Accessing... GameGRiD From The Past.

: Low Clearance Memory : 2011

22 June - The core beauty of the universe is randomness. Think of building a personal gaming computer as a process of aquiring the perfect parts at the right time. That's how I built my first ever 3D computer. After a warranty replacement, the replacement XForce3D shutter glasses are still in the original package. They were never actually needed as the broken pair still worked but with a small corner of the left side offline. Movies have been 3D for many years with the legacy red/blue anagraph.

5 April - Nowadays it's easier than ever to get hooked up with a decent gaming PC, a 64bit operating system and all for about $750. The trendy 3D version is a couple hundred more. If you like, add another $175 for some decent office software and you've built a hybrid office for a gamer. Complex office tasks run incredibly fast and smooth when you have a certified extreme machine at your disposal. Why worry about hardware cost, when in fact, it would be more beneficial to be concerned more with what software you work with. Mainstream licensing usually has the bonus of being more efficient, better supported and greater compatibility. Once you start loading down your system with freeware, kiss your speed goodbye.

The softwars that rage around the world daily are brutal. Malware infects millions of computers every day in an effort to bring down the mainstream developers. Or is it mainstream developers trying to bring down the competition? Suffice it to say that it's not just the apartment based rebel hacker that is involved in the spread of malware. By picking your software carefully, being careful where and what you do on-line and just talking to a professional about your needs will always give you less problems in the future. More often than not freeware does involve some sort of restriction until you pay full price, even then it may not work right. Demoware, where they allow a full version for 30 days or so, is a good way to decide on where to put your hard earned dollars. Microsoft is a billion dollar company because it's software works better than others. They can afford to offer baseware such as Internet Explorer and Windows Live to outclass the competition and build tremedously on their reputation as leaders.

13 March - It's time to point out that having the rebel fortitude to stray from mainstream software, such as Microsoft®Windows or OS X, doesn't necessarily always translate into cost or time savings. Nowadays it's easier than ever to get hooked up with a decent gaming PC, a 64bit operating system and all for about $750. The trendy 3D version is a couple hundred more. If you like, add another $175 for some decent office software and you've built a hybrid office for a gamer. Complex office tasks run incredibly fast and smooth when you have a certified extreme machine at your disposal. Why worry about hardware cost, when in fact, it would be more beneficial to be concerned more with what software you work with. Mainstream licensing usually has the bonus of being more efficient, better supported and greater compatibility. Once you start loading down your system with freeware, kiss your speed goodbye.

The softwars that rage around the world daily are brutal. Malware infects millions of computers every day in an effort to bring down the mainstream developers. Or is it mainstream developers trying to bring down the competition? Suffice it to say that it's not just the apartment based rebel hacker that is involved in the spread of malware. By picking your software carefully, being careful where and what you do on-line and just talking to a professional about your needs will always give you less problems in the future. More often than not freeware does involve some sort of restriction until you pay full price, even then it may not work right. Demoware, where they allow a full version for 30 days or so, is a good way to decide on where to put your hard earned dollars. Microsoft is a billion dollar company because it's software works better than others. They can afford to offer baseware such as Internet Explorer and Windows Live to outclass the competition and build tremedously on their reputation as leaders.

Software can also be classified into generations where the time between generations depends largely on the application. A typical game might be 3 to 10 years between each new release. A good computer that supports 3 generations of gaming, typically will handle 10+ generations of office applications. In this modern age there is a geeky artistic element to hardware and software modding which should embrace the users personality. It's easier than ever to get decent hardware. As an example, Nvidia, a video hardware manufacturer and also a leader in 3D gaming, has just announced the release of their first high-end GeForce video card for $149US. The GTX 550 Ti will reportedly do 40fps at full 1680x1050 HD Widescreen. But just to be skeptical, it's yet to be seen how much heat it'll produce because the fan attached to the card still looks aggressive? I prefer to close my door and not have to literally sweat bullets while playing a game.

02 Feb11 - *Shall we say that sometime in the future, even this North American Holiday of heart and soul will be trashed by the non-believers in life, health, happiness and true love. True love is the willingness to sacrifice vanities in order to help another person experience life. It takes courage to overcome the fear of death'n dismemberment in our society and enjoy life with others and celebration makes that easier. Why can't we just accept the traditional holidays in the spirit in which it was created.

After the holiday a zen gamer will always go back to the game without any disruption in the routine. Perhaps we play 'the game' to desensitize the fact that the real world is out to get us. It is most certainly the timeshare of real versus game that determines our skill level in both worlds. So improve your social skills on Valentine's Day, pause the game and give up hugs & kisses as a reminder to oneself that there is a real world too. Develop a strategy in gaming that maximizes efforts on the gamegrid, while minimizing the timeshare needed to complete a quest or goal. For me, Valentine's Day is just a precursor to our anniversary and the wife will be getting something special this year.

: Low Clearance Memory : 2010

29 Dec - With xMas now come and gone this would be about right for the monthly update. There was a bit of panic when Columbia House in Canada went bankrupt. I still managed to acquire my copy of TRoN: Evolution from the local Walmart. The holidays took all my time, so I had to wait until after xMas to play it. Otherwise there's one planned event that made history on the 17th, TRoN: Legacy (in 3D) was an awesome movie! Just to get the critical notes out of the way, I thought more color would've been nice. The monochrome world schema was a bit taxing. The points that were lost in vibrancy were made up on the plot, action and animation, all very well done! Well worth the price of admission, and getting my son into his halloween Jet Bradley costume one more time.

There was a lot of gaming to choose from this shopping season. By far the coolest is the Xbox Kinect. With a bit of tweaking we managed to get it set up pretty good. Tho, there should be a way to mate it with any game. This is certainly a good time to get a game download too, check out the EA deals this week, up to 44% off in our store. One of my holiday acquisitions is Batman: Arkham Asylum, one of the top ten games of the year in '09. A must have for the serious gamer and whomever holds Batman as a favorite hero. I read that the game playability is excellent.

It's not quite time to talk about TRoN: Evolution, however, I will say that it's rated 'okay' by IGN and probably deserves it for the monochrome world schema, just like the movie. I'm having fun tho, learning discs on hard difficulty and driving the new lightcycle. Looking forward to driving the tanks... which was always on my wish list for the TRoN franchise. Despite the monochrome environment, it plays great so far!

24 Nov - I'll be the first to admit that they did a good job on StarCraft II. There is a nice advanced options interface that allows you to tune the game to the hardware. An issue came up when I tried to create a another BattleNet account for my kids to track their achievements. 'one key, one account, pay for more' was the basics of the response I got from Blizzard Support. Is cyberspace at such a premium? or are the developers getting greedy? Either way I'll have to pay another couple hundred bucks to track all my kids achievements properly, Grrr :(

My first experience with 'achievements' is with our XBox 360. It's a cool way to track your progress, however; it's also an attractant to continue to play more and more eacy day. Perhaps this is just the ramblings of an oldtimer who remembers the Medics, the Wraiths and how I used to time travel into the future everytime I played. I watch for the signs, in my family and in myself, of gaming addiction beast which has torn appart relationships everywhere. Life beyond cyberspace is important also.

Christmas is only a month away so it's time to consider a quick easy way to purchase gifts for the gamer. EA's Holiday Sale is currently running from now until January 2nd and features some exclusive premiere editions, 50% off and $10 Specials. Click Here for more details.

This is going to be an awesome December! There is only one thing in cyberspace that could draw me away from the everyday grind with any excitement, TRoN. The new game, TRoN: Evolution, is going to be released on the 7th of December and TRoN: Legacy hits the big screen, including 3D, on the 17th of December. The game is billed as a prequel to the movie. As an official SuperFan of this cult classic, I say it's totally awesome to have lived 30 years from classic to legacy. You can bet that I'll be writing about it soon.

I've improved the GameGRiD in many ways this time around. It's more mobile friendly. The chat is bigger and better with last post, weather and pro gamer tech monitors on the opening page. There was also a few bugs in the affiliate system and I needed to get the word out about what we can do for Home/Office and Enterprise Security with VIPRE Antivirus Premium.

29 Jul - StarCraft II Released! and picked up today at the local Walmart. One things for sure, I'll be upgrading some equipment before the release of Diablo III? My cpu is under-powered by 0.2mhz on the new StarCraft. It didn't seem to hold me back or make much of a problem playing after I settled in for an hour long install and update process. The movies played were pretty cool, the tutorial just taught me a bunch of stuff I already knew, the basics of the old Starcraft interface. Now I am liking the ability to change the game settings more than a little tweaking with graphics and sound. There are a few things that were always a peeve from the old game that seemed taken care of. Otherwise what I saw so far is pretty impressive. Time to close the door for a night or two, crank up the volume and study the battlefield and command controls more closely. With three or more games on the go, the question remains which of them is going to take the spotlight in the majority of play allocation.

5 Jul - HAPPY BIRTHDAY CANADA! 22 days until the release of StarCraft II. Will it be as big as the hype? I re-installed the old Starcraft on my machines awhile ago to update my memory before the big day. The BLoG is operational just in time for all the reviews to start pouring in :) Having read most of the novels, it'll be interesting to see how much they stick to the storyline. There are rumors that many of the campaigns will be based on the novels. Later this year we can look forward to Crysis 2, I hope it's not like the expansion, dumbed down settings and making use of the big gun for the end only, argh! I've never played Deus Ex, but I hear the new Human Revolution is gonna be good! If your looking for older or current games for all platforms, check out the new store, lots of places to go for games and other software. Time to update the games and tech pages next. These things can go quicker now that the hard stuff is done.

13 Jun - The Blog is almost up and running! A few more adjustments with the clearing of some old data and we'll have it. StarCraft II is being released on July 27th, hooray! So far I haven't read about any new things that impress me. Lets hope it's not just a graphical improvment over the first and has some cool new units and modes? Current games on play are Mass Effect and Dragon Age : Origins. Came across a sugestion that playing the first Mass Effect would lead to a greater appreciation of the second. It was also a lot cheaper. PC Gamer has gone and changed their format with a few distraught readers, such as myself, disappointed in the new tabloid style articles and ratings for seemingly cheap 8086 level games in the 90's. What's that all about?

28 Mar - Welcome to a New Year of gaming! Ya sure it's a bit delayed for this message. Christmas thru spring is always a bit busy for this cyborg. We're making some important changes on the website as I get closer to adding the archived content from the earlier versions and that depends mostly on how long it takes me to finish the flash navigation, Grrrr ;) One thing that has changed is the addition of a current selection. This is the game currently in the high clearance memory of my hardware. The poll is now related to this selection.

: Low Clearance Memory : 2009

10 Nov - Closer and closer to the release of a few games greatly anticipated. Meanwhile back at the console things start off looking and running pretty good, only to be hacked down for simpletons. I speak of Crysis vs. Crysis - Warhead, the first one was actually not so bad, nice nanosuit capable of running at 64bit speeds. The weapons were great, the enemies still stupid enough to run into the line of fire, etc. There was this super weapon I got, too bad it was only good for a few shots at the endgame boss. Enjoyable enough that it was worth the risk to buy the sequel, Crysis - Warhead. My first observation was that the classic gamer is reduced to a complete moron. The time honored low, medium and high graphics values are gone and we are now graphics "personalities" of minimum, mainstream, gamer and enthusiast. My 64bit nanosuit must be obsolete now (like most tech more than a couple hours old) since 32bit is my only option. Wait a minute? I think they got that backwards. Sure enough there is new vehicles and cool weapons, not the least of which is this experimental energy weapon thats cuts down the big guys nicely... once again it all comes to an end shortly after finding it. One can only imagine if they decide to release another expansion, 16bit nanosuit, graphics values of cheap bastard all the way up to richie rich and a doomsday bomb that you can only use once, duh! If this is "The Best of E3" then the gaming world is in trouble, seriously.

12 Sep - One bad vote for TRoN 2.0 came in the other day so I let it pass into being as a statistic. Do a little pinging, trace routes and bingo you have no more data than when you started... *zzzZZ, got better things to do! Oh ya, big deal, the uberTRoN fan lets in a booo for Disney. What's this I hear about a TRoN movie in 2010 and does it come with a PC Game too?! When do I get to drive one of those Awesome Tank Programs! (-censored-) Oh ya, found this really great VIPRE anti-virus program, been using it on my X64 Pro OS for almost a year, by SunBelt Software. It has almost no impact on the system for gaming modes and the registered license cost is low.

3 Aug - Completed the first round of the new TUROK! Nice to see that they still have the same class of weaponry. Not that I had much opportunity to use most of them. Once you find a certain weapon works, then you pretty much stick with it. My favorite was the Plasma Rifle and the Knife. I really enjoyed the cut scenes when you killed something at close range. They went in and out of 3rd person quickly enough that it kept the pace beautifully. Some of the larger dinos were a bit tough to figure and it would be nice if they programmed in a few ways to kill a boss instead of only one way. I ran out of ammo on a couple of them and was left doubting my accuracy, which in fact was perfect. I've installed the new store widget and now the selection of games available is growing nicely! Click Here to go there now.

4 May - We eagerly await the arrival of several new games such as Starcraft II and Diablo III. Whatever happened to GHOST? Lost in the Blizzard of time... Have been playing Tomb Raider in the Underworld lately with only a few minor difficulties in some areas. Should I keep looking for the best way out even tho I have already found a difficult one? When the whole family gets involved, doors appear in shadows. Thses remain as some images from the renos we did on the command center, just mouse over a thumbnail to view the larger image. I'll have a whole album thingy going someday, with lots of other gadgets online.

8 Jan - A deal has been made to obtain the final few pieces of what is going to be named the BorgCUBE. A powerful (and quiet) Athlon 64 X2 4800 based game machine sporting a Nvidia 8800GTX 768mb graphics platform. The list of games for the new minipoll ratings is now 17 and will grow to be 50 over the next year. Be sure to get your rating registered now and visit often to get them all in. The plan will be to have a page showing all the ratings as they progress. The countdown to v.5.0 has begun, this is our 10th anniversary year so be prepared for the ultimate cool stuff to come!