theRapist

5 ways to increase gaming performance

2010-12-16T07:33:00.000-08:00

Slow PC? Can't handle the awesomeness of newer games? Check out these 5 tips on how YOU can increase your gaming performance!

1. Game booster.
This is a great little program which only requires you to press a button! The way that Game booster works is that when you run this, very small software, it closes windows applications that are running in the background. Things that you really don't need. Not like Internet explorer but more like things that Bill gates put there because he is an evil bastard.
( You can see these programs if you press control alt delete and the check the processor tab.
You can get gamebooster here.

2. Ready boost.

Ready boost doesn't work at all like Game booster but it is twice as effective.

Your gonna need a 2.0 USB memory stick and a Widows7/Vista computer.

Just insert the USB stick in your computer and I recommend you to clean it first.

After that you'll get a window as usual, but instead of clicking the 'browse folder' click the speed up computer link.
Another window will pop up and click the dedicate this unit for ready boost and then apply. At any time you can go into the properties of your USB stick and click the "Ready Boost" tab.

3. Laptop cooler

This only works for laptops but it will help you A LOT. Get yourself one of these coolers:

They are usually pretty cheap but work great! Your laptop will stay cooler and it will also be able to hand a lot more action. It also looks pretty cool!

4. Close unnecessary programs.

Open the task manager (ctrl+alt+delete) go into the performance tab, and select "explorer" then close process. What is "explorer" you might ask, well It's basically your file browser and your task-bar. You defiantly do NOT need this when gaming. If you want to open it again do the same thing but instead of closing "explorer" you click on file>start new process>type in "explorer.exe" and it will start.

5. Clean your fan

Okay so let me tell you a little story, after using my computer for about a year I realized that it had gotten a lot shittier. Games ran at a horrible FPS, It sounded weird and my process ran at constant 60-100%. This was obviously a bad sign and I thought it was just full of crap so I re-installed Windows 7 on it but, no change.

My dad came up with the idea that maybe the fan was full of dust. So we cleaned it and yup, that did the trick! It works just as when It was new, well, actually a little better because I found these ^ awesome ways to make it run even BETTER.

So I hope these tips will help you out and maybe your CPU will not look like this:

Thats all, folks!

iCorner #1 Halloween

2010-10-16T10:10:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the first issue of iCorner! Here's where I talk about the coolest, funniest or free-est iPhone and iPod touch apps. Since Halloween lurks around the corner I figured this first issue would be about the best Halloween/Monster games. Let's get it started...

Minigore

Minigore is just an awesome game. You run around,trying to survive by killing furry little animals with your Uzi, shotgun or grenade launcher. It has some pretty cool graphics and it features the voice of Egoraptor, famous on the internet for his "awesome series". You can also make your own soundtrack from songs on your iPod! Although I experienced low FPS on my iPod touch 3G, this is an amazingly fun game and well worth your money.

Two joysticks to control movement and aiming makes the game easy to control!

You can unlock new characters with real money, or the games currency "kills"

Minigore links:
Website
iTunes

Monster Dash

Sure there are a lot of automatically-running-and-all-you-do-is-jump-games on the iPhone but Monster Dash is quite a bit different...
Not only do you run, jump and run you can also shoot down the zombies, mummies or vampires that're standing in your way! And there are plenty of power-ups like a Uzi, tazer, revolver, machine gun-jetpack and a motorcycle! And you won't get boring of the same scenery because when you run 1000m the game changes level. This game gets harder and harder as you play It's a very fun game, but you get a little tired of a game like this.

These on-screen controls work perfectly!

Monster Dash links:
Website
iTunes

Super mega worm

What fits better on a list about monster games than a huge man-eating worm? Probably a lot of things, but still, Super mega worm is an awesome game to play while your bored! Even though it almost lacks a point it's very enjoying to eat/shoot people in this pixel world. Your mission is basically to kill (either by eating or shooting laser, yes LASER) the humans. If you don't kill anybody you will loose health which you can also loose by other things. The graphics is old-school and just great, I love the intense blood and gore as well!

Super mega worm links:
Website
iTunes

Monster Mayhem

Monster Mayhem is a castle-defense game like no other. Instead of throwing incoming troops up in the air, you use different weapons to take them down. There's a never ending line of different enemies/weapons/upgrades and levels. You'll have a great time playing this because it will never end and you don't want it to end! It looks, sound and plays very nice. And I'm especially happy to talk about this app since I got it for free by "liking" the app store on Facebook!

All the weapons you can unlock and upgrade multiple times.

All the animations in this game makes it fun to kill the monsters!

Monster Mayhem links:
Website
iTunes

Infect them all

infect them all is a very basic game, your a zombie in a room full of different people and your mission is to turn them ALL into Zombies! When you've killed one person he becomes a Zombie and will start hunt human brains with you. Next thing you know it, you have a zombie army! Like monster mayhem, you can upgrade things such as health, defense, speed etc. I've only played the lite version so far and it is awesome! One thing that I didn't like was that at default the controls are set to tilt, and I'm not a big fan of tilt controls so I looked at the options and yes, you can switch to a D-pad!

Before I started killing everyone...

Afterwards when everyone are brain-dead ZOMBIES!

Infect them all links:
Website

iTunes

Hope you enjoyed this list of monster games and the first iCorner issue!
Happy Halloween!

the A-team

2010-06-12T04:40:00.000-07:00

I've never seen the original series but when I saw the trailer for this movie I knew that I just had to see it!

A-team mini review

At first I thought this would be just another action movie with a little bit of laughter thrown in here and there but when I actually saw it I couldn't stop laughing! This is an hilarious un-serious action movie where you never fear anything bad to happen and it's not too exciting but you always have a smile on your face! The expression that the characters leave really transfer to the audience especially from Murdock, while everyone else freaks out he's just going "AWESOME!!!" and he quickly became my favorite characters.

This movie does actually bring some twists and turns but nothing too big. Also this movies is about 2 hours long which I have to say, din't feel dragged out. There where no boring parts, sure some talking but in the middle of any conversation one of the main characters would throw in a witty comment which would make the whole audience laugh!

If your planning to see this I really recommend watching it in a theater, it just brings so much more joy and the action sequences feel twice as impressive.

So go and start your summer with a little A-ction!

Play msDos games on your modern machine

2010-05-23T10:07:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid I used to play games on my families PC which was an old msDos machine. And now that I look back I want to play those games again! I have them but they're weird msDos files. Well luckily I found a way on how you can play Dos games on your modern windows XP/Vista or 7 with a software and some simple coding!

Step 1 -Software
First of your going to need a software, assuming you already have a dos game if not you can download DOS demos at:
http://www.dosgamesarchive.com/.
The software to "emulate" Dos games is called Dosbox.
You can get it at:
http://www.dosbox.com/download.php?main=1

Download and install Dosbox and here's an important step:
Put your game in local disk C. Like this:
C:/Dosgames/
Because later on we're going to write the path of the game in Dosbox and it can be a little messy if your path is called:
C:/program files/games/dosgames/blabla.inc/
Oh and another tip if the game is called Jazz jackrabbit don't name the folder that, because it's going to be a lot more to type in and it will get annoying to type all that. So call it Jazz. I do that with all my games.

Step 2 - Emulation
Are you ready to play some awesome dos games?! Well we're gonna do some coding first so calm down.

Open up dosbox and you should see this:

Now we're gonna change the dosbox folder to where the games are at. So type in:
mount c c:/dosgames
and of course if your folder isn't called dosgames you just type in whatever your folder is called. Obviously.

Next is to change the directory to c:/dosgames. So far we've just told Dosbox that disk C is c:/dosgames. Confusing?
Well just type in c:/

Done now the program should no longer say: Z:/ but C:/.
If you want to see all the folders in our C drive (c:/dosgames) you can simply type in:
dir (NOTE: you can skip this step since it only shows you what folders are here, but i recommended you to do this the first time you try dosbox)

Now you see that I have a few folders called 'Alien' 'Blood' 'Jazz' and 'vikings'

If want to open any of these folders I type in:
cd jazz

cd stands for change directory.

You can now see that dosbox isn't saying c:/ anymore now it's c:/JAZZ which indicates that we are now inside the folder jazz (C:/ meant c:/dosbox, remember?)

We now just have to type the file name for the .exe file. Usually it's just the game name like Blood. But here the game is called 'Jazz jackrabbit' and I might be a little unsure what the file name is called so rather than just randomly typing file names. I go into the folder. (i don't recommend you to type in dir here since dos games has LOTS of files in their folders.) Just open my computer then local disk C then dosgames, jazz and these are the .exe files I could find.

It's pretty obvious that the exe for starting the game isn't called. Install, jazz.ico, or istruct.0sc.

So I'm pretty sure it's the JAZZ.EXE one.

So type in:
jazz

The game should boot up and run at a smooth FPS.

Alright that's it for this tutorial thanks for reading and...WAIT!
I just realized that some people might have their Dos games on a CD. (primitive cavemen's...)
Now this isn't the case for me so I don't really know how to do it but from what I've gathered from the dosbox wiki. In the first mounting part where I wrote:
mount c c:/dosgames

Your suppose to type in:
MOUNT D D:\ -t cdrom

And since you've now set D:/ to be the CD-rom. You can follow this tutorial but wherever I type in something with C:/ you just have to type in D:/.
If that didn't make sence and your mad at me because I can't mount CD's in dosbox then follow this link:
http://www.dosbox.com/wiki/Basic_Setup_and_Installation_of_DosBox

Creative sound blaster arena gaming headset

2010-05-21T09:19:00.000-07:00

Good, comfortable and stylish gaming headsets can be very hard to find especially if you have a limited budget. Luckily I was able to find this awesome headset!

My last headset got very uncomfortable for my ears after several hours of gaming, and the microphone broke very easily. So I decided to look for a new one!
This Creative sound blaster arena gaming headset looked very professional, and expensive but when I checked the price it really wasn't that much. It was defiantly high on the price list but not quite at the top.
I bought and, boy is it comfortable! Not to mention the sound quality!

The headset looks very stylish, it's got a glowing white color and feels very smooth. This is a very nice touch since most headsets look sort of doll and uneven. I guess it sort of has an "apple" appeal.
The sound is crystal clear both microphone and the speakers themselves. Which is something very important for serious gamers.
Another thing I've been enjoying is the voice changer that this comes with. If you go to your sound setting then voice FX you can find it, and there are plenty of voices to choose from. I prefer the little girls voice since my friends gets really pissed of when I use it on skype.
These effects are very cool and surprisingly worked very well! I had no problems with them whatsoever!

Results:

I found that this headsets are super awesome and totally worth the price!
They are a little expensive and most people might not have planned to spend this much on a pair of headsets. But if your are looking for something with great quality and some cool effects then I'd say, hey go for it!

Logitech Cordless Rumblepad 2

2010-04-20T09:46:00.000-07:00

If you're a PC gamer you probably love playing on your keyboard and mouse. But sometimes you might want to tilt your screen to your local couch, sit back and play some old computer games!

I never quite grew up with a videogame console, I used to play on the family's home computer. And it was not until much later I got a Gameboy and then a playstation. So most of the games that are retro to me are ms-dos games, and to be honest, playing these games today on a keyboard is...Boring! So I bought a wireless gamepad to fix my finger ache, and boy did it help!
The logitech rumblepad 2 is basically like a playstation gamepad but for your PC. It's got the exact same amount of buttons and placement.

Holding this is a little, strange...If you have two fingers on each hand, on the backside of the unit, leaning on the four R & L buttons you can barely hold it, it just falls out of your hand. If you have 1 finger on each hand you've got to have the other fingers around each handle, where there isn't much space at all. Maybe other people have different opinions, but to me this just seem too clumsy!
However, when hardcore gaming this doesn't seem to effect you too much.

The thing I really like about this is the fact that it's cord less and, the D-pad is one of the smoothest of all D-pads I've ever got hands on. (after the DS..)
I highly recommend you to get this, if you want a controller for your PC of course. If not it's just a waste of your precious money...

Tetris DS

2010-04-08T10:44:00.000-07:00

Tetris is probably one of the most famous games ever, it's been remade and ported to other consoles and phones countless times. It's one of the greatest puzzle games every created. But is the DS version actually worth your money?

Oh yes Tetris and DS, two of my favorite things combined!I remember playing this on my friends gameboy when it was new, and on all the cellphones I've ever had...But something that I've always hated with Tetris is that the controls are usually very, very stiff. You always mess up and lose very quickly due to unfair controls! But thats what I love about the DS, the controls here are amazing! The joypad on the DS isn't stiff at all, even though I've always thought so.
It's almost as a joystick but somehow more reliable. And your other buttons for dropping fast, rotating, saving blocks are spread out so you never actually press the wrong button!

On the bottom screen is the actual game, you can see 6 blocks and the order they're coming. You can by pressing the R or L button hold a block and use it later, this is something very useful and makes the game a little easier. On the top screen you see gameplay of other retro games by nintendo which is completely unnecessary. But I'm glad that they didn't stretch out the game over both screens. Because I just hate having to look over both screens, it just makes my eyes go nuts!
But one of the many things I like about this version is the visuals.
It looks great! And sounds great too, even though they changed the song from a catchy polka sounding tune to a remixed version of super mario...It's also very memorable! And I guess this applies more to kids these days...

But yeah that's pretty much all I have to say about this game, It's one of the smoothest, cleanest, easiest version of Tetris.
But you know what? Nintendo also included a bunch of Tetris spin off puzzels for you! And all I can say is..they're good. Not amazing not bad just good. Sure they're good time wasters but so is Tetris and whenever I play these "minigames" I just think:
-Wow, I could've been playing Tetris right now.
As I said they're good but get this game for Tetris and not for the minigames.

Make use of old computers -Ubuntunize it!

2010-04-07T08:16:00.000-07:00

Do you have an old laptop just laying around collecting dust? Wouldn't it be nice to be able to use it? Well today I'm gonna show you, how to download Ubuntu netbook remix and install it to a USB stick. That's right, surf the web, watch movies all on your old out-dated PC!

So a couple of days ago I found out that my family had an old small HP laptop laying around, and as the geek I am I couldn't just leave it there! It's a pretty cool laptop too, touch-and turn-able screen it's pretty badass. But of course someone (my dad) had stolen the hard drive. I've always wanted a small and handy laptop I can use while I'm watching T.V, so I searched the web on how I can make use of this old computer that I can't install operating systems on. And the answer, Ubuntu (9.10) netbook remix. Apparently you can install this on a USB stick, and I have plenty of those around!
So I installed it, inserted it, booted it up and like from a Disney tale it was working! (magically!) So now I thought I'd share this with other people who have laptops collectiondust everywhere around the house!

RECIPE:

A 2gb (or larger) USB stick
A working PC, to install from
A teeny, tiny bit of tweeking (explained later)
Installation files:

Ubuntu.iso file & Universal USB installer

Insert your USB stick into the working PC, and start up the Universal USB installer.
Select: Ubuntu 9.10 Netbook remix from the drop down menu.
Browse for the .iso file.
Start the installation
Wait about 5-15 minutes
Eat pie (not required)

Now for the tweeking part.

Boot up the old computer without the USB stick.
Press F10 lots of times as soon as you've pressed the power button
Eventually you'll get a blue screen with some menus at the top
Go into Start up/boot options
Select USB hard drive as first

Then it's just to turn off the computer, insert the USB stick and start it up again
If you've done it all correctly you should get a screen asking to Run Ubuntu, just click Enter. Wait a while and you get to the main screen, start the wireless network and surf the world!

To be honest, this works very well! Until google chrome OS comes out I'm using this computer for everything, everyday! Hopefully you'll like it as much as I do!
Thanks for reading!

Source list:
Pendrive linux
Notebook check (image)

Testing

2010-02-24T07:10:00.001-08:00

A test blog post to my website.