I'll be honest with you, I don't have a lot of experience with designing graphics.  Here at tech-shui, we're constantly reevaluating the site colors, logos, placement and design.  It doesn't stop there either, we've been tossing around different ideas for the core of the website (use prepackaged tools that make deployment quick and painless or build something from scratch).

So when it comes to the graphics design, I spend a lot of time in all corners of different websites dedicated to graphic design, where I try to pick up some techniques that the pros use when they do their thing.

The first problem here is that as a lowly software developer, I can't justify spending hundreds (or thousands) of dollars on expensive pro graphic design software.  Unfortunately for me, most of the really good tips are detailed tutorials that focus on Illustrator and Photoshop tools and use images from subscription-based websites.  For a guy who doesn't want to spend any money but wants to break as few laws as possible, there is a little bit of a hurdle here.  This is where GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) enters the picture.

What follows is a mix of different techniques that I've put together from tutorials that use the "expensive" tools, tailored for GIMP, so that you don't have to spend a penny.  If you pay attention to supporting images, you won't have to worry about paying royalties either.

Getting an interesting background

[note:  If you want to see what this piece looks like towards the end, check our our deviantart page:  http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/58583936/ ]

We'll assume that you've got a logo and a picture (that you have the rights to, of course).  Figure out what color scheme you want to do, take into account the style of the graphic and then decide on something appropriate.

Here's our color scheme for this piece:



First off, I went to google image search and looked for a large image of concrete.  A high resolution version is the best.  I picked up one and verified that the owner is allowing for free use of the image.  We should be ready to start!

Make a new document with dimensions that are at least as big as the concrete image you find.  Create a new layer and bring in your concrete image to that layer.  If you're going to make a vertical image (like us), go ahead and find the most interesting part of the concrete and center your background around it using the "Canvas Size" dialouge.  Use the x and y offsets here to move the selection around.  



Hide the concrete layer (make sure it's above the only other layer, the "Background") by clicking the eye in the layer dialouge.  Select your background and color scheme from above.  In the main tools window, select your gradient tool (or press 'l') and choose the "Radial" shape from the gradient specifics below the toolbox.  Hold down the control key while you play around with where to drag the gradients until you can come up with something like this (hint, drag from above the image border to about 3/4 the way down the image):



Next, make the concrete layer visible over the background that you've just created.  In the layers window, move the mode from "Normal" to "Multiply". The concrete textures are visible into the green background.  If you take the transparency and move it to about 50%, then you can see more of the
background and the differences aren't as harsh.



Here's a rough idea of what your picture should look like by now.  On Monday, I'll continue with adding the lettering and the techniques for foreground objects that complement the background.

On January 9th 2007 one of the most hyped products ever was officially announced.  While sitting in my office staring at the feed from MacWorld, I felt the hype grab tightly onto me with it greasy sweaty palms and then sink its teeth into the back of my brain.  After the big announcement was made, I had to run off to lunch, but I knew enough about the product to know that I wanted it.  At that time it was more than a desire ... it was a need.  The little Mac fanboy in the back of my brain stood up and swiftly took control of my thoughts.  As I talked to people on the way to lunch I talked about the phone, it's features, and how I didn't care about it's price.  The Mac fanboy voice told everyone that I was going to get it.

As the days and weeks passed since the big announcement I settled down.  I started to think rationally about it and I devised a plan.  I was going to get a smartphone that offered the features I was interested in; IM, full keyboard, Internet, etc.  It was at this point that I found the Nokia E62 for about $100 USD.

Now the iPhone is about to launch and nearly 5 months has passed since I got that Nokia E62 and I am sure glad that I got it.  By spending the $100 USD on this phone, I will be saving myself the cost of the iPhone.  This is not to say that I feel in love with the Nokia E62 and that there is no other phone on the market for me.  By the time that I canceled the Data Plan and started using my old Samsung flip phone I actually kind of hated the phone.

What pissed me off most about this phone was that all programs needed to be certified by Cingular to run on the phone.  When you download Google Maps or GMail (both applications were not Cingluar Certified) any time the program had to access the network for data I would get a prompt asking me if this was ok.  While this may not sound too annoying on the surface, but imagine using Google Maps and every time you scooted the map to the left you would get this prompt.

So why does this flaw in the E62 translate to my newly found non-desire for the iPhone?  Some of you may say that Apple would never let this kind of behavior exist, and I agree.  However, what I see is that what applications Apple loads the iPhone with will work awesome, they will truly be a breath taking experience.  However, Apple has already stated that the iPhone will be a closed platform and what I learned from my E62 experience was that I wanted a completely open platform for a smartphone.  I am a big boy; let me make my mistakes if I want to.

Now, this is does not mean that I won't have a shiny iPhone in my hands eventually.  I also don't think that the iPhone will be crap, but right now, it isn't for me.  If you are thinking about purchasing the iPhone tomorrow, give some thought about how closed of a platform it will be and if that is something that is desirable for you.

 Role Playing Games are one of my favorite video game genres, the crazy thing is that if you counted all of the RPG's I played it would be a huge number, however of those I could probably count the ones that I have conquered on my hands.  So I thought to myself, "Why do I have such a hard time conquering this type of game?" and what has changed throughout time with the RPG genre, moving from Pen and Paper to  traditional RPG, to finally, MMORPG's.  We have apparently moved from Smelly middle aged men sitting in their mom's basement with eachother playing Dungeons and Dragons with eachother to smelly middle aged men sitting alone in their mom's living room playing RPG's by themselves to smelly middle aged men that sit at their computers and play MMORPG's with other smelly middle aged men at their computers around the world.

The answer came to me about halfway through Final Fantasy XII. 

    I was to the mid-boss in the game and was having a very hard time defeating him, I tend to rush through the story, therefore being very underleveled for where I should be.  After about fifteen times trying to kill him I gave up.  After I gave up I didn't play Final Fantasy for a few days, I was discouraged.  I did not want to come back to the game for fear that I would just be defeated over and over.  This is one of the reasons why I believe makes it so hard to complete a lengthy RPG, and it is what makes the MMORPG beautiful, I'll explain.

    In a RPG you sit alone in your room and watch a interactive movie about characters that were developed before you even came into the story, it is your job to discover their past.  When it comes to "grinding" in a traditional RPG it is tedious, tiring, and boring, and there are many parts of traditional RPG's where your character can get stuck in an area where you know you should be a higher level, but there is no way to grind for the level.  So in this situation you are faced with two choices, either keep trying to defeat the boss by having the best, and luckiest, battle of your life, or stop playing the game. 

    Most people, I assume because I include myself in this group, will choose the latter choice.  It is easier, and there are so many games to play, etc.  But this begs the question, "Why?  Why is it so easy to give up a traditional RPG and so difficult to give up a MMORPG?"  Well, I am glad you asked.  Like I said before, in a traditional RPG you are forced to learn about the characters, the only real character development is through leveling, and that is ussually limited, and wepon/armor choice.  The reason I play ROLE PLAYING Games is exactly that, I want to put myself into that role and play through the game, which is probably why I loved Choose Your Own Adventure Novels.  In most Traditional RPG's characters are given to you, if you are lucky you may get to name them and chose their gender, but that is if you are lucky.  Before the whole MMO movement there were only traditional RPG's, Pen and Paper had dwindled to a small light at the beginning of the tunnel, MMO's were the small light at the end, and we (as RPG gamers) were in the darkness that was the "Final Fantasy Era".  At the time they seemed great.

 

" FF I, FFII, FFIII, awesome, these are so great, I heart Square"

    Then there was nothing, until FFVII in 1997

" I love FFVII, but what happened to IV, V, and VI . . . Whatever VII is awesome"

    Final Fantasy VII was a perfect example of a fantastic game, that many people played for a very long time, but did not defeat the final boss.  Final Fantasy VII had a plethora of features, and gameplay, that past RPG's did not have.  It also had a mindblowing story and characters that were very easy to relate to.  However, there were some bosses in the game, including the final boss, that were so unbelievably difficult that it would ussually take days and days of level grinding to even get close to defeating, Sephiroth.  This would create the decision for people that I discussed before; "Do I level grind by myself for days, or do I just stop playing, and start a different game?"
     I chose to start a new game.  After FFVII I started playing Diablo from Blizzard, released in 1998.  Diablo for the Playstation was amazing, you created a character, therefore immediately creating a personal connection with that character, hence ROLE PLAYING game.  I realize that there were many other games that did this before, but Diablo was my first console RPG that achieved this great connection.  The other thing that Diablo did was create a incentive to level, and get better armor, weapons, and magic.  Diablo is also the first RPG that I played with other people.  On the Playstation friends could come over and bring their memory card, or use the character that they had on my memory card, and go down into the dungeon together and quest.  The beauty of playing a multiplayer RPG, not to be confused with a MMORPG, is that if you needed to grind for levels you were actually, physically, around other people, this made it easier and more enjoyable to play, even when you were stuck.
    After Diablo in 1998, Diablo II eventually came out in 2000.  Diablo II did the exact same thing that Diablo did, except it added the ability to play with each other on the internet via Blizzard's Battle.net.  Diablo II is sometimes credited for starting the MMORPG movement.  Even as I write this article there is still a very large population of gamers who play Diablo II, and keep the economy within the game up.  I never got too into Diablo II, and at that time I played a few traditional RPG's, but like I said I didn't conquer many of them, but I did play a lot of them. 
    When World of Warcraft came out in 2004 I did not really understand what MMORPG's (Massive Multiplayer Online Role PLaying Games) were.  They did not attract me because I did not have the disposable income to be paying the monthly charges that came along with those games.  In 2006 when I finally caved in and bought World of Warcraft, I realized that these MMORPG's were the perfect type of RPG's .  Like their Great Great Grandfather, the pen and paper RPG, MMORPG's have you create a character from scratch, therefore immediately creating a connection to the player personally.  On top of the character creation, the player ussually starts off as an absolute nothing in the game and will work their way up to a important part of the community.  MMORPG's focus on customization and community, mor than storyline's and pre-existing characters, like traditional RPG's.  The last and final beauty of the MMORPG is that the player is never really stuck at a certain point in the game.  If a character gets to a point where they cannot progress, whether it be because of level, or not having a certain item, they can always fall back onto the community for help.  This fact makes progressing through the game much easier and more social, therefore making the game much more fun.
    As the RPG genre has progressed through time, from Pen and Paper RPG's i.e. Dungeons and Dragons to MMORPG's i.e. World of Warcraft, the genre has come about almost full circle. Sidenote (Thankfully the RPG universe found a way to get rid of the "Dungeon Master" this way everyone could play the game)  The games that started out by creating a character sheet, and developing a character from nothing have finally ended up as video games where the player creates a character from nothing.  Therefore we now have very playable and accesible RPG's, that are actually ROLE PLAYING games.  Where the player steps into the role of a character and interacts with other characters, and a story.  Although the RPG's may have lost some story telling elements (Debateable), they have gained something more important, good character creation so players can assume roles, and communities, which make the game much more accesible.

Last week, those tech-savvy guys over at CNet [http://crave.cnet.co.uk/mobiles/0,39029453,49291004-3,00.htm] wrote an article talking about all the features the perfect phone would have.   Basically, the phone is small, durable and has a kickass screen that doesn't drain battery.  Usablity features like one-click contact adds, quick texting and an 8GB MP3 player.  On top of all of this, there would be a robust web browser with support for Java and Flash, with the final addition of an SDK for third party developers.  This phone would kick some serious ass, except that Sony, Motorola, Nokia and Apple (to name a few) have patented all the features listed.  

 

This is not a new phenomenon.  Both within the hardware system mentioned above and the current structure of the software patent system, the general strategy for companies is to patent as much as they can so that they can block competitors from developing (or copying) similar technology.

 

The benefits to this system are that companies are given an incentive to develop new ideas and methods and in return, are given control of the usage of the new ideas.  Shouldn't a company be able to defend against people who literally repackage and resell an idea they didn't contribute to at all? 

 

There are a few drawbacks to this system, but the one that sticks with most people is the hampering effect to the progress of the relevant industry.  This part makes it difficult, if not impossible, for a startup company to break into an industry (alright, not impossible.  I'm talking about areas that have been heavily studied but have room to grow from a protected base).  This isn't necessarily because the startup can't come up with innovative or creative ideas, but rather because basic related techniques have been patented and are now property of would-be competitors.  If this is the case, then how can progress be made by the next generation, without impossibly expensive licensing rights?

 

Clearly, there is a trade-off that happens here.  On one side of the fence, we have a system where faceless corporations own basic, key ideas and the faceless corporations of tomorrow (the startups that would make it big) are killed in the early stages where they can't fight against intellectual properties rights.  On the other side, we have a system where nobody bothers to invent anything new because someone else will rip it off. 

 

I think there are some examples of trends in the past that will shed some light on where the path will eventually lead.  Take brewing beer, for example (this might be a stretch, but beer is awesome and I write whatever I want).  There was a period after prohibition where small breweries were either folding or being bought out by the larger beer breweries.  Eventually, most beer being sold in the United States was Budweiser, Coors or Miller.  Today, there are many more mini-breweries that create radically different beers.  The architecture of the system changed, so that people were given more freedom to tinker with recipes and techniques and as a result, we all benefit by getting more choices.  It's worth noting that the three main players in the beer industry here in the United States still sell almost all of the beer.

 

In reality, I think the truth about the intellectual property system lies someplace between the previously described extremes.  People will still innovate and invent new things because that's what people do.  People are going to steal and repackage ideas from other people because people are greedy and lazy.  Eventually, I think that the need to create new things will overpower the current system and an overhaul will introduce something new where ideas can be protected, but also built upon.

 

[Most of the ideas outlined in this post come from Lawrence Lessig's "Free Culture" book.  It's available online and in bookstores.]

Part 2: Know Your Resources!

So what's the best place to look for computer parts if you're building a computer?  Well this part really depends on your shopping style more than anything else. Newegg.com is probably my favorite site to look for all my computer needs. There are other great places out there like Tomshardware.com and Pricewatch.com that have pretty much everything that Newegg does, and both have their advantages and disadvantages.

Priecewatch: It's not very often that I've found better deals than those you find on Pricewatch.com, the site is fantastic for finding out how cheaply you could get a product for. This site is one of the best places to reference to know if you're getting a deal or not. There are, however, some major disadvantages to the site that keep me from doing anything but looking around. To begin with, there is no rating system built into the site that rates the products. Ratings are huge; they are the best way to know if a product is rock-solid or a piece of crap. Even big names like ASUS and Linksys make unreliable pieces of crap so knowing what experiences others have had with the piece of hardware is imperative. The other issue with Pricewatch is that there are so many vendors that it references that it wouldn't be difficult for you to end up buying all your computer's parts from different vendors, which can cause major headaches. On the plus side, users are able to rate the vendors so you can at least feel confident in your purchases. Additionally, the layout is very basic and effective showing prices for all items in a category in one area.

Tom's Hardware: Tomshardware.com has a few significant advantages over Pricewatch. The first and probably most important: fantastic reviews of new technology and an extensive archive of incredibly thorough reviews. More than just reviews it also has comparisons between products. nVida vs. ATI, AMD vs. Intel, ASUS vs. MSI, and the list continues. Like Pricewatch, Tom's Hardware also allows users to review various vendors for all the products that they review, and also like Pricewatch, Tom's Hardware doesn't sell the products it reviews. Again, this translates to you most likely getting the products from multiple vendors. The other issue to consider with Tom's Hardware is that while it has professional reviews of products, the reviews don't cover differences between manufacturers. While this doesn't affect products such as processors, it does make a big difference for hardware such as video and networking cards. A GeForce 7600GT made by eVGA may cost less and be far more reliable than 7600GT with the same specs made by Chaintech.

So now comes one of the next major decisions you have to make when buying the parts for your PC: Do you care about purchasing from multiple vendors? If not then probably the best combination of web sites are Pricewatch.com and Tomsharware.com. Use Tom's Hardware to find the best performance for the price and to compare things like chipset performance and use Pricewatch to find the best deals. Tom's Hardware does a very good job of comparing vendors' prices, but experience has shown me that Pricewatch generally does a better job of finding the lowest price for just about everything. Be cautious with this method of purchasing, however. While you can find the lowest prices and reliable vendors you may get stuck with a piece of hardware that got great reviews, but made by a company that uses the cheapest materials possible for their products. If you aren't sure of what manufacturers to avoid and this is a concern for you, than you're still in luck, I've got one more site to review.

Newegg: Newegg.com has been my resource for purchasing computer parts for over half a decade and is the site I used to order all my parts for my budget PC. I'll start with the obvious advantage Newegg has over the others: they are a vendor, plain and simple. More importantly, however, they are a reliable vendor, perhaps the most reliable I've come across. Newegg is incredibly good at keeping shipping costs down and is very good about quickly processing your order. One thing that has disappointed me, however, is the switch from standard shipping being FedEx Express Saver to UPS's "you'll get it when we feel like" shipping. Despite my disappointment in shipping, Newegg makes up for it by having very good customer service. Being able to order all of your parts from one vendor also means that they should all arrive at the same time (well, if UPS feels like it anyway). On top of this if something arrives damaged, Newegg is excellent about getting you a replacement. The site also offers up an additional way to compare products: by manufacturer. Since Newegg also allows users to review products this means that you can see how similar products compare by manufacturer. This comes in especially handy for products such as wireless network adapters and motherboards where the manufacturer almost always determines reliability and life of a product. Despite all of its advantages, Newegg does not always offer the best price, though it's usually pretty close. Newegg also doesn't have professional reviews of products, only user reviews so you usually have to read a lot of reviews on a product to get the full spectrum of experiences.

These are only 3 of the thousands of vendors you can choose from, but they are the three that I have had the best experiences with. Newegg is my favorite of the three, but I still find myself going to the other two when trying to decide on parts. Tom's Hardware is helpful in determining what is right for me, and Pricewatch provides me with a way of giving a product a base price so I know if I'm getting a good deal or not. Newegg is my site of choice for purchasing all of my parts for this build. In Part 3 I will go over what I decided to go with and why, as well as give you my thoughts about the hardware I chose now that some time has passed.

---Part 3---

Part One: What Are You Looking For?

A few months ago I decided that I had done as much as I could to extend the life of my old PC.  For the money that I had put into it, it was a relatively good deal. The biggest problem with it was that it started out a piece of crap. I couldn't afford much while in college so I did what I could with the money I had. 128mb ram, Athlon 2200 (which at the time was a bargain for $35), an old hard drive I had laying around, an old video card discarded by a friend, a rock-solid $30 PC-Chips motherboard (seriously, it was rock solid) and a computer case I found in the garbage room (with a working PSU!). Over the last three years I put a bit more money into it to keep it useful, but the point here is that while this was the first computer I had that could do anything resembling real gaming on (and it wasn't much) I had never had a computer that was designed for gaming from the ground up. This needed to change, but it proved to be more difficult than I thought it would be.

 

Over a good six-month period I spent a great deal of time trying to decide what I wanted in a gaming computer and how much cash I wanted to drop on it. I wasn't totally up on what was best for the more recent games out there, so I turned to the web for some assistance. I have to say, I was pretty disappointed. I couldn't find a guide for anything that I was looking for in my price range. There were guides out there for building low-end PCs starting at $300 or so, and there were guides for gaming PCs usually around the $2000 - $2500 range. The few sites that did have a guide for building a "budget" gaming PC still couldn't seem to get below the $1500 mark. None of the options worked for my budget. Was it really that difficult to get a budget gaming pc made with quality parts for under $900?

 

The task ahead of me was not an impossible one, but it was also not an easy one. I was building the PC from the ground up so I had to start my research from the ground up. I was fortunate to have a few friends that knew me well enough to know my gaming needs and they had some excellent suggestions. Now I know a decent amount about computer hardware but my problem is that I sometimes get so set on a particular piece of hardware that I don't look for something better and possibly less expensive. This is where friends and/or co-workers become essential. I researched on the Net for months and there were still a few pieces of hardware that I would have missed had I not taken the time to discuss my build with those I knew.  If there is one thing you take away from this article, it's: Don't be afraid to ask for people's opinions. If you're a tech-geek like me then not only will the conversations be interesting for you, but insightful as well.

The first question you need to address before you begin your search for parts is: What are your expectations for this computer? If you don't know what you want to do with the computer you are going to build before you start buying parts then you'll either end up buying something way more powerful than you need or something that will disappoint you. Since this is an article about a budget PC chances are the latter. I found that a relatively good way to decide if a budget gaming PC is right for you, is to think about what games you want to play and your expectations for performance. Want to play World of Warcraft, graphics maxed out, and getting 200fps? Do you want your computer to perform like a McLaran F1 for all the new high-polygon games over the next 5 years? Yeah, this guide isn't for you. Your eyes don't really notice any difference after 30fps anyway so do you really need the extra 170fps? Want to be able to play most current games at maxed out graphics and getting respectable fps? How about 45-50fps? Want a gaming PC that will allow you to play the newest games for the next three years with decent performance? Then you've found the right guide.

---Part 2---

I have an odd taste in music.  People looking through my collection will notice albums by Elliott Smith, Nine Inch Nails, Sage Francis, and Blink 182; some may find this a confusing hodgepodge of music.  I have no problem paying for music, but I think we all can agree that free is better.  So I set a quest out for myself; can I find free (and legal) music.

To get the best results from this journey, some guidelines have to be formed.
•    I must be able to get the whole album.
•    The artist does not need to release their whole catalog.
•    Albums cannot be offered for free for a limit time.  This rules out sites like amiestreet.com.
•    The music must be downloadable and in a format that can play on the majority of portable players.
•    I like the music.

The start of this adventure could actually be traced back almost two years ago.  At that time I had read that Harvey Danger, a band that I enjoy, released their third album Little by Little for free at their website.  I immediately went to their website and downloaded the album.  Before I pressed play I remember thinking that the production value was going to be low and that it was going to be just a passable effort.  However the opposite was true.  That album has now be
e one of my favorite albums in my catalog.  Knowing that this album was released for free, I knew there had to be others.

I went to google.com and did a search for 'creative commons music.'  One of the first links was to creativecommons.org/audio.  This site feature articles about creative commons music and also contained links to sources for music.  I picked three that sounded interesting to me: opsound.org, magnatune.com, and jamendo.com.

First impression of the opsound.com website was confusion.  It had sections for genre and artist, but it was hard to actually find and a whole album by an artist.  It seemed more like a collection of singles.  The biggest problem I saw was that music was available in Ogg Vorbis or MP3.  This is not to say that you get to pick, it will either one or the other.  Based of my first impression and the fact that you might get stuck with some Ogg files, I would not recommend this site.

Next up is magnatune.com.  This site looks good and seems well organized.  You can stream the music from the site, but you have to pay to download.  Moving on.

Finally we get to jamendo.com.  My first impression was not good; I saw a login box.  I would prefer to not have to create another account for another website.  However I clicked on the music table and was present with a thumbnail view of albums.  This is a great.  According to the page navigation, they have 2808 albums available.  I clicked on an album called Increase the Dosage by Revolution Void.  I was intrigued by the genre tag; 'Electronic breakbeat jazz.'  From the page for this album I could stream or download.  I streamed the first song and it seemed descent.  Clicking on the 'Download this album' button provided me with some options.  I could download via bittorrent or eMule.  I could also pick MP3 or Ogg Vorbis.  I picked MP3 download via bittorrent and within 30 minutes I had the album, complete with album art.  The files were 192k VBR.  While I cannot comment if this is good 'Electrornic breakbeat jazz,' it definitely had good production value and was enjoyable to my ears.

Based on this quest I think I found a winner in jamendo.com.  The site seems well laid out and I did not need to create an account to download.  The only thing I would like in this site is some form of charts.  I like to be able to see what other people are enjoying; I feel that it makes finding new music easier.  Maybe that feature is there; I will dig around for it a bit.

I have used jamendo.com now for about a week.  I still have positive feelings about it.  However, it seems that the majority of music is non-English speaking.  This is not necessarily a bad thing, however I do like to be able to understand lyrics when they are present.  So far I've had no problem grabbing about 5 albums from the site and I have been impressed with all of them so far.

This is by no means the end of my quest; it is just the beginning.  I will continue to report on my finds.

As a youngster I began collecting things, as most children do.  One of the  things that I collected  was baseball cards.  It seems that baseball cards are the usual gateway drug into collecting.  Once I realized that I hated baseball, I stopped collecting baseball cards but still had the itch to constantly trying to finish collections of things.  Since I was always interested in the comic universe, the logical progression was to comic cards.  The beauty of comic cards was that it was a way to collect, and understand characters.  After collecting comic cards for a few years I became interested in the stories behind the characters.  My first comic series was The Punisher, this was good because there was only one character, as opposed to X-men where there were very many characters.  The bad thing was that as a young kid the violence was pretty ridiculous. 

      I lost track of comics for quite some time, until recently I came back, I bought and read Frank Miller's Sin City and realized that I would like to get back into comics, however it also made me remember how expensive they were.  Once I looked on the Internet I found that there was a plethora of resources about digital comics.  Many of these digital comics are free, some have subscription fees, but it surprised me how many digital comics there were.  So I began reading, some of the comics are on websites, i.e. Marvel, and some needed to be downloaded, but they were all accessible.

      The next challenge was to find a good way to read these comics, when I am not sitting at my computer at home.  This is where I am now a few ideas have came up, there were really no good resources, or articles, on the Internet so I decided to do some research. 

      Just thinking about what devices would be good to read digital comics on the go.  The Ipod was my first thought, mainly because I had an Ipod and it was the least expensive way to go, however the screen was so small it was impossible to read the words.  So that was out, my second idea was a   different mp3 player that was able to show pictures, maybe the Archos or even the Zune.  Both of these mp3 players looked nice but again the words were unreadable.  While looking on the Internet I found a device that Sony had, the Sony Reader, all of the reviews that I read on this product said it was amazing with comics, however it was pricey, at 299.99, and it could only display black and white.  This was a good option, but  really wanted to read comics in color, it seems so important to me.  Lastly I looked at the Sony PSP, I was apprehensive to look at this product because I had owned a PSP and eventually sold it to buy a Nintendo DS.  Looking further into the PSP I realized that the PSP had evolved into a multimedia machine, this intrigued me. . . I researched more.

      The PSP was leading the pack, not only because it could be used as a, supposedly, good digital comic reader, but as an overall multimedia monster it looked fantastic, and the price drop helped.  So a week later I caved, the PSP was finally in my hands, with a 2.0 gigabyte memory stick.  My impressions of the PSP as a digital comic reader was amazing.  The easiest process I found to get comic books onto the PSP was to use a paperless printer i.e. PaperlessPrinter3 for windows, I have not found a good paperless printer for Macintosh, but I will be doing further research on that situation.  Once the comic folder is put into .jpg files it can be dragged into the pictures folder of the PSP.  The comic can be accessed on the PSP by going to the pictures section and finding the right folder.  Once the pictures are found the comic can be easily navigated, and zoomed in on.  The pictures, and text, are crisp and clean, and the page is easily scrollable with the analog stick, it feels very natural.  If you are a person who does not mind lugging your laptop around, there are an unbelievably large amount of digital comic book readers out there for PC and Mac, the one that I use on my Ibook is Ffview, it does a good job of displaying all of the pages in order, and has a bookmark capability, and its free.  Ffview can be found at www.feedface.com/projects/ffview.html.  The last place that I have been reading digital comics is at www.Marvel.com.  On top of being an unbelievably cool website to check out and surf around, there is a section where many of their more famous comic books have been put into a flash format, and can be read withing the browser of your computer, or mobile device.

      The comics that I am currently reading are a few of the first editions of the more popular vertigo comics, you can find them at www.dccomics.com/sites/vertigo_num1s/, they are all in .pdf format, which I was able to put onto my PSP, but if you feel better about putting them into a .jpg format feel free.  When it comes to pictures and the PSP it can handle many different file formats, which is what makes it such a great digital comic book reader, that and the gigantic beautiful screen.  I will be writing a follow up to this article once I get deeper in the pool that is digital comics.

A little under a year ago I was introduced to an addicting little MMORPG that I'm sure some of you may have heard of.  World of Warcraft, made by Blizzard, may not have been the first of it's kind but it has become what most people think of when they think of an MMORPG. With a subscriber base of over 8 Million and growing (worldofwarcraft.com) the game has grown to the size of epic proportions. As enjoyable as the game is, however, there are a few undeniable downsides to playing this game for those of us with a full time job and a non-gamer girlfriend.

First let me set things straight. I love World of Warcraft, plain and simple. In the months that I have owned the game I have logged nearly 40 days of total playtime into the game. There was a point when I was in between jobs where I would put 5-10 hours a day into leveling my little Gnome Warlock and playing in the battlegrounds hunting my enemies. When my real life friends still played we'd help each other with quests and kick ass in dungeons and instances. Believe it or not I was able to maintain something resembling a social life during this time, but after awhile I noticed that playing around in Azeroth had stopped me from trying out many of the new games that I had looked forward to being released!

There are quite a few games on my ever-growing list that I feel the need to play yet. Some of these date back to my college years when lack of time and finances prevented me from doing anything but drool over the game unless of course I got it as a gift. Usually when I was able to get the game myself it had already been out for a few years. I've pretty much always been behind the times with getting games, but I've still put a lot of time into some of the classics and even some of the newer games. Civilization III, Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, Dragonquest VIII, Xenogears, Windwaker, Escape Velocity (to name a few): all amazing games, and all games that took most of my free time for about a two-week period (and periodically still do when I decide they need another play-through). World of Warcraft is another great game that I have put a whole heap of time into but as I'm sure many can attest to, seems to be designed from the ground up to keep taking my time and money.

The problem for me is that WoW hits me with a double whammy that makes it difficult to drop. First there's the monthly charge that always makes me think twice about buying another game. I feel obligated to play a game when I buy it, and in a way I'm constantly purchasing WoW so I'm constantly feeling obligated to play. Second is that the game has a heavy emphasis on community. I can safely say that I've made friends in the game; I look forward to playing with them and they look forward to playing with me. About a week ago after getting my flying mount I was actually considering dropping the game for a while but then some in-game friends of mine that had stopped playing started playing again on a different server. They invited me to their Guild and even made a rank specifically for me and only me before I even made a character!  I mean, how can I possibly not play for awhile longer!? These factors combined with the game being so open-ended has made it exceedingly difficult to quit the habit.

I'm a gamer with only so much time, and only so much money. I might have a normal job with regular hours and decent pay, but I still have bills to pay (especially after a nice new 32" HDTV, and completely redoing my car's audio system). Experiencing more video games at this point still means playing games already established as being great such as Kingdom Hearts, which is currently unopened and collecting dust on my shelf. I'm so behind on my gaming that all I have are previous generation consoles collecting dust next to my TV. Heck one I even resurrected from the dumpster!

These neglected consoles and my new budget gaming PC all have games assigned to them that I need to play (or finish playing) once WoW is out of my system. It took me a long time to start playing World of Warcraft (I told myself I never would), and now it's taking even longer to stop playing it. I'm slowly weaning myself off of it and it's only a matter of time before I decide I want to play the game my real-life friends are playing. Until then, Dashriprock will continue run through the lands of Azeroth and fly through the skys of Outland.

Hello, I am a Gamer . . . and I just might have a problem.  Well, I don't see it as a problem, but others might.  I like to play video games and I don't mind spending money on the hardware required to do so.  I currently am the proud owner of a Wii, Xbox 360, and a Playstation 3.  Both of the Wii and the Xbox 360 were easily justified.  The Wii offered a totally different style of interaction, one that I was excited to experience (and more than willing to pay the cost of admission).  As for the Xbox 360, I had a brand new HDTV and almost no HD content.  The Xbox 360 gave me the high resolutions that I was drooling over.  Now we come to the Playstation 3; in my opinion this is the ugly duckling of the group.  It isn't to pretty now ... but give it some time and I feel that it will shine.

Why purchase the PS3 while it is still ugly?  There are a few reasons and surprisingly none of them involve playing PS3 games at this point in time.  None of the games currently out for this console excites me.  However, from what I've seen, the future holds some beautiful things.

As already mentioned I was craving HD content.  Gaming and the meager cable selection was not cutting it anymore.  I was strongly thinking about getting either a HD-DVD or a Blu-ray player.  However I would not get a stand-alone player.   Seeing that there is currently a format war going on the options were either the HD-DVD add-on for the 360 or a PS3.  I did not want to sink a lot of money into a format that might die out.

The other reason was that for the year and a half leading up to my purchase of the PS3 I did not own a Playstation 2.  I had an original PS2 and it was starting to wear out.  So I did the extremely ethical thing; I sold it to a gaming store that shall remain nameless.  However, in the year and a half without a PS2 many great games came out that I was not able to play.  This left a gap in my library of games like Shadows of Colossus and God of War.  The kicker was when I started seeing previews for Odin Sphere.  With the sprite based animation and the action style RPG, I knew I had to play that game (oh, it is sweet).

Knowing that I wanted to play PS2 games and watch HD movies I had to make a decision.  I could get the HD-DVD add on for the 360 and a PS2 or I could get a PS3.  Either of these options will accomplish my goals, but their prices are not equal.  After some research I found out that the European PS3s were having the hardware emulators stripped out; leaving them with crippled emulation.  I could envision that this could happen to the United States models in the future in order to cut costs.  I also did some research on HD-DVD vs Blu-ray and at the time, it looked like Blu-ray would win (in my opinion).  With this information coupled with the fact that I knew I was going to eventual get a PS3 (no matter how much hating I did), the choice was clear.

I spent a lot of my time hating on the PS3, but looking back on the purchase I in no way regret it.  The future looks bright for this system for both gaming and as a home theater appliance.  With recent firmware updates it has only gotten better.  I will go further into my reactions on the system in another article.

Hello,

As Jon mentioned we are getting close to launching.  So, if you found this site, I would like to thank you.  Secondly, we will start putting up some real content on June 18th 2006 around 6:00 am CST.  You can expect a new article each and every week day. 

Until then, peace!
~Tom

We're almost to the point of finally getting some content on the page!  We took most of today to customize the movabletype look on the front page, which Tom did a pretty good job with.  Hopefully we'll get some forums up for easier interaction.  We've got a schedule planned out between the four of us and we'll go live on Monday, July 16th!