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Dillon 1st MRB

Retired 1st MRB
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Posts posted by Dillon 1st MRB

  1. My Next Short Story

    in Mess Hall

    Posted

    wow okay first off it isn't school work. Secondly i just wanted to see if anyone else wanted to put input into it cause when i made the [1st MRB] book everyone wanted to there names in it.

    it isn't a school assignment, it was for the fun of it but if you guys don't want to have a say then that is perfectly fine with me.

    I was just terrified someone (me) was going to die.

  7. New higher end video card - $449.99 (allegedly)

    in Hardware Guides & Maintenance Questions

    Posted

    Well, you may remember my prior post on the 7970 being released, and its a great card. However, it is $550-$600, so its out of the reach of most of us. Well, the 7950 has been released at the slightly less heart rending $450. You can read all about it, but here's the thing: You only can justify it if you have a viewing area of ~4 megapixels. What does this mean? Well, the old VGA standard resolution was 640x480. Multiply that out, and you get 307 kilo pixels. For HDTV's, you have 1920x1080 as the standard, which when that is mutiplied out, you get 2 megapixels. If you are running two of these monitors, voila! 4 megapixels. So, what's the big deal about these? Well, the 7950 is a better card than nvidia's behmouth GTX 580, which sells for ~$500.

    For most of us, this card is not a great option. Its, dare I say, too powerful for us. Even for my now old and dated resolution of 1680x1050 (a 16:10 rato rather than 16:9), I only run 1.7 megapixels. I am looking to the mid-range products coming out in the next month or so for a great product that may fit my next upgrade. That being said, it will be a phenominal day for all gamers when we see nvidia's "Kepler" products released. Rumor has it those cards are going to be extremely powerful with some pretty good efficiency. My biggest gripe with this generation's nvidia cards is how stinking hot and power hungry they are. It is looking like these issues are going to be resolved, which will make for some great competition.

  8. New 1st MRB Spotlight

    in Mess Hall

    Posted

    Nice! When do I get mine?

    Wouldn't yours have to be part of that one movie you made where you played that pizza boy who delivers to the Sorority House where all the girls have been drinking?

    It was a great.. umm... *short* film. <3

  12. Buying New Parts

    in Hardware Guides & Maintenance Questions

    Posted

    There are two factors:

    1. Brand of PSU - if its a quality one (just give me the manufacturer, but model helps too.

    2. Type of Thermaltake case.

    These two factos will determine if this is a fair deal, or a great deal.

    Here is the thing: I am rocking an AMD Phenom II 980, and I'm looking to upgrade. It just isn't as fast as an intel Core i3 these days, and there are new chips coming out soon (Ivy Bridge is coming within 3 months). Prices are going to drop.

    Right now, a Core i5-2500k w/ motherboard can be had for ~$260-$300, depending on the motherboard and what you need. Its a way better cpu.

    So, if its a $40 PSU and a $50 case, I'd say pass. RAM like you listed is running for $30. You are looking at a $100 difference between your buddy's system and building a rocking Core i5 system.

    However, if you just don't have funds to do this and get a gpu, it is't a bad deal, by any means. Do you have a full on budget set for a system?

  22. Scandanavia! The three countries!!!

    in Mess Hall

    Posted

    I may be odd, but I like to know "stuff." While I've had a decent working knowledge of England, Wales, and Ireland, I've been largely ignorant of our Scandinavian brethren and sistren and their respective countries. So, I went about educating myself. So when I look at a map of Scandinavia (the region of Norway, Sweden, and Finland), it looks sort of like a rather painfully partially split penis and a scrotum (ballsack).

    First, we'll start with Norway, home to Zahl and some other people.

    Norway would be the western-most country. The top of the penis, if you will (not the head). There is some very interesting history for Norway. For one, it was in a partnership with Denmark for over 400 years, which resulted in a bit of a drain on the intellectuals and artisans leaving for Copenhagen. Then, in 1814, Denmark lost a bit of a war with the UK. And Denmark lost, thanks to Lord Admiral Viscount Nelson (and his disobedience of a direct order), and Denmark gave Norway to Sweden. Norway, not liking this one iota, said "fuck you" and declared their independance. Norway pretty much did okay until WWII. They managed to stay neutral in WWI (which was a VERY good idea, considering how fucked up it was) and then was under Nazi occupation. Norway had a pretty hopping Resistance and to this day, Norway gives the UK a Christmas Tree that is then erected (*snicker*) in Trafalgar Square in thanks for their assistance during WWII. Norway is CLASSY.

    Norway has a shit ton of mountainous land. This is what helps fjords be fjords. Because of this mountainous land, it tends to be fairly high in elevation for a country with so much ocean-front land.

    Norway has different dialects. I never knew this. North Norwegian, West Norwegian, East Norwegian, and Trondelag (its supposed to have cool bastard o with a /, but I can't do those at work) Norwegian. Why the fuck couldn't it be Southern Norwegian? Because its spoken in the middle of the country. Norwegian is similar to Swedish and Danish, and just like everyone else in the world, they think if they yell it, it will be understood.

    Some famous Norwegians who made the world a better place:

    Edvard Grieg - composed some kickass classical music.

    Henrik Ibsen - who may have the sweetest sideburns known to man.

    Edvard Munch - he did The Scream. Not the movie, but the cool yet disturbing painting.

    Sweden - home of Elf and Berg and some other people.

    Sweden is the bottom of the penis. Sweden is historically a bit of a bastard. Not in a Nazi way, but more of in a UK or US way. See, Sweden had a full-on Empire. Sweden started off pretty poor in finances and in people. Well, then they decided they would export the one thing they did well: ass-kicking. Sweden took over parts of Poland and Lithuania and most of Finland as well as took some parts of the Holy Roman Empire. Pretty much the only reason we don't all speak Swedish is because Sweden failed at the one thing everyone fails at: invading Russia. Sweden was good at staying neutral in WWI and not so good at it in WWII. However, they got really good at smuggling out Jews from the Nazi's, which is funny, because the Nazi's sure didn't want them, but they didn't want others to take them from them. But Sweden did it. Good on them.

    Sweden is not Norway. But parts of it are like Norway. It has mountains, but no where near the amount of them. Sweden has a lot more arable land, so they have a bit more agriculture.

    Sweden has a king and a queen! Suck that, England!

    Famous Swedes:

    Carl Linnaeus - pretty much the one of the grand-daddies of ecology.

    Anders Celsius - decided 212 degrees was just too many, made a metric temperature scale.

    Abba and Ace of Base - kind of the same band, but from 2 different decades.

    Finally, we get to the scrotum. Finland.

    People from Finland - Ella, Jani, and maybe even other people.

    Finland had a bit of a bad time, historically. They were sort of around, and then then the Swedes took over in the 1100's. Then the Russians took over in 1809. However, Finland recognized an opportunity when they saw it, so when the Russians decided to kill all of each other, Finland said, "We are Finland!" Finland kept themselves separate from Russia for the next 20 years until Russia said, "Game on, bitch!" Oh, did they have it wrong. See, Finland had one mean little fucker on its side, Simo Hayha who decided to be so ridiculously good at killing, he was the 1st MRB's first Badass of the Month. Russia technically took land from Finland, but at the cost of huge Soviet casualties. Enough that one Red Army general stated "We have won just about enough ground to bury our dead." Nice job, Finland! During WWII, Finland ended up allied with Germany because Russia just would not quit invading Finland. I suppose if I had to choose between someone who hated me because they wanted my land and someone who liked me because I looked like them, I'd have made the same choice.

    Finland doesn't have many mountains, except in Lapland. Its a pretty its a pretty cool place, and by cool, I mean cold compaired to the two "dick" countries.

    Finland has a sizable population of ethnic Swedes. And they speak Swedish, too! There is also a Karelian language, for those from the southeast.

    Famous Fins:

    Simo Hayha - immortalized White Death in the 1st MRB newsletter.

    Linus Torvalds - he gave us Linux! yeah!!!!

    Similarities:

    All three countries celebrate Walpurgis Night. Its a good old holiday (read: Pagan), but instead of doing fun things with virgins, they burn stuff. Lots of stuff. So yeah, its not so bad, but not as good as doing things with virgins.

    All three countries have a people called Sami. They are from the far north, and personally, I think they should rise up create their own country of Samiland, or perhaps even better, Samiwhich. If there capital could be called, "Bichegetmea" I would die a happy man.

    All three countries worry about hitting moose (European Elk) and/or reindeer with their cars.

  23. Do you transcode video? Very interesting read

    in Hardware Guides & Maintenance Questions

    Posted

    First off, transcoding is the conversion of one video file from one format and/or resolution into another. That being said, I was doing some research, and I wanted to find out what which graphics were included with the Core i5-2500k, the Core i7-2600, and the Core i7-2600k. Turns out, the 2600 has Intel 2000, while the two k models have Intel 3000. Why is this important? Well, Intel introduced Quicksync with the Sandy Bridge model of cpus. This allow them to use both the cpu and the on-die video decoder/encoder to assist with the transcode.

    Most people who perform transcodes utilize Handbrake. Its good and its free. However, the two big products out there, Cyberlnk's Media Espresso and ArcSoft Media Converter 7 utilize Quicksync. What difference does it make? Here is an example:

    ~15Mbps 1080p movie into 720p H.264 at 4Mbps

    Intel Quicksync on an i5-2500k - 98.4 fps

    nVidia 460GTX - 66.2 fps

    Intel i5, no Quicksync - 57.4 fps

    Radeon 6970 - 57.4 fps

    Radeon 6870 - 57.4 fps

    Phenom II X6 1100T - 53.9 fps

    Here is the thing - for some reason, nVidia's CUDA conversion looks.. well, terrible. In my own experience, I can't get a good looking video conversion (with a good source) on my GTX 460 for the life of me. However, I go to my HTPC's i3-2120, turn on Quicksync, and I am able to do it faster and better.

    There is a source aticle I found, which oddly enough is on one of the websites I frequent a lot when I was trying to find out what I was doing wrong. Turns out, I didn't do anything wrong. The author had the same issues.

    Source Article: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/the-san...3-2100-tested/9

    The lesson here for me:

    If you need it fast and good, use the Intel Sandy Bridge with Quicksync (if you have the programs).

    If you just need it fast - nvidia is okay.

    If you just need it good - use the cpu or an AMD video card.

  25. To re-install or not to re-install...

    in Hardware Guides & Maintenance Questions

    Posted

    Wait a sec. Don't move your crap. Here is the best program known to man:

    Steam Library Manager

    However, have you checked your SMART monitoring? Are you sure it isn't just the HD failing? There has been some disconcerting things happening with some WD and Seagate drives. Who makes your hard drive? Every manufacturer has HD scanning software out there. If you have a failing HD, a reformat may cause some lost data.

    If you like advanced stuff (and it sounds like you do if you are in school for this stuff, here is a guide I wrote up somewhere. Its cropped up in a couple of different places, but it utilizes Windows Junctions.

    This guide is about folder junctions (aka symbolic links), and how to use them to move a folder to another drive without interrupting the operation of any programs that make use of that directory. It is designed to help solve the problem that has arisen with SSDs: using some games/programs on one drive and others on another, especially in (but not limited to) situations involving Valve’s Steam, Electronic Arts’ Origin, or similar services. The reason for this is because, at the time of writing, most SSDs aren’t large enough in capacity to support much more than an operating system, a collection of basic applications, and a few games, requiring the user to split the data to best effect. Given that Steam/Origin/others rely on having all their data inside a single directory, we need a way to do that. For best effect, you should focus on keeping your most-used games on the SSD.

    And you’re in luck! Microsoft provides NTFS level support for folder junctions (which are a form of symbolic links, in Unix/Mac parlance) for individual folders. Think of junctions as file system level shortcuts - only the operating system knows that the affected file or folder is actually somewhere else, and it is presented to the application as if it is where the link is placed. For example, you can link “C:\Games\Call of Duty” to “E:\CoD”. If done correctly, which is the point of this guide to explain, the application remains unaware that the file or folder actually points to somewhere else, and continues to operate business as usual.

    One thing Microsoft did not do for you, however, is provide a tool for creating symbolic links. While you can create them through the command line interface cmd.exe using the mklink command, an open source tool released under the GPL has been built to handle this for you called Symlinker, which will be the focus of this thread.

    There are twelve steps (just like most alcohol addiction recovery programs – ed.) to creating a folder junction symbolic link with Symlinker.

    1. Close whichever game manager, if any, is responsible for the game you which to move to the SSD.

    2. Copy the desired game folder from where it’s installed to a spot on the faster SSD. Something simple like C:\Symlinked\ will work.

    3. Delete the source folder when you’ve verified a good copy - you cannot create a folder junction in a location that contains a folder of the same name.

    4. Create the folder junction in Symlinker. To do this, download and open the file as linked above, and:

    5. Set the type of symbolic link that you want to create to Folder symbolic link

    6. Under ‘Destination Folder’, in the ‘Select the type of link’ drop down, select ‘Directory Junction’

    7. Under ‘Link Folder’, click Explore… and select the parent folder of the folder you deleted in step 2

    8. Under ‘Destination Folder’, click Explore… and select the folder on the SSD that you copied in step 1

    9. Select the name of the folder only, starting from the right and stopping just short of the first backslash, and copy to the clipboard-

    10. Back under ‘Link Folder,’ paste the folder name in the field labeled ‘Now give a name to the link:’-

    11. Click ‘Create Link’ at the bottom, and acknowledge the confirmation popup

    12. If the link was successfully created, start up your game manager, and test the game in question!

    Note: Symlinker will tell you that it was successful even if it fails sometimes - you will know that you used it correctly if:

    a) There is a folder with a shortcut symbol on its icon in the original installed directory, named the same as the folder it replaced

    B) By clicking on it, you are taken to the folder's new location.

    This has been tested by the author with Steam, EA Download Manager and EA Origin.

    Under Steam:

    1. Day of Defeat Source

    2. Civilization V

    Outside of Steam:

    1. Neverwinter Nights 2

    2. Company of Heroes

    However, how old is your copy of Windows? How bad is the registry? There is only 1 registry scanner I trust, and its Auslogics (also make a phenominal disk defragment program.

    http://majorgeeks.com/Auslogics_Registry_Cleaner_d6499.html

    Here is a regsistry defrag program that isn't horrible, made by the same folks.

    http://majorgeeks.com/Auslogics_Registry_Defrag_d5668.html

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