Computer put together and OS Installed

I've tested and installed my computer over the last few days. It took me a good few days as I don't have much spare time besides my work. This due to the fact that I go by bike (20KM from work to home) and that takes a good 45 minutes i'd say.

However, I always loved tinkering/building with computer hardware so coming home to an unbuild computer is pretty good on me. This time everything went fine, no DOA parts nor did anything show any sign of incompatibility during the install of different distro's. There was one thing though. The Comrade, the Bitfenix case doesn't house the Mugen 4 very well.

The Mugen 4 fits, however it's a very tight fit and I recommend not to buy the Comrade in combination with the Mugen. I just put this up here so it might help others.

Why?
It CAN be made to work, but your better off saving yourself a headache by buying a smaller block. The screws on the Motherboard of my Extreme3 where blocked off. The position of the screw was in it's ideal location, meaning you will find a screwhole pretty much on every motherboard to where it was on the Extreme3(my specific case) on top of that you will have to tighten the Mugen very tight(wich I didn't bother to try) to get it to fit under the case sidepanel. This will most likely result in the motherboard flexing the way it shouldn't.

It's a super tight fit and decided in the end not to install the block. A sad thing that I coudn't install that block but happy that the computer itself works. I've build quite some computers for family and friends, even carefully checked online if the parts fitted together but coudn't find the specific combo of the Comrade and the Mugen on tech / build websites I know. It was a risk I had to take and in the end it bit me in the butt.

The OS, after trying Debian and Mint will still stay Ubuntu after all. I've been using Ubuntu for solid months on end now at work. Love it, easy to use and I know my way around it by now.

This all was a very interesting experience, as is building any PC. A fun little project that kept me busy for a good month.

Parts are ordered!

Today is the day! I've ordered my computer parts and they are already on the way. I've got track and trace, wich is a code you can use to check where your package is. I'm super excited.

In this computer, as it is not the first I've build and will build, I get to use that Bitfenix case. I've grown quite the fan for that brand as I've build a pc for my mother that house the Shinobi. I expect this case to be of same value to build quality and cannot wait to see it when it comes in.

Then there is a hidden passion I have to confess. A hidden passion for fans that (arguably) have the best color scheme on the market. Ofcourse I'm talking about these Noctua fans. I love how they take special care, making sure they always add those nifty low noise adapters and rubber gromits. These will make the system a breeze to listen to. Now, I've ordered 3 so far, I will check if the noise from the CPU fans will be acceptable. If not, then I will have to purchase myself some more Noctua swag.

Then there is the Seasonic PSU. I've seen that over at the G+ community someone shares the same love for well build PSU's. If there is a brand that screams quality all over, then Seasonic is definitely amongs those. I would've loved to get a PSU with more juice, however this pc doesn't need it. ( photo taken from Hardware.info, Hollands best community when it comes to actually building computers )

Then there is the proc and motherboard. It was my initial choice to get the 8320-FX and the Extreme3, yet wasn't completely sure it would be compatible. Luckily someone caught my blog in time and informed me that he actually ownes a build with that proc and mobo inside it. He confirmed for me that the combination works like a charm and so I added those back to my list. My mothers pc also runs the Extreme3, I'm familiar with the product and happy for it to be back on the list.

Kingston, another A-brand that never let me down; although I have to say that my gaming pc runs Corsair's Vengeance; and that besides that pc, only one experience that can back up that statement. However. It's a great brand and it's always cool to get something from great, big brands. I didn't pick it out, but hey! It's cool!

Then there is the EVO drive. Easily the best money to performance ratio on the SSD market here in Holland. The new drives from Crucial came to the market just a few days ago, however, those are pricey and still hot to the touch. If i have to believe the benchies than these score a tad more stable than the EVO's.

Last but not least, "The Mugen" with it's killer title "PC Games Hardware Edition". Already used it, compared it against others and this is one of those products that is hard to beat when it comes to bang for buck. This little beast is meant for "Gaming pc's" but I figured that having a CPU sink is better than having that small piece of tin that AMD provides with their processors. To mention I still got 2 of those laying about, unpacked and still boxed :)

That said, there is lots for me to be excited about. I will now just shut my piehole as this post has been going on for way to long.

Chrome - Repaint all your text as a temporarily bugfix

This bug in Chrome ( i'm using Chromium as it's more stable on Ubuntu, however this bug has also been seen by me personally on OSX running Chrome ) has been plaguing me lately. It has to do with the font not rendering. What I've found so far is that it only seems to happen whenever the font, or more specifically in my case; Google font, is being loaded under the header response "304 Not modified". Whenever the fonts get loaded under "200 Ok" everything goes fine. Now, I've got no material so far to back this up, but I'm not the only one having this problem.

The appearent fix was that you could refresh using the URL, by clicking in the urlbar and pressing enter the page would load this fine or hovering over the element that contained the unrendered text to trigger a render.

After a bit of searching i found the following snippet ( that i modified to work, and absolutely work in my situation as the snippet I found wasn't working in my case but i guess i'm just saying it wasn't me coming up with this brilliant solution. ) as whenever you would resize the window the font also seemed to be triggered to render correctly, that was one of the methods I was using often in the last couple of days to get my text to render.

// Chrome fix for repainting text
$('body').css('padding-left', '1px').promise().done(function() {
     setTimeout(function() {
          $('body').css('padding-left', '0px');
     }, 10);
});

I need to mention that the snippet above is wrapped in document.ready(). It's a bit overkill to do a promise on css, however, I need this to work everytime without any failure and this is only a temporal bugfix; or at least. That's what I'm assuming as more people in similar situations are having the same results as sought their answer in either CSS or Javascript to fix it.

I've measured the performance before and after the fix, to me, the results were neglactable and not worth mentioning in this post. I still had pages that loaded around a solid 200-400ms so that little snippet didn't worry me in the least.

HTML - Newline and carriage return within textarea

This post helped me solve a problem today that kept me puzzling for an good half hour. I was fiddling with the newline as I had to get the textarea to recognize the newline. It happends to be, to my unknowledge, that a textarea doesn't automaticly take /r/n into account. Specifcally those two in combination.

The first approved answer happened to be my solve. My journey towards that answer costed me an hour of research into why that is. I was loading my content out of a database with PHP and this dazzled me at first as when I printed the text, it would nicely make a line break. Yet, whenever I entered that very bit of code into a textarea, it didn't.

Another experience richer and more knowledgable. I used preg_replace() to convert "/r/n" into "
". I'll post the actual snippet later in this post.

Debian machine try 2

I was able to confidently compose the components to a good desktop development system. Thanks to the hardware compatibility check over at linuxmint.com. Now, it does differ from the other build, yet it stays the same at some levels.

Component	Name	Price
Processor	AMD FX-8320 Black Edition AMD FX-6350 AMD FX-8320 Black Edition	126,- 95,77 126,-
Mobo	ASRock 990FX Extreme3 ASRock 970 Extreme3 R2.0 ASRock 990FX Extreme3	82,60 61,- 82,60
HDD	WD AV-GP WD5000AUDX, 500GB Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm	49,42 46,86
Case	BitFenix Shinobi BitFenix Comrade Wit	54,50 34,80
CPU Sink	Scythe Mugen 4 PCGH Edition	36,50
GPU	Sapphire HD 6450 2GB DDR3	50,22
Memory	Crucial Ballistix Tactical BLT2C4G3D1608ET3LX0CEU Kingston HyperX KHX1600C9D3B1K2/8GX	60,50 62,04
PSU	Seasonic Platinum Series 660 Watt	128,04
SSD	Samsung 840 series 120GB Samsung 840 EVO 120GB	115,47 68,90
	Total :	635.96

This system is cheaper, however, that came as a small bonus as I had no intention to make it cheaper. I just coundn't take the risk of maby buying a component that would be badly supported or somehow not work in combination with another component.

The whole linux world is fairly new to me, i'm in the learning process as they call it. Post a comment on what you guys think. I think this build is final, unless someone eyes out a component and has a better reason to buy another.

Thanks for reading!

Debian Development build

In this post I want to post the build that I will buy soon. This is going to be a development system and also my first step towards the future.

I'm already used to Linux. It's a fantastic system and use Ubuntu at work to develop, as i'm a web developer by trade. That's one of the reason's why I cannot wait to get my build. Now, it's not far away, however. I've made the initial build a little bit to ambitious. That, in the sense that I didn't look for compatibility when building the system online. That's why I have to give it another go. I will have to check for compatibility before adding it to my wishlist.

I'm close to having the money to actually get the components but enough time to do some proper research in what components I should invest. This is going to be a development build, so by all means, if you have an opinion on parts or about the current list of components, input is what it's all about in an community.

Component	Name	Price
Processor	AMD FX-8320 Black Edition	126,-
Mobo	ASRock 990FX Extreme3	82,60
HDD	WD AV-GP WD5000AUDX, 500GB	49,42
Case	BitFenix Shinobi	54,50
CPU Sink	Scythe Mugen 4 PCGH Edition	36,50
Memory	Crucial Ballistix Tactical BLT2C4G3D1608ET3LX0CEU	60,50
PSU	Seasonic Platinum Series 660 Watt	128,04
SSD	Samsung 840 series 120GB	115,47
	Total :	653,03

Now, This is what i've got so far. It might change completely. It all depends on what I will research in the next couple of weeks. I've gotten some good input from forums that I've found through Google.

I've asked a bit around and maby I can get around with an onboard videocard. My linux sources say it might just be enough. However, I want to be able to run 1080p though, as a somewhat higher resolution is just easier to work with.

I will let you guys know more when I know more. Peace.

Starting to learn a new language

Python is my next language to learn. It makes all the more sense to me as I'm going to migrate to the OS Debian soon. I will still keep my gaming machine, and will post about that later. Python.

I've been meaning to start learning this language for a long time as this language is widely spread among every industry. You can pretty much apply it to everything.

This language is easy to pick up to far and has a pretty quick learning curve. Well documentated and fast as hell when you run it through console. As a "Hello World" i made a registry class that kept instances of created objects. I'm going to play with Python in the next couple of days and check out the bigger frameworks for it. I've made a pretty cool start so far and expect to use this as a powerfull weapon amongs my arsenal of knowledge.

If there are some frameworks I should check out, then comment them. I wish to know what you guys use and what is widely used among 'Pythoners'?

Guildwars 2 - Transfering worlds!

There is a limited time to where you can transfer worlds for free. Take the opportunity to transfer if you are in need of such service. You can refer to the transfer rate table over at the website to see when and where you can go with this wonderfull news.

The've done this ofcourse because of the WvW Tournament, but hey, if you're not all that into WvW you can still take the opportunity to get some of the good stuff anyhow.

It gives me the chance to change worlds and get to be with friends that are on the other servers.

Playstation 4 vs. WiiU

This is a post with a rant. Sony has been on there arse since the release of their big console. I've wished many times I would like it more than I do. I'm a Sony fanboy, or I guess I should be. We, and by we I mean me and my boyfriend considered heavily on the question WiiU vs. PS4. The latter lost. This has a few good and solid reasons.

We've made this choice based on our research to both consoles. I also want to add that in a later point in time we will also own a PS4. Yet for now, our favor goes to the WiiU.

The first being the price. The PS4 is a heavy price to pay. It's well worth it's price when you look at the components. Thats something that I cannot deny. However, the PS4 is being devalued for now because of it's small game library. This, over time, will grow and make the PS4 a more valuable weapon in the arsenal of the gamer. The WiiU on the other hand, might not be as powerfull when you look at the components but blowes the PS4 out of the battlefield for the moment.

The games were our second reason. The current set for the WiiU is bigger, but it doesn't stop there. The PS4 has a pretty low steam when it comes of future titles; but when it comes, it comes with a bang. There are a few great ones among those, I cannot deny, titles that will put all consoles to shame and predecesors that are legends of games.

We ofcourse think of titles like Infamous, Uncharted and a God of War. The last one on that list isn't confirmed but i'm pretty sure Santa Monica Studios is going to richen our lives with another epic tale of gods and demigods.

The WiiU has also some pretty strong liquor in their stomach. Think of games like Hyrule Warriors, Mario Kart 8 and an Metroid game to look forward to. These really compete on the 'enjoyable' factor of games mentioned above.

We all know that PS4 is more for the hardcore gamer and the WiiU, or better said, Nintendo for casual. There is no point in fighting that front of the battle. We just had a luxury choice to make as in the end, we will have both side by side, next to DS'ses, PS3, PS2, PS, Gameboys, Gamecube, Gaming PC's, Xbox and an Xbox 360. We welcome both to our powerfull arsenal of game consoles and into our gaming life, yet for now the WiiU makes more sense to buy.

The PS4 still has a pretty long road ahead of itself. A road, that perhaps, and preferable we will not walk all the way. WiiU here we come, show us what u got! It is time to slay some monster in Monster Hunter.

Guildwars Sea of Sorrows

After having read Ghosts of Ascalon, Seas of Sorrow was next up in my list of to-read. This book is amazing. I like Ree Soesbee's style much more than that of the writer of Ghosts of Ascalon. The difference is night and day in comparison to GoA. The writer uses slightly harder to understand words, yet so far, I've managed to understand. I googled if I came across some words I didn't knew.

This book has a much better sense of time and pacing is more balanced. It feels like everything is in place. I like how you can read how the great city of Lions Arch rose and Orr rose; how influencial chracters of the rich lore fit into the larger picture. It's all in much detail described and nothing left untold. The characters grew on me much more than they did in Ghosts of Ascalon.

I'm almost through with this book as I've read most of it by now. I've started reading this book about two weeks ago while on vacation in Austria. Great read. If you haven't read this one, than definitly pick it up. Really recommend this one!

Ghosts of Ascalon Recap

I've went to Austria on wintersport vacation. It so came to that I had the time to finish reading Ghosts of Ascalon. I have to say that the book kinda disappointed me. I liked the way the writer wrote the book, easy to understand and reads pretty quick.

However. The book has a pretty amazing start, detailed and rich in all it's glory. I liked how the group came about and how their journey progressed. I read more and more of the book, only to result in wanting to read more. In the times between the reads, I would think of what would happen or try to imagine the scenes as they were described by the book to give it a place in the game.

All and all, the book is very paced and balanced. Yet the ending is so disappointing. After I was done, it seemed like the whole book was a build-up, to result in an ending that was stuffed into the last 50 pages or so. In my next post I will tell something about the next book im currently reading and almost through with. The Sea of Sorrows.

Anyway, Ghosts of Ascalon is a nice read. I'm not a die hard reader, enjoyed it, but did expect more from the ending. The book really deserved a better ending than it did. As I read through the book I had a gut feeling from about halfway through that the ending was going to be rushed. Turned out, to my disappointment that I was right.

The wonderfull world of Sass!

I've seen the light and started using Sass. It's amazing. I've known of Sass since Foundation 3, yet there was no real opportunity for me to start using it. Until a few days ago, did the basics and it blew my mind.

This opens up a whole new chapter on how to make stylesheets and make life easy. Most of the code editors compile on the fly, what makes all of this a breeze to use. I looked up usefull snippets when I understood the syntax to make my use of Sass even easier. It's easy to understand and you can pretty much use it on any situation to make it better.

What I'm trying to say here, if you haven't tried it yet, then you should. It will not disappoint you. When you get to deal with CSS on a daily basis; wich in my case it is not at all; you should have already been using this.

Guildwars 2 | Learning up on Lore

I'm really not all that big on reading, yet this book attracted me. The lore of the game expands and you have a deeper understanding of cultures within the game. This book is entertaining for every Guildwars 2 player. A must. A gamers bible as it were.

After reading a good portion of the book, I re-enter the world with a fresh look and better understanding of the reactions and general culture and history within the game. I've been gifted all three books and will read them all. It goes at a snails pace, yet it's very entertaining and pretty exiting. Never thought a book could get me that exited. I keep wanting to read more. The story of the first book ( Ghosts of Ascalon. ) has an iron grip on me. I feel very at home within the Guildwars 2 world in the book. When they talk of cities, it's like your actually there. I can easily visualise the story that they tell; wich is also the main reason I love this book so far. 

I will revisit some of the places that I imagined in my head during my read in this book to see if the game matches the book. I've not touched the game since I started reading so it will be a fun little experiment. I'm currently waiting for the updater to update GW2 haha :)

Anyway. If you are one of those Guildwars 2 players that has not yet read one of these books. Then you should. Take it from a gamer that never read for own entertainment haha. These books are good, if you are a Guildwars 2 player, than this will make you better appreciate the game and the story around the whole game in general.

Now. I'm off to the big world!

DavMail and Thunderbird / Evolution

No crashes today. I've gotten DavMail in combination with Thunderbird / Evolution on Ubuntu. I've not decided yet wich of the two clients I like best. I'm still baffled and equally amazed by how much faster the machine was. Windows 8, the install before Ubuntu, wasn't even old either. 4-5 months top. Things are easy to install and when faced with problems, Google and my mentioned sources in an earlier post are valuable source for experience.

I've setup RabbitVCS as my SVN client. I'm coming from TortoiseSVN. Rabbit suits me really well and the performance is excelent. I've tried Rapid and the build in SVN client from Netbeans but both didn't met my expectations. Rapid was good, yet Rabbit is more simplistic and easier to handle in my view. Netbeans build in svn client... horrible. I tried setting it up in multiple ways, tried other build in svn clients other than SvnKit yet that lead to even more frustration and longer waiting times before I could commit. Overall, things are easy and there is a world of choices in alternatives that work equally if not better than their Windows counterpart.

I'm still looking into an calender program, or on how to make it work in Evolution. I've not put effort into this yet as there was plenty of work.

That's pretty much day 3 on my use of Ubuntu. I'm seriously thinking to throw Windows in the bin on my personal computer. Ubuntu is really great for me and it's a mere matter of time before most of my games will be available for Linux. I feel like an b**** when mentioning that in every post postponing my own rig's software overhaul. This due to the fact that my Steam holds currently a library of 492 games, and the fear that something of my rig's hardware might be badly supported by the limited amount of drivers available.

Note that this is said in an unknowledgable position. As I've still not done the proper research nor had the time over the last couple of days.

Linux | Day 2 "Black Hawk Down"

Today was a wise lesson in Linux. I coudn't configure LAMP, still don't know why. Must be something I am doing wrong though. I've carefully followed multiple guides, checked, double checked, yet coudn't get vhosts to work properly. I've installed XAMPP for Linux as an alternative to LAMP and this seems to do the job.

Then I was challenged by the second failure. I installed chrome. I used chrome for a good few hours, when all of a sudden chrome seemed unrespondsive. The OS itself was fine, just chrome. Then it just crashed and had to do a restart. When rebooted I coudn't login. Followed a guide and everything was fine. Lesson learned, using Firefox now. I already found it strange that chrome had no search result in the software center. Ubuntu itself is a blast to use however. I really found that the overall experience, coming from Windows 7 / 8; that it works smoother. Everything is snappier. I like it. I can see myself using this at home, the steam list is growing and the days of Microsoft are counted for.

Cannot wait to personally make the step! I can use my experience that I have at work to install it on my own machine. On that note, coming from someone who has had a few lessons in how to handle Linux, that it has a pretty hard learning curve. You need technical knowledge when facing a problem and often terminal is key to solving whatever problem your facing. However, I'm willing, patient and backed-up by a great Google+ Community, AskUbuntu and an pretty knowledgable boss that knows it's way around the terminal.

~ Rob

Linux | Day 1

Ubuntu is the flavor I've went for. Installing went down quick. Then came the install of updates along with LAMP and setting it up to where it would work with all the stuff we use at work. This took me a good few hours to do so. It was worth it though!

I've had lessons on school on how to handle Debian, I knew everything still! Even though those lessons were about the basics. VIM and small things like that. I was actually amazed by how much I still knew and was able to manage on my own. *pads on own back*

I felt really good when everything was setup and was actually working. Cannot wait to get to work with this OS ( i've installed this near the end of my workday. )

~ Rob

Migration to Linux

At work we,or at least, I am migrating to Linux for the better. As a web developer my duty is to work on the platform where our websites and applications are going to run on. Thus migrating. I've got little experience with Linux, yet what I have with it, is good. I've been meaning to take this step for a long time. On my personal machine it will still have to hold out for a few more months or so as the only thing holding me back is Steam and support for hardware.

I've tried flavors such as Ubuntu, Debian, Mint and Arch to get a taste of what the wonderfull world of GNU/Linux has to offer for a developer / gamer like me. Fact is, I would still like to game and like my OS to be as maintainence free as possible. Ubuntu or Debian would take my preference. In my place of work, Ubuntu is proudly replacing my Windows 8 machine. On top of that, I've prepared myself for years to get to know open-source variants of their counterparts on Windows already. Gimp is my Photoshop. OpenOffice is my MS Office. I've been steaming myself ready for this moment.

Im really exited to take this step ( Win8 to Ubuntu / Debian maby. ) as migrating from Win7 to Win8 was horrible. I've gotten to know the bug that make Win8. For example shutting down. Win8 has NEVER shut down properly. It always asks to forcefully shutdown, and when given the command to do so, still doesn't shutdown.

The start menu, when you search for programs, it often, in mistake starts a program I don't need nor want on Windows 8. That takes us to another point. Some programs are proprietary. IE, wich we need, cannot be uninstalled nor downgraded without taking the nessesary backdoor steps. Along with a huge list of default programs such as your PDF viewer and such. Even the PDF viewer itself is brackisch as it reads the MS version of PDF encoding wich is slightly different than the Open or Adobe version of pdf encoding. Is discovered that when generating PDF files for a client project.

My main, or only heldback is game and hardware support. I've got a camera setup to where I've got hardware that can record old camera tapes. No support on Linux. I really expected this, yet shame. Then games. Videocards have pretty much no support and specially the newer models. Then games, they often NEED DirectX to run. I hate it. Awesomenauts and dozen of indie games SUPPORT OpenGL and this is really a good move. They also have the default setting to OpenGL, wich is a kick to the nuts for DirectX HAHA!

I've got about ~500 games on Steam. I really want to play at least half of them on Linux. Looking at that list, it ain't gunna last long anymore untill I can. When I make this change, it's going to be forever. Windows is going in the bin in my household. If I can get my mom to use Linux, then I will take that chance. If I can get my brother to use it, I will take that chance.

GNU/Linux is something that will change the world and computer technology. We knew this when it started and now it is catching up. Great thing!

~ Rob

Nostalgia

I've started playing games that I've played back when we had the Windows 95 machine. I know it as the day of yesterday. We had dail-in and I wasn't allowed on the computer as it was a machine for my dad's work.

The best thing that happened to me I suppose is that my dad had pretty much null interest in computers and new technology for that matter. The only thing he wanted to know, and still so, is how to apply it for work and nothing more. That said, left a time window on a day to where it was allowed to be used by the "family".

A friend of my brother brought in Dungeon Keeper, and other games we could play on this machine. Eventually and naturally we could use the computer for gaming and other entertainment purposes. This wasn't it's main goal but nicely slipped in. That's where my gaming life began. Dungeon Keeper made by Bullfrog, Peter Molyneux himself. Brilliant game.

Then came the illigal discs back then that were distributed in our area. They were called Twilight discs and contained full software, games and demo's to stuff that was coming soon. Those discs were made by a geek in our village and it's were it originated from. He downloaded the stuff, burned down a copy and sold them for a tenner each. You see, Twilight discs were quite the thing, those who know of it existance probably didn't even knew where it came from as they were spread via people and friends.

Now, on Steam, many old classics came back with an HD version to give the old classic an eternal life I suppose. Think of titles such as Monkey Island, Dragon's Lair and Ducktales. All great games. Cannot recommend them enough as I've all played them back in the day of that old Windows 95 machine. + NES