Acid for Blood

Ubuntu to the Rescue

Per the suggestion of commenter Tough_Nutz in my previous post, I burned the Ubuntu Linux distribution to a CD, booted the OS from the CD-ROM drive, and transferred my critical files to an external hard drive. It totally worked! I'm so happy that I haven't lost my files. I'm going to reinstall Windows on my desktop tomorrow night, and on Saturday someone from the cable company is going to install my internet so I'll finally be able to play Guild Wars at home.

I've been curious about Ubuntu for a while, but never got around to trying it out until now. Ubuntu is incredibly easy to install and from my brief experience it's also easy to use. It's kind of cool that I can run the entire operating system from a CD-ROM. If so many games didn't run on Windows, I'd probably want to use Ubuntu. Gaming on a Linux OS seems like it's beyond my capabilities. I'm probably more proficient at computers than the average user, but probably not enough to mess around trying to get games to work with a Linux distribution. If I get another laptop that I don't intend to use for games, I'd probably put Ubuntu on it though.

Still Alive

If it wasn't already obvious from the lack of content, I've been too busy to post. Blogging will be sparse for at least a month, possibly more. More on why later. Watch this space.

My gaming computer's been broken for a couple of weeks and I haven't had time to deal with it yet.

I have not finished Portal or anything else I said (a few months ago) I would finish. I've been playing Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords on the DS lately. I finished it the other day, so I suppose that is an accomplishment because I suck at completing games. I'm trying to get to level 50 so I can PvP without getting owned during every single match.

Bad Memory

Heyo, everyone. It has been a fortnight since my last confession.

I haven't been doing much gaming lately, since my computer is still broken. I am approaching the light at the end of the tunnel, however. A new memory module from Crucial will arrive tomorrow. I returned it to them a couple weeks ago to have it serviced or replaced (probably the latter).

It is my firm belief that I have been cursed with a hex that causes memory modules to fail on me at least once or twice a year. I think this is my fourth stick of RAM in two years, though I did switch to a name-brand company in the middle of that process. Hexes aside, I wonder if I have been doing anything to contribute to my computer memory problems.

So Soon!

I like it when companies announce a release date that isn't too far off in the future.

NCsoft and ArenaNet announced that Guild Wars: Eye of the North, the first ever expansion to the subscription-free Guild Wars franchise of fantasy online role-playing games, will be released to the public on August 31, 2007.

This isn't an expansion for new Guild Wars players. It was created for veteran players, so the content in GW: EN will be accessible to those characters that have completed at least one of the previous campaigns.

There will be over 40 new armour sets, so maybe one of them will be a Necromancer 15k set that I'll actually want. Honestly, you'd think that one of the edgier Professions in the game might have an elite armour set that would appeal to me, but such is not the case (alas).

The rumour mill had speculated the GW: EN release to be around Winter holiday time, but sooner is also nice. The August 31 release date does mean that I have to step up my Nightfall questing, which has fallen by the wayside due to real life and computer problems.

On that note, I am sad to report that my (desktop) computer's motherboard may be fried. It's out for a diagnostic. I am not going to be doing a major computer upgrade for at least another year (or two), so if it is the motherboard, I'm just going to replace it.

Check the Power

After far too long, I finally have my computer running again. The original problem has not been fixed. When I was trying to determine what was wrong, I inadvertently broke something else. Me = n00b. :-) I fixed the "something else" so Angseth is at least working on the surface. Everything appears normal, but I don't think the main problem has simply vanished.

The original problem was that sometimes Windows would not start up at all, even though everything was powered up. My RAM's lights were blinking (though sometimes they were frozen instead of moving), and the case lights also functioned as normal. The screen would appear blank, as if there was no video signal coming through. When it did start up, it usually took a long time and would do so after a few resets. Sometimes I would get an error message instructing me to check the graphics card's power supply. I'm fairly sure there wasn't anything wrong on that front, but I've triple checked the connection.

Prior to the involuntary hiatus, I checked the hard drive for errors, did the spy ware search, and did everything else I could think of. Nothing worked. If the problem pops up again, I'll search for answers online somewhere. I'll see how it fares over the weekend.

On the Metroid Prime 3 Release and Future Console Purchases

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption is scheduled for release on 20th August. I do not own a Wii and a new console is not in my budget this year. I'd like to buy a console to play more than one game, and quite honestly there aren't any other games on the Wii that appeal to me at the moment. I don't want to buy a Wii to play old games. I want to play Wii games.

The Xbox 360 has more games out right now (or coming soon) that I would like to play than the Wii.

The PlayStation 3 also has more games that I would like to play than the Wii.

Final Fantasy XIII looks like a game I'd like to play, which may come as a surprise, considering my lack of patience with Final Fantasy VII. The more I see of Final Fantasy XIII, the more intrigued I become. I wasn't remotely interested in this game until I saw a picture of the main character, Lightning. She looks really, really cool. Like, so cool that 'cool' doesn't even describe how cool I thinks she looks. I love her costume. I think I have a little crush on her, and I don't even know her story. I want to find out more about Lightning!

Still, the bottom line is: no console purchases this year.

In other hardware news, my PC is out of commission for the moment. I won't go into boring details, because it's a bit complicated. I'm waiting for a part to come through so that I can start working on it. For now, I am computing from my notebook computer. This means no extended Guild Wars sessions because I quickly get fed up of the small (14-inch widescreen) screen, but this was the reason behind getting the small screen in the first place. Yes, I am odd.

In gaming news, I'm reviewing the indie game, Mr. Robot, for the PC. I managed to get a couple of hours in before my computer broke, and the first Play Rating is up at The Game Chair.

Easy Breezy

I've just installed the new/replacement fan on my graphics card. So far, so good. Going to test it on Guild Wars at some point later today.

Sitting Quietly in Packing Peanuts

The replacement fan for my GPU arrived the other day, but I've been too busy to set some time aside to install it. I will be out-of-town from Sunday to Tuesday. I may have some time tomorrow to install the fan, depending on how productive I am on travel preparations and such. If I don't get around to installing the new fan, I'll bring along the instructions to pore over during my travels.

I played a bit of Guild Wars on my notebook computer, and playing on a 1280 x 768 screen makes me miss my 1920 x 1200 LCD. It's all right, though. The laptop was bought primarily for portable productivity rather than gaming, but having the option to play games is a feature I wanted and paid a bit extra for. It's handy at times like this, when my desktop is out of commission.

Dead Fan

It seems that the fan on my graphics card (256MB ATI Radeon 9800 Pro) has stopped working. I discovered this last night shortly after starting up Windows. The display shut off, but everything else seemed to be working fine. My monitor showed a black screen and an error message, helpfully informing me that the input should be in 1920 x 1200. I restarted the computer a couple of times with the same effect -- Windows starts up fine, display is all right, then screen goes black because the card has stopped transmitting information to the display. I shut down the computer again, opened up the computer case, touched my graphics card, and practically burned myself. I started the computer again and looked underneath, and saw that the fan on my card was no longer spinning. I turned it off again and made sure that all the connections were secure, but the fan still didn't work when I restarted. Finally I shutdown my computer for the evening because I was afraid that my card was going to overheat and switch off again.

I am looking into replacement GPU fans/heatsinks.  Any suggestions on which to buy/avoid?

If the replacement heatsink/fan doesn't work, which I guess would mean that the circuit between the fan and the GPU is broken, I am not sure what to do apart from replacing my graphics card.

If I need to replace my graphics card, does anyone have suggestions? I know that SLI is all the rage, but my motherboard is AGP. It seems that graphics cards may be all-SLI within a few years, so is it worth investing in the best AGP card currently available to make the most out of my motherboard? Are there any cards that somehow bridge the gap between AGP and SLI?

I've got to do some research.

What’s-Its-Name is Here

After more than six months of research, waiting, and saving, I bought the Asus W3J Centrino Core Duo Notebook:

PROCESSOR: Intel Pentium-M T2500 Yonah (2.0Ghz; 667mhz w/ 2mb Cache) DISPLAY: 14" WXGA (1280 x 768) Color Shine (glaretype) LCD Panel MOTHRBOARD: Asus W3J w/ Intel 945PM Chipset MEMORY: 2048Mb DDR2 667 (1 Gb x 2) HARD DRIVE: 100Gb 7200RPM GRAPHICS: ATI Mobility Radeon x1600 PCI-E Graphics w/ 256MB VRAM (512MB Hyper Memory) WIRELESS: Built-In Intel PRO/Wireless 3945 A/B/G miniPCI OPTICAL: 8x Super Multi DVD Burner BATTERY: 8-Cell Li-Ion; Approximately 4-5 hours of normal use life OS: Windows XP Professional

DIMENSIONS: 13" (length) x 9.7" (width) x 1.18"-1.28" (height)

WEIGHT: ~5.4 LBS w/ US standard 8 cell and optical drive

Tasks accomplished last night:

• Formatted hard drive from FAT32 to NTFS
• Uninstalled Norton Anti-Virus
• Installed Firefox
• Installed Firefox theme of preference (Brushed)
• Installed del.ici.ous Firefox extension
• Installed Grisoft AVG Anti-Virus
• Installed OpenOffice (I have MS Office on the desktop, but I want to try this out.)

Tasks attempted:

• Tried to find free partition management software (Anyone know of any? I've only been able to find demo or pay software. All I want to do is merge unallocated space with an existing partition.)
• Tried to stop Bluetooth Manager from automatically starting up
• Tried to stop Motorola Modem manager automatically starting up
• Tried to stop Asus Live Update from automatically starting up

To do (in addition to attempted tasks):

• Install SessionSaver 2 Firefox extension
• Take stickers off of laptop
• Decide which pre-loaded software to delete
• Give it a name