[Software] Paint.net

This is a new weekly article where I pick an application that I feel is worth at least checking out.  The first merges the simplicity of Microsoft Paint and power of The Gimp into one handy little app that makes you wonder why Microsoft doesn't package this into Windows themselves.  It goes by the name Paint.Net and is great for doing any type of pictures that requires graphic manipulation which is something that paint just lacks in.  But if you've ever sat down to Photoshop or Gimp, you'll know those two programs are not easy to pickup or intuitive to the new user.

Paint.net has enough features to get the job done.

I love this program for its many features that normally you would have to pay for which makes this app even better.  This app comes in at the low great price of free.  Really can't beat that.  It also has a plugin and add-on feature that you should be able to find on their community but I can't comment on that because I really haven't needed them yet.

If you like to do quick little image edits and often find that MS Paint lacks some key features and the image editing suites or either to expensive or hard to use I highly recommend this app.  Go see for yourself at Download Paint Net.

Edit: In case you didn't figure it out, I forgot to mention this is a Windows only app.

[News] Video Games Recognized As American History

Video games have been accepted and archived into the Library of Congress.  According to the library, its mission is to "support the Congress in fulfilling its constitutional duties and to further the progress of knowledge and creativity for the benefit of the American people".  With the importance that video games have played in the last 40 years or so I think its past due time.

There's no doubt that video games have always had a certain negative stigma in mainstream culture.  They make kids dumb and they drive people to murder are two catch phrases of a moment that has been tied to video gaming.  But it seems with the commercial success of the gaming industry, it can no longer be denied its position in society and history.  To put it in perspective, a quick search shows that the United States movie industry generated about $72 billion dollars in revenue for 2011.  But the gaming industry generated $130 billion in revenue for the same year.  (Keep in mind these are U.S. figures only.  Globally the numbers come out about the opposite with the movie industry on top.)  That is impressive no matter what kind of old man lenses you look through.

As of now, the collection consists of over 3,000 games (every platform invented) and 1,500 strategy guides says David Gibson while being interviewed by Trevor Owens on the Library of Congress website.  They also will archive the actual system platforms themselves in the future.

I constantly tell my kids about the good old days of gaming but now I feel like the historical value is validated in a certain way.  It's not just me ranting anymore but an authority of sorts confirming what I've thought all along.  This can be nothing but good for the industry, the consumer, and the gaming culture alike.  What does all this mean plain and simple?  Video games can be recognized for their creative value.  Why is any particular movie considered a work of art but a great immersive video game is not?

Techni-LOL: iPhone 5 First Look

Jimmy Kimmel the late night talk show host shows us exactly how dumb we are as a society and how corporations have us in their hip pocket.  Basically Kimmel went out on the streets with an iPhone 4S and told people that it was the new iPhone 5.  Here's the gotcha.  No one has the iPhone 5 yet.  This video is proof that we as a society are completely lost.  I propose that high schools make "common sense 101" a mandatory class that you take every year.  And that consumer products are not your friends, just tools.  Jeez.

First Look: iPhone 5

DROID RAZR M BY Motorola w/o plan in White - Android Smartphone (Google Affiliate Ad)

[News] The Best Video Game Deal Ever: THQ Humble Bundle

I came across this deal while using Reddit and almost shed a tear.  Anyone that enjoys PC gaming at all should be checking this out.  Checking what out you say?  (Long and very dramatic drum roll here) The guys over at Humble Bundle have bundled together six triple A titles for your gaming enjoyment.  Here's the catcher though.  You pay what you want!  Here are the games you get for whatever price you want:

1. Darksiders
2. Metro 2033
3. Red Faction: Armageddon
4. Company of Heroes
5. Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts
6. Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor
7. Saints Row: The Third (if you spend the average of $5.70 or more)

This deal is ridiculous.  Your getting 6 great games for $1 or whatever you feel like paying.  You may have noticed that there's a 7th game listed above.  The reason for that is if you spend $5.70 or more (which is the average pay out) then you get it added for free.  Seriously, this is the only thing on Earth better than a Steam sale.

If that wasn't enough, Humble Bundle and THQ also will throw in the soundtracks to 5 of the 7 games.  With all this content for almost next to nothing, I really encourage you guys to dig deep and pay what you think is fair and add a little on top of that.  I normally wouldn't tell anyone to give away their money to the man for no good reason but this is for a great reason.  Humble Bundle allows you to to pick and choose exactly where your money goes when you make your purchase. 

If you look at the picture above, you can see that you can choose a preset amount or a custom amount.  Next you can split your payment between the developer, which is THQ this time, charity, and the humble guys.  What does that mean?  Not only do you get 7 great games for free but you also get to sleep better knowing that your hard earned dollars are going to the people that matter.  A lot of times through more conventional ways of buying games, developers see a very small percentage of total games sales.  Being able to make sure the developer gets his cut is great in so many ways and lets the actual creators of the game know that we appreciate their efforts.  Plus more importantly for paying to play, a charitable organization will benefit.  Last but not least you can tip Humble for bringing us such great content.

I won't waste anymore of your time.  You need to get over their NOW because this deal ends in 11 days.  As usual, questions, comments, and concerns are welcome and can be posted below.

THQ HUMBLE BUNDLE HERE

Update 12/07/2012:  Humble Bundle added two new games to the THQ Humble Bundle.  Titan Quest and Red Faction: Armageddon.  If you've already purchased the bundle before the new games were added you still get them for free.  All I did was log into my Humble account and navigated to my purchases.  The button to redeem and get the Steam key will be there now and should look like the picture below.

[Tuturial] Remove PhysX Logo

More and more lately games are utilizing the PhysX technology which is great.  Anything that makes the eye candy in our games is a treat.  But for some reason they decided that it (I don't know who they are) would be a great idea to constantly remind us which games had physX built into it.  Real quick I'm going to show you how to remove the logo so you can get back to uninterrupted gaming as usual.

The video is pretty quick, so be prepared to have to pause if you need to.  Any questions, comments, or concerns, are welcome.

[Hardware] Christmas PC Gaming Build (~$1000)

Here's a short video showing the components to build a sub $1000 gaming PC build just in time for Christmas.

[Hardware] Best Creative Budget Gaming Build ($500)

I was browsing youtube and came across a budget build guide that I feel is one of the best and creative I've seen.  Best?  Creative?  Well I feel it's one of the best because most sites will say they'll get you a super inexpensive build but they usually sit you down in the $600 department.

The one and only  jwolf2277 managed to get his budget gaming PC build in at a whopping $500 with the operating system!  Now that's a deal especially when you consider this is gonna have better specs then the next generation of consoles and gonna have a cheaper starting price.  Now to the creative.  I find his build to be a little more creative because he doesn't auto recommend you to all the latest and shiniest components on the shelves right now.  Recommending the Pentium G630 as a CPU was genius in my opinion.  This low price starting point is excellent to dive in at and gives you the same socket to move up to the more mainstream CPUs later as an option.

He really did us a favor on that and you should leave a like on his video to show him the appreciation and work done here.  Even though this build won't satisfy the PC vets by a long shot, it is a highly competent gaming PC that will play games at 1080p with good to great visual settings and leaves the user room to grow.  Overall, I would have to recommend this build to anyone wanting to get their feet wet in PC gaming.

Obviously this build is good at the time of writing but may not be so in 6 months.  If you have any questions, ideas, or thoughts, be sure to leave a comment and I will try to address them.

[Tuturial] Steam No Font Fix

If you're having the problem where when you start Steam in Wine and you can't see any fonts or text this may help you.  This guide will show you how to fix the problem using Play On Linux.  Feel free to ask questions.

NOTE: This is for Steam installs that run in Wine only.  Not the new native Steam client for Linux.

The no text bug looks something like this.

Can be very annoying.  Especially if you want to use Steam for anything besides launching your game.

1.  Start by opening up PlayOnLinux.

2.  Select the Steam install that you want to fix the fonts for.

3.  Press the configure button.

4.  You'll get a screen that will look like the one below.  Type in:

 -no-dwrite 

That should be it.

Try launching Steam now.  You should have all your text/fonts displayed the way they should be.

[Tuturial] LMMS Shortcut Fix

When installing Linux Multimedia Studio (LMMS) to Ubuntu with Unity the shortcut does not get installed to the dash or desktop.  Here's a quick fix to that I found on here on AskUbuntu.com.

Code to copy and paste to .desktop file:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Linux MultiMedia Studio
GenericName=music production suite
GenericName[ca]=Programari de producció musical
GenericName[de]=Software zur Musik-Produktion
Comment=easy music production for everyone!
Comment[ca]=Producció fàcil de música per a tothom!
Icon=lmms
Exec=lmms
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Qt;AudioVideo;Audio;Midi;
MimeType=application/x-lmms-project;

[Software] The Best Linux Emulators 2012

Do you got an itch to play some of those games that you so fondly remember as a child knee high to a grasshopper? Emulators is where it's at.  With emulators you can turn your Linux desktop into a Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega Genesis, Atari 2600, or almost any other console, DOS environment, or arcade cabinet you can think of.  Below I compiled what I think is worth your time for each of the main system and linked you to the website.

I chose each of these emulators based on popularity.  Why popularity?  Because the more popular it is in the open source community, the better your chances of getting updates, fixes, and support.  Also there's a good chance that it will be a packaged version ready to download for the different Ubuntu / Debian desktops out there.  I would recommend that you start with your software center or package manager before googling.  If you can't find it then head over to the PlayDeb website and add it from there.  (You will have to add the PlayDeb repository once, but after that everything on playdeb should show up in your software center.)  Quick disclaimer from my legal department, lol.  Emulators aren't an exact science yet.  That means while these should work in theory but not all games and roms will run the way they're supposed to.  Google my friends.  Happy gaming!

Playstation 2
pcsx2

Playstation 1
pcsx

Nintendo 64
mupen64plus

Super Nintendo
zsnes

Gameboy Color
gngb

Nintendo DS
desmume

Gameboy Advance:
vba-m

Gamecube / Wii / Triforce
dolphin

Sega Genesis / MegaDrive
gens/gs

Sega Saturn
yabause

Atari 2600
stella

Arcade
mame

** UPDATE **
I couldn't get bsnes to recognize most of my Super Nintendo roms and zsnes is only available for 32bit Linux.  So here's a ling to install snes9x-gtk.  This will work on 64bit Linux.

https://launchpad.net/~bearoso/+arch...ric1_amd64.deb

[Hardware] Newegg TV: PC Maintenance and Optimization

Newegg TV gives some really good to know information on how to optimize and upkeep your PC in this funny PSA style video.

[News] New Facebook Page!

I have a new Facebook page to help you keep up with updates to this website.  Please go there and support us by hitting the like button.

OsirezTech on Facebook

[Tuturial] Fix Sound Settings App In Ubuntu 12

There's a bug in Ubuntu 12 that causes the sound app in system settings to crash.  It seems like it only is effected by USB audio devices but I can't confirm this.  If you have this problem, hope this helps.

[Tuturial] Unity Dissapears After Reboot

I'm not sure if this is a big problem in general or just some isolated incidents but there seems like there's a definite problem with Nvidia drivers and Ubuntu 12.10.  I've isntalled the latest version of Ubuntu several times and have come up with the same problem every time.  Once you install the proprietary drivers for Nvidia and reboot it seems Unity and Compiz decide they're not going to be coming to work today.  After doing some digging, I found what seems to be the problem.

I'm not a kernel expert or even really remotely knows what goes on at that level but from what I understand someone left the kernel headers out for the Nvidia drivers. What does that mean to me and you in regular people terms?  Simple.  It doesn't work.  I would like to thank KAding for the resolution over at the Ubuntu Forums.  If you would like to read the thread yourself go >here<.

Here's what the fix looks like though:

Bring up your terminal by pressing:

• ctrl+alt+t.

Type:

• sudo apt-get install linux-headers-3.5.0-17-generic
• sudo apt-get remove nvidia-current
• sudo apt-get install nvidia-current
• reboot

NOTE: Some quick things to know.

1. Make sure you put YOUR kernel version in the command above. If you dont know it type "uname -r" in the terminal.
2. It seems at least for me when I type "sudo apt-get remove nvidia-current", I get zero as the results returned.  Doesn't seem to matter though.
3. This only seemed to effect me on 12.10.  Didn't have this problem on 12.04.

 
Hopefully after the reboot Unity will be back in all its glory, or lack thereof depending on who are.

[News] HP bets big on Linux | PCWorld

Several hardware manufacturers have supported Linux distros in some capacity.  The reason I see this as "news" is because with Steam making its platform native to Linux, Nvidia officially ramping up its drivers, and this HP news, it looks like Linux may get a lot of love in 2013.  This could lead to better support and more big name applications possibly finding their way over to Ubuntu or others. Let's hope.

HP bets big on Linux | PCWorld:

'via Blog this'

[News] The Gaming Near Future

Gabe Newell of Valve has been openly venting his displeasure for newly released Windows 8. He's been quoted as saying that “I think Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space,” Valve engineer Drew Bliss elaborates on this at the Ubuntu Summit in Copenhagen pointing out that Apple has a pretty much a closed economy and environment with their OS app store and Windows is headed in the same direction.

It is more than obvious at this point how Steam feels about the current state of gaming with the recent comments like these. Valve who is a leader in the PC gaming community holds a lot of weight, and when they speak people listen. They are the default go to game store on this platform for good reason. I think they feel like they're being squeezed out by Apple and Microsoft.  They're essentially elbowing their way into Valve's market space.

This situation would normally turn out bad for consumers resulting in possibly multi-billion dollar court cases, broken relationships, and the gamer taking on these effects through increased prices and/or less consumer content. But fortunately for us Valve has done what I consider the single most important thing for gaming since the release of the Nintendo way back when.  Drum roll please and wait for it...  Development for Valve on Ubuntu!  It is in the beta stages right now and has been received with a lot enthusiasm.  I personally am very excited and have tried it out for myself.

Steam (beta) running on Ubuntu 12.04

Now I couldn't get any of the Source games to run through this client yet (you have to be a beta tester) but I did manage to download the World of Goo demo and play it just fine.  No issues at all.

This could be a major game changer for PC gaming.  When game developers finally figure out their is a market for gaming under the Linux platform maybe they'll stop riding their high horse and start making games for it, without excuse.  Matter of fact, I think I'll even say that if games are successfully developed for Ubuntu, you could see them as a more recognizable name with Windows and OSX.  Not only that, more and more of the average desktop user will consider Ubuntu.

Information taken from Valve Engineer Drew Bliss Explains Why They Favor Linux Over Windows
Read more at http://gamingbolt.com/valve-engineer-drew-bliss-explains-why-they-favor-linux-over-windows#rXmXHbKEOE4ifKFZ.99 Of course these are my opinions and you're free as usual to leave yours below in the comments.  Happy gaming!

[Tuturial] Cable Management Guide Featuring Ultimate AMD System & Corsair 600T NCIX Tech Tips - YouTube

Do you have a computer with a nice side window to show off your beast of a PC rig? Maybe just want to increase airflow to cool your overclocked monster? This video brought to you by NCIX is probably the best step by step with visuals on case wire management. I don't think I've seen anything better than this. Link below.

Cable Management Guide Featuring Ultimate AMD System & Corsair 600T NCIX Tech Tips - YouTube:

[News] Alienware X51 is a console sized gaming PC | PC Gamer

Alienware X51 is a console sized gaming PC | PC Gamer:

Seems like the PC industry is trying to steal some of the thunder from the console guys when it comes to your couch lounging needs.

'via Blog this'

[News] SpawnTrap Episode 57 - YouTube

Chkdg8 and NasaOne do their thing once again in episode 57 of SpawnTrap. Awesome podcast by by awesome guys. If you like gaming and smart industry talk about it then you have to watch this.

SpawnTrap Episode 57 - YouTube:

'via Blog this'

[Opinion] Upgrades Galore

I know I haven't been posting but there's a good reason for that. I swear. LoL. I recently just upgraded my motherboard from the very ancient motherboard and CPU combo last week. Went from the AMD64 platform to the Intel side. Got a 1.83ghz e6300 that's clocking nicely to 3.0ghz on the stock cooler and voltages. I also picked up a GTX 285 by BFG that comes stock overclocked.  Huge leap from my very old nVidia 6800xt.  Well as anyone has planned for anything can tell you, sometimes a snag in your plan appears.  I got the video card home.  Opened up my case.  Looked at the connectors and the power requirements of the new video card again and realized that my power supply wasn't gonna cut for this beast of a card.  Back to the drawing board.  I'll be looking for a new power supply now before I'm able to run my new video card. That's how the cookie crumbles.

I know this isn't the very latest and greatest in hardware but I'm not part of that crowd.  Nor can I afford to be.  This is proof that you can game and not spend $600 to $1000 on a PC gaming rig.  Upgrade what you have and game on.

My new monster: GTX 285 OCE

[News] Best PC Gaming Podcasts To Start 2012

I don't watch much T.V. anymore.  Haven't done so in a long time.  To fill that media void I often listen to podcasts on my Android phone or watch/listen to them on the computer.  There are plenty of podcasts for gamers but if your specifically into PC gaming then the amount of choices narrows dramatically.


Not to fear though. I went out and auditioned some PC gaming podcasts for you guys and declared the winners. Let us start with what I view as the most official podcast.  This one is brought to you by the guys at PC Gamer.  They deliver a very entertaining and sane commentary of what's going on in the world of PC gaming.  Many would consider PC Gamer to be the official unofficial spokesmen of PC gamers everywhere.

Now if vulgar and obnoxious sprinkled very liberally with lots of humor is more your taste, then you want to check out the guys at Keyboard + Mouse Or Die (KBMOD).  The content over here is pretty much the same as the PC Gamer Magazine guys but with their very own twist.  These guys are hilarious to make it short.  If your'e offended by curse words, stupid college humor, sexual references and the like then you may wanna steer clear from this cast.  But for us adults, this is a podcast that you must check out.

To round this bunch of triple A podcast is the guys over at Spawn Trap podcast.  While the other two podcasts crews consist of very seasoned veterans of pc gaming, Chkdg8 and Nasa One on the other hand are self admittedly newcomers to modern PC gaming.  But this is their strength.  They bring you a point a view that's refreshing and new.  Instead of the I've been PC gaming for 20 years and I run the most bad ass gaming rig known to man, they bring you the let's game attitude, and that's it.

Whichever one you give your precious time to (I subscribe to them all) you will not be disappointed.  These guys are knowledgeable in gaming and down right entertaining. Go see for yourself with the links below.

L I N K S

PC Gamer Podcast

KBMOD Podcast
SpawnTrap Podcast

What If Steam Went Out Of Business

In this video I explore the question "What if Steam went out of Business".