Thursday 21 July 2011

Team Fortress 2 Update - Crazy Rocket Launchers

I'm guessing that earlier today, you TF2 players started TF2 only to find an update. Since there have been a lot of updates recently, mainly to the matchmaking system, I assumed it was some kind of update to the matchmaking system, however, I was wrong. I got in game to find soldiers with a weird type of weapon that was vaporizing their targets, just like how items you carry to the elevators in portal 2 are vaporized!
Personally, I think that this weapon is pretty overpowered, and that Valve will nerf it later on. What do you think of this new weapon?

Wednesday 13 July 2011

It's been a while.

I haven't made a blog post in a long time. This is mainly because I have travelled to Wales and have had a pretty bad internet connection, and honestly, I just haven't had much time at all.
So now, I'm going to discuss something that you're all probably aware of now: Google+.
I got an invite to Google+ on my email address that uses apps, and to my disappointment, discovered that I couldn't use my Google Apps account to access the service. After getting an invite on my gmail address, I managed to get in on the latest hype.

As far as interfaces go, it has a very simple interface, which is to be expected from Google. It does have a facebook-like feel; they could of been more creative, but then again, it makes it a lot easier for people who have used facebook for a long time and are trying out Google+ for the first time.
Google+ does not have one big friend list, it has circles. You can edit the names of the circles, create circles or even delete circles. This allows you to easily categorise your friends list and set permissions for each group of people. For example, if you have followers, but you do not want them to see your personal info, but you do want to allow your friends see your personal info, then you can edit your privacy settings, which is a very neat feature.
The main problem with Google+ is the number of users. There are reports floating around the net that the gender of Google+'s users are ~87% male, which I presume will change when it throws away the invite-only system. A funny fact about Google+ is that Mark Zuckerberg, the owner of facebook, has more friends on Google+ than the Google CEO does!

If you've managed to get in on the latest craze, let me know what you think about it below!

Wednesday 22 June 2011

Fringe

A friend of mine that I know over the internet recently got me into a TV show called 'Fringe'.
It's a unique show, as I haven't seen anything like it before. If you aren't aware already, it's what I presume to be a mix up with CSI and some crazy sci-fi show.
It's basically about a scientist that did a lot of scientific experiments that would often be referred to as breaking the laws of science and also defying logic. Although everything seems to happen too quickly to begin (in my eyes, anyway), it gets easier to understand in every episode that you watch.


The story is more complex than this, and there is obviously more to it, I just took you through the basics.
If you like science, or if you're interested in things that you would consider impossible (for example, teleportation) then this show is definitely for you. The current season is season 3 and, to my knowledge, season 4 is currently in production.
This is an American TV show and is aired on Fox (channel 5?).
A television drama centered around a female FBI agent who is forced to work with an institutionalized scientist in order to rationalize a brewing storm of unexplained phenomena.
If you're interested, watch the trailer, and possibly even episode one and tell me what you think!
Comments from existing Fringe watchers are also warmly welcome.

Friday 17 June 2011

Android

I've decided to talk about my favourite mobile platform at the moment: Android
I don't like the iOS platform because of a few factors; for example, as with most of Apple's other products, you can't just buy a product, you have to buy something else to make it work, in this case, iOS is designed to run on iPhone only, just like how their MAC OSX operating system is designed to only run on MAC computers. Apple are also too restrictive on their app store, which is why they're having problems with jailbreakers. What I love so much about Android is that there are barely any restrictions; you can send files over BlueTooth without having to hack your phone's software, you can do whatever you want with your phone. If you root your phone, they even allow apps that will only work on rooted phones to be distributed via the market!
It's open source, and has a very active development community.

Aside from this, it's very user-friendly as it is integrated with the Google products and services that we've come to know and enjoy, it has a very familiar interface and is packed with tons of pre-installed apps that prove to be very useful. You will find that most mobile phone manufacturers have at least one android-enabled phone on the market, even the small phone manufacturers.

The main thing that I don't like about Android is it's development platform. I cannot stand Java, it is a horrible language in my eyes and doesn't really make much sense to use. It seems like a waste of resources. They should at least make a decent native API available for developers.

If you haven't already, you should check out a phone that has Android enabled as it really is a nice platform.

Tuesday 14 June 2011

Seek Bromance

This will probably be a rare occurrence from me, as this blog is more technology-orientated than music orientated, but hey, I really like this song. It's kinda chilled, has a nice sound to it and has an interesting music video to it. Check it out :)
(I'm sorry if it's blocked in your country - it's out of my control)

Monday 13 June 2011

Localhostr Uploadr

Hello everyone,
This isn't anything new to me, i've been using this program for a good while now and it's proven itself to be useful on many occasions.
It's basically an extremely quick way of taking screenshots. You can chose what area of the screen to take a shot of, or select which application to take a shot of. It then automatically uploads it to the localhostr file hosting service and displays all of the recent images that you have uploaded. It also works with uploading files too, you just drag the file onto the program and it will automatically upload it for you and display the link in the history when it's done.

It also adds a shell extention to windows, so you can just right click on the file that you want to upload, hover over 'Send To' and then click Localhostr Uploadr and it will upload for you without any messing around.
It's an extremely good program and you should check it out if you take screenshots quite a lot, as I do.
Some screenshots of the program:
Here is a link to the official site where you can find out more: http://localhostruploadr.com/


Sunday 12 June 2011

Windows 8 - Thoughts?

What are your thoughts on Windows 8? They've tailored it to suit tablets and normal desktop PCs. It has two main interfaces which are shown on the video: the classic Windows desktop interface with a start bar and such, and a Windows Phone 7-styled interface, which I presume is mainly targeted at tablets. As far as the classic Windows desktop interface goes - it looks too similar to Windows 7, but hey, it hasn't been released yet so hopefully there will be some major skinning before release.

Bitcoin

I was chatting in IRC a few days ago when someone told me about 'Bitcoin'.
It's basically a de-centralised e-currency. You can earn these 'Bitcoins' by either using your computer's spare CPU/GPU cycles to work together in 'pools' of computers to solve a puzzle. Coins are then divided between everyone in the pool based upon how many cycles they put into the pool.
Of course, this isn't the only way of earning bitcoins, you can also do jobs for people just like any other currency. Because it's de-centralized, no cut is taken and coins are transferred directly between people.
I'd like to hear people's opinions on this, because I'm not entirely sure if it's worth it or not.
Here is a link to their site where you can learn more: http://www.weusecoins.com/

Thursday 9 June 2011

Hello world!

Hello to anyone who is reading this! This is the first of many posts to come.
Please follow me for more posts soon!