My thoughts on Steam (the digital game distribution service, not the gaseous state of water)

Well I haven't been writing anything here in over a year so lets give this another go.

I will be rambling about my experience with the Steam service in the recent months but lets start with my first impression I made years ago.

When I first heard about Steam it was way back when Half Life² was going to be released and while today I'm not too thrilled by the game, back in the day I really wanted to get my hands on it for the flashy new engine with its elaborate physics.
Now I didn't have access to the Internet back then and I had heard that even if I bought the game off of the shelf I would need an Internet connection to play the singleplayer experience. :\ This was frustrating to say the least and really had me off to a bad start with the Steam service.

Some time later, I can't remember if it was while I already had Internet or not, I installed the Steam client to try out how it is and I made yet another frustrating experience with it: It really bogged down the performance of my older PC just by running the client. Something I really didn't need on my weak hardware. So overall I wasn't happy with the existence of Steam only knowing it as a way to not let me play a game I was interested in.



But... about half a year ago now I've had another go at it because I needed a way to easily purchase games for my collection that I had tried out and liked and maybe couldn't find in a retail store here anymore or only to awfully high prices still. As it turns out Steam pleasantly surprised me this time around.

I had heard something of games going on sale on Steam before while not being announced ahead, but I had no idea that this would happen like almost every week(end), sometimes a different one going on sale every day! This was perfect for me since I don't really have a lot of money to spend and sometimes I play games to distract myself from dealing with my chronic illness and getting something new for a change is great of course.

The Steam client is also not feeling like it drains away system performance anymore. The web content can take a bit longer to show up than in a proper browser but overall it's responsive and doesn't impact on my modern system that I could notice it.

Then there is something I really really like: the overlay.
While playing a game through Steam I can hit Shift+Tab by default to open an overlay that fades over the game screen, show some info, links, lets you use the browser ...and offers the ability to chat with friends.
Now this is great because I'm usually constantly chatting with one of my friends while we play and with this overlay there was no need anymore to try to get games running windowed mode if they even support it properly or hope that they won't crash from tabbing between the game and instant messenger from within fullscreen mode. So that's one of the best features to me really and my friend who wasn't keen on Steam before as well got a much better experience from it now also.

Having all the games in a neat list and being able to (un)install without discs sure is nice as well (although I belong to the people who regretted that games stopped being sold in proper boxes and instead only DVD cases anymore). While I would prefer to physically own the games, the benefit of being able to get most games without relying on a retailer to stock them for a good price and having to drag my ill weak body downtown just to check outweighs that concern for me. (And I do hope that if Steam ever is going to be shut down in the future, that there will be some way of being compensated or at least I would download them all to run them in Steam's offline mode then, but I do think they'll be around for a good while as a success digital distributor.)

So Steam for me has gone from "Oh come on, I just want to play HL² offline!" to a convenient and functional service of easily providing me with a good selection of different games on a budget and I've been enjoying it, making great deals to add to my collection.
...Oh and when there was a problem with my Steam wallet once, the customer service got back to me within the next 1-2 day with very friendly messages and fixed the problem. Thumbs up, Steam team of Valve.

Getting used to Windows 7

 (Post is under construction)

So I got my copy of Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit a little while ago and have been exploring it and have been looking for some things to compliment my new system so I thought would I share my experience on getting started on the new Windows and maybe you find it useful.

First of all I'm positively surprised as to how well this already works so early after its release. On my system it runs and feels noticeably faster and smoother than Windows XP 32-Bit. I have never bothered with Vista but I imagine that a change from Vista would show performance improvement as well. Compatibility so far hasn't really been much of an issue either. All my devices work and I got any program and game working that I have tried so far. The only real issue I have is that Windows 7 sometimes doesn't want to shut down completely which I suspect is one of the old 32 bit drivers not properly reacting to the shutdown instructions (Edit: Actually it turned out to be my WLAN device not having proper drivers). You probably won't even run into that one of course because you'd likely run different device drivers and software than me.

I'll be honest and say that in the time when I only saw previews of Windows 7 from various people I wasn't happy about the design it seemed to have. At least in the videos of those testers I recall seeing that on the taskbar there were big, fat, shiny, "web 2.0" buttons which just looked ugly and like trying so hard to imitate the look of Mac systems I guess. (Perhaps the previews I had seen ran on a low resolution which blew up the taskbar a lot while not using the "small symbols" option. I don't remember the exact look anymore. I'm simply stating my first impression as it was then.) I hated it and I hoped for the ability to switch to an efficient Win95/98 like design to get that cheap looking shiny stuff out of my face. (Which by the way you can if you desire.)

I also worried that the application thumbnails (which display even video and 3D graphics running live within them) and the said shiny desktop design would eat away at performance like back when Windows Media Player went from 6.4 to 7.0 and instead of a simple window that played just the video anymore, they added that shiny big frame which noticeably sucked away graphic performance on the hardware I had in those days for no other reason than to look shiny.

..However, now that I have the release version and running it on my monitor's native resolution the taskbar and buttons are nicely subtle actually. The only shiny round button is the Windows symbol and the applications use their normal little icons with subtle selection effects and as I said, Windows 7 actually performs faster and more smoothly on my hardware even with the Aero desktop and its effects. (It is possible to switch to a Windows 7 theme that doesn't use Aero by the way if graphic performance does happen to be an issue for you.)

The interface changes are also handy and a pleasant change. (Again keep in mind that I've skipped on Vista so if anything was a feature included in Vista already then I don't know of it and so I'm comparing to the XP system.)
You probably have heard about the mouse gestures for the control of windows already. You can maximize a window by grabbing it and pulling the cursor up against the top edge of the screen and likewise undocking the window will return it back to former size. You can also dock windows to the left and right in the same way which makes each take up half the screen. Oh and of course wiggling a window you've grabbed will minimize all other windows and repeating it will bring them back up, which is nice if you quickly want to get stuff out of your face to focus. It's handy I think even though I still have to get myself used to actually using the mouse gesture feature more often.

The visual design pleases me as it keeps everything looking very integrated and unobtrusive. For example remember me bitching up there about how the media player versions since 6.4 have gotten so clunky with their shiny design. Well that's thankfully gone in the version that comes with Windows 7! It is once again nothing but an effective slim window that plays video (the media management can be switched to by the click of a button) and when it plays an audio file it even changes into a small (but resizable) window by itself since you don't need a big scale window to listen to music after all. I like that.

I like the new features for file management as well. The libraries (I hope that's the term in the English release) help having all your media available in a convenient quickly accessible place even when stored in different folders (as I recall right now), the search is quick and surely very handy to keep order when utilizing the filters and all (which I haven't yet), ohh and when you rename a file it will automatically select just the text before the extension so unless you want to change the file type it saves you having to go and select the name with your mouse tediously every time you just want to change the name. Nifty

So yes I'm pleased with my new Windows. Faster on my hardware, effective design and hardly any compatibility issues. (I did keep my Windows XP installation on a separate partition just in case but I don't really seem to need it. You can find guides on how to preserve your XP for dualboot though like this one for example: "How to install Windows XP over Windows 7 in a dual-boot" .)



Anyhow, now the we got that pseudo review out of the way lets get to things I personally found good or essential additions to my new system. I may add to this list over time. We'll see.

•  Windows 7 Codecs

This is a codec pack that aims to add support for video and audio codecs not natively included with Windows 7 while not messing with existing codec setups to prevent bugs, as well as not requiring a certain player to work. Any player that uses directshow to render video supports these codecs.
For more info and the download visit the homepage of Shark007 at http://shark007.net/win7codecs.html

•  Disable Taskbar Always On Top

This is something I find a flaw in the new design and I assume the choice to always keep the taskbar pop up into foreground was made so less tech-savvy people would not miss on notifications of Windows and their applications, but I still think they should have kept the option to uncheck this behavior. When I'm in Second Life for example and receive an IM on my instant messenger the taskbar pops up in front of the buttons of Second Life and gets in the way. Now I don't want to put my taskbar onto another edge on the screen, I just want it to stay in the background.

After unsuccessfully looking for a checkbox or even a registry setting I have had a look around and found this little program someone has written to force the taskbar into background anyhow. http://www.csparks.com/Win7TaskbarMasher/

•  Fences (desktop icon management)

This is something I came across while looking for tweaks for my new Windows and I think it's something handy to have since the default icon placement still isn't too comfortable to manage. What fences will do is create variably translucent boxes which you can name and sort your icons into which you can then place on your desktop freely. I have grouped mine into fences for system tools, applications and games for example to separate them. Also with a double-click on empty space of the desktop you can hide and show the icons to have a clean desktop.
I'm using the free version and I haven't experienced any issues with it. Give it a shot if you like at http://www.stardock.com/products/fences/

Back to online living on a new PC

Actually I have been for a while now, however still rather quiet after what has happened and with the problems that are still very much going on afterwards.

But I do have a properly working computer again now thanks to the generous help of a dear friend (you know who you are).

"Properly" is putting it lightly actually.
While I had to use a weak, old PC over the months to have any kind of text contact to friends at all (it couldn't play video, let alone render much 3D and was choking on running Windows XP alone) after my computer completely broke down ..I now have what me and my friend jokingly referred to as a "supahputah" all the time while waiting to be able to get it for me and trying to stay cheerful.

I would have never thought that I would have such a beast of a PC one day as poor as my family has been all my life. I was just hoping that my PC would last me as long as possible until it broke a couple of months ago. I am truly grateful for this gift to help me out in such tough times, not only bringing me back to being able to live my social life fully and be able to be myself in SL again, but all around improving very much on what I used to have. It will hopefully last through the next 5-10 years before it would break from the constant use as well. This thing is so frikkin powerful. Thank you so much, dear.

For the curious and tech-savvy I'll post the hardware specs. This PC is self-built by the way.
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Mainboard: Gigabyte GA-M720-US3 (AM2/AM2+ socket)

CPU: AMD Phenom II X2 550 3,1GHz (dual-core processor)

RAM: Samsung 4GB DDR2 (only 3GB available in XP until I can get me Windows 7 64-bit for higher memory addressing)

Graphics: Gainward Nvidia GTX 260 with 886 MB DDR3 VRAM (custom fan cooling)
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This PC might not be the fastest currently available to people who have a lot more money to waste but damn is it good! I am more than happy with the performance.
I can suddenly run SL with maximum draw distance and still cam around easily (my hardware situation back in 2006 before I got an extra 256MB RAM was that I had to restart SL with emptied cache every 5-10 minutes to be able to move at all on minimal settings), it also runs Crysis at maximum settings at very playable framerates for example and heck it even runs crappy console ports okay that the developers didn't bother to optimize for PC architecture.
I can't thank my friend enough for this amazing gift that shall help to make my sick, little life more bearable again for the coming years. You've brought back my ability to have a social life as myself in SL again and to have some fun and happiness while the First Life times are tougher than ever. Thank you so much <3

She is gone...

In the evening of September the 1st, losing the struggle against the aftermath of a stroke and the cancer that was found in her body, my mother has died at the age of 60.

It was ensured that she would never have to suffer great physical pain and everyone visited her often to not be so alone over the long days in bed. However being paralized on her left and in a hospital which she dreaded so much, being helpless to do things on her own and unable to live normally and selfsupportive has been very hard for her and I am so sorry that her life ended in this way with her last two weeks being spent in such psychological misery for her. It hurt me and kept me sleepless to know of my mother being so sad and troubled in her situation and I so wished for her to recover quickly to become mobile again for her to feel better again to then fight the cancer at her best.

She had been recovering a little, regaining some feeling in her side and we had hope, but she always has been very weak from going so critical and suffering of the stroke back in that terrible night now three weeks ago and so she never got to regain control over her left side again yet in this short time, before she would become even weaker over the days of last weekend, when she eventually fell into coma and passed away.


She was a strong woman who always went on and somehow made it through, no matter how hard the troubles, sorrows and financial problems of our life were and she always had my back about issues of my own to protect me. Likewise she was liked and now is being missed at the social offices she worked for.

She will not only be greatly missed but was very much relied on in our frankly poor, sick and troubled family and where she was is a void now, very hard to be made up for. Living was practically based around her being the only one of us still healthy to have a proper job and she also was the one who knew and managed the needs and liabilities of life the best and properly, from knowing everyone's favorite food articles to dealing with legal and financial papers.
In my illness I am little more than a big child still when it comes to such things and I would have needed her at least for several more years to try and learn from her at least to know how to handle a living, even though everything is overwhelming me in my condition anyhow. ...but now she is gone in such short time and we will somehow have to manage living without her aid and support. Life always has become poorer, sicker and harder for us over all these years but we somehow all endured it especially with my mother being by our side and being there to somehow make us survive everything without hitting rock bottom.

... *sighs heavily*

I would have wished for a happier end for you, mom. You would have deserved it after all this stress and sorrow of all our lives. I am so sorry and thank you for having been there for me.

I love you

Life's a bitch, so is cancer and bad timing

I'm writing this just to let some of my close friends know why I am not showing up anymore.

About two weeks ago my PC broke down on me... It is likely the mainboard as it's not even booting the BIOS anymore. So it's dead for good.
This comes at the worst timing too as my mother has suffered a stroke, has a severely damaged liver and has been found to have cancer metastases in her body. I had howled and cried like a seal in the night of her stroke, being scared of losing her. She is in hospital now, her left side still paralyzed and chemo therapy is carefully being attempted, but she is very weak.
Not exactly a time in which it helps to be cut off from my closest friends and my Second Life or not to get some mental distraction, but alas that's the luck life throws at me sometimes. I had thought I pretty much had hit bottom already in the past but it can always get worse still, right?.

I am writing this using a very outdated old PC that chokes and crashes just trying to run my Windows so I am naturally unable to take part in my Second Life anymore or do other common activities. I am lucky I can even get this done. With my luck it might break too with the stress I am putting on it to have any contact at all.
We can't afford replacing any hardware as we barely have enough money for living at all now and the additional expenses of gasoline to get to the hospital for visits aren't helping.
My only hope now is that a friend of mine has offered to help me out to get new hardware, which I am very very very grateful for and this hope is what keeps me sane and avoid the mental breakdown I would have if I were to be cut off from my close friends due to our financial situation. It will likely take a couple of month still though until I have a functional PC again.

So I'll be back when I'll be back. *sigh*

Hardware update

..or how my pc grows up 5 years too late.

In the long meantime since I've been working on you, blog, my main hard drive has died by the way.
I've lost a lot of things that meant a lot to me like the logs from all of my time in Furcadia and SL (since it had logging). Saved memories have a big meaning to me especially due to my condition with my impaired memory and I guess the fact that I had been losing so much of myself from the past.

Anyhow I always loved to be able to go back and read how me and a good friend met the first time or even just to be able to go back and look up something I had been told before or just something that made me smile. I also never liked to lose roleplays after working on the posts. Before SL had a log option I hated to lose RPs and copy pasting into notepad didn't always work when crashing for example.

Now I lost several years worth of conversations and roleplay. I didn't have a backup of them. Constantly updating files to be burned on a permanent disc again and again somehow never appealed and I didn't expect my main drive to just die from one day to another. Go bad maybe, lose data, start scratching itself like an old one I had yeah, but not just waking up one day and it doesn't even spin anymore.
I've also lost the work files for my edited pictures, video clips I recorded and of course a lot of other stuff but anything downloaded or installed doesn't matter much compared to the loss of memories.

Anyways I am rambling. I meant to get to the good point about my hardware as well.
It will be my birthday soon (Dec 20th) and eventually after having this PC for years already I will have 2GB of RAM and I am curious about how that will feel, multitasking finally working better, loading times being shorter, program stuttering going away, some games becoming playable for me just like when I got from 256MB to 512MB.
It'll be great I am sure.
When I put my current PC together, which was the first one that wasn't second hand from family members, it cost us a lot of money for our situation then (and now we have even a lot less money) and after getting the ASUS A7N8X mainboard with a AMD 3200 XP, the case, etc I had run out of money and could only afford a 256Mb RAM for the rest of the money. A junk brand at that unfortunately.
The thing is this motherboard is (was by now) powerful and needy and it crashes such cheap RAM if running at full speed because the chips are not of a good enough quality to be reliable. So all this time I am running the CPU on like a 2500MHz instead of a 3200Mhz because I have to keep the frequency lower for the RAM.
Also 256MB aren't really much as you surely know. Windows alone used almost all of that and I was purely running on my hard drive as virtual memory. My time in SL consisted of logging in with a clear cache, be a little smooth while things weren't rezzed yet then I would freeze up almost completely, relogging with cleared cache every 5-10minutes to start over.
Yeah I don't know either how I managed to survive 3 years on the PC like that in total with every program running that well.

Then the additional 256MB came from wonderful friends who had old hardware they wouldn't need anymore and sent them to me over half the globe. They upgraded my life really by doing that since the PC is my gateway to living and I am still very very grateful for it. Thank you <3
512Mb felt amazing compared to before. I could actually move freely in SL for example! Like walking and looking around and staying online for hours. Beautiful.

So now I will be making a jump from 512MB to 2GB when I get the ram as combined gift for birthday and Christmas and I am really looking forward to the performance boost. Finally my PC would get the full potential ..when it actually already become outdated.

Well enough rambling about this for now.

(Please pardon possible typos and bad phrasing. I just scribbled this together, overtired, not working it over much really yet)

Hello blog, long not see

Well just as I predicted I couldn't keep up with updating this.
Naturally in my condition as always. I can start things again and again, gather a little bit of initial enthusiasm to get energy out of nowhere for doing so and then after the first break I never get to finish it as I would need to force my sick little body and brain from then on which only possibly results in suffer like overloads or frustration of the inabilities. It sucks, yeah.

Well maybe I'll still use this space for general babble when I feel like typing about something although I am usually chewing off a friend's ear with that in conversations instead.

On a sidenote: I still love the header graphic though. At least something nice here.