Sunday 4 September 2011

Sunrise

Hello everyone! It's me, the lone denizen of the blog, here to spout some more poetry at the void!

Only, this, in a change of tradition, is actually the lyrics for a song that me and my friend are working on, so hopefully we'll have a video up of him singing this, because, well, I can't sing. Or play the guitar. Or anything really, except write!

Well, I won't waste anymore of your time with the story, heres the lyrics;

Sunrise

Heres a story about being alone in the world,
I sat upon the hill and watched,
As the cloth of the night unfurled

Remembering summer nights
When everything was alright
Tanning under the midnight sun
Back before the world was wrong

Ace of spades, Shades of blue,
Back when I thought it was all true
We chased the sunset and and we almost won
But who care we still had fun

(x2)
Summer Nights opened our eyes
Summer Nights watching the sunrise

Staying up till the dawn
Sitting on the beach lawn
Lying there spending time
Reminiscing of past lives

I was a city boy, and you were a farm girl
I don't know why, it seemed to work
We were together, it seemed like forever
Then it seemed to unfurl

(x2)
Summer Nights opened our eyes
Summer Nights watching the sunrise

Saturday 3 September 2011

The Quest For The Best... PSU

Hello people, It's me once more, here to talk about something very close to my heart, namely, computer building. I am currently in the process of determining what parts to put into my machine, so I thought I might aswell share the search with you guys. Feel free to tell me in the comments if this is boring you to tears rather than being any help!

Right, I looked into 3 PSU's for my rig (Which is going to be a gaming desktop), namely; The Silverstone Strider 500W, Antec Truepower 650W and the XFX Black Edition 850W.


First up, is the budget option;

The Silverstone Strider - RRP- £60 eBay - £43

Silverstone strider 500w

 

















The Silverstone seems to be aimed more at the casual gamer, rather than anyone looking for serious performance figures, as it's relatively low power output makes overclocking rather difficult, and the serious lack of connectors (only 12), means that external power will be required for any serious peripherals.

However, where it does find it's niche, is in ease of use, and ease of assembly. If this is your first time building a computer, a cheap, non-modular, mid range power supply unit is absolutely essential, and this provides it without sacrificing efficency or size.

Best Buy For: First Time Builders / Casual Gaming Desktop

3/5

The Antec TruePower RRP - £90 eBay - £73


Antec truepower

Antec has been creating great PSU's for years, and their R&D has been rather busy, as this updated model in their TruePower range is packed full of new bits and bobs that increase efficency and make it generally a much more powerful machine according to the stats, and given their track record for being 99.9% accurate with their manufacturers specs, I am inclined to believe them.

Now, I have a very big soft spot in my heart for the Antec PSU's, as it made the core of my first ever build, a desktop tower, built entirely out of second hand parts, and put together in my school. And, no matter how much abuse I put it under, no matter how many mismatched, bodged parts I wired up to it, it never failed to work. If you want something ultra reliable, but ultra modern, given Antec's track record, I'd choose this one.

Also, one other thing I want to draw your attention to here, is the plentiful number of connectors present, 24 in total! Also, the distrubution of these slots should make it easy to fit all of the peripherals you could want without getting all your wires tangled, which is the ban of modern computer building.

The only complaint I could have with this model, is that the decibel readings are a little higher than other models in the same price range.

Best Buy For: Mid range gaming towers

4/5

XFX ATX 850W Black Edition  RRP - £120 eBay - £101


XFX black edition


Now, to those of you with a bit of a background in computer building, the XFX brand will stick out like a sore thumb, in comparison to long established PSU producers such as Antec and Silverstone, as XFX is primarily known for producing some rather splendid graphics cards. Infact, I personally like to think of them as the Skullcandy of graphics cards, because, whilst they might cost a little more than the competition, they make up for it by looking damn sexy. You can see this heritage in the design of the module, with it's candy green fan, and spider web style grate, it certaintly looks the part of a luxury piece, despite only costing a little over £100.

In terms of performance, it is no slacker either, as 850W should be enough to power anything except the most bespoke of towers. Aswell as this, it also boasts the highest number of connectors in this little comparison test, counting in at 28, which seems almost superfluous, until you consider that it is designed this way, to allow for the upating of a tower with extra peripherals, which can add an extra year to your towers life cycle if you know what you're doing!

Also, according to other reviews, that eyecatching fan isn't just for aesthetics, it is also designed as a backup or complimentary cooling unit, meaning that it can help to keep your tower cool as an ice cube, or manage it all on it's own, though I wouldn't advise that if you plan on overclocking your comp, or installing any serious hardware.

However the voltage noise (slight jumps in voltage from the unit) is fairly high, though as long as you have good wires and good hardware, that shouldn't be worried about it, meaning that the only true downside here, is the price, which is admittedly, quite high for the voltage range.

Best Buy For: Upper Level Gaming Towers.

4/5

Conclusion

Well, it was a tough call for me between the Antec and the XFX, but I have decided to give my money to the Skullcandy of graphics cards. I chose it because of it's secondary use as a cooling unit, because I have decided to run a air cooled unit, instead of the more popular water cooled type for practical reasons.

Also, Daaamn it looks cool!

Agree? Disagree? Think I missed a completely awesome product? Let me know in the comments!

__________________

Oh, hey, you're still reading this? Awesome! I'm just going to give a quick shoutout to one of my friends sites, Cat Scratch Productions! They do some very short Youtube films, that both show off - and show you how to use - Adobe After Effects CS5! So, if your looking into using this software, give them a look!

Concrete Jungle

Hello every(no)one again! How are we all feeling this fine morning?

Silent?

Thats cool, I guess.

But, anyways, I digress; I'm here to once again, to shower you with poetry, only, this time, I found a recording of myself reading this trainwreck on youtube, here.

Now, without further ado, Here is Concrete Jungle in lexicon.


The Concrete Jungle

The concrete jungle

A place with grey skies of concrete
Where urban predators line every street
Heat shines on everyone’s faces
And they are of all races

The concrete jungle

A place with a heartbeat of car alarms
Where six out of 10 don’t know about farms
The city grows – fat and lazy
So large – even the skies are hazy

The concrete jungle

Jets from metal birds are the morning chorus
As glass mountains tower overhead
Hundreds of council estates lie dormant – now dead

The concrete jungle

With broken dreams
Like broken glass, lining every pavement
As hard workers struggle to pay rent
With this democracy of hippocracy
Paying people more than they could hope to earn
And only the few can afford to learn

The concrete jungle

Once a place of hope and glory
Now it seems, just the same old story

_______________________________
Thank you for reading, I hope that you enjoyed it! Please don't hesitate to throw a comment down below telling me what you thought of it, and constructive criticism (Hell, even flames) have been, are, and always will be welcome!

Friday 2 September 2011

And now for something completely different!

Well, I hope you enjoyed that last post, but it is now the time that I talk about computers, games, and generally geek out a little. If you just tuned it to read. Ah, who am I kidding? I've only gotten 8 hits, and I'm pretty sure none of them stayed to read anything. If you did read and enjoy, please comment, it let's me know that your not just some bot trawling the site!

Right, so, what am I going to talk about? Yup, that's right, something I'm sure many of you have expierienced atleast once; Computer viruses. The evil programs that take your computer and turn it either into something about as useful and as entertaining as a brick, or fill it with more holes than swiss cheese.

I am going to focus on a few relatively easy general fixes and preventative measures, rather than the history of malicious programming, because that, in itself, is very interesting, and is something I have on my little list of posts to write


Step Zero - Prevention

First of all, as the saying goes, prevention is better than the cure, and nowhere is this more true than in the realm of computer, as I have learnt the hard way. So, instead of being forced to run through these steps, which are boring as all hell and, completely A-Grade avoidable, just keep your antivirus up to date. I know that is continually beaten into your head  by everyone who talks about computers, but please, just do it, it'll save you alot of worry, and if you are unlucky enough to be hit by a bad virus, a lot of money to. Oh, and if you're like me, far to busy to update your anti-virus manually, get one that does it automatically, like Kapersky, or, even better, get one built into your MoBo, though that may be a little OTT for casual computer users.

Step One - Diagnosis

The first step to knowing what to do to your computer, is knowing what the hell is up with it. There are 3 types of malicious program that I am going to cover here, and I don't claim to be covering all of them, though feel free to mention the ones I mentioned.

1) Adware - This stuff will flash up all sorts of irritating warnings, telling that your computer is completely riddled with infections galore, and try to trick you into buying a bogus antivius program. This stuff is often really easy to spot, but much harder to get rid of.

2) Actual Viruses - These things will, unlike Adware or Worms, just brick your computer completely, after replicating in some way. If this happens, I'd advise going to your local computer store and seeing what they can do, as it is unlikely that anything except specialist help or guides for that particular virus will help. However, it is advisable that you run these steps before hand, if at all possible, if just to be sure.

3) Spyware/Worms - These types of programs operate invisibly, and are typically used in data mining operations, where they log your key presses and steal information such as passwords or credit card numbers. Most antivirus softwares will have a "Full Scan" option, which can find and destroy such programs, and whilst it is not infaliable, it is the best you can do, apart from using your common sense. Running these steps, should however, should kill off most Spyware, though if you think your passwords have been stolen, it may be a good idea to contact

Step 2 - Start Windows in Safe Mode (With Networking)

To do this, simply restart your computer, and when the screen listing all your computers hardware pops up (The black and white screen that shows up about 2-3 seconds in for the unaware), keep pressing F8, until you are presented with the advanced boot options screen. Select "Safe Mode with Networking" (Depending on your system you may be forced to use the arrow keys instead of the mouse here) and watch as your computer boots in Safe Mode, which will help to reduce the impacts of  the virus on the OS.

Step 3 - The Right Tools For The Job

Now we must end the processes that belong to any worms, adwares or viral infections, so that they do not interfere with the cleaning procedure. To do this, please download RKill to your desktop from the following link.RKill Download Link - (Download page will open in a new tab or browser window.)

When at the download page, click on the Download Now button labeled iExplore.exe download link. When you are prompted where to save it, please save it on your desktop.If you are unable to connect to the site to download RKill, please go back and do steps 3-6 again and make sure the infection has not reenabled the proxy settings. You may have to do this quite a few times before you can get RKill downloaded. If you still cannot download the RKill program on the infected computer, you should download it to a clean computer and copy it to the infected one via a USB flash drive or CDROM.

Once it is downloaded, double-click on the iExplore.exe icon in order to automatically attempt to stop any processes associated with Adware and other Rogue programs. Please be patient while the program looks for various malware programs and ends them. When it has finished, the black window will automatically close and you can continue with the next step. If you get a message that RKill is an infection, do not be concerned. This message is just a fake warning given by certain Adwares and Viral infections when it terminates programs that may potentially remove it. If you run into these infections warnings that close RKill, a trick is to leave the warning on the screen and then run RKill again. By not closing the warning, this typically will allow you to bypass the malware trying to protect itself so that RKill can terminate any Rouge programs . So, please try running RKill until the malware is no longer running. You will then be able to proceed with the rest of the guide. 

Do not reboot your computer after running RKill as the malware programs will start again. 

If you continue having problems running RKill, you can download the other renamed versions of RKill from the RKill download page. Both of these files are renamed copies of RKill, which you can try instead. Please note that the download page will open in a new browser window or tab.

Now you should download Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware, or MBAM, from the following location and save it to your desktop:

Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware Download Link (Download page will open in a new window)

Step Four - Search And Destroy

Once downloaded, close all programs and windows on your computer, including this one.

Double-click on the icon on your desktop named mbam-setup.exe. This will start the installation of MBAM onto your computer.

When the installation begins, keep following the prompts in order to continue with the installation process. Do not make any changes to default settings, and when the program has finished installing, make sure you leave both the Update Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware and Launch Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware checked. Then click on the Finish button. If MalwareBytes' prompts you to reboot, please do not do so.

MBAM will now automatically start and you will see a message stating that you should update the program before performing a scan. As MBAM will automatically update itself after the install, you can press the OK button to close that box and you will now be at the main program.

On the Scanner tab (It is usually opened on launch, but if not, it is the top left tab), make sure the the Perform full scan option is selected and then click on the Scan button to start scanning your computer for any known malicous files.

MBAM will now start scanning your computer for malware. This process can take quite a while, so I suggest you go and do something else and periodically check on the status of the scan.

After the scan is finished, it will prompt you to choose to remove the located programs. Check all of the boxes, and click remove.


And, there you go, job done! Tell me what you think of this guide!

    Tuesday 30 August 2011

    A Shopping List For The Modern Era

    Hello once again! As I've mentioned before, I am a poet. Admittedly, I don't think I'm a great one, but hey, I'll leave the judgement to you!

    This poem is my annual entry into a competition that I completely adore, the SLAMbassador UK championship. Check them out!


    A Shopping List For The Modern Era

    Sainsburys: Try something new today

    TV meals, 4.99
    To raise the kids that you leave behind

    Diet pills, £15
    To take your self esteem off the ground

    2L of Cheap Alcohol
    To fill the void left in your soul

    10 X Sticky Plaster
    To cover the holes in your happily ever after

    3 Cans of black spraypaint
    To write your eulogy on the walls of the estate

    A bottle of Aspirin
    To make the pain go away

    A kitchen knife
    For the games you play

    You were served by Rachel

    Have a nice day.

    _______________________________________________________________

    Thank you for reading my little poem! Now, I've been reliably informed by friends, that that poem is pretty sad, so, to counteract that, here's a kitten!;
    Say it with me folks; Awwwwwwwwwww 

    But, cute animals aside, tell me what you think of this in the comments, I'd love to hear what you thought of it! 

    And don't forget to tune in next time, where I'll be talking about computers, soldering, and gadgetry galore!

    Hello World!

    As the programming tradition goes, a format should, before anything else, be consecrated with two words and one punctuation mark "Hello World!".

    I knew that completely random piece of information would come in handy some day!

    Well, I'm sure you'll have guessed by now, but this is going to be a bit of a nerdy blog. But, not just that, it'll also, hopefully, be fairly creative, hence the "Prose" part of the title, which will likely be indicitive of what I'll be putting up here, seeing as I am, by the large, a poet. Oh, and the fact that I can't draw may come into that!

    By now, I'm sure you're wondering just what the hell is happening here, and why the hell you should care!

    Well, what I am going to do, is write a blog of two halves. First of all, I am going to be writing an electronics, computing and generally geeky blog, that will aim to inform and help people with their wonderful 1's and 0's. Along with providing you with some random facts and figures, because, you know, why not!

    The second part of the blog will be me posting up some poetry/bars, or some other miscellania I wrote. Or, some pictures of art, or just some other creative and artistic stuff!

    Well, thank you for taking the time to read this, and hopefully I'll have had the time to put up some more stuff for you to enjoy!