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.

Over the last year we started playing a lot more board games at home.  As a kid it was common during parties and gatherings to play boardgames but for whatever reason it sort of fell out of favor.  At the time Risk, Monopoly, Uno, Sorry, Game of Life, Snakes and Ladders were all played at home with Risk and Monopoly being the favorites, certainly when I was a teenager.

I played a number of RPG pen and paper games in my late teens in high school.  D&D, Rifts, Car Wars, TMNT and so forth but it was difficult to get everyone together, have someone cobble together a story and run as DM or game master.  I enjoyed the supplemental books, certainly D&D had a lot of great artwork that went a long with their books and guides so it was probably as fun collecting all the ‘junk’ that came along with pen and paper games as it was playing them.

As an adult though I never really played any games.  Video games, movies and simply socializing were a lot more common in my adult life than sitting down and playing board games.  Recently though this has changed.  My girlfriend picked up Catan at one of the local shops here in Calgary.  (I’ll post more on that shortly) The rules are fairly involved (certainly a lot more than any of the board games I played in my teens) but not so complicated that the game isn’t fun.  Initially getting in to adult oriented board games is daunting simply because of the rules and reading the manual but you’re no longer stuck reading the manual and ‘hoping’ you got things right.  Youtube and the myriad of other gaming specific sites offer a lot of insights how the game is played, how the rules are applied and if you dig into it, strategies on playing the game effectively.  Catan is fun, though does take some time investment but still follows the rules of games that I’m familiar with from my youth.. in that “every man (or woman) for themselves”… There can only be one real winner.

When you realize that there is no way you’re going to win this game of Catan

That leads me to the most recent board game I have played.  Dead of Winter.  One evening, after playing a game of Catan with my sister and husband we decided to take a look at some of the other board games out there and by chance stumbled upon a pretty cool video of Wil Wheaton and friends (yes that Wil Wheaton) playing Dead of Winter.  It looked fun and offered a co-op experience, which I hadn’t really played since pen and paper games.  We went by our local shop and found out that sadly the game was no longer in print (the company that owned Catan actually bought the developers of Dead of Winter) but as usual some googling showed that I could pick up the game online which we did.  The rules are really daunting, there are so many different variables to keep track of, the order of operations is imperative and the amount of details required to play the game effectively is staggering.  BUT… if you take your time, follow the rulebook and watch a few ‘how to play’ videos on Youtube you’ll find it’s an excellent experience.  The game can be completed with multiple winners, and conversely everyone can lose as well (with no winners at all).  The games are pretty long (2-3 hours usually) but are a ton of fun and a lot of camaraderie occurs when everyone is working towards a common goal.  The game does have a lot of pieces and a fair bit of setup to get started but the game also has a story (depending on what game mode you choose) which also gives a similar pen and paper vibe that RPGs do.

A game of Dead of Winter

If you are dreading the long winter and would rather spend time with friends enjoying a cocktail or 3 and socializing I would seriously recommend picking up an adult board game to help consume the long winter nights at home or at friends houses.

In Calgary we are lucky to have one of the largest gaming stores in Canada, and likely North America.  Sentry Box has a ton of games, not only board games but RPGs, Warhammer and the myriad of other gaming trends popular these days.  Everyone I talked to was really friendly and even if you aren’t interested in some of the more ‘hardcore’ type games like RPGs it’s worth going to visit just to see the place.

You can find the Sentry Box here

Sentry Box

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.

For more than two years my girlfriend and I suffered with having a stalkers.  Not the kind that follow you around (though with stalkers can you ever really be sure), we would regularly get a lot of phone calls, calls to our work numbers, calls to our cell phones.  The stalker wouldn’t actually say anything, because, like all people with mental issues they were too scared to have any sort of confrontation, their entire purpose was to be an irritant and be disruptive.

The cell phone companies can do nothing, as usual they expect you to pay your bill and not to call them, when asked they said there is nothing that can be done track these blocked calls.  Calling the police gave similar results.  Their solution (which was identical to the cell companies) was to “change your number”.  Why should I have to change my phone number to get someone to leave me alone?  The stalker is the one breaking the law, not me.  At any rate we suffered with this annoyance until my girlfriend found a really cool service called Reveal5 here in Canada.  Their system allows you to see ALL blocked/unlisted numbers and then reverse the number to find out the address, telephone provider, name of the scumbag person who is calling you.

The service really works, we sent all the information provided by Reveal5 to the local authorities who then proceeded to have a discussion with the stalker and since then the calls have stopped.  While I would have preferred to press charges because clearly people who irritate  you (sometimes called 15-20 times a day and do nothing on the line) have mental issues it was easier to just have the police have a chat.

We’ve subscribed to this service.  I cannot express how happy we were that the calls stopped.  The Reveal5 support team have been nothing but fantastic, friendly and understanding as well as willing to work with local police to provide them with the information they needed.

I highly recommend subscribing to Reveal5 if you are suffering from blocked calls calling your lines.

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.

I really haven’t had a lot of time to spend on new things, I’ve had a lot of personal distractions over the past 2-3 years that have really limited my time and interest in learning new things.

I have however spent a little time looking at HTML5 game engines.  Not that I would have time to actually write a game but I always like reading about and experimenting with graphics and HTML5 seems quite suited to that.  I only experimented with a few game engines, I looked at quite a few but the two that I found the easiest to use and understand were http://www.kiwijs.org/ and http://www.pixijs.com/.

I spent the most time using pixijs simply because there were enough tutorials and web resources to get a better understanding how the pieces tied together.  It’s one thing to write your own engine that you think other people can use, it’s another to actually show people how to use it rather than assume they want to spend hours pulling it apart and actually understanding how things fit together.

Eventually I would like to get back using pixijs and modify the pixelsystems.net logo a the top of this page to make it animated, perhaps some simple 2D effect from the good old Amiga demo/intro days.  I’m just surprised how far browsers have gone where you can write a legitimately good looking and fun game in a web based language instead of C++.

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.

I took some time off this summer to catch up on spending time with family, reading, watching TV.  I hadn’t updated my blog in a while so I figured it was time.

I discovered HBO’s Game of Thrones, merely by chance to be honest, I think one of my regular news sites had a posting about being able to watch the first 15 minutes of their new show for free and since I really loved Rome (and was pissed off that it was cancelled too early) I thought I would check it out.  The 15 minute preview was really well done and so I invested some time in watching the entire season.  Near the end of the season I bought the books and starting reading them and was seriously hooked.  I hadn’t read any fantasy novels since high-school/college with the Dragonlance series so it was nice to get back into 1) reading  2) reading in a genre that I had forgotten about.  During summer I read all the books including GRRM’s new book.  The new book I got digitally and was actually surprised how well reading on a tablet/ereader would be.  I expected (like a lot of people do initially) that reading on the screen would not be the same but in many ways it was better as the reader I used managed bookmarks, it was easier to take the tablet around than a bulky 1000 page book and it was easy to review and find parts within the story that I needed to re-read.  I can see eReaders being the future, something I never expected until I enjoyed reading a great book on one.

I also managed to pick up Coalitions End by Karen Traviss, which is the 4th Gears of War book based off the video game.  I enjoyed all her other books so it was easy to get into this one.  It ties in really well to where the 3rd and last? game starts of, to be released on XBOX360 tomorrow.  I’m a huge Gears fan so I’m really looking forward to going through the game story with friends and playing online.  Normally I wouldn’t really considering reading a video-game tie-in book but the characters and world created by Epic are so engrossing and Traviss has a great style of writing that it was easy to get reeled in.  I recommend her books if you are interested in reading something a little different.