cyborg Rumble Pad

An exception to the rule above is the Cyborg Rumble Pad (formerly called the Saitek PS2700 Rumble Pad) that was featured in the column.

The Cyborg Rumble Pad has a number of unique features, most notably a reversible D-Pad and left joystick (called the Cyborg Module), and is compatible with both the XBox 360 and PC, allowing for its native use in Games for Windows Live as well as Games for XBox Live. The Cyborg Module allows the gamer to configure the game pad with the D-Pad above the left joystick, which is the default location for the XBox Game Pad, or with the D-Pad below the left joystick, which is the default location for PlayStation controllers.

The Cyborg Rumble Pad features force feedback and vibration effects (hence the name "Rumble Pad") which are a common feature on console game pads, and when it is used on the PC, allows the gamer to program any part of the controller for specific keyboard or mouse commands, allowing it to be used for games that do not normally use game pads through the included software for Windows.

XBox 360 Game Pad

When the game being played is branded with the "Games for Windows Live" logo that means it is fully compatible with both the wired and the wireless Xbox 360 controller. If you already own an XBox 360 with a wired controller, you can plug that into a USB slot on your PC and use it to play your game -- if you have a wireless controller, the simple addition of the XBox 360 Play and Charge Kit (a NiMH battery pack and long cable that allows you to connect the standard wireless 360 controller to the USB port on the front of your XBox 360 and play while it charges).

Logitech RumblePad 2 Vibration Feedback Gamepad

Available in two versions -- the Rumblepad 2 and the Cordless Rumblepad 2 -- this well-engineered gamepad has a solid feel to it. Configured with the D-Pad above the left joystick, the Rumblepad 2 contains two vibration feedback motors in it, and comes with software that allows the player to custom configure the buttons and to load pre-set profiles for popular games provided by the manufacturer.

The wireless (cordless) version of the Rumblepad 2 is compatible with the Logitech Unifying Receiver System (LURS), so if you already have a wireless mouse or keyboard from Logitech you may already be using this technology. LURS consists of a very small low-profile USB receiver that plugs into a convenient USB port (on notebooks you can leave the receiver plugged in even when you transport your system), and allows up to six compatible wireless devices, which means you do not have to worry about having enough USB slots on your computer!

Thrustmaster Ferrari Wireless Gamepad 430 Scuderia Limited Edition

If you are looking to make a style statement as well as obtain the edge of a PC Gamepad, the Scuderia from Thrustmaster may just be the way to go! This numbered and custom-painted limited edition gamepad includes an optical wheel with auto-centering for precise driving control in its standard layout. Connecting via the 2.4GHz wireless spectrum, the controller features fully customizable and programmable controls with built-in mapping, presets, and platform-independent internal memory, and it works with both the PC and the PS3, which means you can get double-duty out of it. Priced at just $40 SMRP, the Scuderia is a limited edition unit, so if you want one it might be an idea to get it soon!

Other Controllers

Fans of flying games, flight simulators, and flying combat games will want to add a joystick or flight control system to their PC, and thankfully there are almost as many to choose from as there are gamepads!

Selecting the right controller means looking for the options that you want, and the price you can accept -- but even if you are on a tight budget there are still quite a few high-quality units to choose from:

Thrustmaster T.Flight Stick X

For under $30 you can obtain a T.Flight Stick X from Thrustmaster that is fully programmable and can be used on both the PC and the PS3! This 12-button 4-axis controller has default configurations for Microsoft Flight Simulator X, UbiSoft's Blazing Angels and Tom Clancy's HAWX, and IL-2 Sturmovik from 505 Games to name a few. ITs plug-and-play design includes a sliding throttle and air-brake for realistic civilian airliner flight, and its protected internal memory allows you to store all of your configurations even when the joystick is unplugged from the computer.

Mad Catz X52 Flight Control System

Featuring a separate joystick and throttle control segment, the X52 adds a level of realism to flight simulation normally only found on more expensive control systems. At just $89 this controller offers features commonly found on controllers in the $200 plus range, including illuminated buttons, a multi-function display, 3 toggle switches for up to 6 programmable flight commands, and a mode selector switch with LED indicators. The joystick features all of the standard buttons and the throttle quadrant a scroll wheel, two throttle controls, and detents for afterburner and idle settings.

Saitek Pro Flight Yoke

The Saitek Pro Flight Yoke System features a stainless steel shaft, ergonomic controls, integrated chronograph and a separate throttle quadrant providing a smooth and accurate interface for realistic flying simulation. Priced at just under $130 this unit includes a built-in USB 2.0 Hub in case you want to add additional instrument displays, and is compatible with XP, Vista, and Windows 7!

10: PC Sound

When the topic of PC Audio is raised chances are that the conversation is about speakers and sound systems (a topic that will be covered in-depth in a later part of this series), and not the subject of Personal Audio, yet most PC owners prefer to listen to music as a solo activity. Add in the increasingly popular voice-over-IP (VoIP) programs that allow PC users to make and receive phone calls all over the world for free or at very low cost, and a high-quality headset and microphone are on the must-have list for PC upgrades!

As obvious as that may be, finding a headset and mic combo that will last through more than six months of moderate use can be a very challenging experience! If you read the column you will note that I used to consider any set that lasted more than six months to be a pretty darned good deal -- the exact quote is:

"Over the course of the past decade I have owned — and replaced — more than a dozen headset and microphone units as they broke or wore out, believing that six months was a good lifespan for that type of device."

I held that belief until I received a pair made by Sennheiser as a gift on Christmas Day 2008 -- a headphones and mic set that I still have and use today! Having evaluated a large selection of products from a dozen different manufacturers I am prepared to say that in this area of tech you really do get what you pay for, which means that paying extra for better quality is both necessary and a good idea.

Consider that the average cost of a set with reasonable quality can run between $45 and $75 and still only last through 6-months of moderate use, and you get an annual cost of $90 at the low end and $150 at the high!

Sennheiser PC350

Sennheiser's PC350 model has an MSRP of $229.95 and offers the user noise-isolating earcups, a noise-canceling microphone, and is fully compatible with Skype and other VoIP software just as a starting point. Factor in that they are compatible with Microsoft's XBox 360 (but that requires a third party adapter), feature a 9.8 foot cable with 3.5mm plugs that will fit the standard ports on any PC or notebook, and support directional sound data, and what you have is what I see as the perfect combo.

Whether using them for gaming, making VoIP calls, or listening to music, the PC350 delivers a strong and high-quality experience. In Modern Warfare 2 I was able to detect the direction of footsteps and give-away sounds allowing me to be a much more effective sniper/SPEC OPS soldier, and when I listened to my MP3 collection it sounded like I was in the room with the symphony, not listening to an MP3 track on a computer. VoIP calls are crystal clear, and the noise-canceling mic allowed my voice -- and not the background noise in the room -- to be transmitted.

If you have the budget, this is the headset and mic combo that I recommend.

Sennheiser PC151

The PC151 stereo headset and mic combo delivers a high quality sound and voice experience for gaming, music, and VoIP for a price that is easily worked into your upgrade budget! With an MSRP of just $79.95, the PC151 offers similar features to the PC350, including a noise-canceling mic, adjustable microphone and headband, in-line volume control and mute, and the 3.5mm plugs that mean it will work with any PC or notebook computer.

The PC151 performance level is very good though it is not at the level of the PC350 set, and the materials used in the construction of the 151 are not the same grade or quality as that of the 350, but in the realm of budget-friendly headsets it has no equal!

11: Controllers & Sound Conclusion

Computers used for gaming tend to receive the most benefit from adding additional types of controllers, but that is not to say that only gaming rigs benefit from this. Users into digital graphic arts may find that adding a graphics pad and pointer add to their abilities in that department, and folks who find using the standard mouse in gaming or general computing may find a trackball or pointing wedge to be the ideal solution to that problem.

The focus for upgrades on this level is to add capabilities to your computer, and like keyboards, these are devices that ideally should outlast your present hardware configuration and carry forward with you to the next, and the next after that, a fact that justifies spending extra money on their acquisition.

When it comes to personal audio, it should be pretty obvious that obtaining high-quality and reliable kit is not easy. Sennheiser was the only company out of the dozen whose products I evaluated that reached the minimum level of quality that is required for me to be comfortable recommending them -- and that says a lot. There is nothing that I hate more than spending significant money on a product that lasts less than a year, let alone just five or six months.

Upgrades in these two categories can add immensely to both your computing satisfaction and the capabilities of your PC, but prior to making purchases in this category it is always a good idea to visit a store and try them out -- that way you know that what you have chosen is the right solution for you.

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. . . MPCU -- Keyboards

2010-08-04T18:24:00.015-04:00

Modular PC Upgrade Series Part 2
(from the Cape Cod Times Digital Grind Column)

A Brief Foreword on this Series

This post is part of a multi-part series on the subject of Modular PC Ownership.

The system of Modular PC Ownership espoused in this series follows a green conservation approach to technology that is intended to reduce your individual carbon footprint, save you money, improve your computing satisfaction, and increase the value in many respects that you receive from your personal computer. Each posting on this blog has been created to support and enhance a related column published in the newspaper.

Today's posting supports the column: Computer upgrades: The right keyboard is... Key, which is the April 13th, 2010 Cape Cod Times Digital Grind Column.

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Table of Contents

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Keyboards

05: Introduction

This posting covers and expands upon Part I of the multi-part column series on the modular upgrades approach to personal computer ownership, "Computer Upgrades: The right keyboard is . . . key" in the Digital Grind Column (13 April 2010, Business & Technology Section, The Cape Cod Times) which covers keyboard upgrades.

The computer keyboard is the most frequently-used input device connected to the modern computer, and not surprisingly comes in a variety of forms of varying quality based upon factors such as cost, appearance, and special use. Most name-brand computers come with a higher than average quality keyboard, while discount and bare-bones systems tend to include inexpensive keyboards that lack any sort of brand identity.

Considering how important the keyboard is to using your computer, it is perhaps the most logical component to begin with when considering an upgrade that improves both your computing experience and the abilities of your PC. In the early days of personal computing the keyboard was little more than the PC-equivalent of the standard typewriter keyboard -- it was used to enter data, write, and to a limited extent, access the menus for computer programs prior to the dominance of the Graphical User Interface (GUI) that is a standard feature for the modern PC.

Today keyboards have the potential to offer much more in terms of functionality, convenience, and ease-of-use for the PC, though these capabilities are still commonly overlooked not just by PC makers, but by the vast majority of users! In this article we will examine the current tech level for keyboards, and the different features that can improve your computing experience.

The reason that most discount (bare bones) PC's and all but the higher-end name-brand PC's come with a basic keyboard is partially due to cost, and partially to expectation. When a consumer purchases a high-end gaming system they expect that computer to be feature-rich, including the functions associated with the keyboard, because PC games tend to support that sort of interface.

Consumers purchasing a computer for general use expect that it will have certain basic features -- for example, the standard 104-keys that are required for the Microsoft Windows Operating System, and the 12 Function Keys that are routinely used by most business and productivity programs as short-cuts and to access their internal menus combined with the ALT and the CONTROL keys.

For gaming systems the widespread use of macros has generated a different set of expectations, and while function keys can be used for the assignment of macro commands, most gamers expect to use extra keys -- often designated as "Game" or "Macro" keys -- that can be assigned to replace commands or combinations of commands. This type of keyboard has some built-in memory and processing capabilities, and can record keystrokes or load pre-set definitions for macros and command combinations that are provided by the game makers.

On the higher-end of that spectrum are keyboards with small built-in display screens that allow the user to specify additional information or to monitor parts of the games they play, such as their inventory or ammunition supply, features that may provide something of an extra edge for the gamer and, no surprise, represent an edge that they are willing to pay for.

In the realm of general-use computing an increasing percentage of the computing public has a desire for convenience features such as wireless connectivity, programmable macro keys, and tactile positive feedback from the keys themselves, spawning an entire set of subtypes in keyboard tech. These subsets often include a further division of lines to service notebook and laptop owners with similar functionality and capability that is equal to the lines created for the desktop PC.

Notebook and laptop computers are increasingly being used as a replacement for the traditional desktop PC, allowing the users mobility while at the same time providing the convenience and capability of a desktop through the use of a docking station or a full-sized keyboard, a mouse, and full-sized monitor on the desktop for home or business use. While this approach demands the same sort of tech used for traditional desktop PC's these same consumers increasingly require portable versions that match this capability, or would choose such tech if it were available.

Because of all this a wide variety of hardware solutions have been created and exist on the market -- a market that is historically targeted at the power users and mobile computing road warriors that make up much of the business computing market, and is only just now being discovered by the average PC user, consumers who, empowered by the World Wide Web, are increasingly becoming more aware of the potential in convenience and capability expansion these tech sections can provide. This new focus has served to elevate the keyboard to status as a computing device rather than as a simple input peripheral, and the expansion of awareness in the typical consumer has broadened both the availability of these devices but also helped to lower their costs.

This section of the series will focus upon the different lines of keyboard tech, and how they can be used to improve your computing experience and expand the capability of both the system that you already own, and present expanded capability for your PC as you upgrade it in the future by adopting a modular approach to computer ownership.

As you venture into this new point-of-view on owning and upgrading your PC and contemplate the Keyboard as a device worthy of consideration in that respect, bear in mind that there is a direct correlation between capability, extra function, and cost.

It helps to remember that the extra costs associated with these products should not be considered as a cost specific to your present computer, but rather should be factored as the cost of a device that you will retain in the process of future upgrades, so that its actual cost is spread over many years rather than the much shorter lifespan of your current hardware configuration. Viewed this way, the cost of an upgraded keyboard is actually less when it is spread throughout the life of your system.

06: Connectivity Options

Modern keyboards can be divided into two categories -- wired and wireless -- but despite these simple connectivity methods there is still a great deal of difference and variety in terms of quality, capabilities, and special use. With that in mind we should examine the two types of connectivity from their most basic forms before expanding our examination to encompass the added features and tech that differentiates the unit within those two subsets.

For desktop PC's and to a lesser extent for portable computing when a basic upgrade keyboard is sought the consumer is likely to find that wired keyboards are far more popular on the shelves of bricks-and-mortar stores than wireless keyboards, with most retail stores having a much wider selection in quality and features than they do for wireless models. This is partially due to the fact that there are far more manufacturers for wired keyboards in the market today than for wireless, and partially due to the fact that the profit margin for wired keyboards is higher than that of wireless due to their simpler technology.

Regardless of whether you are looking for a keyboard for a desktop PC or a portable PC that you intend to use as the replacement for a desktop PC, there are certain factors that weigh in heavily in any choice. These begin with size -- a full-sized keyboard is easier to type on and tends to have more extra keys for higher-end units than smaller keyboards have -- and materials quality.

The Average Wired Keyboard

A flimsy keyboard made mostly of plastic with a basic set of features can be purchased for an average of $20 at most retailers, but as with most computer tech you get what you pay for. These keyboards represent the lower end of the spectrum, they are cheap, and they are functional, and they take advantage of the current interface preference for Universal Serial Bus (USB), but that is where their similarities to better quality keyboards end.

As the price of a keyboard increases, so do its capabilities, with moderately-prices models such as those made under the Microsoft brand featuring built-in USB 2.0 hubs, programmable function keys, and ergonomic forms that offer a more relaxed typing position for the hands that can reduce the repetitious stress associated with prolonged use of the keyboard. The closer you get to the $30 and $40 range, the better the material, an aspect that you can feel when you pick up these keyboards.

Once you reach the $50 range keyboards tend to include special features like extra gaming keys, built-in USB-based pointers or pads that can replace your mouse, and a full set of media keys that allow you to adjust settings on your PC via these special controls on the keyboard. Media controls generally include volume, a mute key, and special keys to launch various types of media players as well as your email app, web browser, and even the File Manager / Windows Explorer function.

High-end Wired Keyboards

It used to be that when the label "High-end" was applied to keyboards it was simply code for "Gaming Keyboard" but that is not the case any longer, with many keyboard manufacturers including general-use keyboards in that level of their tech. What does that mean in terms of features?

For general-use keyboards the basic set of features includes a set of media controls and extra function keys for email, web, and DVD, as well as programmable macro features that take advantage of the function keys and may or may not include special macro selection buttons, and you should expect to pay anywhere from $40 to $80 for these basic features in a higher quality form.

On the high-end for general-use keyboards are units like the iConnect, for Mac owners, which features touch-sensitive media keys, dual USB 2.0 hubs, and a docking port for your iPod or iPhone, which will set you back a cool $129. A PC version of the iConnect offers the same features but at a lower price, which averages around $129.

A no-nonsense all-metal keyboard with positive force feedback click keys and a durable design probably means you are looking at one of the variety of wired keyboards made by Keytronics, a line of tech that is based upon the original IBM PC keyboards. Back in the day these were widely considered to be the best keyboards available regardless of price, though today that is only true of materials and performance rather than a wide range of additional features are the criteria you use. Ranging in proce from $60 to $200 depending upon connection type, size, language, and features, these represent a better quality of keyboard with a very long life potential.

For gaming keyboards the price range you should expect to pay starts at $60 and can easily climb to several hundred dollars depending upon the features, but if you are building or upgrading a gaming rig, spending that kind of money on a keyboard actually makes sense, because once you reach this level what you are paying for are the features as well as the quality!

At the $80 level there is the Logitech G-15 Keyboard, which features a small balck-and-white LCD panel on which a wide variety of information can be displayed while you play games or run programs, displaying game stats, inventory, and system information, and serving as the display for information updates depending upon the game being played and what features the game maker has included in the configuration profile that is provided with the game. This model includes a number of programmable macro (or game) keys in addition to the function keys, and is widely viewed as the entry-level keyboard by many gamers.

At the upper end of the scale for gaming keyboards is the Logitech G-19, which has all of the basic features of the G-15 but includes a larger full-color display, extra game keys, and permits the user to customize the key colors to help differentiate between the current settings when using alternate control toggles. A full set of media controls, and a Windows Key disable button adds to the functionality, but all of those features come at a cost -- in the case of the G-19 that cost is a whopping $179. That may seem like a lot, but many of the features for this keyboard equate to well-defined benefits in gaming, and provide a noticeable edge, which is something that most gamers are willing to pay to achieve.

Wireless Choices

Cheaper wireless keyboards tend to feature a USB-based interface that is plugged into the PC and then positioned to function as what it is -- an antenna -- and often come with a wireless mouse, with prices ranging from $18 to $35, but with these economy models you get what you pay for, which includes a higher than average susceptibility to interference from other devices, and the need to replace batteries on a frequent basis.

Entry-level models for an upgrade wireless keyboard consistent with the modular upgrade philosophy would start at around $80 and up, and feature either Bluetooth or 2.4GHz connectivity, and boast at a minimum a full set of multimedia controls, programmable function and macro keys, and the ability to automatically change frequencies if interference is detected.

For an improved wireless multimedia keyboard, the Logitech diNovo Edge represents the top-end of the scale, and it is priced accordingly at $199. That price tag gets you a keyboard that is billed by its maker as "The World's Most Advanced Keyboard" and it may well be just that! Among its many features are its Li-Ion powered blutooth interface (it also includes a USB Bluethooth nub for systems that lack built-in Blutehooth connectivity such as desktop PC's) and boasts a charging cradle so that you do not have to concern yourself with replacing batteries ever. Its editing and navigation keyset, audio volume slider, and touchdisk controls combined with discrete backlighting for the keys and high quality materials helped it earn the CES Innovation Award, and place it among the most feature-rich wireless keyboards available today.

07: Keyboards Conclusion

Often the choices that we make with respect to keyboards has little to do with capability and everything to do with convenience. The keyboard that came with the computer tends to be the first choice, largely under the assumption that it is also the best choice, because that is what the manufacturer included with the computer. That may be simple logic, but in the world of keyboards it is really a starting point.

Determining what keyboard to use as the upgrade choice for you as an individual does not require a great deal of research or effort, because the process really comes down to three simple factors: the type of computer, your primary use mode, and budget.

The first choice -- the type of computer -- has the most weight in your choice. For a desktop system a wired keyboard that is feature-rich is the obvious choice, especially if your system is used for gaming. For a portable computer the obvious choice is for a wireless keyboard, with the most weight coming down on the Bluetooth side, because if we ignore the fact that it is the more expensive of the two main standards for wireless communication and concentrate on the fact that it is the most reliable, the decision is much easier.

Even the higher-end 2.4 GHz keyboards are susceptible to signal interference, which can (and often does) cause the dropping of a keystroke here and there. That may not be a big deal if all that you use the system for is casual word processing and web surfing, but if you use your keyboard a lot not having the odd character fail to appear is more important, and the wireless format means that you can easily take the keyboard with you if you change locations.

The second factor in selecting a keyboard is how you use your computer -- if you listen to music and watch videos and DVD's a lot, you are going to want a multimedia keyboard, whereas if you use a lot of business and productivity apps, you are going to want a wider set of macro features and programmable keys. Ideally whatever your use patterns are, your new keyboard is going to improve that experience.

The final factor is price -- but there is good news here. Today there are enough manufacturers in the filed that you can usually find a keyboard that meets your needs throughout the range of prices, with the biggest difference being in the materials used in the construction of the board and its components. More metal means more money, but the downside is that the less you spend, the less durability is built in, and ideally what you are looking for is a keyboard that you will not be replacing for a very long time -- and that means spending a little more than you might otherwise want to so that you get the highest quality keyboard that you can afford!

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. . . Modular PC Upgrading -- Introduction

2010-07-02T23:33:00.022-04:00

Modular PC Upgrade Series Part 1
(from the Cape Cod Times Digital Grind Column)

A Brief Foreword on this Series

This post is part of a multi-part series on the subject of Modular PC Ownership.

The system of Modular PC Ownership espoused in this series follows a green conservation approach to technology that is intended to reduce your individual carbon footprint, save you money, improve your computing satisfaction, and increase the value in many respects that you receive from your personal computer. Each posting on this blog has been created to support and enhance a related column published in the newspaper.

Today's posting begins the blog-based complimentary support for the series that will appear in the Cape Cod Times Digital Grind Column.

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Table of Contents

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Introduction

01. Preface

This article is intended to compliment the PC Upgrade Series that is running now in rotation on my column, Digital Grind, in the Cape Cod Times. You have been provided this link in addition to the information in my reply to your email in order to supplement the information published in the paper. As always, if you have questions -- or there is information that you need that has not been addressed either in the column or these complimentary postings -- please feel invited to email me. Send your email to chris@boots-faubert.com with the topic indicating that your mail is about the Upgrade Series.

02. Introduction

Part I of the Modular PC Upgrade Series appeared in the 13 April 2010 edition of the Cape Cod Times, in the Business and Technology Section, as a regular part of the Digital Grind Column. With the publication of the first piece in the series, I will be rotating each new piece with the regular columns to add some variety to the column, which will allow the series to run through the Summer and into the Fall, when most people start to think about upgrading or replacing their PC, so regular readers should be very well equipped to tackle that issue when the time comes!

This series is a multi-part examination of the practice of adopting a "modular approach" to upgrading your personal computer. What does that mean? Sit back and relax and I will try to explain that in simple and easy to understand terms, because as complex as the personal computer can be, this part of the equation is actually pretty simple!

The upgrade path for most PC owners usually consists of replacement of a peripheral -- a new monitor, the addition of an external storage device, or adding RAM or a hard drive internally. Generally speaking, upgrades of this sort are made when the PC user is seeking to lengthen the usable lifespan of their computer, and are often the last step in the life of a personal computer before it is replaced.

With the troubled economy today, a much larger percentage of PC owners are choosing to "make do" with what they have, or look for ways to lengthen the useful lifespan of their computer by adding capacity, or new components. Generally this is a temporary approach, as they have the intention of replacing the computer eventually, with a new computer.

Roughly 70% of PC owners (7 out of every 10) choose this approach, and when the speed or performance level of their present PC finally reaches the point at which they are no longer willing to tolerate its performance, end up fully replacing it. The average cost for a new general use computer, when it is not bought on sale, runs between $700 and $2000 depending upon the various options they choose. For a dedicated Gaming PC that top end can easily surpass $3,000.

Conversely, 3 out of every 10 owners take a different approach to their PC -- what is called the "Modular Upgrade Path." Rather than completely replace their computer every year or two, they simply upgrade the parts that are causing them problems, either installing -- or paying an expert to install -- these components, and in so doing not only increase the effective use and lifespan of their computer, but save a lot of money in the process.

A modular approach to PC ownership has many benefits, including:

Better control of the quality of the components;
Doubling the average lifespan for a PC; and
Saving as much as 60% of the cost of a new PC

I want to underscore that last bullet-point: adopting a modular approach to PC ownership can save you as much as 60% of the cost of a new PC without sacrificing anything! In fact, by hand-selecting the components that go into your PC, you not only save money, but end up with a better PC in the process!

03. The Economics of Modular Upgrading

A new name-brand PC is built by the manufacturer in a fixed and standard pattern. Once the type of CPU and motherboard are chosen, the maker then either purchases a mass-produced case or, more often, has their in-house engineers design the case for the new model, often for the purposes of making it distinct in its appearance, and to appeal to the potential customer. Case design is actually something of a science in the PC industry -- a subject that we will examine in-depth later in this series -- but for now, the important thing to understand is that what goes inside that new model of PC may not get there, or be, what you think it is.

Once the external appearance of the computer is finalized, the name-brand computer company uses an open-bid process to find the manufacturers for the components that will go inside the computer. As a general rule they work with a set list of companies, or a consortium, so who ends up being chosen and how they end up being chosen may not completely conform to the whole open-bid process, but either way, the lowest bidder ends up making the parts.

That usually surprises most PC owners, because there is an assumption that since the brand name is stamped on the outside, what is inside is also made by that company, but this is rarely the case. In reality the company whose name is on the outside of the case only assembles the PC, they don't manufacture it.

Almost every component inside the case, from the motherboard to the power supply, are purchased based on the lowest bid, which means whatever component manufacturer bid the lowest is who ends up winning the contract. In the real world that is not always a good thing, but in the computer world, it is the normal approach to controlling the costs -- and therefore the profits -- associated with a new PC.

To make this easier to understand, let's use a hypothetical example... Let's say that you want to purchase a new computer, and you like the computers made by the Really Big Computer Company (RBC) because they have been around a long time, they have a reputation for making good computers, and you have even owned one of their computers in the past, and liked it. You use them at work, and think highly of them because they have really great advertising campaigns that use famous actors, and besides, they are a standard in the PC industry!

The model you are thinking about buying is their Supergreat PC XL, and it comes with 2GB of RAM, a 3.0GHz dual-core CPU made by Intel, and has a 1TB hard drive in it. It comes with a DVD/RW optical drive, a keyboard, mouse, and set of speakers. It has USB 2.0 ports on it, and an external eSATA port in the back. The slimline case is very nifty looking, and it seems to have plenty of available slots for expanding it later if you want to add something like a BluRay drive or an extra video card. It has built-in video, built-in sound, and a built-in Ethernet port, so it fully meets all of your needs.

The cost of the Supergreat PC XL is just $999.00 after the rebate, if you buy it from the RBC website. If you buy it in a bricks-and-mortar store, you would end up paying $1,299 for it, but then you would have a local warranty and you could get it the same day. Either way you choose to buy it, the system comes with a 90 day complete warranty, and some of the parts are covered for longer -- and besides, RBC is a reliable company, so why worry about that?

There are different options you could choose, but you go with the standard ones, because a larger hard drive or a BluRay player would significantly increase the cost of the system. It comes with Windows 7, but for an extra $50 you can downgrade that to Windows XP if you like -- but you go with Windows 7 because it is newer and, really, makes more sense. The computer is plenty fast enough to run it, and it has 2GB of RAM, which should be plenty, right?

After shipping and taxes, your order off of the RBC website totals just over $1,100 which is almost $200 less than you would have spent if you bought it at a local store, so hey, you saved some bucks! That is always something to be happy about!

Your younger brother Tim wants a new computer, and you tell him all about your new one and perhaps show it to him, demonstrating all of the cool things that it can do. It is fast, it is cool looking, and you like it! Tim likes it too, but he is a bit more tech-savvy when it comes to computers than you are, and he decides that rather than buy one like yours, he will build it himself.

You might scoff at the notion. You have heard that it can cost a lot to do that, and besides you will never end up with the same computer in the end, you explain to Tim. Yours was made by RBC - they practically invented the computer!

Tim's Computer

As he sets out to build his new PC, Tim sets a budget of $1,100 or about what you spent. He wants to get a comparable computer to what you have, because he likes the speed and abilities he saw, but since he is into gaming, he wants a bit more expansion capacity and needs a higher level of system cooling than you do.

After carefully evaluating the market, Tim decides to buy the following:

Coolermaster CM 690 Case (Newegg.com $69.99)
Coolermaster Silent Pro M 600Watt Power Supply (case-mod.com $86.99)
Thermaltake Frio CPU Cooling System (Thermaltake $59.99)
Intel Core i5-650 3.2 GHz Dual-Core CPU (Newegg $179.99)
ASRock P55 Motherboard (Newegg $134.99)
4GB Kingston DDR3 Memory Kit (Newegg $111.99)
2TB SATA 3.0GB Hitachi Hard Drive (Newegg $129.99)
Plextor 24x CDRW/DVDRW w/Lightscribe (Newegg $39.99)
GEForce 9800 GT 1GB Video Card (Newegg $109.99)
Logitech 920 illuminated keyboard (Newegg $59.99)
Logitech MX18 Gaming Mouse (Newegg $42.99)
Creative Inspire T3130 Speaker System (Newegg $49.99)

Total cost $1,039 after shipping $1,094.95

Like you, your brother Tim used his old monitor. Unlike you the system that Tim ended up with is slightly better than yours -- the main differences are:

Twice as much memory
Twice as much hard drive storage capacity
4x the video RAM
A slightly faster CPU
Better keyboard
Better mouse
Better speakers

The one drawback is that Tim had to purchase a copy of Windows 7 because it did not come with his computer, and his old system runs Vista.

Quality is never an Accident

Above you note the obvious differences in the two systems. You might be thinking that since Tim spent nearly as much as you did, even if he got twice as much RAM and Hard Drive, and a slightly faster CPU as well as better video card, he still had to buy the OS so you came out ahead, right? Well, no. Not so much...

A few months down the road, both of your systems got nailed by the same virus and you both are forced to re-install the OS and apps! Tim has his set of installation discs because he bought his copy of Windows 7. You don't -- your PC came with the OS installed but no discs -- in order to get a set of discs you have to pay an extra $99.99 to RBC. You go ahead and pay that in order to get a set of discs, but you have to wait while they send them to you, whereas Tim was able to get his system back up in less than a day...

A few weeks later a new game, World of Warfighting Monkey Goats, was released, and it is a game that both you and Tim really like. According to the specifications, both of your systems are capable of running it, and in fact Tim installs the game on his PC and is playing, while you are having a small problem.

It seems that World of Warfighting Monkey Goats has a minimum requirement of 512MB of dedicated video RAM. Tim's system has 1GB so he is all set, but your system has a built-in video card that actually borrows its memory from the system RAM. It was set at 256MB but you go ahead and increase it to 512MB so that the game will run, but when you try to run the game, it will not run now for a different reason!

After carefully reading the error message, you realize that the minimum system RAM requirements for the game is 2GB -- well that is okay! You have 2GB! Ah, but you don't, because you "borrowed" 512MB of the system RAM for the video card, which means you only actually have 1.5GB of RAM available. The OS used almost 1 full GB itself, so that half a gig that is left over is simply not adequate for the game to run...

You have to make a choice -- upgrade the memory, or add a new video card with its own RAM. That means spending more money on your PC!

You decide to add RAM to the system, so you go to Best Buy and purchase 2 GB of DDR3 RAM. You call Tim to come over and add the RAM to your system for you, but when he opens the case up, you discover that all of the RAM slots are already filled! Instead of using 2 1GB memory sticks in your computer, the manufacturer used 4 512MB sticks, filling up all 4 memory slots, because those cost the manufacturer less than the 1GB sticks would have.

Okay, you shrug. Pull two of the 512MB sticks and put in the two 1GB sticks -- that should give you 3GB of RAM, more than enough to run the game! Tim does as you ask, but when you turn your computer on, you get an error and it will not boot. It turns you that you cannot mix memory sizes! All the chips have to be the same size!

Frustrated, you go back to the store and purchase two more 1GB memory sticks, return home, and Tim installs them for you. You boot the system and it runs fine - no errors! Excellent! Of course you now have 2GB of memory in your hand that you paid for when you bought the PC, and that you cannot use anymore. You throw them into your desk drawer and decide to just forget about them.

You can now load the game, and you do, but when you run it, it is painfully slow and frustrating to play because of that. You cannot figure it out! Why does the game run and look great on Tim's PC but looks horrible and runs slow on YOURS?!

After a few days of frustrating web surfing, you discover that the reason that it runs so poorly on your system is because of the built-in video card in your PC. The version of the card is similar to the one Tim bought, but it is an older chipset, and does not have as robust a GPU or processor. In addition to that, the lack of dedicated RAM is also slowing the video down because it has to access the system RAM instead of using its own dedicated RAM.

You have already spent almost $250.00 on RAM, now you need to buy a video card!

Based on Tim's happiness with the card he has, you buy one of those from Newegg for 109.99 and he installs it in your PC. You run the game and it is as good as Tim's PC! Excellent! You are very happy. But then you think about something...

You originally paid $1,100 for your PC, but after the upgrades that you had to pay for, the adjusted cost for the system is now $1,459.99! That is more than Tim paid for his system even with the cost of the OS! And Tim did not have to pay an extra $99 to get the OS discs -- oh! You forgot to add that to the cost! That makes your system cost $1,558.99! Wow, that turned out to be an expensive computer!

Now fast-forward two years, and two generations of CPU. Both your PC's are now a little too slow to run the current games and software, so it is time upgrade. Tim ends up spending $300 on a new motherboard and CPU he bought as a package deal, with 4GB of RAM, and you both replaced your video cards the year before so you don't factor that cost.

But when you go to check out the package deal that Tim bought, you discover that your computer uses a special motherboard that is not the standard size, and worse, a standard sized motherboard will not fit in your case! Even if it would fit, the plugs for the power supply in your case are not the standard type, so you would need a new power supply.

You start to think that maybe you should just buy a whole new computer -- that would have to be cheaper... Right?

This is why a modular approach to PC ownership can be beneficial. This doesn't matter as much if all that you use your PC for is surfing the web and word processing, but when you start using games or programs that are resource dependent it becomes a real issue.

04. Introduction Conclusion

In the example above I highlight the most common issues associated with the two approaches. In the long run, Tim ends up saving money, not because he spent less, but because he got more for the money he spent. When it comes time to replace the components you are left with no choice but to buy a new system, or build one, where Tim already has the infrastructure in place to simply upgrade the components that need to be upgraded, without having to spend money to replace the bits that do not.

When you choose the modular approach over the packaged approach, it is often smarter to spend a little more on the various parts in order to obtain better options and features. For instance a standard mid-tower case can be had, off the shelf, for as little as $49.99 at any large computer store. That case will have a power supply, and it will accept the standard hardware. It will serve your basic computing needs, but it is constructed of sheet metal and plastic, and has an inexpensive power supply in it that usually maxes out at around 450 watts.

If you were instead to purchase a better case, from a company like Thermaltake or Coolermaster, you end up spending more money, but you get more for that money. The cheap case comes with one cooling fan, whereas the better cases from those two makers come with three to five fans, and have slots available to add additional fans if you need to.

These cases do not come with power supplies -- you purchase those separately. Instead of a cheap 450w PSU, you pay a bit more and you get a much higher quality 700w PSU that has an actual warranty and is expected to last 5 or more years without needing to be replaced. The same is not true about the cheaper PSU's that come with the standard cases. Those have no warranty associated with them, and are not expected to last much longer than the 2 year average lifespan of a computer.

By spending a little more, you end up saving money, because when it comes time to replace your motherboard and CPU, you only have to replace those and not the case and PSU! The same basic logic and economics apply to the other components in your computer, and selecting the components yourself allows you to control the quality and performance level of each.

As this series continues, we are going to examine the different components that go into the modern PC, and explore options and choices, in order to build a high-quality PC. While we are going to follow a budget, and in the end we may spend almost as much as it would cost to purchase a packaged PC from a name brand manufacturer, like Tim in the story above, we will end up getting a lot more value for each dollar that we spend than we would buying a package deal.

As each part in the series comes out I will be adding a post here to discuss the various options in some detail, so check back here regularly to follow along with the series. If you are contemplating building a new PC, or upgrading your existing one, I hope that you will consider a modular approach, because economically it makes a lot more sense.

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. . . Games Journo

2010-07-02T06:44:00.006-04:00

- Observations from the Front Lines -

I am up late. It is 06:45 and I have not been asleep since I awoke at 08:00 yesterday morning. The reason that I am up late has to do with two deadlines -- my column for next week, which had to be filed this morning due to the 4th of July holiday, and a piece for a game site that had to be filed today due to the 4th of July holiday. By all rights I should now be sleeping, since I filed my column at 04:30 and the game piece an hour ago. But I am not asleep, I am laying here reading the blog of a self-proclaimed "Game Journo" because... Well... That is a long story.

Go grab a cup of tea/soda/coffee/your preferred beverage and a snack and then come back and sit down to read.

Back? Hey, that looks good, I wish I had thought of that. Now I am hungry for it.

Now for the long story, which I will make a very serious effort to make shorter by using economy of words, though to be honest I am not all that great at making things shorter. I mean seriously, my editor gives me 1,400 words as my target for my column when most columnists only get between 800 and 900, because it usually takes me 1,400 or so (who am I kidding, I would take 2,000 or more every time if they let me) words to say what I think needs saying. Gah, sidetracked again.

In the midst of writing my column I got an IM -- which I ignored -- then an email -- ignored that too -- and finally a text on my cell. All from the same person. All on the same subject. After I finished the final edit of my column, I turned to these messages to see what they were about, thinking I could get that out of the way quickly. Well, pretty much not.

The messages were about a post that the sender thought I needed to read -- a post on the blog 'Game Journalists are Incompetent Fuckwits' with the title "Leigh Alexander is an Incompetent Fuckwit" and, no shocker here, I was rather surprised that they felt that I needed to read that post. After all, I told myself, that particular blog is usually more rant than substance... But I went ahead and loaded the page, and I read the post.

My next move was to load the blog of the target of that post -- one Leigh Alexander -- a somewhat plain looking if typical 20-something who fancies herself a "game journo" and who writes for the sites Gamasutra and Kotaku, ostensibly on the subject of gaming but often not.

In her blog profile she proclaims: "I think people should be able to be into games and still have a cool life."

Naturally this implies that people who are into games do not have cool lives. She does not explain why people who are into games do not have cool lives, but then the whole notion of establishing what is and is not a "cool life" is rather subjective, and probably would not be the same if you and I were both defining it.

For instance, my mate Mark has a Coke machine in his basement from the 1970's only instead of dispensing cans of sweet sticky soda, it dispenses cans of beer. I think that is cool, and since Mark is into games and gaming, I reckon that his Coke-Beer machine would factor into any evaluation of the coolness of his life, but you might disagree with that.

Perhaps you would think that the fact that he has a pet skunk would be more of a coolness in life factor than a Coke machine that dispenses ice cold cans of beer? Of course that would cause me to start pondering why you think skunks are cooler than beer, and then it would just devolve into a massive fight over which is cooler and which has more impact on life, and therefore is more of a marker for judging the coolness of the same, and so... Well... Let's just not go there, okay?

Sometimes Silence Really is Golden

As I read Ms. Alexander's blog, I kept hearing over and over in my head the words of Proverbs 17:28: "Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise; and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding." And then I hear Proverbs 29:11: "A fool uttereth all his mind; but a wise man keepeth it in till afterward."

So what was it that this Alexander did that incurred the wrath of the GJAIF author? It appears that she actually did several things, but the most prominent of them was to decry the popularity of violent war-based shooter video games. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that she made the mistake of associating these games with the events and experience of real war?

I read her article "Who Cheers for War?" on Kotaku, and after I read it, I re-read it, then read it again, just to be certain and sure. Okay, yes, she really did go there. On the one hand, it is an opinion piece -- in fact it almost certainly qualifies as an Op/Ed, so what is the real harm here? Clearly she has strong feelings about the subject of war, and video games. Everyone has a right to an opinion, right?

Wait...

Well...

Yeah, they do; but then again, when you write for a site whose basic revenue stream originates through its coverage of -- as near as I can figure -- video games, men with freakishly long beards, T-Shirts, and animated cartoon women with large breasts, well, perhaps that is not the most appropriate place to publish that opinion? Ah, but it gets worse...

As I read Ms. Alexanders manifesto -- and the supporting comments that she made both in other posts on her personal blog ( which has the unfortunate title of "Sexy Videogameland" ) and via Twitter, in which she attempts to prop-up her opinion with convoluted but somehow circular self-justification, I am left with the inescapable conclusion that she was writing about something she knows absolutely nothing about save for the abstract and very general opinion that is formed by taking in what society, "news" and, perhaps worse, TV and the movies, can offer for instruction...

Let me be blunt. She offered what she considers to be very well-thought-out and reasoned opinions on war, war in video games, and how the latter tends to glorify the former in the eyes of the gaming public. Which she aggressively claims to be part of, even if she does not actually play these games. Hmm...

(Refrain) Proverbs 17:28, 29:11

A few years ago a close family friend asked me to come to Boston with their religious studies group to help protest the use of public funds to pay for abortions for women who are on public assistance. The gist of her position was that abortion is murder, it is wrong, and therefore any good Catholic should protest against it.

"You think abortion is wrong, right?" she demanded when my silence grew uncomfortably long.

"Well," I hesitated.

"You must think it is wrong. It is wrong!" she cried.

"The thing is," I say, pausing again.

"Go on!" she demanded.

"Well, the thing is, I am not capable of being pregnant. Therefore I will never have an abortion. Logic dictates then that I will never have to face the mental and emotional struggle that I imagine must come with the making of such a decision," I pointed out.

"A struggle that I cannot claim to understand or grasp with any honesty, because a subjective opinion of that nature is about as worthless as tits on a hog," I add, trying to be helpful.

"What are you saying?" she demanded.

"What I am saying in simple terms is, I don't have an opinion about abortion because it doesn't apply to me. I am not capable of understanding the underlying issues that go into the process of making such a decision, and any opinion I express about the act would be disingenuous and patently fraudulent.

"If anyone is to decide the issue of abortion, it should be women. Leave me out of this," I add.

That, it seems, was not what she wanted to hear.

I am not going to bash Ms. Alexander for her opinion on video game war -- other than to repeat that having no experience with war, her opinion is disingenuous and patently fraudulent. Of course I will defend her right to express that opinion with my most vocal and persuasive voice because I believe she has that right.

And then I will insist - with the same vocal and persuasive voice - that she accept the shitstorm headed her way for expressing that opinion, because that is the price one pays for opening your mouth and speaking an opinion like that.

You see, Ms. Alexander, you can shout fire in a movie theater, as long as you are willing to accept the responsibility for doing it. If you are not willing to accept that responsibility, you are better off remaining silent. Or even better off reading Proverbs 17:28 and 29:11. I'm just saying...

. . . Being back in harness

2010-06-19T09:51:00.002-04:00

Well, E3 is over -- it was an interesting and frenetic event -- but sadly this was one of those events where the anticipation of it was not borne out by the reality of it. I am not saying that it was bad, or inadequate, but there are certain expectations that one is made to feel -- mostly due to the stories that you read and are told of previous events -- that add a certain level of... Well... Call it the Disney World Effect. And even Disney World is not the total package no matter how excited that you are to be there.

Perhaps part of the disappointment of E3 is the certainty that schedules have to be resumed afterward. For instance there is the preparation -- writing a column in advance because there is not going to be time to do it in the usual way (adding to that necessity is the fact that my editor is taking his annual holiday this week so the column had to be filed early anyway).

This Tuesday's column is not of the usual sort, in fact it is one of those personal experience pieces in which I relate something that happened to me, rather than covering news, or an event, or technology -- that is okay, I notice from such columns in the past that my readers tend to enjoy that sort of thing every now and then... Setting up a review or two in advance for the blog, and covering the two other regular commitments I am obliged to cover and it all serves to throw-off the routine, and change the schedule.

But it is the return to that schedule that weighs heavily on the mind at the moment... I have to finish shooting the video for Pokemon Platinum (not a big deal since there was plenty of down-time to get the game played to the point it needed to be at for the last few shoots), and then do the Alan Wake walkthrough, which will instantly be followed by one for Pokemon HeartGold -- while at the same time managing the various writing commitments I have, and doing the research and interviews for future pieces that are in the works.

I have one very significant project that relied upon literally dozens of different companies, all of whom I need to touch base with and obtain information and resources from, and then there is maintaining forward progress on the game review front -- which invariably means playing games, which translates to finding the time to play them (because they have to be played to the end before the review can be written as that is how the process works don't you know?).

I am in the process of wrapping up Cameron's Avatar, which has been largely a disappointment but I'll be covering that in the review. I have deleted the three death threats and the dozens of nasty emails caused by my review of Resident Evil 5 -- which clearly was a different game for the very vocal fanboy population than it was for me. I am comforted by the fact that all of the death threats originate from teenagers in Europe, so I doubt I have to worry about them actually carrying out (or trying to) said threats, but still, it is disturbing that an honest review of a video game could move someone to that level of emotional outburst.

A simple glance at the shelf is depressing -- when I finish Avatar and write it up, I still need to play Alan Wake (to both review and WT it), then Alpha Protocol, Toy Story 3, Red Dead Redemption, Star Ocean, and a half-dozen titles for the Wii, NDS, and PSP that I will have no choice but to Lab Rat if I am going to cover them in a timely fashion. It is that time of year -- a lot of games releasing!

Add to that an invasion of tourists - oh yes, we love the tourists - and that means that you get nowhere fast when you leave the safe and peaceful haven of home. If I sound like I am depressed ignore that, okay? I am actually excited about all of this, if a little intimidated by the heft of my plate for the next two weeks. Still, I would not trade this for another job, no sir!

The only misgiving that I have is that with all of the new games waiting to be played, I cannot return to some of the previous games and finish them off because there simply is not enough time... Have you all noticed that games these days are different than they used to be? Playing a game "to the end" means something different today -- sure you reach the end, you get the closing CS -- but invariably there are still things you need to wrap up, missions that still need to be completed, collections done, so that the "end" is not really the end! But it is the end enough to justify reviewing at that point, which leaves you with a dozen games that you really REALLY want to complete... Gah!

I noticed something odd the other day -- if I ask a question on the blog, all of the answers come back to me in email, and not as replies to the blog... Why is that? Is it that email is more personal? Or is it that readers would rather not publicly state their position on things? Don't take that wrong - I am okay with the email, I just think it is rather odd is all.

Last Summer the entire Summer slipped past without me doing the things that make living on Cape Cod a cool thing -- going to the beach, hanging out at BBC, and taking in the live bands that are EVERYWHERE in the Summer. It was over in the blink of an eye and yes, I had regrets. That is NOT going to happen this year! Err, I hope not anyway...

Be happy, people. Do the things that make you happy. Life is too short to put that stuff off!

Cheers!

. . . Social Gaming

2010-06-15T07:26:00.004-04:00

When you see a game identified as an MMO, that means it is a "Massive, Multi-Player, Online" game. If it is identified as an MMORPG that means that it is a "massive, Multi-Player, Online Role-Playing Game" with the latter being a very different gaming experience than the former by far. For one thing, any game that has some sort of multi-player element that is online is technically an MMO, whereas MMORPG's are almost always huge persistent worlds in which you not only play with other real people, but often play *against* them!

My history in online gaming and MMO's of all types has its roots in a game called Ultima Online (UO), which I began playing as part of its Beta release in 1996. The public release of UO in the Fall of 1997 naturally resulted in many late night gaming sessions, and the creation of a small group of friends who formed a guild and, no surprise here, played together regularly. In fact most of us played together daily!

UO was something different - it was a new concept in gaming, really, though in reality it did not create anything new, it just combined a large number of gaming aspects into one packag (for example online gaming was not invented with UO, it existed for over a decade prior to the game's release. Multi-Player gaming was also nothing new, the long and colorful history of the Net MUDs is evidence of that).

No, what UO did was create a new way of gaming that including a key and critical component to the process: social connectivity. And make no mistake, the social bonding that UO promoted was a major and important aspect of the whole experience. All of the people I was gaming with were people I knew in real life before we started playing UO, but most of them were people I had not seen in real life for years!

The group of people that became my gaming family were literally scattered all over the world, with some in New England, some in Australia, some in the Netherlands, and others scattered all over the USA. We had a member serving in the US Air Force and stationed in Japan, and another member who worked for Pitney Bowes in Alaska! It was an eclectic group who really only had three things in common - (1) we knew each other in real life, either from school, the SCA, or work; (2) we were all serious about gaming; and (3) we all embraced the Internet as both a communications tool and the primary source for our careers (in one way or another).

The Intangible

One of the most often heard criticisms of 'net gaming was that it required the devotion of lots of time and effort, and strictly from the casual view of a non-gaming observer, offered very little (if any) reward for that sacrifice.

At the time I was working a contract for a telecommunications company that took me away from home for weeks at a time. Every evening after work, and after eating dinner with the team that I was working with at our hotel, I retired to my room where I logged in to play UO for a few hours before hitting the sack. I was sharing that room with another engineer, and their take on the whole thing was not just skeptical but hostile!

"Look at that! You spend three hours every night playing a game in which you kill imaginary monsters, complete quests for pixel treasure, and then grudgingly sleep for 6 hours before going to work -- where your efforts actually result in you being paid real money for your 9 hours of work!

"Why can't you see the problem?!" he demanded.

This was not a single conversation -- it was an event that repeated itself every few days. My roommate simply could not wrap his mind around the idea that I enjoyed playing the game, and more to the point, that I enjoyed playing the game with my friends, with whom otherwise I would have a hard time maintaining a daily relationship beyond email and the occasional phone call.

"I like it," I invariably began my explanation - and failed miserably because no matter how many different ways I found to rephrase the same answers, the bottom line was this: I was giving that game hours of my life and, as far as he could see, not receiving anything tangible as a result.

Yes, he had a point... I was not receiving a paycheck for playing the game... But how do you put a value on friendship, and hanging out with your mates -- on victory in an epic struggle to defeat a powerful enemy, and ride off into the virtual sunset, your best mates by your side, and carry back a trophy of that accomplishment with which to decorate your virtual home?

I read this quote once -- I do not know who actually originally said it -- but it goes something like this: "For those who understand, no explanation is necessary - for those who do not understand, no explanation is possible."

That pretty much sums up the entire issue...

This New Thing

I was recently sucked in to a new game - well, a new game to me anyway - called FarmVille. I may have mentioned this before, and if you are one of my mates, well, you already know about it because you are playing it with me! I mention that so that what follows has some grounding...

Every day I exchange email with a lot of my mates - and there is a list serv we use to chat with each other in a general fashion (we have been using that list serv since February of 1994 when it was originally created). Lately one frequently mentioned topic on the list is FarmVille - which a lot of us are playing. One of my best mates, Jim, has been drowning in a complex project and had dropped out of sight for nearly 8 months, and was only recently coming up for air now that his project has completed the Beta phase and is ready to release.

One of the first things that he did was announce his return on the list, and then spend a few hours reading the digests for the list to catch up on what he had missed thanks to his employer and its unnatural need to make gobs of money off of the brain sweat of the engineers it employs. That being the case, I was not at all surprised to see a post from Jim, on the list, asking the question: "What is this FarmVille thing??"

The easy answer is that it is a cartoon-like simulation of small farming -- a game in which each player develops their farm, starting small, and by planting crops, raising farm animals, and upgrading the size and capacity of your farm, create a successful farming empire!

Along the way -- once you attain Level 20 -- you can join with other farmers and grow crops under a co-operative scheme, earning money and winning prizes, including limited edition and rare content. In addition to the above, you are able to customize your farm, adding character and flavor to it and stamping it with your personality and interests.

In the traditional sense of the word, FarmVille is not really a multi-player game, but considering that its home is perhaps the largest social networking site on the Internet, and the amount of communication - through IM and wall postings - makes it a social activity in its own right, it certainly qualifies.

Another aspect of the game is the near-instant gratification that if offers, keying into more than one powerful motivator, and providing bragging rights to the players. Having rare animals, or buildings, exclusive content, and even collections of special items that can only be obtained through luck, and what you have is a powerful draw for a game that is technically free to play. But is is really free?

According to recent news, FarmVille -- which is just one of many games that is hosted by Facebook and developed by an independent game company called Zynga -- actually had higher profits than Facebook! The revenue stream comes not from subscription fees, but from what amounts to voluntary content fees in the form of in-game money purchases, which can be used for obtaining rare and limited edition items in the game.

The concept of value-added content and pay-as-you-go transactions is the backbone of this type of game, which is growing in popularity in the past few years. LucasArts is preparing to launch a new free-to-play MMO based upon the Clone Wars part of the Star Wars stories, which should tell you that this model is more than viable.

What do You Gain?

Take a step back and replay the previous conversation and, once again, we are facing the same question - what do you gain from spending your time and effort playing these games? In this case though, there is the added question of rationalizing spending real world money to purchase in-game money, which you then use to purchase in-game content -- digital goods that you do not really own and cannot take home with you if you one day decide to stop playing the game.

Does it make sense to spend money on games like this? Well... No, not if the tangible is a critical component of your thought-process. On the other hand, there is great fun to be had in playing these games, and most of my friends - and myself - genuinely enjoy playing them -- so in that respect, yeah, they are worth playing.

Now if you will excuse me, I need to show Jim how to leverage his in-game coins to generate experience points -- he needs to get to Level 20 sooner rather than later, because he wants to start doing the Co-Op challenges with us!

. . . PC Upgrade Philosophy

2010-06-10T05:30:00.003-04:00

I am in the process of writing a new series for the Digital Grind Column over at the Cape Cod Times on upgrading your computer -- which may seem like an obvious and predictable subject on the face of it, but it is turning out to be anything but that.

Part of the process of writing any piece is researching it to get a full and complete picture of the subject -- which as I note above in this case is upgrading your computer.

Statistically there are two groups of computer owners -- the first (and largest) is what I call the "Replacers" and the second smaller group are the "Upgraders." Both groups have distinct sub-groups within them, and I want to digress for a moment and examine those...

Replacers Group
This is the largest of the main groups, and some estimates put their number around 75% of all computer owners. The statistics I accessed represent a view of consumers rather than business and corporate owners, basically the average Joe or Jane with a computer in other words.

According to what I have learned, these people purchased their computer as a unit -- most often from a brick-and-mortar store rather than online (online purchasing of new computers is still a fairly small percentage of the consumer group excluding purchases from the websites of the PC makers, which for the purposes of the statistics I used count the same as if they bought their computer at Staples or Best Buy).

Their notion of a computer is a ready-to-use unit that comes in boxes and, save for the display, comes from a single source. When it is time to replace their computer -- whether it breaks or is too old/slow or for whatever reason -- they will repeat their choice by purchasing the new computer as a single unit. This is a comfort level choice for many, but a significant chunk of this sort of consumer believes this to be the "normal" way you buy or replace a computer.

One of the consequences of the rough economy is that this group is not following its established trends -- for example it was not uncommon for the consumers in this group to regularly replace their PC's. The average life span for their PC's was 16 months, with a significant percentage replacing their PC's annually. When the economy started to sour in 200/2001 this group delayed replacing their PC's until they felt it was absolutely necessary, which added around 3 months to the cycle. That represented something of a hiccup, but not one with an impact severe enough to dent the market.

The last major downturn in the economy a few years ago changed their pattern significantly however, and that three-month delay turned into an indefinite one for a very large percentage of these folks. The result of that was not a hiccup but a disaster, and it is largely what the statistics people are referring to when they speak of depression of the PC market.

Rather than a short delay before replacing, these folks have been holding on to and making do with what they have until they are forced to replace their PC. Performance does not seem to be the deciding factor - with the most obvious trend being that they resist replacing their PC until it breaks. That change in this groups purchasing habits had a decided impact on the industry - not a good one I should not have to add.

At least part of the concern is how this group views the PC -- as a unit rather than a device with components. An obvious side-effect of that POV is that they do not embrace the notion of upgrading their PC, as replacing is the logical -- some research suggests "the only" -- choice available to them.

Upgraders Group

The second group is the Upgraders -- among which there are a number of sub-groups, from the smallest which is the PC owners who do their own upgrading, to the largest, being those who will pay a shop or tech-savvy friend to do the upgrading for them.

When the computer component makers push products out to get them reviewed and advertise both online and in magazines, these are their primary target audience, and considering how small this group is compared to the first group, you would think that these companies would spend twice as much money trying to reach the first group as they do this one in the hopes of converting some of them. Well, if you thought that (I did) you might be surprised to learn that no, not so much really.

A Modular Approach to the PC

The primary focus of the series of columns I am writing is directed towards promoting a more modular approach to the subject. The idea is simple enough really -- while upgrading components does not give you a new PC, it can make your old one feel like it is new, or at least stretch its useful lifespan considerably.

Statistically -- if you follow those trends -- a PC owner who upgrades (whether they pay some one else to do the upgrade or do it themselves) gets more out of their PC for longer. Folks from the first group get an average of 14 to 20 months worth of use out of a PC before replacing it. Folks in the second group (Upgraders in other words) average between 26 and 40 months out of their PC before completely replacing it. That is a significant difference!

In fact the difference is even more significant when you consider that the second group tends to skip generations in PC technology. What I mean by that is that the Replacers tend to own a system from each generation, whereas the Upgraders tend to own a system from every other generation -- and in the end, even though the Upgraders seem to be spending more money because they are making regular upgrade purchases every 6 to 8 months, in the end they actually end up spending less when you look at the over-all annual cost of computer ownership!

The Upgrade Series

The idea for this series is to convince as many people as I can that a modular approach is a better way to do it. The logic of this is really very simple... Here is an example, using my own computer and my experience.

Almost 4 years ago I bought a new computer -- my old computer had died and while I could have built my own component-by-component because I was short on time and because I needed that PC right away (a lot of my work happens on it) instead I chose to purchase a bare-bones system from a company that makes its money by building those exclusively.

By eschewing the brand name PC makers, I was able to obtain a basic and reasonably fast modern computer for about a third the cost of one from HP, for example. The system I bought was basic indeed -- consisting of the following:

A generic mid-tower case
An Intel Dual-Core 3.0 GHz CPU
A bog-standard motherboard with onboard sound, video, and ethernet
1GB of RAM
A 320GB SATA2 Hard Drive
A bog-standard EIDE CD/CDR/DVD/DVDR all-in-one drive
A cheap wired keyboard
A cheap wired mouse
A mouse pad with the bare bones company name on it.
An ethernet cable.

I got all of that, shipped out to me in a matter of days for just under $400. At the time that was a good price for what I got!

When the system arrived I set it up where my old system used to be, using my old systems flatscreen monitor, ethernet connection, mouse, and keyboard. Using my licensed copy of Windows XP Pro, I spent a day installing and patching the OS, installing all my apps, and restoring all my data from our Network Accessible Storage Device, and I was back up and running with minimal fuss.

For what it was, it was good. In that configuration I did not run into problems with speed or capability for nearly 8 months, but around 8 months into the new PC, some of the new software that I was using wanted more resources than I had available. It was not a question of the system itself -- the CPU was plenty fast enough, but it became obvious that I needed to do some upgrading.

As I was running a 32-bit version of Microsoft Windows, adding any more than another GB of RAM would have been a waste of money -- for the most part 2GB of RAM is all that the 32 bit version of Windows can practically use, but there were other considerations when it comes to RAM to bear in mind.

The First Upgrade: RAM

If you were to go to a reputable computer shop or technician and tell them that you wanted to upgrade your RAM, and they learned that you were running a 32 but version of Windows and currently had 1 GB of RAM, they will likely suggest that you add another Gig of RAM.

Doing this *can* double the amount of memory in your system -- but I emphasized with the word "can" because that is not always true! Sometimes going from 1GB to 2GB does not equal doubling your systems RAM, and here is why...

Folks knowledgeable in the care and feeding of the PC will tell you that for a Windows XP/2000 system, 1GB of RAM is the minimum you should shoot for, and 2GB is better. For Windows Vista and now, Windows 7, 2GB of system RAM is the minimum amount you should have, and 4GB would be better. The thing is, when I upgraded my system to 2GB, what I ended up with was around 1.5GB of system RAM, whereas prior to the upgrade of the RAM even though there was 1GB installed, what I really had was 768MB not 1GB. Why?

The on-board video card that is built into the motherboard I have has a small amount of RAM that is all its own -- 128MB -- but because a lot of software needs a minimum of 256MB of RAM for video, the board borrows some of the system RAM for the video card! In my case it was borrowing an additional 128MB, and one of the programs that I regularly use borrows a small amount of system RAM and turns it into an imaginary scratch disk.

So even though I had a physical 1GB of RAM, once the system was fully booted and I was logged into the OS, I really had access to only 70% of that RAM. When I upgraded to 2GB that setup carried forward -- though the software side of the video card, noticing that there was more RAM available, added a little to the amount of RAM it was borrowing from the system.

Still that upgrade of an additional 1GB of system RAM did the trick, things went back to a usable state, and I was happy! About four months later I started running low on resources again -- it was time for some tweaking and another upgrade.

The Second Upgrade: A New Video Card

Adding RAM was an option - but if I had the 2GB of physical RAM that was in the system available to the OS that would solve me problem, I knew that. And adding more RAM beyond the 2GB that was in the system was not going to solve my new problem -- which had to do with slow video speed.

This new set of problems related to the fact that I needed to be able to shoot and edit video on my PC -- something I had never needed to do prior to this, but the nature of some of my writing had changed. Just writing using a word processing program and adding screen shots to illustrate the pieces was not enough, I was told. I needed to provide video illustrations with sound, I was told. But my system was not doing that very well!

The RAM that was borrowed from the system for the video card combined with a small amount of RAM that was borrowed by the mixing software for the sound side of the process was removing more RAM than the minimum spec's required by the mixing software -- and the end result was that I could not use that software at all to do what it was designed to do! I had to find a solution.

Faced with this situation, the average PC owner would have simply replaced the PC at this point, even though the CPU was more than adequate for what I needed. Adding RAM was not going to solve the problems I had -- sure it would have returned a small amount to the system as the program that I was using for mixing and editing WAS able to see RAM beyond the limit of the OS, but the video card would still be taking more than I could afford to lose from the RAM that the OS could see. The obvious solution was to replace the video card with one that had enough of its own RAM so that it would not need to borrow RAM from the system!

As I mentioned before, the "video card" is built into the motherboard, so turning it off was simply a matter of going into the PC Bios configuration menu prior to it fully booting into the OS. Knowing that, I spent a few days reviewing the currently available video card tech, and made a list of all of the cards that would work with the different software that I was using at the time.

Bear in mind that I was, at that time, still playing some MMO's that had very limiting requirements with respect to what video card chipsets that I could use. Add to that that I had to be able to use Direct-X 9 as a minimum (it was required by some of the games and one of the apps that I used) and that set out my path for me.

The onboard video was an Intel-based chipset. The way I saw it, I had to choose between ATI and Nvidia, as that was the core group that was dictated by the needs of the programs I was running. I knew that 256MB of video RAM was the *minimum* that I could have, and that much of the software I was running would happily take advantage of as much over that base amount as I could give it.

When it comes to upgrading your computer to increase speed, performance, capability, and reliability, upgrading your video card is right at the top of the list. The thing was, I needed to spend as little as I could get away with and still meet the requirements that were necessary for using the video editing software.

Luckily for me, just prior to the circumstances that prompted the need for another upgrade was when a new generation of video card chip technology was released, and as a result, most of the cards from the previous generation were now on sale at considerably slashed prices. I was in a good position!

After reviewing the market, I ended up selecting an Nvidia card that had a whopping 768MB of video RAM for what amounted to spare change compared to what a similarly-placed card would have cost from the new generation.

Having decided on the card that I wanted, I shopped around and found the best deal that I could on it online, paying $50 less than I would have spent buying it at Best Buy -- and when the card arrived I turned off the on-board video in the bios, installed the new card, and then booted up and downloaded the latest set of drivers and software for it from the makers website.

The difference was incredible and easy to see. It really did feel like I now had a new computer! I now had more system RAM, a much faster video display, way more video RAM, and a computer that felt like it was different -- like it was brand new.

One Upgrade Causes Another

Unfortunately there was an unforeseen problem waiting for me when I tried to make my first video... Remember that before I did not have enough system resources to make a video that was longer than 30 seconds. Now I could make videos as long as I wanted -- or at least as long as the available disc space would permit.

But when I made my first video under the new setup, I discovered that something was wrong with the audio side of the recording. There was a static-like background noise, and nothing that I could do with the configuration, or updating the drivers, or the software itself seemed to fix it!

It was a very frustrating situation.

After struggling with and trying different solutions -- and one of which might have worked -- I ended up researching the issue online, and quickly learned what the problem was. It turned out that the on-board sound card was not really a very high-quality setup. That alone meant nothing really, since I did not need to emulate the London Symphony, but I learned that the addition of the new video card was likely the source of the problem, because the sound card built into the motherboard was using a small section of memory that it should not really have been using, and THAT was what was causing the trouble!

Consider for a moment that previously it was not a problem -- but then I was using the on-board sound with the on-board video then, so of course there was no problem. The folks that made the motherboard had engineered it to work fluidly in that configuration, but here I had upset the apple cart, and was now using a configuration that they had not designed into the board when they built it.

Did they know that the sound card built into the board was using a small section of memory that it should not have been using? Yeah, probably. Did they have a fix I could apply? A patch? Some way to make the built-in sound card work with my screaming new video card? No. Uh-uh. They did not.

I had a choice to make -- and going back to using the built-in video was NOT on the table.

It was time for another upgrade!

The Third Upgrade: A New Sound Card

The choice was simple and painless. A quick look online and I was able to find a Sound Blaster Audigy card for $19 online that not only fixed the problem, but that expanded the sound capability of my PC!

When the card arrived in the mail, I shut off the ob-board sound card, installed the new one, downloaded and applied the newest drivers and software from Creative Labs, and was up and running flawlessly, with a minimum of tweaking to get the performance I needed.

The Fourth Upgrade: USB 2.0

As I began to use the PC for this new purpose, shooting and editing video to illustrate pieces I was writing for the web, I learned all sorts of new skills. Eventually though, I ended up needing to shoot longer videos, and needing to record play sessions in video games to use as source material for the video illustrations, which required me to get a capture device that I could use to connect my TV to the computer.

Despite the fact that my PC was, at this point, over 3 years old, I knew that its specifications included USB 2.0 and that was a good thing, because the capture device required USB 2.0 to function. The thing is, when I hooked it up, the first thing it did was tell me that it could not function, because I did not have it plugged into a USB 2.0 port.

"?!" thought I.

After carefully checking the motherboard spec's again, I knew that it was equipped with USB 2.0 ports. So why wasn't the capture card detecting that?!

I will save you a long description of all of the hassles and solutions that I attempted from drivers to software and everything in between and tell you what the actual problem was -- but I want to note that it took me a week to actually figure it out mostly because I had presumed something that I should not have presumed...

The problem was that even though the motherboard did indeed have USB 2.0 built into it, the case that the company that built my bare-bones PC had used was... Wait for it... Not wired for USB 2.o!

Seriously -- the wiring on the inside of the case was bog-standard USB 1.0 wiring, and while you can plug USB 1.0 wiring into the 2.0 slots on the motherboard, without that all-important extra wire that 2.0 uses, the motherboard can only deliver 1.0 spec if that wire is missing, and that was what was happening.

At this point I would forgive anyone for simply throwing their hands up and buying a new PC -- after all mine was well over 3 years old at this point, and there had been two new generations of CPU released by this point, so maybe replacing it was the way to go? Or maybe not. After all, this PC still had way more power than I was using or needed -- it was not an issue of it not being fast enough or able to run the programs that I needed to run -- it was a question of it not being ABLE to use the hardware that I needed to use.

So yes, I could have justified replacing the PC at that point -- but I did not want to. It is still a good system after all! Another option would have been to replace the case with one that has the modern wiring -- and I could have done that, but it would not have been a generic off-the-shelf $40 case, I have standards when it comes to cases (something I will be covering in the upgrade series).

Replacing the case would have meant spending anywhere from $100 to $175 not including the cost of the power supply -- and a quick check of the power supply in my existing case revealed that it was underpowered and of an odd construct, which meant it would not be a candidate for moving into a new case with the rest of the components.

I could have purchased some wire and tried to re-wire the case myself -- that was almost what I chose to do, but when I checked the price of wiring I discovered that it would cost around $35 to do it right. Why did I choose not to spend that $35 to re-wire the case? Simple, really -- a USB 2.0 add-on expansion card could be had online for less than $20 including shipping!

When the card came in the mail, I installed it, downloaded the drivers for it from the manufacturer, installed those, and I was back in business.

Upgrading the USB ports did not really have a noticeable impact on the system speed or anything, but I was now able to use the hardware that I needed to use, and everything was running smooth as silk! Problem solved! Mischief Managed!

But what is the point of all this?

Upgraded vs. Replaced

The point to this is simple enough, really. Despite having to upgrade this system four times in as many years, I still spent less money than I would have if I had replaced it at any point in this narrative -- and more significantly I still have a viable PC!

At this stage the system has some weaknesses, sure. There is software -- and games -- that I am reasonably sure it cannot run, but happily none of those are among the programs (and games) that I presently run or need to run. So in practical terms, this 4-year-old computer is still a fully functional and working system that meets my present needs.

I do plan on replacing it soon, as I plan to build a new system for myself, but my replacing this system will not end its usefulness at all! In fact, when I replace it in a few months that will be the trigger for a fifth upgrade!

I do not know what I will replace it with yet -- I have not walked down that path -- but when I replace it, I will be passing it on to one of my kids to use as their desktop PC. Before I do that, I will determine what the hottest fastest and most capable CPU is that its motherboard can use, and I will be purchasing it. Yes, it is two generations old -- which means it will not cost a lot of money -- and upgrading its CPU will very likely add 2 or more years to its potential life-span.

Its purpose will be for doing homework, playing games, and surfing the web -- all of which it can do as-is, so the upgrading will be purely to maximize its potential and make it as useful as it can be for one of my kids. That is pretty cool when you consider that it is so old that it is supposed to be useless by now, right?

Join the Upgraders

When you view a PC from a modular approach you expand its capability simply by changing that POV. Rather than save a long time to purchase a new system, you can budget your upgrades and, over the course of a year, end up with a new system that stays near the cutting edge without having to fork over money for the bits you do not need to replace.

Modular upgrading is more than just how you own a computer, it is a computing lifestyle choice. It also allows you to do things with your PC you cannot do with an out-of-the-box name brand system.

The upgrade series I am in the process of writing will cover all of that --- and if you are interested in changing your POV on computers, you should read it! The most significant change starts with the foundation of the PC, which in simple terms is its Case and Power Supply. With so wide a selection covering a variety of concentrations, selecting a case to use as the foundation for a new modular PC is not a decision that should be made lightly, either.

The case you choose should be the last case you will ever need to purchase, and it is the one part of your PC where cost should not be a consideration at all! Selecting the right case -- the right foundation -- is key to the whole process, and that is going to be the next piece in the series. I hope you will read it -- I hope to convert you to my way of looking at this subject -- and I welcome questions or thoughts on it.

This blog is going to be featured more prominently on my website soon, and I hope to use it as the main comment and reply venue -- so consider this an open invitation to you to ask questions or offer your own opinions, starting with this question: What do you think is the most important function of a PC case?

Cheers!

Chris

... Disaster Recovery

2010-05-14T13:43:00.003-04:00

When I booted my PC today to do some work everything progressed as expected - the monitor flashed, the post code was completed with a beep, and the system booted into Windows 7. Unfortunately as I plugged in my password and the OS loaded to the desktop something happened that was not expected...

A small box popped up on the screen notifying me that the hard drive was in trouble. Specifically it warned in dire terms that the hard drive was failing, and suggested that it would be an idea that I backed up my data.

Here is the thing - backing up my data does not really solve the problem - the problem being that my hard drive was failing. That happens - in fact it is not really all that much of a surprise, and there are elements of procrastination involved here. I should explain.

- A Little Background -

My current desktop computer was a Christmas gift from my brother two years ago. It is not a bad computer as computers go - it has a 3.0 GHz CPU and 2 GB of RAM, and it came with a 320GB SATA2 hard drive. Note that I said "came with" because that is really sort of where this story begins.

The system that this new one replaced was old - shamefully old - and not really able to do all of the things that I needed to do, hence the gift of a new and much more capable computer. What I ended up doing was plugging in my new computer with a monitor I borrowed from my wife's desk and, using disk sharing, copied all of the data and minor configuration files from my old system to the new.

The old system was not really all that useful, so it was unplugged and lugged down to the basement, where it sat all alone and presumably lonesome. I enjoyed my new computer for a few months, and then that almost spanking new hard drive - a Western Digital SATA2 - died dead. I mean it simply imploded. Stopped working. Finito. Kaput!

I pulled the drive out and loaded the Western Digital website, but when I went through the RMA process a notice was flashed that the company no longer provided free shipping materials. At the time (Winter) it seemed like more hassle than it was worth, so I closed the browser, ticked the old drive into my sock drawer where it sat, out of sight and out of mind.

I looked around the house and then remembered my old system - and the 120GB hard drive in it. Granted it was small compared to the drive that just died, but on the other hand it already had my OS installed on it! So I pulled that drive, installed it in my system, and was up and running without having to reinstall any apps in less than an hour. Bonus!

A few months later I upgraded the computer to Windows 7, and added a few applications that I need now - a video capture suite because the writing that I do in video games now requires me to make videos - and quickly discovered that I was mostly out of space on the drive. 120GB was simply not enough!

What did I do? Well, being the tech savvy geek that I am, I did... Nothing. Well, that is not entirely true - I did remove programs that I no longer use, and I moved some data off of the system to the NAS drive we use for backups and data storage on our network, but other than that, the result was to free up around 19GB on the drive, which I decided I could live with for now.

Everything went smoothly in my computing life for nearly a year - I was happy even if I had to juggle data and regularly move stuff off to the NAS drive. And then one day while I was using the computer there was a "Phhht!" sound, and a curl of smoke wafted above my now dead computer. I recognized that smell instantly - my Power Supply had died.

Despite the fact that this was a pretty decent computer, it was build by a break-out company whose main business is assembling bare bones pretty good computers and selling them at low but competitive prices. What that means is that the case - and power supply - were pretty average and, no surprise here, not the sort that you would worry over replacing the power supply for. No, with this type of case it is usually cheaper to simply buy an new case and power supply!

Fortunately I am always prepared for this sort of situation - I am a geek after all! On a shelf in the basement is a box with a brand new case and power supply in it - there are other boxes down there with spare parts - alas no hard drives, but still.

The end result of this is that I was back up and running two hours later, having swapped the guts of my PC into this new case, and life computed on. Right, that gives you the history up to this morning.

- This Morning -

So there I sat looking at the notice that my hard drive was failing. Believe it or not, Windows 7 is pretty good about providing the user with accurate information about the state of the computer - something that Microsoft got right in an OS that largely fixed all of the bad things about Vista and is, in my opinion, a wonderful improvement to my computing experience!

The problem above is that I have deadlines and work that needs to be done, and most of it cannot be done on my netbook - I need that PC. So it was not a question of "can I limp along until the drive fails?" because, honestly, the drive failing would be a disaster that would be very difficult to recover from! The smart thing to do is implement a disaster recovery plan before you need to recover from a bigger disaster.

A brief and hasty conversation with my wife devised The Plan - she would pop into Staples and grab me a new hard drive before she headed off to work - and that is what she did. I knew that you could get a 1TB sized SATA2 drive these days for around $99 which, personally and recalling the horrific prices paid for hard drives in the past, I find to be a reasonable price to pay.

Twenty minutes later she arrived with the new drive, and I proceeded to crack open my PC and install it. I had hoped to be able to clone my old drive - which would have allowed me to avoid re-installing the OS and apps, patching, and all of that other stuff that can take an entire day to complete. Alas, my old drive was simply not stable enough to permit that.

- A Clean Install -

So as I sit here writing this, I am in the process of performing a clean install. I have already installed the OS - that was largely painless because, yet again, Microsoft managed to get the process right - and so I am applying patches.

When that is done, I will need to go out and get the Windows 7 updates for the various hardware installed in my system - the sound card and graphics card were taken care of by Windows, but there are some other devices I will need to do by hand.

When that is done, I need to recreate the user account structure, install the anti-virus, anti-malware, and anti-phishing software, and then begin the long and tedious process of installing and patching the applications that I use on a regular basis.

When all of that is done, my last task will be to re-connect the old hard drive and, using it strictly as a data rather than boot device, copy over all of the data on it, and some settings files. This is a good thing, by the way!

By acting immediately rather than waiting for the drive to fail completely, I am left with the ability to recover my computing life almost painlessly! That means I will not lose my iTunes stuff - songs and games that I have paid for but that Apple will not replace if I lose the original files. I will get all of the works-in-progress, which means not having to re-shoot some of the videos that are part of the project I am in the middle of and, might I add, am past deadline on.

In short, this is a nice example of disaster recovery managed under ideal conditions.

The point of today's blog entry? I am glad you asked that!

- A Little Action -

The point of this is to remind you that waiting for things to get worse is not the best solution in a case like this. Learning early that there is trouble with your hard drive is always preferable to finding out by the drive failing on you.

You do not have to wait for Windows to tell you there is a problem - once a month I do my regular maintenance on my drives, which means using the tools that are part of the OS to scan them for errors, and correct anything that has gone wrong.

There is no doubt in my mind that, had the health of the drive not suddenly worsened, I would have caught the problem during the maintenance that I run on the 15th of every month - but Windows let me know today instead of tomorrow. The important thing here my friends is that I took immediate steps to correct the problem.

If you find yourself in the same situation, your best choice is to do the same. If you cannot immediately replace the drive, shut the system down and do not use it until you can replace the drive. Ideally you want to subject it to the trauma of booting as few times as you possibly can until you have managed to recover your data and install it on your new drive.

The old drive - the one that is failing - was manufactured in 2004, and its warranty expired in 2008, which means that I received a comfortable two extra years beyond the warranty of service from the device. Realistically that is pretty good! Oh sure, I have hard drives in some of my computers that are running now that are 15 years old - the SCSI drives in my NeXT Slab and on my Sun SPARCstation are examples - drives that are way out of warranty, but that I am confident will continue to function for years to come.

The replacement drive that I selected is a Seagate SATA2 unit that comes with a 5-year warranty from the manufacturer - that is a good sign, as in the past most drive makers only offered from 1 to 3 years of coverage. Hopefully it means that this drive is built like the old ones that still run in my workstations - the length of the warranty implies that sort of quality.

Now if you will excuse me, Windows Update has completed and all of the patches have been applied, so I need to load Internet Explorer for the first - and last - time on this PC so that I can download the installation files for Mozilla Firefox. After that I have to start going through my CD media to figure out what I will be installing - and that is how I will be spending my day...

Sigh...

. . . Memory Cards

2010-05-12T16:14:00.002-04:00

This afternoon I needed to pull my headset and mic out of the box I keep gaming fear in so that I could chat with a mate while playing a game on XBox Live and I stumbled upon an old green metal tin that came with Pokemon Emerald. I paused for a moment, trying to remember why that tin was in this box? Perhaps some background is in order...

The box in question is a fairly large Rubbermaid plastic box that has a latching cover on it, and I use it to keep pretty much anything gaming related that I own that has wither (1) a cable, or (2) a foam or rubber element. The reason that these items are kept secured in this box is that my dog Calvin (a year-old Dachshund) is hell on cables and anything even remotely chewable. In the year that he has been my faithful companion he has destroyed:

2 XBox 360 headset/Microphone devices
6 Power cables including the ones belonging to my notebook, netbook, and iPod
15 Ethernet cables
2 lamp cords
The power cable for a surge protector
The cable connecting the foot pedal to my wireless drum kit for Rock Band
2 wired microphones for Rock Band
2 sets of drum sticks for Rock Band
A Wii nun-chuck
3 Cell phone charger cables
11 stuffed animals

Now bear in mind the above list is just the stuff I know about... I am sure that there are other items he has destroyed that I am not aware of. I fear looking under my bed, as that is his favorite place to stash the various items he "collects" and, every now and then, where he goes to chew on them - an activity that I can hear.

Anyway, back to the tin...

This green metal tin was familiar to me - I knew that there was a reason it was in that box, I just could not recall what it was. When I opened it - as often happens - the sight of its contents instantly reminded me of why it was in there! This tin contained all of my memory cards for the various game consoles that I own, including but not limited to my Nintendo Game Cube, Nintendo 64, PS1, PS2, XBox, and my Pocket PC.

These memory cards used to be a very important element in gaming. In order to save a game you needed them! Back in the days of cartridge games there was usually some sort of battery-backed on-cartridge memory for saving - but not always - though those were the bad old days. The days of memory cards came in between today and the days of cartridges, but I digress.

After careful thought I came to the realization that I had not used a memory card in at least two years and probably longer! I do not use my Wii much - that is mostly for the kids - and my 360 has a hard drive, as does my PS3. As I do not visit friends to game as much these days what with being in a wheelchair, I am more used to them visiting me - so invariably they bring their memory cards, not the other way around.

My son Peter has a memory card for his 360 - but only because it came with one, being that I had purchased an Arcade version when I bought my kids their 360 since I had my old 20GB hard drive to give them, having upgraded to the 120GB version not too long before.

All this thinking about game console memory cards dusted off a recent memory - I recalled having received a press release not too long ago that related to them, so as is often the case, my interrupt-driven mind then fixated on finding that press release - and the finding of it added something to this whole adventure.

The release was about the upgrade to the XBox 360 that added support for USB Thumb Drives. The gist of it is this: Microsoft has discontinued their memory cards! The USB based drives are the direct replacement for those - but of course in this day and age Microsoft expects that you will have a hard drive installed on your 360 anyway, so that is doubly a good reason for doing away with those comforting little devices that used to contain all of our progress for the games that we played.

Call me sentimental, but the news that these little plastic memory cards days are now numbered struck me as sad. They say that change is a constant in life, and I can see that. It is not that I need a memory card - I have several USB Thumb Drives that I carry around with me on my key chain - one that is strictly for my writing and that contains copies of every article, column, and walkthrough I have ever written, and one that is a "mixed mode" drive, containing a partition for the 360, a partition for my Linux stuff, and a partition for Windows that holds things like the installation files for OpenOffice and other software that I find indispensable.

All of that tucked away on neat little slabs of plastic, silicone, and metal. Each one of those thumb drives contains more memory space than literally all of my console memory cards combined, and yet as I gaze into this small green tin full of oddly shaped memory cards I cannot help but feel a sense of loss. Each of these cards is distinctly shaped so that you know simply at a glance what console it belongs to, whereas the thumb drives are ubiquitous and generic, lacking any real system identity.

I am not sure what it means, to miss something that I have not touched in years. Perhaps this is part of getting old. Or perhaps it is simply that I know that no matter how efficient my thumb drives are at holding my data, they will never enjoy the same association of identity to the joy of gaming that my memory cards do. This is progress...

Sigh...