Scottish Samurai

Well shit, I forgot to post about my current machine updates. This will be short and sweet. Gone is the 2012 Macbook Pro (well gone to a friend), and hello 2015 Macbook Pro. 15" Retina Display CPU 2.5 Ghz 4870HQ Ram: 16GB DDR3 1600mhz Video Card: 2GB VRAM R9 M370X Storage: 500GB Solid State Compared to my Desktop PC it won't win any races but for a portable computer I'm happy. This was another deal with work and happy to have something a bit more portable then the old 15' Pro, along with a better screen and speakers. Man I didn't realize how important having loud speakers is on a laptop when you use it for cooking or almost anything. The thing can play most thing I would want to play with a trackpad. Beyond that I move to the PC but I've been happy with it as something to work on. The future currently looks to hold some possible video card upgrades but really everything is in a good spot.. well except the world so see how that turns out.

It's another tech post, another talk about my latest hardware addition however I think this might be a first for me. Instead of a cheap work desktop turned into a gaming "thing", instead of a laptop with extra power, or a iMac or even a strange console like Alienware rig, I have actually build my first PC. Before I dive into the PC I want to go over the history a bit. I've been playing computer games since forever, I was a die hard windows user till university where Apple made a big play in my life (and still is, typing on a mac for this post) however I've always been playing games with what I had, never on a machine made to actually push games. I had a stint as a console player near end of high-school till about mid-university which was the most gaming thing I had probably bought at that point. I have to say I've impressed myself with my love for the gaming industry, and PC's yet never actually built or had a machine that could really capitalize on gami...

Total War: Rome II  So it took almost 2 years but I think I finally like this game. It's amazing to me because Rome Total War probably up there in most played game. The hours I have put into the game, and the nights spent trying to take over the known world are so many.  The memory of playing the demo for the first time sticks in my brain in the original game. Taking my force and attacking from the tress in a surprise maneuver just had me my teenager mind lost in a sea of tactics and battles. From that point it was nights spent avoiding homework going "just one more turn" as my armies marches across the classical world. There was something to a game that balanced a great real time war scenario with a simple yet fun turn based system that had you stuck once you started. Years went by, and more Total War games came out, but slowly they just stopped being the Total War games I loved. Looking at them I loved certain parts but the dark era of gunpowder nev...

You know what's weirder then crying over fictional characters in a movie. Crying over a fictional universe in a game. I got to spend most of my holidays playing Life is Strange. A wonderful interactive fiction game (think Telltale games) that lets you control a 18 year old going to High School and the drama that follows...oh and you can travel through time. It is amazing to see a game that can not only be fun; maybe not all the time but tries to tell an amazing story well keeping a person engaged with some interesting gameplay. My plan is not to talk about the story to much in Life is Strange but rather focus on the idea of story. The time spend playing Life is Strange had me kept going back to asking "why isn't this a movie or tv show" or "this would make such a good..etc". The story in the game tell teenage drama in maybe a corny way at times but probably better then I have seen it in a long time. Not only that it is able to wrap in a time travel element...

So I swear this is more due to a lack of actually updating about upgrades then any actual crazy purchases, but I finally now have my dream editing machine (well I will with a few tiny upgrades). Anyway due to the luck of the job I have, they had an internal auction for old laptops they were getting rid of due to upgrades. I didn't think much of it at the time when I looked as I thought they prices would go crazy high. However on the last day I took a gander and noticed a 2012 Macbook Pro 15" was still sitting at $400. So I jumped in. With one small bid, I was able to secure it for $415 easily and can't be happier. The specs did say a failing a hard drive but I already wanted to throw in a SSD anyway so didn't mind at all. The nice specs of this machine I think make it my most powerful machine yet. It has a quad core i7 2.3 Ghz CPU which clocks in on the geek bench over 10,000 which makes it about a little more 1000 more then my old iMac 27". It came with 16gb o...

Hey Folks, won't even go into how long it has been but as tradition, a new gaming machine means a new blog post. Normally I would post if I had upgraded my main computer with something amazing. However my old 2010 iMac is still a beast so I have yet to need to do anything with it. In the mean time Macbook Air and a Macbook Pro have done well to fill any other voids I might have. This being said today I got probably the first time, a fully operational gaming machine. It is not like a  typical gaming machine however. I don't have a huge case, or 2 GPU with i7 whatever in it. Instead i got an Alienware Alpha. This thing takes up less space then a Xbox, or PS4 yet punches even harder. It has a 2 GB Nvidia card in it paired with 8 GB of Ram, and a 250 SSD. It only has a i3 processor but this is a machine meant for games. It is not meant to destroy frame rates, or edit movies however compared to the 2010 1 GB ATI card in my iMac it can beat the pants off of it for sure. I have yet ...