Koopatech

Working from home as an I.T. Professional

noreply@blogger.com (Koopa) — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 18:21:00 +0000

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My Web 3.0

noreply@blogger.com (Koopa) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 15:11:00 +0000

I have been on the internet since 1995 and was subscribed to one of the first major ISPs, (no...no...not AOL) CompuServe. (They were alright, but looking back I should have had Cruzio or something. But what did I know, I was 10 lol.)

The internet is kind of a shitty place right now as far as I'm concerned. All this web 2.0 stuff is bullshit man. Web 2.0 is supposed to be about us, making the internet more personal, but you know what? I feel very depersonalized on the internet most of the time.

Let me give an example why I hate web 2.0. Facebook. Facebook changes their layout wayyyyyy too often. They are thinking about designing a website for the user and not the human!!! They don't consider how we feel when they make all these stupid changes without asking us, the community who supports them.. Why should I have to wait a week or longer for a name change? LOL I reallyyyy hate facebook but its good for connecting with people and making new friends. Facebook is very poorly designed and bloated IHMO. For the IM chat you need a fast computer with a lot of Ram.

Now, here is a good example of Web 3.0. Speedtest.net. Speedtest is a free broadband analysis website. On New Years day 2010, I noticed they redesigned their site to remind people that network traffic was heavy on that day. Before this, your speedtest result just had two numbers, Download, and upload. On this day they had all these new numbers, including a grade of how of how well you performed. Mine was a B that day, and I forget most of the other numbers, one was jitter.

At this point, Facebook was literally scaring me to death, and all the negative comments people leave on Youtube videos were really bothering me (I.E. One person said something like, video sucks hope you get AIDS.) Who says things like that? WTF I HATE people who say that, my Uncle died of Aids in 1988! How can someone be so insensitive?!?!!?

It was probably my bipolar acting up, during that time I was soooo paranoid/afraid of the internet. lol. I even deleted my Facebook! Speedtest.net made me feel sooooo happy, like I could use the internet again! Speedtest.net made me feel like the web designers care about the user and the human. They actually cared about me sitting on the computer, they reminded me my connection is going to be slow on New Years because everyone is at home online! lol It just made me feel so good.

Web 1.0 was perfect. There we're only a few of us online (SMART PEOPLE) and everything was great. There were no trolls, no mean ignorant haters. No fancy flash/programming crap to make websites. Just HTML. Things were lightweight, because they had to be. Most people had dialup.

Back in 2002, the requirements for the internet were much lower. Flash had been gaining popularity just recently, which really allowed for better looking websites (although more hardware intensive). If you would have asked me back then what I thought the requirements were for the most flash intensive websites on the net, I would have said 300-400 Mhz, 128 mb ram, and a 2 Mb-4 mb dedicated graphics. As far as connection speed went, ADSL or ISDN was enough. Hell most people still had 56k STILL back then lol. Now, lets just say its much MUCH higher.

The system requirements for the internet are getting too high. We shouldn't need a fiber connection and an Octocore I-7 processor just to view web pages!!!!!! It's great they are trying to make it interactive. But keep it simple and light weight god dammit! Then it will be faster. Too much crazy programming and software bloat going on! I really think you need at least a 3 megabit connection now, even if you just browse the web. The lower DSL speeds just don't cut it anymore. Especially for wireless connections.

Anyway enough ranting ^__^ In conclusion too many ppl on the interwebs.Make net more usable for the human, and not the user. And In my opinion web 3.0 will be awesome. It will be designed less for the user, and more for the human. :)

If you are interested, compare your internet connection speed to mine! www.speedtest.net. I bet mine is faster. :) But Remember kids, it doesn't really matter. IMHO any DSL connection above 3 Megabit is enough for most people these days when it comes to just browsing the internet. But pretty soon that's not going to be enough. It really depends on how you use the internet though. I have a 16 MB connection, because I take advantage of it.

On a tangent here, I really hope Verizon's fiber rollout is going well...I hate Verizon though lol. I worked as a system engineer for them at their largest data center in Sacramento. They are just plain mean. A few nice people their though.

(Anyway this is for another article about why I am getting out of IT to be a teacher, I can't stand IT some times. I was in it for 6 years and I am so over the politics.)

Lucid Hydra

noreply@blogger.com (Koopa) — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 11:16:00 +0000

Hydra by Lucid is a vendor independent multigpu technology, motherboards with the Hydra 200 chipset can run any set of gpus in tandem. This means your Nvidia graphics card and your ATI card can team up to give you great framerates. :D The war of Nvidia vs ATI is obsolete, they can join forces xD Man I never thought I would see the day lol.

MSI Big Bang Motherboard with Lucid Hydra technology. $400 right now as of 2/2010 :(

I may be Bipolar

noreply@blogger.com (Koopa) — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 02:41:00 +0000

So I may be Bipolar, which isn't too much of a surprise to me. My twin brother was diagnosed 2 months ago. Like any medical condition it's just something I have to live with. I am not perfect. I kinda thought I was for awhile. I rarely got sick, but my stress level was way too high. I think I attribute this to being too obsessed with computers. So my new years resolution for 2010 is to be on the computer less, and enjoy life and the people around me more. I'll still play PC games often, but more of a casual gamer except for when I play TF2.

Back to what I was saying about Bipolar(ism?) Everyone jumps to the conclusion that I am Bipolar just because my twin brother is. I defiantly have some kind of condition. But, I think I can control it and I don't need medicine. The only times I can recall this (outburst?) was when I was 16 and now at age 24. My parents think I need to see a psychologist and take medicine. I'll go along with their recommendation, for now. But I am only listening to them because they are my parents. I don't trust psychologists/psychiatrists/doctors. They jump to conclusions too quickly. People CANNOT be lumped under these silly categories. It's not that simple, or is it?

In other news, I am planning on starting up my own company soon. I am not sure what it will be called yet... I have a lot of ideas and creativity I want to put to use. That's one of the good things about the manic stage of bipolar(ism), the creative side of my brain definitely takes over. xD

So I am feeling great despite my diagnosis. Exercise is definitely making me feel alot better. I went on an epic run yesterday.I also lost about 12 pounds from the flu woootttt! So in summation I am feeling great and looking h4wt. xD

End entry January 6th, 2010. (That's twenty-ten, say it right :) )
-Cooper J. McKay aka Koopa, Coop, Koop1, Astral1.

The thing that annoys me about maybe being bipolar is that I get angry. I am not a angry person I am a REALLY happy person on the inside, so I think of it more like a yin yang then a depression. There just has to be some balance.

So here is my visualized goal for 2010 including my TF2 clan promotion ,lol.

Quake Live

noreply@blogger.com (Koopa) — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 01:39:00 +0000

Quake Live is awesome. It's a return to the classic hardcore competitive FPS style gaming I love. It's more than just Quake 3. I love the colorful graphics, not having to worry at all if it will run on my computer, and the fact that it can possibly run on a cell phone. I love everything about it.

Upgrade your sound card

noreply@blogger.com (Koopa) — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 01:32:00 +0000

Note to self: Upgrade your sound card. I have an Audigy 2 ZS. Old? Maybe. It was new in 2005 I think. Anyway, this card is great. It can support 7.1 and OpenAL and stuff, but I want more features as an audiophile so I am considering finally upgrading to the Xfi, lol. I don't know if i will even notice a difference.

PC Gaming is NOT dead

noreply@blogger.com (Koopa) — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 01:18:00 +0000

(This article is a work in progress, i will add to it when I feel like)

I'd like to think of myself as a hardcore PC gamer. I really like how games on the platform have evolved. Modern Warfare 2 (MW2) has no support for dedicated servers. That really bugs me out man. Now that I have got that off my chest, let me start by saying PC Gaming is NOT dead, nor will it ever be. Infinity Ward wanted to make the MW2 experience the same on all platforms, but having done that, the PC game lost some of the features it could have had.

What is a PPU? & Why you should care as a PC Gamer

noreply@blogger.com (Koopa) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 13:59:00 +0000

PPU stands for physics processing unit. Not to be confused with PSU, (Power Supply Unit) or GPU, (Graphics Processing Unit) A PPU is a dedicated processor for handling the physics processing in a computer game, it increases performance by offloading the physics calculations off the CPU and GPU.

There are a few ways to handle physics in games. There are middleware physics engines (ex. Havoc) Onboard GPU physics acceleration such as Nvidia's Quantum Effects Technology or ATI's version, which I am not sure what it is called. And finally, a PPU.

In 2006 a company named Ageia released a product called PhysX. This was the first PPU add in card. It was a 128 MB PCI card first retailed for $250.

In 2008, Nvidia released Geforce 8 series GPU's with a physics acceleration technology called Quantum Effects Technology designed to compete with the PhysX. That same year, Ageia was acquired by the Nvidia corporation. Now, any CUDA ready Nvidia Geforce 8 Series or above with 32 or more cores and 256 MB ram can act as a PPU.

Nvidia's rival ATI also offers physics acceleration onboard their GPU's as well. They claim the x1900 XT delivers 9 times the performance of an Nvidia based PhysX card. I have yet to see benchmarks however.

Based on the benchmarks I have seen, the best price to performance Nvidia GPU to use as a PhysX PPU is the Nvidia GTS 220, which sells for $65. To run a PPU you have to have at least 2 PCI-express slots on your motherboard. One used for your GPU and one for the PPU. To run SLI GPU's and a PPU you will of course have to have 3 PCI express slots.

As of September 2009, users with Nvidia GPU's can no longer use a AMD GPU as a PPU. Also Windows 7 removes support for the Ageia PhysX1.

In conclusion, I believe with the rise of low cost CUDA enabled Nvidia GPU's PPU's are now affordable to anyone, and there is no reason not to upgrade.PPU's are a great way to increase your PC's performance in games that have heavy use of physics. But as of right now I'm not sure that many games would benefit from having one. The only games I can think of off the top of my head our Mirror's Edge and Batman Arkham Asylum. You can find a full list online. For more info read this tomshardware article on the performance advantages of a PPU in Batman Arkham Asylum.

[I am going to write a second article explaining CUDA and GPGPU's (General purpose graphics processing units) Basically CPU, GPU, and PPU combined into one card, ATI is already offering a solution. Stay tuned.]

(Newegg was selling these CO-OP cards for awhile. These are dual pcb cards, This was a Geforce GTX 275 + Geforce GTS 250 for PhysX Eventually these will become 1 card when GPGPU's come out.)

Verizon FIOS

noreply@blogger.com (Koopa) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 13:14:00 +0000

Verizon FIOS (fiber optic service) is a new service being offered by Verizon that runs over a fiber optic cable that promises speeds that dwarf DSL/Cable. FIOS service has a download bandwidth of 50-100 Mb/s (DSL is around 1 mb and cable is around 4-16 mb/s) Currently fios is only available in southern California but according to this it should be up here around late 2010:

FiOS Deployment

"Verizon FiOS is currently available in 16 different states and is continuously expanding. Verizon plans to deploy their fiber optic internet service to over 4 million homes in various states by mid-2006 and nearly 20 million homes by the end of 2010. Even though this is a rough estimated time frame it will take Verizon to fully deploy this fiber optic internet service, they are adamant on the success of this tedious mission. Verizon hopes to expand the FiOS internet service to all 28 states where verizon currently provides land line telephone services.

The 16 states which the FiOS internet service now occupies are California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, Virginia and Washington. Many more states may have FiOS internet services available as time progresses. "

I think this redefines broadband. Imagine everything you do on the internet being instantaneous, being able to download HUGE files in the terabyte or higher range in the blink of an eye. You could back up your hard drive to a web cloud or something, idk i think it would be cool.

How I became interested in PC Hardware

noreply@blogger.com (Koopa) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 12:24:00 +0000

I still remember my first upgrade. For Christmas in 1994 I received a CD Rom drive bundled with a game called Myst. I was so excited! Of course being that I was 9 years old, and had no idea how to install it. My dad helped me install it on my 133 Mhz AMD 5x86 and soon I was enjoying Myst. (This wasn't my first CD Rom drive, I had one on my 33 Mhz Intel 486 prior to this in the early 90's) Since then I enjoyed upgrading my computer, but I had much to learn.

In 1997, I wanted to play a game called Comanche 3 but it didn't run well on my computer. I realized I needed to upgrade my graphics card, so I went to Fry's with my dad and bought a 2 MB VGA card. Although 3DFX launched their Voodoo PCI graphics accelerator (4 MB) that same year, I had no idea what it was. In fact I didn't know what a 3D accelerator card was until 1999.

In October 1998 I got this computer for my 13th birthday:

Compaq
AMD K6-2 450 MHZ (Performed on par or better then the Intel Pentium II for less $$$)
64 mb ram (actually only 56 dedicated as 8 was shared for video memory, i wish they would have explained this)
3D Now! Integrated Graphics 8 MB
6 GB Hard drive (LOL)
Windows 98

It was nearly top of the line for the time. I still didn't know what a dedicated video card was, so I was stuck on integrated graphics. AMD's 3D Now integrated graphics worked quite well for games that supported it; but unfortunately that was very few. I actually ended up buying a 3DFX Voodoo Banchee (12 MB), but I couldn't use it because it was AGP, and my computer only had a PCI bus. (Lol I was such a noob.) I played Half-Life at some horrible resolution below 640x480 on software mode. (I loved every second of it though). In 1999, most games stopped supporting software rendering so I was confused why my games wouldn't run.

Some time in 1999, I went over to my friend Dylan Mitchel's house, his dad had just bought him a new computer. I played TFC on his computer and I was amazed at the graphics and how smooth the game ran.

This was because he had a brand new computer with the following specs:
Pentium III 500 MHZ
128 MB ram
3DFX Voodoo III 16 MB (The main reason this game ran like butter)

I started researching computer hardware online. I stumbled onto a website called Tomshardware.com. I read everything I could find. Soon I was ready to build my own computer. For christmas in 2000 I knew what I wanted. I gave my dad a list of computer components to buy at Fry's, and he did. I built myself the following computer:

Pentium III 800 Mhz
256 MB Ram
Nvidia Geforce 2 GTS 64 mb
30 GB Hard drive (That was pretty good back then lol)
19" CRT Monitor (Huge at the time and 85 Hz @1280x1024)
Windows 98 SE

I LOVED this computer. It ran everything SUPER SMOOTHLY for 2 years. I also was able to get the 64 MB version of the Geforce 2 GTS which was rare at the time, as most people had the 32 MB version at best. I actually kept this computer until 2002. I think the reason I loved this computer so much was because it was such a HUGE leap over my old computer, a powerful Pentium III processor, it had way more ram, and a dedicated video card. The graphics difference between software rendered games to Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament blew my mind. Basically after seeing how amazing PC graphics could be, I could never go back to consoles.

I have built many great systems since then, but I will never forget my Pentium III. The first computer I ever built myself. *Sniff.

Free week of World of Warcraft

noreply@blogger.com (Koopa) — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 12:52:00 +0000

In celebration of the 15th anniversary of the Warcraft series as well as the new World of Warcraft 3.3 patch, Blizzard is giving a free week of play to anyone who hasn't played in awhile! I own two WoW accounts, so I'm getting two weeks free ^__^.

There is a ton of new content in the patch, including Mr. T's Night Elf Mohawk grenades xD. World of Warcraft is as great as it was since release in 2004, so enjoy your free week! .

Older programs that will see new use to PC Gamers

noreply@blogger.com (Koopa) — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 06:48:00 +0000

Here are three relatively old programs that I think will start to be used more often. The first 2 are to lock refresh rates. Very useful if you have a spanking new 120 Hz LCD (Or still use a CRT.) and the 3rd is an IPX emulator to play older games.

Powerstrip & Reforce -
These are two programs that among other things, lock a monitors refresh rate when you run a full screen application or computer game. Basically a refresh rate is how quickly a monitor refreshes an image. Higher refresh rates cause less eye strain and have a smoother more "realistic" feel in moving images.

CRT monitors (The old big monitors as opposed to flat panel LCD's) Were able to run at 60-200 HZ depending on your video card. However 99% of current generation LCD monitors are locked at 60 hz. That is the only refresh rate they can display. Because of this, some gamers didn't switch from CRTs to LCDs when LCDs were first introduced. Some in fact, still use CRTs for this reason. Recently, with the arrival of 120 HZ LCD computer monitors, gamers will be able to use Powerstrip or Reforce again to lock the refresh rate.

Currently Viewsonic's VX2265wm 22" is the only computer LCD monitor capable of running at 120 HZ. It retails for about $250. However, Samsung and a few other companies will be coming out with 120 HZ monitors soon.

I'm not going to go too in depth on either program, but powerstrip basically has more options then reforce, you can create custom resolutions and performance profiles. But I prefer reforce because it locks refresh rate settings in the registry, and after that there is no need to run the program in the background. (Compared to Powerstrip where you need to be actually running the program for your refresh rates to be locked)

Both programs will run on any version of Windows 7/Vista, despite only listing Windows 2000/XP.

Reforce
http://www.pagehosting.co.uk/rf/download.html

Powerstrip
http://www.entechtaiwan.com/

Kali -
Kali is a emulator for playing IPX network games over TCP/IP. It enables legacy multiplayer games to work over a modern TCP/IP network such as the Internet. Back in the mid 90s it was a popular way to play to play Warcraft II online.

Windows 7 removes support for the IPX protocol. So if you want to play an older game that uses IPX you have to use Kali. I used it to play Warcraft II on LAN with my brother. I only own one copy of the game, so we couldn't both play using Blizzards' Battle.net service. I think the original Quake requires IPX to play on LAN as well.

Check out Kali here.

http://www.kali.net/