2PhatGeeks.com » Computers & Internet

And in the Dorkness, bind them.

Melissa — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 21:07:03 +0000

The year was 2007. I was still fresh-faced from the disappointment I held in my little nerdy heart for a few other MMORPG’s that Will Not Be Named here Again.

I was tired of being lied to. I understood gaming companies had to really sell it to get the subscribers, and thus the cash, to pay things off, I really did. Look, Mr. programmer who spent hours making fighting chick’s rack perfect and realistically bounce has gotta eat too, right?

But selling it and then paying roughly $50 for a copy of the game, plus the monthly subscription–just to play for two weeks and be disappointed? It was weighing on me, man. It was getting tough. I didn’t realize it then but I was becoming an MMORPG skeptic. I still played MMO’s, don’t get me wrong. I still signed up for beta and to this day? I still play them. But I eye them far more warily than I used to and it’s rare that I write about them. By the time I get around to writing about them I find I am usually already disenchanted.

But I’m ahead of myself–let’s go back to 2007. What happened then?

Elven starting area.

Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar was released. A massively multi-player online role playing game set in the universe of J.R.R. Tolkien, riding on the back of a huge wave the movies had set to motion. It was a good move by Turbine, actually. Here was a beloved setting many adults and children were familiar with, rife with all the markings of a great backdrop for a game. Earlier that year I got the chance to beta test the game and I did.

For a week I played, I really enjoyed myself. There were glitches of course and several things were not even yet implemented this early in the game (those would come later on) but I found myself liking what I’d seen so far. I didn’t have the same parts and video card in my computer then, that I do now, and couldn’t run the game full blast. It was still pretty.

Then the game was released and that was the end of beta. I asked my husband if I could play, who had also beta tested the game as a hobbit burglar. Unfortunately, he did not enjoy the game as I did. On top of that, we were in a financially crappy time–he couldn’t see a point in purchasing a game he did not enjoy and I couldn’t see me pushing him to spend money we needed for other things–like food, bills and so on.

So the game was set aside. I heard about it through good blogging friends of mine, Eve and Lillith. Art, posts about–all these things reminded me of the game and I never truly forgot about it. Life simply wasn’t going to let me play it when I wanted to. Several other games came out and one thing distracted me from it and another and another. One year went by, then two, then three. I’d almost put Lord of the Rings Online aside entirely until–

I got a little e-mail that informed me this year, Lord of the Rings Online was going free and that you could sign up for the beta…

So I did.

Now…I’m doing a bad thing by telling you I got into the beta. Yeah, I know. I’m pretty rebellious. Last week? I totally ate three peanut butter cookies while baking them. Just sayin’. So, technically, even though I am no longer playing the free-to-play beta, I am under the NDA not to discuss it. Let me just say I am aware I am breaking the sacrosanct of NDA and am fully ready to accept my punishment. (Dear Turbine, please send a reasonable Aragorn look-alike to dole out my punishment. Please.)

But I have to tell you this because it was the free-to-play beta that convinced me to to finally purchase a subscription to the game. And to make the deal sweeter the monthly sub is a might cheaper than most MMORPG’s out there if you buy a package payment plan. AKA: Purchase 3 months for $ 24.

I do not regret my decision one bit, despite the fact it’ll go free to play this fall. And I plan on continuing to support LotRO even after it goes F2P.

Why?

Because the game has not degraded over the years but has improved, significantly. There is player housing, horses, fishing, hobbies. Many, many, many more quests than I ever remember there being. There are two new

A beautiful day for a walk in the Shire.

extremely fun classes and the community (which reminds me so much of the Star Wars: Galaxies peoples when the game was in its golden years)is a fantastic, amazingly patient, helpful, well spoken bunch of fellow gamers. It truly outshines any MMORPG community I’ve been in for a long while.

I can download the high-res version and play this game with everything cranked max. Lighting, shadows, Anisotropic hiked up, water, water reflections–you name it, I’ve got it turned all the way up. It’s gone from pretty to pretty-damn-gorgeous.

Right now, at this very second on the Lord of the Rings forums and in the game chat channels–there are countless debates about how the game will go down hill once it goes free. There are people saying the community will slide down hill. That paying members will stop paying and that the game will never be the same.

I’m here, breaking the NDA of free-to-play Beta, understanding I might have it taken from me (that’s okay though) to let you know it was because of the F2P that I decided to purchase a sub. It was because of the community that I wanted to support this game and hope to continue doing so. I wanted to remind fellow subscribers that, not all bad things will come out of the F2P.

And to let you guys know, seriously? If you played the first year and quit–if you’ve never played but always wanted to–do it. Go check out the free trial. Go sign up for the F2P beta right now.

I never go back to old games. That’s just how I work. Once the magic is gone I simply can’t. It’s done. Ask anyone I’ve met and follow my posts about the MMORPG’s I’ve played, and you’ll notice that once I’m done that’s just it.

Here I am, three years later, and I’m back to Lord of the Rings Online and loving it to pieces. That in itself, should be incentive enough for you just try it.

And hey, if you do? Send a hello to Bluecup Bumbleroot, Landroval server, let me know what you think of it and if you need any help.

♥

Hooked on Dragon Age: Origins, worked for me!

Melissa — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 14:24:35 +0000

Or: Reasons why I am such a Dragon Age fan girl.

So I’m on my third run through with this game. And I’m still approaching it as ridiculously as I did the second time. I’m over here more worried about hurting a computer generated pixel’s feelings more than anything else.

You know its a good game when you find yourself with a case of crazy.

"Oh Maker! What is WRONG with you women?"

During the first run through of Dragon Age: Origins, my character’s main love interest turned out to be Alistair. He’s blond, built, has the tendency to look like a kicked puppy when his awkward, boyish, somehow-still-innocent-but-sweet overtures are misconstrued and? He’s hilarious as hell. “We won? We did? Yay!”

…Did I mention, cute?

The second time I played through and epic battle of conscious and morality began inside my head. It started out with the innocent thought that: It’s a game! I could peruse any other romance I liked now! How about Zevran? Leliana! Choices!oneone!`1! I could frolic amid the companions Bioware had worked so hard on to entice me with. With their pretty faces and long back stories and funny quips. And did I go to these new interests to explore the new relationships and romances?

No.

The moment Alistair’s brow quirked, lightly stubble-speckled face filled my screen I quibbled, inwardly. In the first few seconds of his introduction I felt immediately as if he was staring inside my ready-to-write-fan-fic soul and judging me. He knew. I felt terribly guilty for considering any other choice but Alistair.

I kept imagining his face. His sad, sad, you just ate a Mabari puppy! Why did you eat that puppy? face.

Going off the rail on a crazy Deep Road trail.

And that’s when the ridiculousness of it all hits me again. Alistair isn’t real. He’s a program generated pixel on some highly paid Bioware member’s screen. (HI BIOWARE HIRE ME PLZ? I CAN WRITE. AND MAKE REALLY GOOD COFFEE. :D) He’s a concept, a processor-birthed entity meant to entertain me and continue shelling out my $$ so this company can continue fulfilling my house-wife fantasies wit–he’s not real!

And I’m worried about what he’ll think.

And behold, there was a sign.

That’s how you know Bioware has succeeded with Dragon Age: Origins. Bugs, glitches, giant spinning heads, splotchy kiss scenes and speeches that don’t make sense with your choices aside, Bioware set out to make a kick ass game that gets you emotionally involved and invested with it.

I can’t imagine a sign that it’s done exactly that, than me worrying over what Alistair is going to think when I’m over there romancing the Crow. Or the pretty bard–and he doesn’t even know!

But I know.

As many times as I have already been swayed by his charm, good looks, and stupidity witty commentary, I keep going back out of some sort of guilt. I think that speaks louder about character, connecting with your audience and amazing writing more than anything I’d have to say about it.

♥

PerfectDisk 11: Now Even… Perfecter?

bariguy — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 21:38:50 +0000

Many years back I was a firm believer in the Norton Speed Disk. It seemed intelligent enough. I could schedule it to run through windows scheduler. Plus, well, it was Norton… and Norton was the best at everything right? After all, the company that made Norton Commander could do no wrong! It was perfect!

Perfect except for the fact that scheduling it always seemed to make the computer run a bit slower than I liked so I ended up running it myself. Oh, and the fact that once I did run the thing it took hours even for the smaller drives at the time. Eventually I stopped falling for the hype and the continual wave of fanboyish support from a surprisingly large percentage of the tech crowd I worked with at the time. The continually high price for the Symantec products coupled with the bloatware they had become became finally drove me away.

I next landed in freeware and shareware land, looking for a light, efficient and cheap option. First I tried just using the windows defragmenter and my system ran like… well… like it was defragged by the same company that designed Windows ME. I stumbled over to Auslogics Defrag next. This program is great… there’s just not much to it. After the handful of intelligent (sounding) features of Norton this was the equivalent of going from a daily diet of double whoppers and milkshakes (so delicious but so bad for you) to vitamins, stale bread, wilted celery and dirty skunky Florida well water. Sure you can live on it but why the hell would you want to?

Auslogics worked. It wasn’t great but the drive performance afterward was better than Windows Defrag and it finished more quickly. It had a small footprint and the price is certainly right… it just wasn’t enough for me. I’d gone too far in the other extreme… I didn’t want to sacrifice features for price and footprint.

Then I found Raxco’s PerfectDisk… I think it was Version 8. It was single purpose, it was small but it was full of intelligent features and it was cheaper than Norton. I was, of course skeptical at first. I’d been fooled by bright and shiny baubles and smooth talkin’ before.

They had me after the first time I ran it.

I’ve reviewed PerfectDisk before (and hopefully will continue to do so) and so I won’t dive too much into the first result… but I can tell you that my drives were more than just a little faster… programs launched quickly and there was a decided “snap” to the system. It scheduled itself. It’s system footprint was reasonable and it had a nice smattering of intelligent sounding… and acting… features.

Well, A couple of weeks ago the fine folks over at Raxco Software once again provided the Geeks with an evaluation copy of their consistently impressive PerfectDisk. The newest iteration, version 11, continues the outstanding tradition set by its predecessors while upping the bar even higher for the competition.

Footprint

One of the first things I look for in a defrag program, or any system maintenance utility, is the background footprint. I leave my PCs on a lot. Our server is on 363 days a year… only down when I take it apart to clean it. The home PC is on more often than not. I also work a lot and don’t like to waste time doing system maintenance when I can be stabbing people or flying spaceships. Because of this, I prefer to schedule my weekly defragging for times when I’m at work or asleep. This also means at least some portion of the program is running in the background at all times, waiting to run when I tell it. PerfectDisk uses 2 programs for this… PDAgent and PDAgentS1… and these programs retain the same names between version 10 and 11. A big difference between the two versions, however is their size. In Version 10, these programs were already an impressively small 9,876 bytes combined (all of these figures are under Windows 7 x64). In version 11 drops almost in half to 5,532 bytes!

When loading the actual program, the footprint of the open program increased just slightly from 26,200 bytes to 29,556 bytes… but this still leaves us with a reduction, overall, from 36,076 bytes in PerfectDisk 10 to 35,088 in version 11. Both programs rise by similar amounts while operating defragging, of course, but again I’m not at my computer when it’s defragging. I am at it when it’s scheduled to run.

Features

Next up in my wish list of Defrag program qualities is feature set. The perfect example of a featureless Defrag program is Windows Defrag. It doesn’t do anything but defrag the files. The order of the files is irrelevant. Connectivity to other PCs? Not important. Decent (or any) logs? Hell no. Space management? Go buy another program.

The feature set for PerfectDisk 11 is expansive enough that rather than just referring to it as a defragger, it’s more accurate to call it a drive management system. It not only helps manage your drive performance through intelligent defragmenting of your files. Though Space Management, it will give you back more of that hard drive real estate and, most importantly, help you remove the duplicates that always seem to build up on a computer used for any sort of work. Run this Dup finder just once. You will be surprised how much space is taken up by duplicates installed by major apps like Adobe.

One of my favorite updated features is the use of presets for SmartPlacement: Raxco’s intelligent file placement system. In version 10, SmartPlacement essentially allowed you define ages for rarely and recently modified files and a simple check box to aggressively defragment empty space. In Version 11, the system has been revamped to include several different levels of defragmentation, from conservative to “classic” to Performance and Performance Aggressive. The more aggressive, the longer the run time but the more significant the impact on system performance.

Defrag Speed

Now that I can actually schedule the defrag without suffering constant system slow downs, the actual speed of defrag is much less important than it used to be. However, I also don’t want to have my drive chewing away at full bore for 8 hours, even if I’m not inconvenienced. I run defrags weekly on by 300GB system drive approximately 50% full and they are typically complete in about an hour on a Aggressive Performance setting… the initial run took longer, as is typical in my testing experience, but the performance difference was noticeable even though I had been using PerfectDisk 10 before. The end goal of any system maintenance software is to promote stability and speed and PerfectDisk continues to deliver.

One experience to note: The first weekend I installed this thing I accidentally scheduled it for Sunday rather than my actual normal day of Saturday when I’m at work. After installing it an poking around a while I decided to waste some valuable time and play some Star Trek Online. I played a few hours and quit. When I closed the window The perfect Disk Status Window was up behind it. It had completed a defrag without crushing my system. I opened up Outlook and it popped up in what seemed to be half it’s already quick launch time.

Price

I’m not a millionaire. If you are, please buy me things and/or send me money. For the rest of you that aren’t, price matters. Norton = $49.99. PerfectDisk = $39.99 for Pro, $29.99 for Home premium. Better product for less money. How the hell could this not be a selling point?

Conclusion

So there you have it. Another year brings another fantastic release from Raxco. If you haven’t used this program before, try out one of their demos and I guarantee you that you will be impressed and that you will become a believer. You simply cannot appreciate the difference a professional disk maintenance tool can make on your own system until you see it for yourself.

♥

What’s white and black all over with spots of red?

Melissa — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 12:33:09 +0000

If you said a newspaper you used to beat the annoying guy on the cell phone yelling loudly as if that would help his reception whilst stuck in an elevator with him until he is bloody–then you’re wrong! (Say that run-on sentence three times. Fast.)

It’s actually something I’ve been tinkering with on the side lines, mulling and musing over whether or not I should have one and if, by having one, I’m sort of making me ego seem even larger than the small moon it occupies now…It’s my Portfolio for my digital photography and clay creations, called Everyday Magic. (Run ons ahoy, matey!)

When we originally purchased 2phatgeeks.com, I asked my husband to give me a subdomain name of digitalpoetry.2phatgeeks.com, I had wanted to do something for myself with that but hadn’t any clue what. This was if I remember correctly, just before he purchased my canon camera and well before I started tinkering in clay. A few months ago I finally settled down and started searching for photoblog templates (sorry fellow design Geeks–I’m only good at being a game/Star Wars/Star Trek/Sci-Fi/Fantasy nerd! Not design!) that would suit the simplicity of what I wanted and put the showcase on the pictures, not the words. After stumbling across so many amazing photography blogs, I wanted one of my own!

I didn’t have much luck at first but settled on one for a bit. It just didn’t sit well with me, however. While the design was okay, I was limited in showing only very small pictures of my images and the instructions just weren’t WP-n00b friendly. After a second search I found an absolutely fantastic theme two days ago by Graph Paper Press. It’s the F8 lite theme offered for free and it is mind-blowingly awesome, because it does exactly what I wanted a theme for my portfolio to do: emphasis entirely on photos and content, yet a clean, simple, elegant design lingering in the back ground. It truly is a fantastic theme that tricks you into thinking how simple it is.

I’m gushing like the gigantic girl-nerd I am about this theme because it’s kicked up my interest and my enthusiasm over keeping the portfolio blog up to date. When I was first facing the thought of posting a picture daily; having to edit and reconfigure the images to display properly with the old theme? I began to not-look-forward to doing that with every photo. It was becoming too much of a hassle and frankly, (as you can tell with my rash of posting and then weeks of nothing here at 2phatgeeks!) I simply set it aside.

A good theme on a blog really, really, truly effects both the readers and author.

A great, fantastic theme that I love looking at makes me want to stay at a site and meander about a bit longer. Gets my nerdling-creativity going.

So that’s what’s white and black all over with spots of red! And that’s what’s got my creative mojo going! My new portfolio word press, Everyday Magic & its newest kick-ass theme by Graph Paper Press!

You wanna come over to my blog and hang dudes?
http://www.digitalpoetry.2phatgeeks.com/

I got pics!

♥

Aion: is it worth your money?

Melissa — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 13:26:40 +0000

Authors Geek note: While the author has been playing Aion for several weeks, she does not claim to be nor tout she is some sort of Aion expert, either with the Aion Lore or game play. Should she be incorrect, please feel free to comment!

What is Aion?

Aion is a MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing game) being distributed in the USA by NCSoft. Originally, a Korean MMORPG, it has been released and played in Korea approximately a year before being tweaked for North American audiences and re-released here.

General Lore?

Loosely retold, the story is that you are an ascended being–a Daeva, who has forgotten his or her memories of the past and so you must journey to recover your powers and your memories. As proof of your ascension from humanity to Daeva-hood, you proudly boast a pair of white or black wings (depending on which side you choose, Asmodae have black wings, Eylos have white) and can fly wherever there are large amounts of aether.

The Eylos and the Asmodae have been at war with one another since the destruction of Aion’s tower, blaming one another on the cataclysm that sundered their planet in two–leaving the Asmodae occupying the colder, sunless half and the Eylos in the warm, bright other. To add further conflict, when the world sundered and created a great Abyss, a race called the Balur began occupying the Abyss attacking Asmodae and Eylos alike.

Graphics?

Graphics are a mix of breath-taking textures and details, bright colors or dreary settings to create the mood–to a biiiiit outdated pixel-ated spots and places and flat texture wraps designed to trick the eye into thinking it’s 3-D. In some areas, such as the capital cities for the two main races? Aion’s detail and attention truly shows. The main cities and player details are really eye catching.

Character customization is okay. You can truly make some unique and different looking avatars to represent yourself in the game. However, it’s not quiet enough to make them stop blurring in my head. There are far too many pretty, oh-so-pretty boys running around with teeny tiny delicate ladies. (Yes, including myself–guilty of making a short female avatar!)

The armor sets are not as unique as I’d like, and while you can dye your armor different colors, it’s not quite the same.

There are vendors in the main cities which sell actual no-benefit-clothing. They are so ridiculously overpriced however, in my opinion, you are better left to worrying about extras such as this when you can afford to rake in the several hundred thousand kina needed to own one piece or two.

What’s the questing like?

Repetitive.

And I do mean that in the grindy-oh-god-just-drop-my-god-damn-shit-already-jesus-been-at-this-for-two-days-way. Those of you familiar with the grind of Lineage might find this game (while not specifically as bad) familiar and like a second home.

And yet, I don’t mean the grindy either.

Aion’s quests are good for those who seek the lore of the land or like a good little laugh. They range from: steeped in history, to: find my pet pig. The rewards for the quests aren’t often the end goal but the amount of things you kill. NCSoft has attempted to make the outright grind-fest which was the original Korean game (which 1 or 2 repeatable quests–so I hear–for every five levels have turned into a butt-ton of quests every level or two) into something a little more appealing to North American Audiences. And in a sense, they succeed here, marginally.

What’s the game play like?

The game play itself against PVE is pleasant if, again, repetitive. As I am not the sort to get into super depth about armor, crit rate, percentages and what not–I’ll be passing over this with my usual generalities.

I do feel that Aion is a gear-centric game. The better your gear and the better your manastones/Godstones slotted into your gear (mana stones are little, well, stones with + bonus to stats. Such as +8 to Evasion to +14 to Parry. Godstones are Proc stones, such as: 10% chance to stun on hit, etc) the easier time of it you’re going to have with your class.

As you level, you are eligible for skills to purchase from your class trainer. There are the normal, subset skills for your class and then a triggered, special ability connected to the original skill which can also be triggered. This depends either on a percentage, a stat, or in some cases can be triggered each time by just hitting your regular skill. Whether or not you succeed against PVE or a PVP will depend a lot on timing and your gear.

It sounds Grind-ey. Am I really going to have to Grind?

Eventually, yes. There is no real way to avoid having to spend an hour or two, three, or more grinding for mob drops either to sell on the Auction house or gray (useless) drops to sell at a merchant just to afford your skill-up books, or your crafting/gathering skill ups. Or travel. Or paying for Soul Healing to remove XP debt after death. The game is designed to be an enormous money sink–and this is where at the very least Aion shines perfectly. They did a great job. It seems like every time you turn your head in this game some NPC some where wants you to pay them or buy something for them for several thousand kinah (the monetary system) which you likely do not have.

Don’t be fooled by people who shrug and say it’s eeeeeassssy to get several 100k in an hour or so below level 25. These are people who are either grinding for hours straight, or people who have more time than the general crowd to play the market. The average gamer with responsibilities elsewhere (jobs, time away, etc) generally does not have time to do either very well. If you want $ in this game you will have to set aside time to grind and sell. Period.

Crafting?

I’d only recommend the crafting if a) you are willing to grind for either the parts and pieces you need, as half the crafting materials you need can be collected, the other half can only be found from mob drops or purchased from players from the AH, b) grind for the money needed to get these pieces off the AH, as eventually you’ll out level the things you need and they will no longer drop, or c) you like never having any money. Seriously. No matter what you do, crafting wise, it will cost you money to make something. Even if you just grind the work orders blessedly placed by your crafting instructor to help you grind levels up without using materials you will desperately need to make your own Staff of Awesomeness.

Work orders, however, still require you to purchase components to finish the work order. While the main “materials” are supplied to you by the crafting trainer a player picks their work order up from, the cost for extras is still steep enough that in the beginning levels you’ll find yourself running out of money just for a few points.

And the PVP?

Can I absolutely avoid PVP?

No. Due to the rifting system and the zones these happen in, you’ll be forced at the very least to run from–or observe PVP from a distant happy safe place. I’ll explain more when I get to rifts.

PVP from my point of view: It’s fantastically frustratingly awesomely awful. All at once.

PVP happens in two ways in Aion:

The Abyss, which is the space created between when the tower of Aion was torn asunder. Occupied by the Balur who will attack Eylos and Asmodae alike, it’s a collection of floating islands in the sky a player must use their wings to fly to in order to travel. When in the Abyss and away from your factions NPC or fortress, you are attack-able to the opposing faction.

Within the Abyss are powerful artifacts and fortress’ controlled by the Balur. Artifacts can be taken with great effort and reward by either Eylos or Asmodae; but since this is the Abyss, either side may also hamper either side in their attempts to take over an artifact or Fortress. For example, say the Asmodae were attempting to take over a fortress for their own. Not only is a fortress difficult to clear and the end boss legendary to take down–Eylos may also pour in while the Asmodae are in the fortress. The Eylos can kill the Asmodae whilst they are trying to take over the fortress and should their numbers and strategy be strong enough, they may be able to take over the fortress themselves.

Designated Zones where rifts occur:

Rifts are tears in the ‘fabric’ of the Abyss, connecting the two sundered sides of the planet. They can be traveled through either from the Eylos side to the Asmodae side or vice versa. Rifts appear every few hours and in random places at random times all over the map of certain zones. They are level restricted and population restricted. For example, Rift A connecting to Asmodae will only allow 20 Eylos of level 20 to pass through before closing.

As I have only played Asmodae, I can only attest to the Rift PVP from that stand point. When you reach level 20 several of your quests will span in two different zones. One of them, Morheim, has the largest amount of quests for the 20-29 level range and a player will no doubt be spending time there. While the PVP is nothing like the Abyss, roving packs of the opposite side randomly appearing while you are trying to collect 20 mushrooms are an average occurrence in Rift appearing zones.

This isn’t necessarily as bad as you think it sounds like. Most often, those who come through the rift are individuals, groups of three or four or opposing factions just trying to finish quests–as the game some how feels the need to give you quests to do on the opposite faction. (As in: Eylos are sent to Asmodae territory to finish quests and Asmodae must go to Eylos territory to finish a few of theirs) Depending on the server, time of day, level range of the rifts–it’s currently rarer for me to see large, organized groups of Eylos terrorizing the country side. Usually it’s one or two hopefuls just trying to finish a quest being zerg-rushed by happy Asmodae.

The PVP system in Aion is…actually…fun.

You are rewarded each time you kill a mob in the Abyss, or each time you kill a player in the Abyss, or each time you kill a player in PVP regardless of where it is with Abyss points. You may accumulate these points for rank and to use Abyss points to purchase unique, orange gear which cannot be found anywhere else in the game.

I have been playing MMORPG’s for a modest seven years now. There are others out there that have been doing it far longer, but I’d like to point out that in seven years I have never participated in, nor wished to have anything to do with PVP.

In Aion I have actively put myself in the Abyss, joined a guild, followed them on fortress raids and taken great joy in stabbing at the opposing side. I’ll let you be the judge as to whether or not the above is a positive or a negative toward Aion itself.

So in a nutshell: is Aion worth your money?

Yes if:

You are bored of everything else and have nothing else to play.
Like PVP, or at the very least, don’t mind it or don’t mind having to grind extra in controlled PVP-areas (non Abyss)
You like pretty, pretty, pretty characters.
You played Lineage II or Guild Wars. Aion is NOT WoW, despite the similarities in some areas.
Realm Verses Realm works for you
You don’t mind the grind
Pretty, pretty characters with wings!

No if:

You have ONLY played WoW and no other MMORPG.
You don’t want to ever PVP or be near it.
You want to quest all the time, all day, every day/want to have a quest to do every time
Want uber rewards for quests
Dislike gold spammers
Dislike having to grind out a level or few, or grind for drops, etc
Pretty, pretty characters with wings make you do EW faces at your monitor

I’m thoroughly enjoying Aion at the moment, and I will readily admit half of that is because there’s just nothing else out there that I either haven’t already played (free or paid) or nothing on the horizon for a good long time and I need my MMO fix. The other half–is because I am actually liking the game despite the money sink, the gold spammers, the idiots (which come with any game) and the grind. There’s something about it, possibly because I AM a girl and I DO like pretty things–that keeps me signing in. And that’s all a game really has to do at the end of the day to work, doesn’t it–keep me signing in.

♥

2phatgeeks Issues/Maintenance

Melissa — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 06:22:50 +0000

Hey boys and girls! This is just a heads up for the coming few days: 2phatgeeks.com will be going through some Maintenance as we’re currently experiencing some WP plug in issues.

I would like to blame this on bariguy, my husband, but I fear that it’s due to me and we think trying to use the debacle that is Intense Debate. We couldn’t save drafts or posts directly from the WP admin yesterday either, but today we can–and now the ads went down. So we’re going to try a fresh re-install of everything and see how goes.

Don’t worry! All your comments and all of our scintillating posts will remain for you to enjoy! I sincerely hope you’ll stick with us which we beat the shit out of some gremlins in our system! Sorry guys for any inconvenience this may cause!

♥

Pinkopalypse

bariguy — Sun, 31 May 2009 17:19:29 +0000

When it comes to computers, there are pink components, and there are good components, but there are scant few good pink components. While for most geeks this is not a problem, for me it is as the better half loves the color pink. So, in addition to doing every odd job I could think of to fill my time, I decided to right a serious geek wrong and make the pink computer I know she wants.

I am not a case modder; not by a long shot. I put computers together in preassembled cases. I’m pretty handy when it comes to putting things IN computers, but I am not known for my vast case modding skills. So while this was intended to be a welcome home gift for the better half of 2PhatGeeks, It was also a learning experience. So, I began.

First, we had to modify the cover. The case was originally black and silver and designed around a nicely geeky RPG/Medieval theme, complete with a shield on the front. Unfortunately The XBlade Design wasn’t going to work for the pink happy box idea I had in mind, so I had to do something. I pondered long and hard, several weeks before she left, in fact, deciding what to put on the case…

This brilliant design, of course, required I cut aluminum approx ¼” thick. I needed firepower. I needed… my first Dremel! It is an amazing machine that I am not at all good at using. But I managed to accomplish what I needed and lined it with a little bit of rubber tubing and hot glue to cover some of my many imperfections… wow, it’s a metaphor for me!.

Next there was a BOATLOAD of painting. Every peripheral that I could properly paint (as well as some I couldn’t) got a coat of candy pink, white or pink fading to white.

One thing you won’t see in this next picture is a fancy pink keyboard. While I knew it would be a challenge, Mel had literally worn her keyboard almost out, half the letters were gone, so I figured I had nothing to lose. If things didn’t work out, well, she was due for a keyboard anyway. Good thing I had planned for the possibility of failure! While the keyboard looked awesome, it just didn’t work. The Microsoft ergo that she prefers is made to pretty dang exacting standards that my painting is not up to! I bid it a fond adieu and replaced it with a new one. Anyway, here we can see some of the peripherals. The mouse looks and feels awesome!

Next I turned my attentions to the case. Every surface was repainted. The chassis frame is completely white, inside and out, while the outside of the case is pink in the front fading to white at the rear. It was far from flawless, as a first attempt, and some minor touch ups were needed, but when I first saw the case front repainted and reassembled, I started to get excited. I think it looks awesome and girly!

Lastly, as I assembled the case, I couldn’t just let the blue lights and fans stay, so I replaced them with white lights and filled the heart in with a pink bit of plastic from, of all things, a girl’s notebook from Wal-Mart.

Behold… The Pinkopalypse! It looks so light and airy and girly I think I just grew an ovary.

So ended my first real attempt at (admittedly very minimal) case modding and I hope the returning princess likes it! I really believe she will. I learned several good lessons for the future… including that 1. The Dremel is the coolest power tool ever, but that they require patience and that 2. I really suck at painting. By the time you are all reading this, she will be on a flight home and will be seeing it by sometime around 8PM this evening.

WELCOME HOME BABY!

♥

Linux FAIL

bariguy — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 14:35:23 +0000

Recently, like a lot of geeky type folks, I was warily taking part in the Windows 7 beta. I cleared a 30 GB partition for this on my primary System hard Drive and happily dual booted for a while. After a good while evaluating it, and deciding that I really liked what I was seeing, I decided to get rid of the Beta and see what other mischief I could get into.

This was about about 8:30 Tuesday Evening and I was presented two basic options at this point:

1. I could resize my Vista partition back to the full drive and find some other way to amuse myself or
2. I could try out a Linux OS.

Not realizing the horrors that await, I decided to see what all the kids were talking about and try out Linux. I went and check out the various versions at distros (which is hip Linux slang for “Distributions” which the rest of the world calls “Versions,”) at DistroWatch and downloaded the latest stable Ubuntu and began.

Let me begin my horror story-critique by telling you all that I began my computing life back on DOS and earlier command based systems. I understand these systems decently well, even though it’s been a while since I’ve used them, and this brings me to my first and largest complaint about Linux in ALL of its distros …

It’s not 1995. Leave the command line for emergencies. I should not have to use a command line terminal to do the most basic of tasks, like driver installation. I update my drivers all the time and like to make sure I’m always using the latest stable drivers I can get my hands on. It seems like every aspect of using and installing Linux needs command line access through a terminal interface. And the commands can’t just be through my regular user, but through the uber-powerful ”Root” user. This adds an extra string to the command or requires that I open terminals or system functions through a different manner than just fucking clicking on them.

It’s 2009, people. I should be able to accomplish the vast, overwhelming majority of system functions with some clicks and a few scattered keystrokes. The only typing I should have to enter are user names and passwords. Until Linux leaves its Unix, command-driven roots behind, they will never be more than the OS for small pre-programmed devices like routers and the like. Windows and Macintosh have both shown that the computer can be used by anyone, all you have to do is know where to click. Linux seems like a step back. And yes, I know Mac was first…. I can give credit where credit is due.

At Any Rate, let’s see how each of the distros I tried fared individually.

Ubuntu
Latest release: 8.10

My First choice. Most popular by hits at Distrowatch.com and there is a great support community. It installed quickly; popped right up at boot. I dug the look. I set up my normal static IP

address and was online in seconds. Unfortunately, I had to do this every reboot from this point forward since this latest *stable* release doesn’t save static IP Settings… no, I’m not kidding. Online guides I followed to hack my way around this failing resulted in disabling the Ethernet all together. Yes I followed them correctly. The online community is great; very vocal and always willing to come up with a solution that may or may not work.

I tried to install the latest nVidia Linux drivers. I have to tell the program I want the program how I want it to be run first. then I have to essentially leave Linux to a pure command prompt, and type in three excessive commands:

1. to stop some system service called X Server since the driver can’t install with it running
2. to install the driver
3. restart the X Server

This resulted in a garbled low-res image of a menu that told me my drivers were incorrect and led me in a menu circle of, “This driver doesn’t work, try another. Would you like to use different drivers or use a default?” I tried to default to some pre-installed drivers a version behind, these loaded initially, and after a reboot resulted in another low resolution garbled screen.

At this point (4:30AM) the system became unusable. This led me to go to bed… with a headache. On Wednesday morning I tried…

OpenSUSE
Latest Version 11.1

Never installed. Started to, but then screen went black and stayed black despite me waiting for as long as 30 minutes. The hard drive light flicked occasionally but nothing more. I moved (relatively) quickly to…

Fedora
Latest Version 10

This also never installed, though apparently it’s because it never finishes the partitioning process. I’ll be kind and assume this is because I’m trying to Dual boot with Vista which is known for being a bit picky.

I stopped here, as I found out that the failed Fedora installation screwed up the GRUB boot loader and my computer was no longer booting properly. I rebuilt all of the boot files with the windows bootloader and regions and did what I should have done at 8:30 Tuesday Evening: I expanded my Vista partition and went looking for something else to do.

Three installations, three failures.

Oh, I know what’s next: “There’s something wrong with your hardware,” or “You’re a moron.” No, there isn’t and no I’m not. This is all on hardware I know is in great condition and working perfectly. Heck nearly all of it is new and not so bleeding-edge new that it’s unsupported. It’s just new enough to be good but stable and well supported. It’s all been burned-in and tested and retested when I installed the motherboard.

Let’s not forget that I also use this computer every day without fail and I haven’t had crash on since the new motherboard has been installed, some 3 months ago. I’ve been building and loading PCs since they were little more than a hobby piece.

The one possible issue I see with my hardware, according to the Linux devotees, is that my P45 motherboard chipset could be the culprit. Apparently there are a few issues between P45 and Linux. This board, however, is one of the more widely popular Intel Motherboards and the Linux programmers should be more aware of that. After all, everyone’s most hated OS ever, Windows Vista, works like a charm on it.

It wasn’t all bad. Based on the Ubuntu install and the couple Live CDs I tried at least this much is true: Linux is impressive looking. It has a very slick look and lots of eye candy, if you want it, without much of a noticeable system slow down, either. Ubuntu loaded like a bullet. Fedora was very fast once it loaded from the LiveCD. It seems secure as heck, especially since you essentially can’t do anything without root access at the terminal. I’ll also be fair here and note that I was trying to dual boot these distros. Not all OSes behave well when it comes to dual booting. It is possible this and this alone is responsible for the problems I ran into, at least with openSUSE and Fedora.

You know, I remember the uproar when Windows Vista’s User Access control was a lot more prominent. Mac even made ads attacking it. Hell I hated it and to this day it’s disabled on this PC. Someone should have given these people Linux. Linux, from what I can see, is the triumph of security over usability. The upside, though is that with the massive amount of effort to accomplish the simplest of functions, it’s pretty hard for the end user to screw it up. Linux is on the cusp of being something really awesome, though. They’ve got the look, and the tech is great behind a bunch of it, now they just need to get someone to tell them that actual people will need to use it and show them what a mouse is.

I’ll take a look at it again in a year or so whenever they get past using the command line to do something as simple as install drivers. As far as my experience goes, however, I took the road less travelled… and based on my experiences; I can now see why no one takes it. It’s a road to a hell. This wasn’t even a new, different hell, but a hell I remember from before 1995.

♥

Best. Correction. EVER!

bariguy — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 03:47:29 +0000

Ok, so between bursts of psychopaths at the office, I usually spend the day reading The Drudge Report to stay on top of the steady decline of my retirement account. I follow link after link and down the rabbit hole I go. At some point Saturday this led me to the Huffington Post. Normally I can’t stand the site. Mostly it’s because they’re calling themselves “HuffPo” which is like a gang name for a big fat white guy… and I just hate wiggers.

However, while perusing through link after link I found this:

Bright Blue Monkey Scrotum

This just made my day.

Thank you, universe for this very special gift, and now I can finally enter “Monkey Scrotum” into my keyword list.

♥

Perfect Disk 10 Review

bariguy — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 14:30:29 +0000

The ever gracious public relations team over at Raxco Software (Hi, Sherry!) were nice enough to provide the 2 Phat Geeks with an early release copy of Perfect Disk 10 Professional. Those of you that read my series on keeping your computer running should be familiar with Perfect Disk as one of the few paid utilities I actually recommend spending your hard-earned dollar on. The 2008 version of the program was the first interaction I’d had with any Raxco software and I was more than pleased with the result. Perfect Disk 10 has done nothing to diminish that.

In essence Perfect Disk 10 and Perfect Disk 2008 are a great deal similar to the end user when it comes to appearance. The interface feels familiar, with most of the function located in icon and text menu bars at the top of each of the function windows. If you were smart and took a look at 2008 than Perfect Disk 10 should be easily accessible. Both versions seem to be taking a page from the Microsoft Office 2007 school of tabs and icon based menus for navigation.

The install itself was quick and painless, much like the prior version, and only takes a few moments before you’re up and ready to go. Standard options for regular updates and all that good stuff remain in place for this version. The prior version seemed to have updates on a pretty regular basis and I like seeing software refined throughout its lifecycle; most especially for system maintenance programs. Only one little gripe about the install process was that when installing, it wrote over the prior version using the old directory structure. I prefer newer software uninstall its predecessor and install itself into a new directory. True, this is a pretty minor gripe, but the less confusing my life is the better.

All in all, however, from download to install to first examination everything seemed like a slightly prettier version of the prior version.

Things are a bit different “under the hood,” though. The engine used for the PD10 system seems a lot snappier than it’s predecessor. I ran test defrags under Windows XP 32-bit (a very fragmented system, as well), Vista 64-bit (large volume, moderately fragmented) and Windows 7 64-bit (small volume, largely fragmented) and all of them worked not only flawlessly, as I had expected, but a bit quicker than similar systems under the 2008 version, which I had not. The inclusion of Windows 7 support is a nice and important addition since I, like many folks, will be moving to 7 as it releases. While I know this is unrelated to the Perfect Disk, I’ve been fairly satisfied and successful with Vista, but I really like what I see in Windows 7.

Both the vista and the Windows 7 defrags went quick like a bunny. Even though I had been using the prior version of Perfect Disk I did notice a slight increase in the disk responsiveness after the short defrag. The Vista hard drive is just over 260GB just about 50% full. Initial fragmentation was about 6% and it was finished in just over 17 minutes. On the same system, the Windows 7 disk, which is on a small 30GB test partition, ran in about 8 minutes after an initial fragmentation of just under 15%.

The XP Box was the hardest test drive I took in the software, as it was just installed, used older hardware and was pretty heavily fragmented. Initial fragmentation was just a hair over 45% on an older 7200RPM, 120GB Maxtor SATA Drive. The defrag was finished in just over 1 hour on a P4 3.4 with 2GB of RAM. For my money that’s pretty quick, especially considering how much more snappy the system runs following the process.

In addition to the apparently beefier defragmentation system, Perfect Disk 10 Professional also includes a nice suite of smaller applications for space management; handling duplicate and temporary files and the like. It’s a nice bit of added features for the space conscious, but with Hard drive space considerably cheaper than gasoline, it’s not making me tingly in the geek areas yet. I do like the inclusion of extra features wherever possible and pertinent, though and it’s well and simply integrated into the existing shell.

Apparently the enterprise versions of the software have complete support for the virtualization going on in the big machines these days, though I have no system using these technologies on which to test it on. To be honest, the enterprise and server versions of this software are amazingly feature packed and seem an even better deal, especially considering how quickly large network data drives become fragmented and slow… I work at a good sized credit union: I know!

So, for the tl;dr crowd: Perfect Disk 10 Professional is a decided improvement to is very worth predecessor and is among the very few pieces of software I’ll actually recommend everyone actually purchasing, rather than finding freeware versions that are similar. Go get it. Spend Money On it. Love it.

♥