Blog

The thoughts, opinions, happenings, and just plain ramblings of a seemingly boring person.

Battlefield 4 Beta

Categories Gaming, Geekery

BF4 skyscraper collapsingI don't often play beta versions of games. I mostly prefer to wait until the final product, rather than get used to an incomplete version of a game or get frustrated at bugs.

The one exception to that which I can think was Unreal Tournament 3 back in 2007, but I think that might have been a pre-release demo rather than an actual 'beta'.

However, after some prodding from Michael (who pointed out that it might be a decent test of the newly-built Executor), I installed the beta of Battlefield 4 and played it a bit over the … Read more →

Building the Executor

Categories Gaming, Geekery, Technology

I've taken advantage of the long weekend to put together my new computer, which I have named Executor (after the Super Star Destroyer of the same name :)). Photos are at the bottom of this post.

For this build, I concentrated on putting together a quiet computer, but one that is still capable in the gaming department. Everything is new, with the exception of the graphics card, which I have carried across from the last upgrade of Executor's predecessor.  The specs of Executor are:

  • Fractal Design Define R4 case (with window and another fan added to the front
… Read more →

Getting Ready for the Next Build

Categories Geekery, Technology

It's been the longest time between computer builds for me at the moment. I originally built The Cannon back in January 2010, so it is coming up to 4 years that it's been in service. It has definitely survived the test of time, although I have given it some substantial upgrades of the past year which has helped keep it going strong past the customary three-year expiry of computing products.

But alas, all good things must come to a replacement, so over the past few weeks I have specced out a new computer, and am eagerly awaiting for the … Read more →

Tomb Raider: A Fantastic Reboot

Categories Gaming

Tomb RaiderOver the past few weeks I have finally gotten around to playing the recent Tomb Raider reboot that I picked up for cheap in the Steam sale earlier this year.

I was pretty amazed at how good this game was. I had heard lots of good things before starting to play it, but nevertheless I still had low expectations of it. That was partly because I'm not that much of a third-person fan on the PC, and partly because I'm not a fan of reboots in general.

On both counts I was quite impressed. In terms of being a reboot, … Read more →

Why Haven’t You Turned on 2-Step Verification?

Categories Internet, Technology

two-step verificationWe've all heard of it, or even seen it personally many times: "my account was hacked!". Usually I'll get the scam emails from a friend's email address saying they are trapped overseas and to send them money to help them out, or maybe the general spam or phishing attempts from one of their online accounts.

You might think it won't happen to you, but all it can take is logging in on a computer that might be infected by something, or using the same password for your account on another site that had its servers hacked.

There is … Read more →

My Rekindled Love of Lego

Categories Geekery, Lego

Me building the Lego SSDJust over two years ago, I saw this video of one the biggest and most terrifyingly awesome Lego sets: the Super Star Destroyer (10221). I remember being awed by it, as it awakened my childhood love of Lego combined with my continuing adult love of Star Wars.

I can't remember a specific point in my life when I stopped playing with Lego. Like every kid born from the 1970s on, my family had loose Lego that we would make neat things with.

Rather than just loose Lego, it was around the start of the 1990s that I can … Read more →

Getting Into Podcasts

Categories Geekery, Internet, Technology

Pocket CastsAfter starting a job in the city, and now for the first time having to travel to Brisbane's bastion of capitalism on public transport, I have had to find ways to fill in the time whilst being on the train.

Reading on the train is not an option for me; for some reason, when I read on transport (cars, trains, etc.), I develop headaches, so I usually limit my reading to checking a few emails or briefly catching up on news.  For the first few months of the commute, I have been listening to my music library on my phone, … Read more →

Feedly is My Choice as a Replacement for Google Reader

Categories Internet, Technology

Feedly Logo After the gnashing of teeth that greeted the news of Google's decision to close down Google Reader (effective in a few days), over the past few months I have tried out more than a few possible replacements.

I have been surprised by how many 'Reader replacements' have popped up or gained attention since the announcement. It definitely seems like Google had largely killed-off a market when they developed Reader, and now have almost single-handedly recreated it by shutting down their service.

A lot are aiming to just re-create Google Reader and it's features (or previous features); The Old Reader, … Read more →

Delayed Gaming: The Walking Dead & Journey

Categories Gaming

Recently I have played through a few critically acclaimed games that were released last year that I never actually got around to playing: season one of The Walking Dead episodic series, and the downloadable PS3 title, Journey.

The Walking DeadI had picked up season one of The Walking Dead in a Steam sale for some ridiculous price months ago, and over the past few weeks played through all the episodes. I have previously played almost every episodic series released by Telltale Games (like Sam & Max, and Strong Bad), so the uncensored swearing and violence of The Walking Dead… Read more →

Experimenting with GNOME Shell Extensions

Categories Geekery, Technology, Work

After using Fedora 17 and 18 as my OS at work for the past few months, I've been getting to know the somewhat controversial GNOME Shell. Although recent googling has found that a lot gripes with GNOME Shell may be addressed in the recently released GNOME 3.8 (which will be included in the upcoming Fedora 19), I thought I might share a few things that I have done to make my desktop environment in GNOME 3.6 a little more usable without having to switch to other environments like Cinammon or Xfce.

Like with Chrome and Firefox as browsers, GNOME … Read more →