Happy New Year!

Back in the 90s and early 2000s I was a full time PC gamer, I cut my teeth on Doom, Quake, Unreal and the myriad of 1st and 3rd person games using mouse and keyboard and felt like I was competitive, or at least could hold my own against random gamers in the game lobbies of the day.

In 2005 with the release of the 360 and eventually PS3, the downfall of the PC industry (mid 2000s were in my opinion the dark days of PC gaming) I switched to consoles for simplicity. I had kids at the time and didn’t have as much spare time to tweak my PC, upgrade and Steam was still not the convenient behemoth of software that it is now. It just made sense to switch to consoles.

Now I recall playing Call of Duty 2 on the 360 and thinking, “using a controller sucks, it’s so bloody difficult to feel accurate, I wish I could use m&k or buy some addon to use M&k, I’ll never get good at using a controller”. It took time, but I did eventually get decent at using a controller. Eventually I did end up love using a controller, it was common for all machines (no different key layouts, no different weights per-controller if compared to mice). It was nice to be able to game at home then go to family’s house and play on a different console and not be bothered about the control mechanism because in the end all controllers are basically the same. This last year I got back into PC gaming, I got a good used gaming PC off my local Kijiji, loaded steam and realized that it was time to go back to PC gaming. It was easy to use the 360 wireless controller dongle to use controllers and thus I figured I could just replace my console gaming with PC gaming, save money and enjoy games at a better graphical fidelity. Until last night when I decided it was time to go buy a nice gaming mouse and keyboard.

What the hell happened to me? I feel like a club footed, one-eyed gimp monkey playing shooters (in my certain case, The Division). I can’t remember all the keys to play the game properly. Using a keyboard doesn’t feel intuitive for movement, opening inventory, mantling barricades, sticking for cover, etc. I died 5 times in the span of 15 minutes because the mouse felt TOO fast, movement too twitchy.

I never thought going back to M&K after 10+ years away from it would be so damn difficult. I love my new mouse and keyboard but I won’t lie, I was seriously questioning my decision on buying the new components.

Anyone else find the same? Anyone else decide to skip M&K and stick with a controller?

I played a few competitive matches with a controller in Gears 4 PC but I could tell that to get to the ‘next level’ online, at least in Gears4, I would need to use something that allowed for faster aiming but damn, I suspect I would suck so bad using M&K people on my team would question if I was drunk.

TLDR: Going back to M&K from a controller is a lot harder than I thought.

This is the mouse that I bought:

Logitech G502 Proteus Spectrum

And here is the Keyboard:

Logitech G610 Orion Brown Backlit Mechanical

For a while I’ve had a HTPC.  At first it started out as an old laptop that I put a new hard drive in and installed Ubuntu Linux on, along with Kodi/XBMC.  Near your TV though having yet another screen to clutter the display and no access to multi-channel audio (the laptop only had stereo out) made the laptop less than perfect.

I camped out on Kijiji and found a guy selling an older case with mini-itx motherboard and older intel CPU.  I was more interested in the case to be honest but oddly enough the mobo and cpu (and ram) fit in another server application I wanted to update so I used all 3 parts from the system I bought used.  The case was one of Silverstone’s receiver-like cases, it looks perfectly normal sitting next to my receiver, XBOX, PS4 and myriad of devices I have in my home theater setup.

Silverstone Grandia GD08

I bought an integrated motherboard CPU combination (AMD APU) and some ram and threw it all in the case and was happy with what I had.  I ran this way since 2013 but on a whim this last December I decided to find out how much a CPU upgrade would be since I was pretty sure that the motherboard was end of life (EOL) and usually that is a good time to upgrade the CPU to the maximum the motherboard will support to try and squeak out a little more life from the unit.  I bought an upgraded CPU from TigerDirect (they’re usually pretty good at matching EOL hardware and CPUS).  I decided to upgrade the power supply that came with the original HTPC case from the limited 380watt power supply to a used power supply from Kijiji.  Normally a 750 watt power supply would cost at least $100 but I got a good brand name model from Corsair for $50 which was nice.  The unit was hardly used and while the fit was tight (the power supply wasn’t modular so finding room in a tiny case for 400 power cables was tricky) it ended up working perfectly.

At this point the HTPC was fine, the CPU/APU upgrade was significantly faster than the old APU I was using.  By the way, APU is an integrated video GPU and multi-core CPU.  APUs in general are perfect for building a HTPC since the APU takes so little space compared to a regular CPU/GPU combination.  As usual though, camping Kijiji found me a GTX660 GPU, while not top of the line it was significantly faster than the APU, and more than double the speed of my full size computer’s GPU.  I reviewed the dimensions of the GTX660, they would fit inside the HTPC case and I had more than enough power connectors to feed the GPU so I bought the GTX used for $125 when new they were going for $209+tax.

So now I have a HTPC that plays all my media files but will play most new PC games as well at framerates significantly better than the XBOX One or the PS4.  Overall I’m happy with how it turned out.  With so many more fans in the HTPC case it is a lot louder but when watching a movie or playing a game you don’t really notice the sound considering that my media case seems to help muffle a lot of the sound of the fans.

I’ve been using Android for close to 4 years now, I started with a Samsung Galaxy S, upgraded to a Samsung Galaxy S3 and this December I switched camps and bought a Sony Z3.  I was a fan of Samsung mostly because how easy it was to get one since nearly every carrier here in Canada stocks and sells them.  On paper the Galaxy series seem like good phones, they have great specs, nice screens, and for the most part are supported well from Samsung (barring the OG SGS of course).  The problem I found with Galaxy phones is that they feel really cheap.  The price of the phone doesn’t say cheap (probably because the specs are high at the device launch) but the overall finish of the devices are cheap.  Plastic cases, cheap battery covers, terrible implementation of their launches (Touchwiz).

After using my SGS3 for nearly 3 years I wanted to get a new phone but sadly due to the plan I have with my provider it was not cost effective.  I have a pretty generous data plan with my provider and in order for me to get a ‘free’ phone and upgrade I would have to give up my plan and switch to a more expensive plan.  This was not something I wanted to do.  Luckily a friend on one of my tech forums that a used, unlocked Sony Z3 for sale.

Now originally I wanted to buy a Google Nexus device.  After having a Nexus 7 since 2012 I was really happy on how open and well supported the device was.  Yes the Nexus is a generally forgettable device on fit and feel, similar to the SGS series, but the software support and overall performance of the device was really attractive.  It just worked, and if I wanted to try a new ROM it was extremely easy to pick one and flash it to the device without having to jump through 400 hoops (I’m looking at you Samsung Odin).  Sadly the Nexus phone that was released this year, the Nexus 6 was too big for my liking.  Not to mention the size but overall the device received a mixed reception, mostly due to it’s high price.

I like Sony products, I had read good things about the Z3 line (both full Z3 and their compact edition).  I’d seen enough feedback on the XDA forums about Sony’s dev group participating well in releasing their sources to developers so that suggested to me that they were more open than Samsung in regards to people modifying their phones.  That plus their version of launcher (I don’t even know what they call their launcher) seemed well organized and had enough useful improvements over stock Android that the Z3 would be a nice change.

Overall the Z3 has been exceptional.  I get around 2 1/2 days worth of battery life from the phone, it’s responsive and pretty much everything I’ve thrown at it runs flawlessly, from games to apps, to videos, etc.  I haven’t been overly thrilled with the availability of cases but I found a few that work fine.  I also like the magnetic charger which works well but I can’t help but think it’s a bit finicky.  My biggest concerns are the battery life.  Yes, right now, the battery life is amazing, but both of my SGS devices were really good when I first got them.  But, as time went on, the battery life on my SGS went in the toilet.  It would take a long time to charge and the battery would drain really quickly.  I’m not sure if it is just because the removable batteries Samsung supplies are crap or just the daily cycle of charge, use, charge, use caused the battery to become less efficient in keeping a charge.  With the Z3 not having a removable battery this could be a real issue.  I’ve been more diligent in plugging in my Z3 only when I need to (less than 20% battery left) but it’s not clear if that will make any difference or not.

For Christmas this year I decided to pick up an XBOX ONE for my son.  He’s a pretty big Forza fan, in particular Forza Horizon and I had read on GAF that Forza Horizon 2 is a pretty decent game and since my son asked ‘santa’ for FH2 I decided to pick up a XBONE.  It helped that I had almost half of the cost in gift cards from some rewards at work.

Overall I am happy with the system, it does take some time to get used to as nearly all functionality that existed on the 360 is now run as an ‘app’.  Want to see your friend’s list, run the friends app, want to see achievements, run the achievements app.  I don’t find the UI that intuitive but that is likely a side effect of the XBONE UI (in it’s current form) being designed with the Kinect sensor (and voice control) being the primary way to access functionality.  Luckily it looks like Microsoft has designed the OS to be easy to patch and they’ve been doing updates monthly to improve the OS and add features.  This is easily my favorite thing about the XBONE, that Microsoft is being proactive in adding fixes and functionality in a timely manner.

It’s not all rose colored glasses though, there are some issues.

The OS is buggy – the XBONE has something called suspend/resume.  It’s an amazing feature that basically allows you to jump back into your game/app instantly.  Even if you’ve turned the console off.  Say you’re playing a game and take a break.  You don’t actually need to save the game, just shut down the console and come back to it when you’re ready.  When you restart the game it recalls exactly where you left off, even if the game doesn’t have a ‘save’ feature for that part in the game.  It’s really slick and makes the console feel like a console of the past, with instant loads (cartridges for example).  Sadly this suspend/resume feature only works for one game at a time *and* can cause the OS to become bogged down and flakey.  The only way to fix the issue is to hard-boot the machine.  Not a big deal but annoying once you get used to how awesome the suspend and resume feature is.

Overall I like the machine and it complements the PS4 well.  The console feels connected, something the PS4 does not, though the PS3 didn’t either.  Personally playing on the PS3 and PS4 never feels like you’re part of a larger community whereas the community aspects of the XBOX are front and center, so even if you don’t play a lot of online multiplayer games you do still feel like you’re part of a larger community.  The XBONE is, on paper, the weaker (technically) machine though honestly I haven’t noticed anything that made me say “wow this would be a lot better on the PS4”.  When playing a game though I’ll always consider the PS4 version first simply because the game should perform better on the PS4.

Game pricing has also been more attractive on Microsoft’s console.  Microsoft threw in Assassin’s Creed 4 : Black Flag for free, which I spent 40 hours enjoying.  Microsoft regularly has sales on games.  (I just bought UFC and Peggle 2 for $15 for a digital download) which, at that price, makes buying games digitally a no-brainer).

It will be interesting to see how things progress.

So I’ve been paying with the PS4 for a while now.  There is a lot to like about the system but a lot of goofy things too.

1. The OS and updates to it are terrible
   1. Updates seem to come very infrequently and when they do it’s a crap-shoot on what content will be in the update.  So very often the update notes say “stability updates” but no indication as to what sort of things needed the update.  Sony thus far haven’t had a lot of luck when it comes to keeping the Playstation OS dynamic.  The last update (v2.0) was terrible, their ‘standby’ or now called ‘rest’ mode was broken with v2.0, and so Sony a week later posted a 2.01 patch that supposedly fixed the ‘rest’ mode.  Unfortunately for me the console will still regularly have difficulty starting properly and will fail and require the machine to be turned off then on again.  In general the OS on the PS4 is a mess when it comes to stability.  I like a lot of the features (bounce in-out of games to OS seamlessly, screenshots, videos, etc) but so much of the console’s instability is centered around how buggy the OS is.
   2. Sony does a terrible job of keeping customers informed, using a facebook page to keep users informed as to what is going on with the service, patches, etc is a terrible idea.  They have notifications broadcast features on the console, why do they not use them.
2. The controller battery life is pretty bad.
   1. I can’t believe Sony didn’t allow the users to be able to turn off the light on the controller.  It seems pretty clear that if I don’t have a PS-EYE camera, then why would I want the light on the controller to stay on.  I mean, for games like GTA5 where they use the light or other titles that actually use the light to denote which player has control, etc then by all means keep the light on, but I would say of all the titles I’ve played none really NEED the light on so power is wasted needlessly.
3. Patching games is painless
   1. This is a huge improvement over the PS3, being able to leave the console in ‘rest’ mode and having it automatically update your games and patches is nice, and by the sounds of things significantly better than the Xbox One.  This was my biggest gripe on the PS3 (besides the shitty controller), if I had 30 mins to game I had to wait 15-20 of them for updates to download and install, this thankfully has not been the case with the PS4.

In my last post Destiny was the focus of buying the white console.  I will say that Destiny in general was a pretty big disappointment.  Perhaps if more of my friends had PS4s and the game I wouldn’t have gotten bored of the title so quickly but once you hit level 20 the game changes and turns into more of a grind which is a pretty big disappointment.  I don’t have limitless time to play games so a game that forces you to replay content over and over again in order to progress is something I’m not interested in.  I quit games like WoW, DAoC, because I couldn’t tolerate having to repeat content over again over again in order to compete with other players, Destiny seemed to expect that.  I got about 15 hours out of the title, which is pretty terrible.

I about about 1/2 way through The Last of Us:Remastered.  It’s an excellent game but pretty harrowing.  It feels a lot like Half Life 2 which is good in my book.. The collectibles and side mission story elements are very well done.  I haven’t played it for a little bit since I got distracted with another game but in general TLOU is probably worth the price of a PS4 as it stands.  It even has an excellent multiplayer mode which by the sounds of things is also very good.

I am currently playing Shadow of Mordor which is amazing.  My favorite genre is sandbox games and Mordor fits that model well.  I enjoy sandbox games because I like how, if the game is designed properly, there isn’t 1 way to play the game, that there are several ways to complete game content.  I’ve had several very cool somewhat random events happen as a side effect of the game being sandbox which makes the game feel very organic.  I enjoy the game world (LOTR is still one of my favorite movies), the voice acting is really well done and the graphics are top-tier.  My only complaints is that the game is really difficult in certain sections (it is easy to get swarmed if you don’t try and play the game with some thought put into how to tackle missions) and the free-formed nature of it being a sandbox game can sometimes feel daunting.  Being placed in a huge game world with dozens and dozens of things to do sometimes feels like “there is so much to do I don’t know where to begin”.  That might sound like a good thing but sometimes without the game making suggestions as to what makes the most sense you as a player spent too much time debating which of the seemingly endless parade of missions do you attempt first and if you fail what are the ramifications of failing.  Overall I have been really happy with the game, even moreso that I got it for free due to some of my other Amazon shopping.

I’ll eventually make a post or two discussing some of the indy games that have come out as part of the PS+ membership.  Initially I was disappointed that so many of these ‘unknown’ games were given out instead of retail games on PS+, but I was mistaken because I’ve played some really interesting games that normally I likely would have not played at all because I had an impression of what they were (and I was wrong).

Stay tuned…

I haven’t done an update in a long time.  Really I’ve been busy moving into a new house, on holidays, etc so I haven’t had time.  Or at least that’s my excuse anyway.

I picked up a new PS4 Destiny bundle this week.  To be honest I haven’t played a lot of games in the past few years.  I sort of got burnt out, or maybe I’m just getting older and lost interest.  I don’t think I’ll ever get bored of having electronic toys though and a new gaming console is probably one of the top tier ‘electronic toys’ out there.  It feels strange because back in 2005 the launch for the XBOX360 was a highlight for me, yet this new console generation has started out as a bit of a ‘meh’ for me.  Developers still haven’t had enough time to create enough compelling software.

I decided to go with PS4 (as opposed to XBOX One) because none of my real life friends really game much anymore. (unless you consider tablet/phone games..gaming).  Last gen on the 360 I had a lot of real life friends as well as online friends to play with but with this new generation I’m sort of starting from scratch.  It seemed to me to pick the machine that will have the best content.  The PS4 is a technically more capable machine and PS+ (their online subscription service) is offering a lot more compelling content that XBOX Live is.  I won’t lie though, the PSN network does not seem as fleshed out as XBL.  The sense of community feels very sterile, though that may be a side effect of having so few PSN friends.  I’ll sniff through the GAF PSN posts and see if I can headhunt some people from there to help populate my PSN friends list.

From an aesthetics standpoint the PS4 is very nice, it is well designed and a handsome device.  Even my girlfriend, who doesn’t really have any bias in terms of video games said that the PS4 looks like something Apple would design.  Not that I’m the biggest Apple fan, but you can’t deny they are good at making eye-pleasing hardware.

On the software side the PS4 is an improvement over the PS3.  As I mentioned the system does feel very sterile, boring perhaps but it is easy to find whatever you’re looking for on the device, no sniffing around 40 different pages or sifting through dashboard ads to find games and content.  I haven’t used the device enough to find out how seamless the PSN->PS4 connectivity is.  I suspect it still won’t be as easy to use as XBL chat groups, mail invites to games and that sort of thing.  In my 2 hours of playing Destiny last night I never heard even one person talking (and since the game is so popular there are a LOT of people playing) so I was disappointed to still not have any idea how easy to use and good-sounding the voice chat is.  Though I suppose that may be just the design of the game rather than a limitation of the PSN network.

Once I have a little more time with the system I will probably have a follow up post with my overall review of the system and games I’ve played.  With the winter months quickly approaching I will likely have a lot more time to sit and enjoy my electronics.

Wow I haven’t updated in a while.  I’d be lying if I had a lot of new things to talk about but I suppose there are some things of note.

I have some vacation property in BC that we visit regularly but still the commute is still quite far and so we don’t visit enough to feel secure about the place.  That and the fact that it’s vacation property so often when stuck working on a project that’s frustrating it would be nice to see what life is like where I’d rather be.  I figured, I have internet at my cottage, I have an old laptop that is collecting dust at home, I have a few old webcams, why not make a poor mans security system or web cam host at my cottage?

The problem is, a lot of the free web cam software is either terrible or not really free at all but subscription based.  Being a cheap mofo I’ll always go for free software, especially if it means I can tinker with it a bit too.

I discovered yawcam a LONG time ago and really like it.  The things typically that clobber these type of projects is that they either don’t work with the cameras themselves well, are too limited on the type of output (file, streaming, etc) they produce or they’re so poorly designed that they’re a nightmare to use.  Yawcam doesn’t have any of these problems (well that’s not entirely true but I’ll get to that later).  Yawcam does have some nice features too in that if you want you can have the software detect movement from the camera too so setting up a ‘cheap’ security system as well.  I installed Yawcam and configured my main camera that I bought cheap off ebay for $8 from Hong Kong and instantly it worked.  The nice thing was this cheap webcam I bought also had LED lights too which meant  could use it indoors for 24hour motion detection and security.  This is where I started running into troubles though.

1) I did have two cameras, I wanted to have one camera pointing outside so I could see what the weather was like, who was in the neighborhood, etc.  The problem is that the camera I wanted to point outside has terrible light compensation. Basically the entire image was SO blown out (due to the outdoor light) that it was impossible to see anything.  This meant that I had to use the camera that had LED lights on it to point outside and so no night time type monitoring.

2) yawcam does not ‘play well’ with multiple cameras.  The software supports being launched multiple times (for multiple cameras) but under the covers the configuration files would overwrite themselves so you have to have multiple copies of the same app in multiple folders otherwise all the configurations you did for one camera would overwrite the other camera’s configs.  Also the output stuff (I picked streaming) will actually cause one of the other streams to crash, even though the application looks like it’s running a user could not stream to one or the other stream, that entire camera was basically disabled.

What I did end up running was yawcam with webcamxp 5.  Webcamxp5 is okay, it pales in comparison to yawcam in terms of features but it works well enough in tandem to yawcam that I am happy with it.  If I ever find some free time I may look at debugging some of the odd behavior with yawcam in regards to multiple cameras (and their configurations) but for now what I need is working.

Wow I have been lazy and haven’t updated my blog for a while.  I finally got my Viewsonic gTablet and it’s a pretty decent device.  I found it really difficult to put on a screen protector (to be honest I’ve never had good luck putting on any screen protectors on any of my devices).  With the screen on the gTablet being so big it was really difficult to get the screen protector on straight and without little bits of lint and misc under the film.

Recently some rom developers managed to get Honeycomb onto the device which is what I’m running right now.  It works pretty well really, my biggest complaint is that flash doesn’t work yet.  The libraries for Honeycomb are cobbled together so that’s likely why but a large portion of the OS and device work well (hardware acceleration, wifi, browsing, google apps like gmail and the market).  It’s a shame that Viewsonic basically abandoned the device but thankfully so much of it is unlocked that it’s very easy to put new ROMS on it (and it has such an active community) that it makes up for the lack of support.  The fact that it’s less than 1/2 the price of the next true Honeycomb tablet makes it easier to ignore the quirks of the device as well.

I finished Crackdown 2 on XBox, it was a pretty big disappointment mostly because I loved the first game so much.  I found climbing in the game to be a lot more frustrating and buggy.  Things that I know I could climb in the first game were impossible to climb in the second.  The lack of story in the first game was annoying but the second game had even less of a story.  The character progression seemed a lot less fun too, they added more orbs (because more is better right?) but it just made the progression a lot less fun.  I never felt the sense of accomplishment that the first game had when you ‘leveled up’.

I started playing a new Indie game called Terraria.   It’s pretty simplistic but a lot of fun.  It follows the vein of your typical dungeon crawling Diablo/Larn/Hack game but a lot of the game follows the new genre Minecraft type game.  So far it’s pretty addicting but sadly it’s Steam enabled which means I have to be online (and not at work) to play it.

I liked the idea of a tablet but really you have to pay a decent amount of money to get anything worthwhile, that part I didn’t like.  It didn’t make sense to buy something that wasn’t supported or had glaring faults that were difficult to overlook.  These are the things I looked at regarding before buying a tablet:

1. CPU speed – if the device doesn’t have a viable CPU, that being something that is appropriately clocked (>600 mhz) or one that is older technology and poorly supported then the device will never be responsive
2. Memory – if the device doesn’t have a decent amount of memory a lot of the CPU time will be trying to manage memory slowing the device down (typically you’ll want more than 256mb)
3. Screen – if the device has a poor screen, difficult or impossible to read under certain circumstances and lighting or if the screen is not capacitive or does not allow for multi-touch then your choice for software may be limited or using the device may be difficult in many situations
4. Support – if there is no after-market or ‘hacking’ enthusiasts actively discussing or improving the device then it’s shelf life may be limited beyond what the device ships with.  Typically if there is no forum discussing your device on XDA or SlateDroid then it’s safe to say that you will get no support beyond what the device ships with.  Do NOT buy a device in hopes that it “may” get an OS improvement or has the specs to run a new OS / features because if no one writes the improvement for the device it can never had the improvement.

In many ways item #4 is the most important.  Hardware is only ever as good as the software running on it.  You can have a very advanced tablet in terms of memory, cpu, screen but if the software not well-written for it it’s response and use could be very limited.  In the same breath you can say even if the device has some glaring faults on the hardware side good software and good support can often help eke out the most from the device given it’s limited hardware.

I still need to get back to improving SudoTape.  I have some things I want to improve, the top two things:

1. reorganize some of the strings so that I can get localized versions
2. improve the performance of drawing the markers when zooming

for issue #1 I noticed that there are a number of users in Latin America using SudoTape.  To be honest the majority of comments about the app directly have been in Spanish so I think there is likely some value in getting the app ported to Spanish, by reorganizing the strings.xml that will be much easier to do.  It helps that I work with people who are natively Spanish so perhaps I can persuade them to convert the app to Spanish if the content is laid out easy in my source.

For issue #2 it bugs me that zooming in is sluggish in SudoTape if you have a few markers defined.  I have an idea where the slowdowns are but I haven’t spent much time optimizing it.  There will be some value in optimizing it as personally I have a few project images that I defined 2-3 markers on and the app seriously slows down when zooming.

I also bought a tablet this past week.  woot.com had a sale on a Viewsonic gTablet which on paper is very similar to the highly touted Motorola Xoom, except it was less than 1/2 the price.  Sadly Woot wouldn’t ship to Canada but my parents are snowbirds and live in Arizona during the winters so I had the device shipped to them.

I’m pretty excited (being your token male gadget lover) but I won’t receive the device until Easter at the earliest.  I guess it will give me time to do some reading and think of writing an app for the thing.  Luckily XDA has a great following for the device so there will be a lot of fun had modifying it as well.