B-B-B-Back!

Hey people! I haven't been around here in a while, but I come back and write a blog with some explanation, my holidays and a few problems and new stuff about my computer. I also have a bunch of new games, but I'll keep all of those for another blog as this one might be filled a bit already. To top it off, I come back with THIS! My review of F.E.A.R. for X360.

I'll start by saying that the review might feel a bit rushed in some parts, because I have to admit that I forced it a little in the past few days to get it done before blogging. As I told Tanya, I didn't want to come back and blog until the review was over and done, so in the last parts I rushed it a little, please don't hate me for this! ;p On another note, I welcome any types of comments, critics, advice, love (lots of love, can never have enough, can we?), hatemail and threats (can never have enough of these either ;p).

So the holidays are over, so is my first week of work after the holidays. It's been a while since the last blog, which was on the first day of my long awaited holidays in which I did not find as much time as I wanted to just relax, game and work on the review. I spent the first week with my sister, sister's boyfriend and my parents, so I tried to actually BE with them as much as I could, although every once in a while I'd end up playing video games, mostly Torchlight which I have finished and am currently in the Shadow Vault, or if you want, an infinite dungeon. During this week, Christmas was on the menu and I've received and gave what I think are great presents.

I received Batman: Arkham Asylum on PS3, which I quickly Platinumed. The game is truly amazing, with the characters of The Dark Knight, the Joker is once again captured by Batman and brought back to Arkham. Only, Batman feels there is something wrong as he surrendered too easily. Back in Arkham, the Joker had set up a trap and escapes the clutches of the guards only to take control of the complete island, and as Batman, you must now regain control and jail in those crazy people. The game plays amazingly well and the combo system is extremly well done and enjoyable. You gain experience as you defeat thugs and bosses (which are just epic in the Batman way, Poison Ivy was one my favorites, simply because she's a beauty in nature) with which you can upgrade your weapons, gain new abilities and thus access new areas to complete some side quests given by The Riddler, which consists of finding hidden objects and such. Truly a great game, it is absolutely beautiful in terms of graphics and well, everything in it is great. I recommend this game to anyone who likes action games and of course, it is a must for any Batman fan.

I also received Big Fish and Corpse Bride on Blu-Ray. Those two are part of my favorite movies, and if I can allow myself to say it, Big Fish is probably the most beautiful movie I have ever seen in my life, a true masterpiece. I love Tim Burton, all of his movies are just amazing, and ever since I bought a PS3 a long time ago, I've been rebuying every movies by Tim on Blu-Ray. He's probably the only one of whom I keep rebuying the movies. Back then it was VHS, got a DVD, rebuy the movies on DVD. Now I have a Blu-Ray, rebuy the movies on Blu-Ray, and the day they come up with something even better (because they will), I'll rebuy his movies again. That's just how much I love his movies.

My sister and her boyfriend gave me a magnetic board with magnetic poetry, which is quite literally words on magnets. The point of this is because everytime I visit my sister, I can spend the entire time sitting in front of her fridge making up sentences with her magnetic poetry words, so they decided to buy me some. The funny thing is that ever since I own it for myself, I barely even touch it lol. Nonetheless it is a great gift, and it's always fun every once in a while to create funny sentences. It's also fun for visitors, as they will usually come up with crappy sentences or funny ones, but usually crappy lol.

For my part, I gave my sister an Hello Kitty toaster which makes the face of Hello Kitty on the slice of bread, Hello Kitty socks and Hello Kitty phone strap. She's quite a fan, I must say, even for a 27 years old person. I gave my sis' boyfriend Gears of War 1 and 2 for X360, I gave my mom Ghostbusters for the Wii and some good smelling oil for an oil lamp, and I gave my dad this Century History Canadians Collector Edition ort something, the hockey team. It's a big wooden box with 5 DVDs, containing the entire history of the team, documentaries, best games and such, and the box also contains collection pieces and such.

After that week, my friend called me up to say he was having a Christmas diner for his girlfriend's daughter, since she was at her dad's for the 25th. Despite not feeling like going out, I still agreed as I knew he would be pleased, and so would the little girl (she seems to quite like me, it's kinda freaky). Plus, it gave me an opportunity to go see his new born daughter, which with the kind of close relation him and I have always had, I consider the niece. Although I'm not a big fan of babies (let's face it: they look evil), she's quite cute :] But then again it's probably only because she's my niece lol. After waking up with a headache and everything a well flourished evening and night comes with, I went back home later this day only to learn that a work collegue is throwing a small party for the new years, so hey, why not? It was nice, especially when you count the number of beers you drink with your collegue in order to drink more than he does, which ended up in a funny and enjoyable walk back home along with, once again, waking up with a headache and everything that comes with a well flourished evening and night.

Next thing I know, I start working only a couple days later. Great.. The holidays were officially over and I felt as if I didn't have any time for myself. It's during that time that I discovered that I didn't have the latest nVidia drivers on Windows 7, nor did I do in Linux (I was using the ones provided by Ubuntu for Linux), so I decide to update them. That's when the problems began. I start by uninstalling the old drivers in Windows, since although nVidia installer takes care of that, I don't really trust it and prefer doing it manually. Once that was done, I start installing the drivers only for it to tell me "The Control Panel could not be installed". I think to myself that the file could have been corrupted while being downloaded, so I download it again and try once more only to get the same error message. At this point, I start checking through the support forums where nVidia says to try a different driver and to not install it in Safe Mode, as the Control Panel has difficulties installing in Safe Mode. Well I wasn't in Safe Mode to begin with, so I try a different driver. I tried every single driver from the latest one to the one I was actually using and all of them gave me the exact same error message. How did I fix it? By doing the exact opposite of what the tech support of nVidia told everyone: Installing it in Safe Mode. Thank you, nVidia, for a great service.

Installing on Linux was much easier: Download the file, exit X server (sudo stop gdm), run the script (sudo sh filepath/filename), follow the instructions. Takes about 30 seconds and it's installed, up and running. You don't even need to reboot the computer. Now that's what I call an easy, well done install. But then I updated my Kernel this morning.. and upon rebooting, a bunch of errors from nVidia came popping in my face. I simply reinstalled the driver, as despite still being installed in the system, it was linked to the older Kernel. That's all I had to do to fix it.

Speaking of my computer, I upgraded again and installed a new motherboard, new processor and new memory (RAM). My computer was entirely fine with the old components, but I felt a urge to change them. Thing is, upgrading it the last time felt.. quite good. I enjoyed the experience a lot and though I could have found a new hobby. Then it came to my mind.. Would I be able to change everything, as if I built it from scratch? I started getting informed and reading throughout the internet to learn more about changing these, especially on the compatibility side and what to check to make sure everything fits well together, but it didn't feel right. Throughout my life time, I've realized that the best way to learn is to actually do it. That's exactly when I decided to buy a motherboard, processor and memory to change everything inside my computer. Everything went well, although I was nervous at handling the processor knowing this is the smallest, yet most expensive and one of the most important parts of a computer. To top it off, Intel are very strict on their return policy, so I sure as hell didn't want to mess something up. Now everything is up and running, I updated the BIOS and installed the latest drivers from the websites and it feels great to accomplished my first, entirely complete custom build. Everything in my computer is new now, apart from my LightScribe DVD drive which came with my old HP tower.

I probably would have a lot more to write about right now, but as I said, I'll keep some for later blogs. I haven't commented in a while either, Tanya is really the only one who got the last bit of me before I went missing during the entire holidays (oh lucky you!), but I'll make sure to leave a comment on the latest blog entries of everyone after pressing the nice little "Submit" button at the bottom. I'll also pass by my old blog see if there's anything new, but I probably won't reply unless a question as been ask, which I'll add to this blog at the top.

This blog is sure to be worth a LOT of candies for Xiao lol. See all of you in another blog.