It has been a long time since I last posted to my blog. I am quickly just coming on to tell you that whilst I may have closed down the other blog on my site, We Blog, a community blog, I intend to keep this going and keep using it more and more. At the moment I am finishing my first semester of second year (after a long time waiting to get back into the swing of things after hospital, I've finally made it here) at university.
As much as one of my YouTube videos states that Windows 8 is in my opinion a recommendation, I will not be purchasing it. Sure DirectX 12 will not function on Windows 7 and that means I cannot take advantage of this great new API. Unfortunately, that is not enough to make me give up features that I use and need on a regular basis.
For a start, I do not think I could give up the Aero glass theme as I am and have always been a fan of the theme. I could live without it but I would rather not have to trade in something I love for something that I may prefer for features like DirectX 12. There's no real games for DX12 at present anyway.
The next reason is because I have bought loads of software for Windows 7 (much more than before) and a lot of this is now incompatible with Windows 8, for example Stardock Windows Blinds 7. Even if it is compatible, most of it loses its novelty. Additionally, my Logitech QuickCam Sphere is supposedly incompatible with Windows 8.
I will not be upgrading my desktop, MacBook Pro or netbook to Windows 8. In fact, this business is pushes me to love Mac OS X more and more by the day.
Finally, I have heard that because of the fact that it is a new design of the Windows operating system, it is glitchy from the kernel upwards. I am not going too much into this but I have discovered that a lot of drivers that I used on 7 do not work with 8. Therefore, compatibility is something that I would lose with a lot of hardware. I just could not use 8 without full compatibility.
Since I now own Stardock WindowBlinds 8 for Windows 8 after the recent release, I have since transferred over to Windows 8 and I am loving it. I have the Start8 from Stardock to bring back the Start button and I have a Dell S2340T touchscreen display.
Also, my Gigabyte board has since had drivers released for Windows 8, meaning I can use it together with Windows 8.
Intel's new Haswell chips have been out for about half a year and are incredibly powerful CPUs. Ranging from the i3 to the i7, the 4th generation core processors was set from the offset to be a big thing.
But recently, my computer; known as The Zebra, which was a second generation Core i7 2600K based system, died on me. The problem was related to a motherboard issue. The system had to be replaced from board to CPU and I decided to replace it with a new Haswell system to make it as future-proofed as possible. The specs of the system are now being boosted several generations further, but it's not without problems.
For a start, I could not find any board featuring FireWire headers or connectors, making my drives with FireWire harder to connect to the system (I eventually decided to trade in FireWire for eSATA). This was none the less a disappointment. On top of that I could only get a decent board without PCI at all. Now it's fully understandable that PCI is being completely phased out, but it's just getting so rapid that it's more costly to the end user. Luckily, I found a mid range board that suits me fine and features just one PCI connector, the Gigabyte Z87-UD3H. This is actually my third Gigabyte and my third UD3 model, with my previous being the Z68XP-UD3 and the previous being the P45-UD3R model.
But the real problem is down to compatibility with Haswell. I've read numerous forums where users are complaining about solid state drives and compatibility with Haswell, in particular the Sandforce controller in the 1000 series (this does not include the SATA 6Gbps versions, apparently). This is the exact drive I own for my PC, so on top of a failing motherboard, I now know that I've got to fork out on a new solid state drive. The Sandforce controllers in the original drives were actually pretty bad for numerous reasons such as a false advertising AES256 instead of AES128 etc. but it was not enough to put me off buying four of them (with my MacBook Pro is the only one of the four that has been a Sandforce SATA 6Gbps).
Anyway, on top of the issues with the drive, there have also been reports that some power supply units (PSU) have also had problems, as such Corsair and other power supply manufacturers are now doing their bit to specify which of their units are working with Haswell boards. Now when you add all this together, it seems like a disaster on Intel's behalf, but from what I am reading it down to the fact that some drives are out of date and do not support the new C states to the full. C states are power states for a computer system, and apparently Haswell adds more C states that makes energy saving better in the system. Of course, all the hardware needs full compatibility with these states in order for it to work and this is where some power supply units and solid state drives have problems.
Corsair's compatibility list can be found here:
http://www.corsair.com/us/blog/haswell-compatibility-with-corsair-power-supplies/
You can share any experiences you may have had down below.
Firewire has suddenly become an obsolete connector in many areas of computing. When I build my previous computer in 2011(named the Zebra) it had a Firewire header and Firewire on the back (actually 2) and now when I'm building my new computer (due to a fault with the board) I've come across a huge problem when looking for boards that feature this connection.
It's becoming increasingly difficult to find the IEEE1394 standard anywhere now. Macs are starting to phase out a connector which they backed so hard and definitively for years until Thunderbolt came out. But Firewire still offers an excellent, CPU-free connector which is great for people who cannot afford a new hard drive with Thunderbolt (I wouldn't recommend USB because of it's topology and lack of daisy chaining).
To put Firewire into a PC is also getting more difficult as PCI is getting more and more obsolete by the day. Most Haswell boards do not feature PCI but feature PCIe x1 instead. Firewire cards in the form of x1 tend not to be hard to find, especially with an internal header.
I guess I better learn to embrace the future better...
Also, someone who agrees with my statement:
http://www.hispanicbusiness.com/2013/9/20/they_are_on_their_way_out.htm
Pasting single links is a new thing I'm starting to do with my posts on my blog.
This is an excellent piece of work that was carried out by an individual to change his standard black Corsair 600T into a green one. (I also have a Corsair 600T but it's white and apparently a special edition, although his seems more special).
http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=218528
Update: Here's another one for people reading this blog:
Now that the design of my site is finished (as of last month), I want to take a look at what I have actually changed and managed to construct, my achievements with the site and what I have learned.
New features
The new design
During version 1 of my site (circa April 2010 - Dec 2012) I had no real theme to my site. It became a cluttered collection of pages using a cheap template offered to me by my host.
In December 2012 I had a thought to redesign my page by the end of January 2013. By January 2013 version 2.0 was released. It had barely any real CSS involved in it, in fact most was included in the pages. In April 2013 I rebuilt my blog using Word Press and then added my community blog We Blog as well. By the end of May 2013 version 2.2 was released and there was new PHP and MySQL content powering the pages.
As much as it does not seem that long ago it was that bad, in June 2013 the redesign started again and by 4th of July 2013 version 3.0 was released. It now featured HTML5 and CSS3. The site was built with PHP and DHTML that made the site more dynamic. I made the site in to my own CMS (content management system) that made updating sections of it much easier. I was very impressed with how it turned out. Just last month, version 3.1 was released which featured so many new features over 3.0 such as the new menu which allows me to put many different sections and pages on my site without cluttering the menu and added a new fresh design to a few of the older designs using PHP. I no longer need to update the page when I add a new article, review or tutorial as it is all done by PHP. I now have my own liveblog, gallery and a special way of updating my site.
The gallery
Whilst I was building my site, I added a photo gallery for my photos. This one was attractive and was actually built by my host. But by version 3.0 I was thinking about replacing it with my own custom gallery and by version 3.1 when I released the new design I launched my new gallery as well. The gallery is constructed with the server side language PHP. PHP builds up the page using the images on the server already. I can create an album or section within an album which gives more detailed information about a photo. For instance, in the album Gismo and Petro, you can see there are two sections; namely Gismo and Petro, and they are divided automatically by the PHP which generates the site. Of course, this would be demanding on the server, so I developed JCATCH, which is my own caching system for PHP. It assesses the cached content to check if it needs updated and updates it or throws the user the cached version.
Liveblog
An easy to update blog that I can post like on Twitter. It will automatically update with the latest news when I post. I will be using this to cover live events, as I have been invited to a few events (Nintendo and a few other software companies in the past).
CMS
Content Management Systems are designed to make it easier to put information on a site. I have built my site to make it as flexible as possible. If I want to upload a new review, all I do is open my CMS application (I built it) and give it a HTML file and any images or other content and all the rest is done for me. The CMS is called BlackCat, to go alongside BlackRabbit.
What I have learned
JavaScript
I learned quite a lot of JavaScript when creating this website. In fact, I have made my own library on my site of JavaScript that allows me to easily reuse it for other sites. The JavaScript on my website is used for many things. One of the most important is the menu. I did not however, write the menu. The menu is by MenuCool.com. I did however write the code that maximizes the page and sorts the menu for different user agents. I also have managed many other smaller JavaScript uses through out the site that make the site the way it is.
CSS3
The site is full CSS3 and has many CSS3 features in it. This was something I learned to the full from no knowledge of CSS at all within about one week. Once I got the hang of CSS the site was just to be built (this was the starting point, after all).
HTML5
HTML5 is the new standard of HTML and it really is fantastic for producing sites. No more of the end tags for instance with images (that's XHTML only) but more focus on the requirements such as alt on images which means you never forget it. My site is now fully HTML5 which means that I can easily embed video into it without the need for making some crazy video plugin or using something like the QuickTime plugin.
What is still to be done
I have made a good design with some features I had only dreamed of before. This year I will be focusing on what matters on my site, content. On top of that, BlackRabbit will be getting a redesign and version 2 will be fully released by the end of the year. If you are unsure on what BlackRabbit is, I will be producing an article for my website that neatly describes its purpose and functions.
Some software pages are still not complete and will be undergoing work this month. I hope to have a preview of every piece of software by the start of November.
What I have achieved
I hope that you would agree with me in saying that I managed to achieve a nice website that looks smart and finished. If not, please do say what you do not like about my site and what you do like as a comment below. Feedback from my site has an average of 7/10 so somethings must be missing (I do realise that a few pages are inconsistent since they use the version 2.0 edition of my website).
If you want to quickly fill in the feedback survey, just click here. If you wish to contact me about my site and feel that you have interesting feedback, you can contact me using the sites contact form.
If like me you love following big computing companies like Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft and all the others out there, then you may have noticed that there was just a big release from two of the larger companies there.
Both Apple and Google have just released new devices; Google with the new Nexus 7 (I love and hate my 2012 Nexus 7 because it's constantly running slow, but is now used for simply browsing the web and playing Happy Street[!]) and Apple with the new iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C. Now it is confirmed that Apple has set the 15th of October (great news for you Calum Cormack) as the date for their next event.
Expected at the event is the new iPad. Some mentioned that the new iPad, now in it's fifth iteration, will feature a smaller bezel, thus allowing the iPad to shrink slightly. Others have stated that a 13 inch iPad may be on the cards. Whilst both of these are feasible, neither have concrete evidence yet.
However, as much a Retina iPad Mini would be something to expect don't get your hopes up. It is completely understandable why Apple has not put one into it's medium size tablet. Retina displays actually made the iPad 3 (first with Retina display) thicker and heavier than the iPad 2. Apple would be giving up the very thin design of the Mini for a display that is not necessarily needed on the company's cheaper line of tablets. However, it seems the right time to do it, as Google launched it's new Nexus 7 which has an eye-watering 323 pixels per inch, and if Apple intends to keep up with Google, or overtake, they will need to push forward.
Also at the event will hopefully be that long awaited update (for me anyway) of the Mac Mini. This year we will see Haswell enter into the mini sized Mac. As well as the Mini, we are also expecting a couple of other Macs including the iMac and possibly MacBook Pro (or Retina?).
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/506677/20130917/apple-ipad-launch-15-october-new-imac.htm
Whilst my iPhone is downloading iOS 7 right as I type, I wanted to go through the features that will make it brilliant. This is my personal opinion so disagree if you like.
Control Center
Control Center is like the Notification Center but for controlling your device. Swipe up and access all of your settings easily, much like Android's Quick Settings (it's getting a bit copy-cattish here now). Control Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Do Not Disturb, a handy torch and more.
AirDrop
Us Mac users have had AirDrop for about 2 years, but it is the most used part of OS X that I use on a regular basis. Send files between Mac and Mac to make an easy file transfer. Now iOS 7 brings the same feature. You can easily share a photo with a friend who is running iOS or Mac OS X without the need for third party applications.
Notification Center
It's just so beautiful. It loses it's silly tweed background and goes for the full on iOS 7 design. The Today feature will be useful for me as I can check the weather, stocks (and yes, I constantly check stocks, mainly because I'm interested in the computing industry stock) and more.
Siri
Lord Siri will be updated as well. Apparently more voices are coming with it, but that's not what I am excited about. iOS 7's version of Siri will bring the ability to control the device much more. For instance, you can ask him to turn on Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. Great for when you are on a hands free like I am sometimes.
Safari
Safari has better performance. It also looks more attractive and the tabs are organised in a neater way that will suit every device. Tabs are shown from above, a bit like a magazine rack. It all looks awesome.
But to finish
I never mentioned how I do like the consistency of the new user interface. It is so much more consistent and coherent that iOS 6 and before. I am excited a lot about the interface and the new design is a change I will have to get used to, but it will be great to try something new, hopefully.
I adored the GameCube. I have games for that have a total value of around £500+ which is incredible.
Games like The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess and the Legend of Zelda The Wind Waker, Wario Land, Mario Kart Double Dash, Pikmin and Pikmin 2, Final Fantasy Chrystal Chronicles, Pokemon Coliseum and Pokemon Channel, Billy Hatcher and The Giant Egg, Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime Echoes, Metal Arms Glitch In The System, F-Zero AX/GX, Doshin The Giant, Super Smash Bros Melee and Super Mario Sunshine were among the little purple box's best titles in my opinion. The console had great controllers and had good graphics for it's generation.
It's successor, the Wii, may have been the most successful console of that generation to date, but it certainly was not the greatest console ever made. I'm sure a few of my friends would undoubtedly agree that the GameCube holds that category.
What about the Xbox 360?
Whilst to so many people out there, the Xbox 360 is the console of consoles, to me it most definitely was not that. Throughout the years of the 360's life, I managed to find just four games that I enjoyed, namely Halo 3, Halo Reach, Banjo Kazooie (I have this on my Nintendo 64 as well) and Metal Arms Glitch In The System (my brother also owns this on his PS2). I can hardly say I loved the 360, as my original purpose to buying it was specifically for system links and online play of Halo 3.
There is no doubt, I disliked the Xbox 360 as a console.
Ok then, PS3?
Well the PS3 had a bigger impact for me. I genuinely got it as a Blu Ray player with access to games at the same time. I originally got the Metal Gear Solid 4 bundle and when I started to play MGS4, did not like it.
After trying to get into it, I really did fall in love with that game. In fact, it's one of the games on my list of games that I complete once a year. The game was fabulous and that continued on to my next favourite PS3 games, MotorStorm Apocalypse and then inFamous 2. I then downloaded the first three Spyro games, Mickey's Wild Adventure, C&C, C&C Red Alert and could continue to play my old PS1 games (Croc, Croc 2, James Bond Tomorrow Never Dies).
Overall, I liked the PS3 better than the Xbox 360, especially as a system, but still not over the GameCube.
To the point
Now, the point of this post was about the relationship between the GameCube and the Wii U. It's clear to me that the Wii U has a wide range of games, but there are some games focused more at the `serious` gamer (which I certainly had lost since 2003 until Halo 3 came out in 2007, the only serious games I played were PC games). However, there have never been so many brilliant games on the one console since I have become a serious gamer again. So far, after less than a year, I have a total of 8 games for my Wii U, I already own just under two thirds of my Xbox 360 library which had a total of 13 games. I also own 15 Virtual Console games for my Wii U.
Now, with the Wii U bringing back the serious gamers with the Pro Controller and the awesome new GamePad, I can see another GameCube.
To date, we have had some really awesome games such as Nintendo Land, ZombieU, Pikmin 3, New Super Mario Bros U, Game & Wario and Rayman Legends, all of which feel like, well, GameCube titles. There were countless titles for the GameCube with success. Third party games were good, and the GameCube was considered the Resident Evil player's console (just ask Greg Innes, one of my friends from back in school who holds Resident Evil time trial records), we had awesome games like Metal Arms Glitch In The System, James Bond NightFire and Final Fantasy Chrystal Chronicles but the GameCube relied on Nintendo to release the awesome games such as Sunshine and Wind Waker.
Now you may notice, all the third parties such as trashy EA and Bethesda have already announced a lack of support and interest in the Wii U. Also, so far the Wii U has been incredibly unpopular, just as the GameCube was. Could this mean Nintendo end up making the majority of the games to a very high quality standard just as they did with the GameCube to keep up and try and win back it's gamers?
The line up for the Wii U is incredibly Nintendo-published with loads of games like Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze, Super Mario 3D World, Mario Kart 8, Super Smash Bros 4 and the two new Zelda games (one being a remake of one of the greatest games to have ever existed, and one of the first to ever get 97% or above from GamesMaster magazine). We could even see a new Metroid game or F-Zero (both would be nice!).
So will the Wii U replicate the GameCube's brilliance?
