Saturday, October 31, 2015

Weekly Wrap-Up :: W44-2015

Concept art taken from the upcoming game "Dreadnought".
There use to be a time, what seems like ages ago, when I used to publish these Speedlinking articles listing all the EVE Online news. So I thought that I'd start doing that again, listing all the interesting bits of info tweeted of the course of the week, movies and trailers I've seen, and stuff I'm reading.

What I'm watching:

What I'm reading:

Gaming:

Concept Art:

Thursday, October 29, 2015

EVE Blog Banter 68: If I show you my rig, will you show me yours?


They say "Better late than never..." Well that's all fine and dandy, but it makes for a shitty first impression. Or in this case, for a shitty re-introduction. I wanted to jump back into the  EVE Blog Banters, my child of yesteryears, who's all grown up and soon turning six, with a BANG! But the Blog Father is bit rusty, and three days late will have to do!

Enough ramblings (damn, I AM getting old!).

Just like an old rust bucket of a space freighter, my current rig is a patchwork of parts scavenge here and there. There used to be a time when she was the pride of my geek gene. Built by yours truly way back in August of 2009, she was made up of an old Antec Plus 1080AMG File Server Case and the following components:

  • Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB 7200RPM 32MB Dual Proc SATA 3.5IN HDD
  • Gigabyte GA-MA770-UD3 ATX AM2+/AM3 AMD770 PCI-E16 2PCI SATA2 MoBo
  • XFX Radeon HD 4870 750MHZ 1GB 3.6GHZ GDDR5 PCI-E 2XDVI HDCP Graphics Card
  • G.SKILL F2-6400CL5D-4GBPQ PC2-6400 4GB Dual Channel RAM
  • Corsair VX450 450W ATX 12V 33A 24PIN ATX Power Supply
  • Windows Vista Home Premium 64BIT OEM DVD with Win7 Upgrade Offer

Over the years when moved on from Vista to Win7, and recently to Win10 (very happy with that last OS by the way), the GPU card was upgraded to a 1535MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 (NVIDIA) and the RAM was doubled to 8Gb. 

As the keyboard and mouse combo, I'm using Logitech's G110 and G500, respectively. Both feel comfortable and I love the customs combos. A Plantronics GameCom 780 headphones envelopes me in a full 3D sound experience!


Finally, the display is a decent 23" LG W2361 monitor, which no longer feels appropriate. I'm currently eyeing an  LG 25UM57-P Black 25" 5ms (see below) - now THAT would be sweet!
She (continuing the ship analogy here folks, bare with me) still runs all the games I play at a decent level, with a good balance in terms of visuals/performance.

But I'm itching to build a new one, though I'm not sure the Secretary/Minister of Finance would approved. She (the wife here, not the rig - please stay focused) might prefer a few more incremental upgrades before going with the completely new rig.

As such, what would you recommend I upgrade first? CPU? RAM? GPU? That new 25" monitor. I'd love to know your advice!

EVE Blog Banter #68 Contributors:

  1. My Cat's Bed aka Eve Online PC! - Sand, Cider and Spaceships
  2. @tgl3 cannot be arse to blog but Tweeted a photo :S
  3. Go Fund Me - Eveoganda
  4. Get yer rigs oot - Notes from New Eden
  5. My Rig - Morphisat's Blog
  6. Its not Much, But its Mine - Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah
  7. Rig Check - The Ancient Gaming Noob
  8. Show me yours and I'll show you mine - Absence of Substance
  9. Flying the Deadly Skies on Ductape and a Prayer - A CARBON Based Life
  10. If I show you my rig, will you show me yours? - CrazyKinux's Musing
  11. Back In The Saddle? - Diaries of a Space Noob

Thursday, September 03, 2015

The 2015 Science-fiction Book Challenge that I'll loose


I'm pretty much fucked.
That's my considered opinion.
Fucked.
...

Ok, so I'm no Mark Watney, and my life is in no way in danger. But the plan I had, to read 15 books in 2015, is pretty much fucked at this point. Yeah, 15 - as in fifteen - books in 12 months. That's a lot. For me, right now, at this point in life. But it was doable. Or so I thought.

At this point in time, on this 3rd day, of the 9th month, of the year 2015 C.E., I've read 3 of those 15 books. Which means I'm 7 books behind schedule - according to Goodreads' 2015 Reading Challenge.

Yeah, 15 won't happen. Foogettaboutit! But, looking at my friends progress on that same Book Challenge page, I see that I'm not alone - 7 out of 30 books read, 2 out of 15, 9 out of 20, etc.

So let's forget that UNREACHABLE challend and let's focus on what I've actually read and what I plan on reading till the New Year.

So far I've read:

  1.  Scatter Adapt and Remember, by Annalee Newitz (review: 7/10)
  2. 2312, by Kim Stanley Robinson (review: 8/10)
  3. The Martian, by Andy Weir (review: 10/10)

As I said, that's not much, and no way near where I wanted to be at this time of year. So here's a revised challenge that I think I can realistically reach by the end of the year: 4 additional book. That's one book a month. With a bit of discipline, I should be able to reach that goal. One hopes so.

Here are the next 4 books I plan on reading:

  1. Solarversia, by Toby Downton
  2. Leviathan Wakes (Expanse #1), by James S.A. Corey
  3. Abomination, bt Gary Whitta
  4. Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline
There's a bunch of other books I would [have] like[d] to read (take a look at the image of my bookshelve above), but being realistic, I'm sticking to a book a month!

What's your list? 

What have you read so far this year? 

I'd love to know!