Category: tech ect

Posted on

101st post =p.

Wow.. 101 Posts. thats a bit crazy by my standards, and no i did not feel like saying 100th post.. its way too overdone.

Today brought wii out with the original cable thinking I’d have a nightmare setting the thing back up for my monitor. I got home and was pleasantly surprised by the ease that 480P stayed on.

After looking through my games collection i started thinking what the future games I’d be interested in.. And the problem i see with the Wii is the amount of Game Vomit. Game Vomit is what i call it when developers just toss anything they can at a system and call it a game. Unfortunately the Wii has Enough Game Vomit to warrant surgery to reduce the amount of crap that the system intakes. Personally I think it makes the *Nintendo seal of Quality* Look Horrible.

Posted on

VD-W2 Wii VGA cable part III.

Over the weekend i picked up a few GameCube games, Metroid Prime , F-zero GX, Killer7and Need for speed Hot pursuit 2. Now i previously wrote about the VD-W2 Wii VGA cable, This is the first time I’ve had a problem with the cable. The first game i tried was NFS:HS the game starts up and the display on the monitor goes nuts. Typical, EA and more crap they put out, You would figure as the one of the “top” gaming manufactures, it would support 480p. The gamecube supports 480p , but theres a catch. in order to get the game in 480p you need to hold down the B button on the gamecube controller when starting the game.

this is a small problem in my opinion since i don’t play too many GC games. But, if you intend to play Game Cube games using the VGA cable There is a list too help you out at Mobygames.com .

Overall the cable in my opinion is worth it with the one minor downfall of not supporting GC in 480i , but Most of the good games are supported in 480p for the game cube.

overall i’d say the cable too me is a 9/10 with that small drawback (to me)

Posted on

Media… Completely fascinated with bored people .. and there wii’s

I find the media often gets fascinated with some pretty weird shit at times, weither its the next missing garden gnomes, or some star taking a dump… the media is there normally to smell it. Lately with the media getting involved with console gaming, they have been attacking it as the next WMD, to the Media it is something that beats your wife , kills your pets and makes your children into cannibals. When the media is bored i find thats when there at there most dangerous to themselves and others around them. So just doing my normal thing of looking at Fark.com , an article caught my eye and I clicked. the Title of it was “Growing a wii bit bored” from the Calgary Herald. but the dumbfuckery of this one gets to me. its a long write by me but I’ll take a stab at his stab.

read on for my silly take to this article of playing with numbers and attention whoring at its best from the calgary heralds department of pulling numbers outta there ass.

It starts

In an interview with gaming publication IGN.com, the president of Epic Games, which produces the incredible Gears of War for the Xbox 360, dumped on Nintendo’s Wii, dismissing the system that has sold 20 million units as a fad that will soon wane, and saying his company won’t ever be releasing games on it.

“The first time I played a videogame with my parents was on Atari 2600,” says Mike Capps. “The next time I played a videogame with my parents . . . was Wii Tennis. So it’s about bringing people together, families, Thanksgiving, all that. I think it’s kind of like a weird virus because I have not yet found a reason to play with my Wii since then.

“It’s a virus where you buy it and you play it with your friends and they’re like, ‘Oh my God, that’s so cool, I’m gonna go buy it. So you stop playing it after two months, but they buy it and they stop playing it after two months but they’ve showed it to someone else who then goes out and buys it and so on.

theres so many things wrong with this I don’t even know where to begin. To Immediately just start dumping on something means your pissed off for one reason or another rather than taking a neutral bias to what your writing about. Also bringing the Asshat from epic in on the first line from and interview just starts this article all wrong.. I’m allowed to have bias here… gears of war? I couldn’t care any less for the game. I mean just how many times can you rehash unreal tournament. The comment alone is shortsighted, The reason people get the Wii is it is FUN…

As far the wii being a virus, i think not , Nintendo has realized that power is not everything. Generally i have one rule with gaming, the more eyecandy generally the shittier the game is for fun and replayability. I Do not play a game for eye-candy , I learned that lesson once too many that general focus on graphics tend to kill games, Or make the game so short its not worth it. Balancing graphics and gameplay is the key, people still play D&D… now theres some heavy fricken graphics for ya .. This guy is full of it .. by the looks of it this guy never played anything past Wii Sports. Continuing…

Continue reading “Media… Completely fascinated with bored people .. and there wii’s”

Posted on

Console Gaming without a TV part II..(VD-W2 Wii VGA cable)

I do not usually watch TV, the last TV i had I ended up giving up because it just took up too much space. So I’ve always used my PC to watch Movies, Play games and such , until i purchased the Wii. From my last post
Console Gaming and Movie watching

I have tried almost every PC HD TV card under the sun in order to get a better picture/ less lag time out of the display with results fairing for the worse rather than better. One of my biggest problems was screen lag time.. On the HD Cards you had at least a full second of delay while moving the cursor around, on the analog card the lag time was barely perceivable but enough where it was noticeable if you had played on a TV, also If the PC is doing ANYTHING what so ever , you will get graphical corruption in the display thats the fault of the PC not the Wii. As far as using a TV card the display is fuzzy in fullscreen.

Wii On TV Card
After all those cards my thoughts on internal tuner cards for PC’s are they are all piles of shit… But, looking around i saw one possibility the VD-W2 Wii VGA cable from Vdigi I had taken my time on ordering this because I didn’t see any sort of review for this cable. Also being from HongKong and I am weary of Ordering from sites i don’t know. Resellerratings.com had next to No information about them, After much thinking I finally decided to order the thing…

After an impatient 2 week wait the cable arrived in a simple brown envelope from hongkong. Following the USPS tracking site.. Not really worth even tracking because they barely update you on the location of your goods. Anyways the packaging is dead simple , right to the point, you don’t need user testimonials on how it works. Anyways anything with a billion testimonials usually is a pile of shit.

the cable seems to be built of really good quality, Setup is a breeze as long as you understand the basic premise of what your doing. since the monitor your plugging into does not have an analog tuner, you have to use the component cable plug in on a tv

Wii VGA cable closeThe Green RCA jack you just plug into a TV and power on the wii , After doing so you goto your system menu and Display selection of 480i or 480p , You want to choose 480p , but doing this will look like something bad is happening . the screen will look completely fucked, don’t worry here,  because the TV doesnt know how to handle the signal. after this Power down your Wii , Disconnect the Green RCA than proceed to connect the Cable to the monitor , you will need a male to male VGA connector/Wire to complete this action, After that you should be all set on Connecting up to your monitor.

As far as quality goes , the cable kicks ass.

it removed every problem you would have with a TV card and basically gives you the same response as you would get on a TV screen. with the added bonus of You can turn off your PC to play the console if you run your Console like i do.

Posted on

Lets see where this goes… Logitech this is in your hands now. Part I

I’ve always loved logitechs mice and keyboards , I would recommend them to anyone in the past … but now since having multiple hardware failures with the G7 double clicking when your just trying to single click. my confidence has been shaken. Hopefully I wont have to jump through 87 hoops to get this replace but this is chapter one in firing emails off to logitech. I just want a damn mouse that works without being fucking possessed to completely screw up at anything its doing.

Continue reading “Lets see where this goes… Logitech this is in your hands now. Part I”

Posted on

Console gaming and movie watching… When you dont have a TV.. Wait what?

When I got my Wii, it was a thought to exactly how i’d play the console since i don’t have a TV so to speak. Eventually I just ended up going to most efficient route for myself. I connect the Wii to my PC via an analog TV Card, it works fine for me. but there are little things you do notice between having the Wii connected to a TV vs connected to a PC through a TV card.

Personally i use my PC as my center for media, Watching movies, playing games(PC), and playing the Wii. I don’t need a super huge screen, having one would be nice but eh… what can you do. I don’t watch enough TV to validate the idea of getting cable or anything, the way channels are these days its just all rehash of programs anyways… what are we on now “survivor 923 – Night with the power out” edition? About the only thing I tend to watch is mythbusters.

The only thing about having the wii through an analog tv card though is that the screen looks a bit fuzzy and lagged a bit. I’ve tried out many digital Tuner cards with no luck whatsoever, Either I have some sort of weird problem or perhaps my pc is getting a bit aged.

I have tried –

  • WinTV-HVR-1600 – This card is ok, If you have an Via Chipset/Nvidia Video card you will run into an overlay problem, easily fixed but …. the Crashes are not, generally HD channels look spectacular but on occasion the software would crash on channels with a low signal or format difference. Using it to play a console through was worthless, Trying to play the wii on this was like trying to play the Wii underwater , You would move the cursor, and the screen would always be half a second behind becoming extremely annoying fast.
  • Pinnacle PCTV HD Card – out of the box the card was purely annoying… the install software DEMANDED to have WinXP Service pack 2 installed, Nothing would progress unless you did that. as far as channels it did not have the problems that the HVR1600 had, but there was a noticeable unsynchronized Audio, For having the Wii hooked up , Again Display lag issues made this card useless.
  • Visiontek TV wonder 600 – based off the ATI TV wonder 600, installation was painless, Installation of software was relatively painless, Operation was terrible. Trying to pull in any sort of digital channels was totally out of the question no matter the position of the antenna NO channels were received. I even Put the antenna outside the window in hopes of seeing some sort of life from the tuner itself, For the Input part of the card for the Wii, This card got the Worst of the ratings – Display lag was far greater than the other cards, Up to 1.5 seconds of display lag which made any sort of console gaming Completely out of the question.

These card were all tried through about a years time, and Likely in the future possibly there will be a Digital HD TV card that will serve my purposes for both a TV Card and a Console hookup. but I have discovered theres a 4th option that would remove the PC completely from the math , which hopefully will remove all my percieved points that i dont like about running my Wii to Tv Card to PC output. while its the cheapest of the options I’ve only heard and seen very limited reviews on this I’ve ordered the VD-W2 Wii VGA cable . This will skip having the PC as an intermediary and plug directly into my monitor , which thankfully has 2 VGA inputs and 1 DVI input.

My hope is this will solve all my complaints about having the setup i do and having a more direct setup which eliminates a device which the console Passes through

Posted on

Just what you’ve always wanted with your coffee, printing! wait.. what?!

This is one of those things that keep you up at night.. how do i print on my coffee? Alrighty than… although the uses can be fun , hand your boss a coffee/latte that has a personalized message. just be sure to have your desk prepacked before you do so.

Anyways Onward to the video…….

Apparently from Oleksiy Pikalo page,  he wanted to create a machine to create art on his lattes, hey you cant knock it.. just think of the fun you could have with this…

Long time ago, I saw a great video about “Latte Art”, and figured that I absolutely must build a machine capable of printing the most beautiful art on top of my latte. So I bought a used x-y flatbed plotter (Philips 8155) on eBay and a great book by Matt Gilliland, titled “Inkjet Applications”. I put the two together, to get this nice Latte Art Printing Machine

If your the industrious type you too can make a coffee printer too..

the instructions are listed on the site to make your own… as for me thats definitely something I’d have some fun with.

Posted on

Wii would like to play..

I posted a really short comment. In October about me ending up getting a Wii, Now, i had been Debating on a console system for months and was fairly decided but money was an issues and finding one was also an issue. Around the holidays which are here now. Finding a Wii is about as likely finding bigfoot.

I managed to get extremely lucky when i had got mine last month at the begining of october. I had been in best buy for another reason and just for the hell of it i asked the blue shirt with the expected answer of "we don’t have one". I figured I’d go up the road to Target and when i was walking down the isle i noticed 3 boxes and i thought they may of been displays. I Had to ask twice, And they were indeed real, Knowing that how hard it is to acquire I ended up borrowing some money to get it. Since then I’ve not seen one for sale since.

As far as fun the system kicks ass, and my major complaint about gaming in the last couple of years is that, the focus on gaming has been on making a pretty picture with basicly no controls. all graphics No fun. I’ve seen the other systems and the expense to me just doesnt make sense when i have a PC. my Main complaints for consoles are

1. most are insanely expensive

PS3 = 400$ (no games inc. accessories you have to pay even more for. Lack of games.

Xbox360 = 300$ to 400$ +35$ for online play (Not to sure how it works out with other stuff, but most games are eventaully ported over to the PC from this system so pointless to buy into)

Wii = $249 the Cheapest and most fun i’ve had with console gaming in a very long time.

2. Games

Ps3 = lack of games, Lack Of interesting games + Used to Have backwards compatibility but removed.

Xbox360 = since most games come to the PC – no real need to have since 90% of the games come over to the PC , and really Halo Does not appeal to me since its just a slowed down version of Unreal tournament (Halo doesnt even come close to the fun of unreal tournament)

Wii = ALot of games whole game cube library + Wii games availible , nintendo normally has different games than the above two systems so its a more unique experence.

 

*All systems = Fuck Guitar hero with a baseball bat. its retarded, ITs a guitar simulator simulator , wow You simulate someone whos simulating a guitar… Pick up a real instrument you sissy. if you want something more interesting and to actaully learn music rather than playing dance dance revolution for your fingers try "Jam Sessions" for the nintendo DS.

3. Controls

Ps3 = Tried and true controller setup, only exception was when nintendo announced the wii controls and they delayed there controller to attempt a motion control setup themselves. SUXAXIS was put on after the fact removing the Dual shock- which was quoted from sony that both could not be on the controller or some silly shit.

Xbox = appears like the older gravis control pads. I’ve not personally tried to out the xbox controls but im sure its works.

Wii = Completely Unique system of control, brings very interesting gameplay and adaptions to gameplay.. gesture based system does make some really fun games. I could go on and on how actaully interacting with the game rather than Inputing actions into the game and reacting makes a huge difference.

 

4. Graphics

PS3 – some really nice visuals at times but really most of the time games are not much better than the 360

Xbox360 – same as above but reverse the comment. both systems are pretty much equals to each other.

Wii – I’ve not seen many games I could compare to the other systems but It gets down to my Final comment. Graphically it has lesser than the above two systems but in the same comment the games are more involving . Less eye candy more dimension.

5. Fun

Im not going to compare each system down. Reasoning is it would just be a flogging of epic proportions, theres only so far that PS3/xboxs dated controls can go , and there basically running on running on a control set thats 20 years old. To me graphics do not mean Everything. Sure you can make it look "pretty" but 90% of the time you know when something looks "good" as far as a game you know it controls like ass. there are notable exceptions to that.

Gamewise you get more involved , You dont get bored off your ass watching someone else play. Even thinking sporting games golf is like golf on the wii , bowling is like bowling. First person shooters even have a strangely appealing system of use on the wii. by Far the system thats the most interactive and Fun in the same sentence I’d say is the Wii .

I’ve picked up only a few games so far but I forsee myself picking up other games as well as they come out. I’ve Really liked how the system works as you can see above and the future will see more responce out of me.

 

Posted on

From the department of oh noes

Just an article from Dslreports other news sources are reporting this as well but i figures i’d work from this one.

Wi-Fi Health Weirdness Continues
The German Wi-Fi ban that wasn’t…
06:30PM Monday Sep 10 2007 by Karl
tags: wireless·Oddities

There’s been no solid scientific evidence that Wi-Fi is a health hazard, but that hasn’t stopped a parade of people from trying to stop Wi-Fi deployment, usually based on absolutely no evidence of any kind. In the U.S., teachers have sued schools to derail installs, while angel guidance consultants have launched campaigns against Wi-Fi in their free time.

Continue reading “From the department of oh noes”