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March 31, '08 - Monday - 9900 GTX / GX2 in July? *boggle* - Link
This does not appear to be an early April Fools joke (since it doesn't have an April 1st posting date). It looks like we may see Nvidia's new chip shipping in July on two different cards; the 9900 GTX and 9900 GX2. This boggles my mind. It's crazy talk that they are launching yet another new card so close to the 9800 GX2, 9800 GTX and 9800 GT launch. There must have been some trouble with the chip which initially delayed it's launch, because launching cards this close together is just crazy talk in terms of research and development.

March 28, '08 - Friday - zomg Bunny Day for the Win! Continued Donations?
zomg Bunny Day for the Win! Happy Bunny day! (I can't believe I didn't update for bunny day.) My favorite bunny day candy is probably the chocolate with marshmallows inside. Peeps are fun too, but it's like wwwwaaaaaahhhh raw sugar and you go all crazy. That's ok for when you are doing a MMOG though, heh.

Been playing Resident Evil 4 for the Wii lately. One of my roomies got it and is out on vacation, so I'm playin' that for teh free. Once I get monies again I'll have to buy my own copy. Even though the control is a bit flawed it's one of the most fun, and longest, single player games I've played in quite some time. (You move your body and target pointer separately instead of the target pointer scrolling as it gets near the edge of the screen. Understandable since it originally was designed for gamepads, not the Wiimote.)

I had a request by an iPhone user to put on text links, since it can't run the flash menu. So, there ya go, I added those on. I don't know how many of you are out there that will affect, but I guess it doesn't alter the look too much, and it helps out some people. I also made some changes to my bio page, one of which was the addition of a link to my old site. You can read some of teh crazy rabb1t brain writings there; poems, stories, and stuffs.

I'm still having trouble finding a job. I have a few very strong job applications out, so hopefully things will change for the better soon. But... teh rabb1t still doesn't have enough to pay rent or bills this month. If you could donate anything at all it would be incredibly helpful. Even as little as $2 or $5 would be incredibly helpful.

March 4, '08 - Monday - Donations?
Off and on in the past I've tried asking for donations. As you can see below about a month ago I lost my job. I've had a really hard time finding a new one. I hate asking people for things, but I really do need help. It is very possible I could run out of food monies by the middle of the month, and I may be unable to pay bills or rent at the start of next month if I don't quickly find a job.

If you have found my site helpful, and could find it in your heart to send a few dollars it would be really immensely helpful to me right now. I know this blog page isn't viewed very often, so if you happen to know anyone else who visits my site, pass the word along. Thanks for anything you can spare; even a few dollars would be really helpful. I hate to ask, but well... I guess we all need help sometimes.

As always, if I get no donations in a few weeks, or my life is back in a position where I no longer need donations, I will remove the donation button.

February 22, '08 - Friday - Champions Online, Cryptic Studios - Link
zomg Champions Online. For those who don't know, Champions started the whole super-hero role-playing back in 1981. Almost all the games I've seen have copied ideas from Champions in one form or another. Cryptic Studios took a lot of Champions original ideas and used them in City of Heroes / City of Villains. Now it seems they are going directly to the source with their next super-MMOG (though it won't be a direct translation of the pen and paper rules). I always thought that power choice shouldn't be as restricted as it was with CoX and during the CoH beta I suggested characters should be cell shaded. Well, now it looks like both will be included with Champions Online. Woot! Can't wait.

February 15, '08 - Friday - Nvidia as Ageia (PhysX chip) - Link
The dust is settling on the Ageia buyout, and it seems like what Nvidia plans to do is to tweak/incorporate the Ageia code so that certain Nvidia cards will act as both a graphics card and an Ageia PhysX chip. Those cards recently labled with "Quantum Physics", which are any of the series 8 graphics cards, will soon have a driver patch which, by my understanding, will include the Ageia PhysX code. This should allow those of us on series 8 cards to also play any game which previously required the PhysX chip for acceleration. We would then accelerate the PhysX code on our GPUs. Pretty exciting news.

February 14, '08 - Thursday - Love Day
I've been single forever, but happy V-day to peeps out there with sweeties!

February 5, '08 - Tuesday - What the poop?
Today I was given notice that my contract position as a tech support person is being liquidated. What the poop? Zero notice? That seems a bit suspicious. I have a feeling they cut me loose for other reasons that they don't want to say due to what someone else posted on a board which implicated me that they weren't supposed to/allowed to say. I don't know. Well, I did hate the grave shift. It was really destroying me, but being again in a position without a job... the clock is ticking down very quickly. My life has yet again gone into a very rapid downward spiral and if not saved quickly I may wind up on the street with nowhere to go. I really don't understand how people manage in the world when every time my life starts to balance and go in a positive direction it crashes again due to circumstances beyond my control. Does this only happen to me? Why me? Gotta hold on to my belief in fate that things happen for a (positive) reason. Can't let life get ya down when bad things happen.

February 4, '08 - Monday - Nvidia to aquire Ageia (PhysX chip) - Link
While the Ageia PhysX chip was never really embraced by the industry, it looks like Nvidia believes strongly enough in the potential to buy them out. While this is very exciting for Nvidia, it could be years before we see any real adoption of the technology or anything like on-motherboard or on-graphic card solutions. Hopefully, in the short term, this means we will see the chip mass produced in quantities large enough to get the prices down on the same kind of add-in cards we see already, most likely by companies like Evga, BFG and XFX. Apparently there will be a conference call in about a week and a half and we should know more details on the buyout and Nvidia's plans at that time.

February 1, '08 - Friday - Hum
Not much to say. General life is going ok I suppose. I'm hoping to get some student loan money to cover my recent car exploding and get some monies I need for moving, but I've had to change directions in school lately so things are still a bit chaotic there.

I'm still waiting on the new Intel cores (Wolfdale and Yorkfield) to make it out before I change my recommendations. Also, the motherboards seem to be a bit behind as well. Only one 750i board is out, and word is the new high-end 790i boards should be out in a few weeks. Looks like my recommendations probably won't be changed until late in the month or early next month.

January 13, '08 - Sunday - Car go boom, Car go zoom, Pew pew
This year is off to an odd start. A week ago my, now previous car, decided to somewhat explode. It was having problems with the engine and they got much much worse. Not being a mechanic I decided to sell it, as the money I had slated for fixing it wouldn't have even covered a mechanic fee for figuring out what was wrong. Yesterday I managed to pick up a cute little car, a Geo Tracker. I used to have one (from 2000-2004) and since I lost it (dumb roommie totaled it) I've missed it a lot. This one is kind of old and busted, runs fine, but the inside is all messed up, so it's happy, but sad at the same time.

In other news I picked up Super Stardust HD for the PS3. It's all pew pew. It's like Asteroids times a billion! I also picked up Puzzle Quest, which totally roxors. Puzzle games are fun. I wish there were a good card game or collectable game I could get. I was really looking forward to the Pokemon game for the Wii, I haven't played those yet, but they look fun. Reviewers haven't been happy with it though, as it lacks the collection aspect. I guess you need the DS game to collect up critters. I was thinking of getting Eye of Judgment for the PS3, which I probably will at some point, but reviewers haven't been thrilled about that either, as it lacks a strong single player game, and anything which requires online play is dependant on the players. I haven't heard of there being a strong online player base for the game, so I've been pretty hesitant to pick it up as it could easily slide into obscurity. (Even the most popular collectable card game, Magic the Gathering, apparently has a very small online following.)

As you may or may not notice this blog page has become shorter. Every now and then I'll purge older articles so this page stays fairly small and more topically relevant. I'm still waiting on the new Intel cores and new Nvidia chipset to release before updating my recommendations, but they should be soon. Recent word is that all the bits should be on the market between now and February.

December 22, '07 - Saturday - Happy Holidays!
Just a quick hello to wish peeps Happy Holidays!

I'm looking forward to doing my yearly update soon, after the new Intel cores and Nvidia motherboards have launched. It should be a pretty exciting time for choosing new systems. Hopefully the new nForce series 7 won't be too expensive at that time. Right now a few of the 780i boards are out and wooooof are they expensive.

December 10, '07 - Monday - Hummm...
Haven't done a December blog yet. Hum... let's see. Xmas is coming soon. Though, I'm single with no friends, so the bunny doesn't do much on Xmas. Almost time for my big year end update / check on the site. You might see some changes happen you might not. Not a lot needs changing, but some older areas might need some tuning in terms of my opinions and the state of their tech. I expect early next year I'll look into moving my site to a new hosting place, which probably won't be any visible changes on your end other than being able to see the site URLs and bookmark any page you like.

The Warhammer beta should be letting more people in soon. That is something worth watching out for. Age of Conan is due in March. AoC isn't something I've been too excited about, but the lore could be interesting and the fact that they use DX10 and the X-Fi should make it a very enjoyable experience if I do decide to play.

Hopefully I can meet my plans of updating in Q1 to be ready for all the DirectX10 goodness yet to come in the near future. Technically I could just upgrade to Vista with what I have, but I'd like to avoid changing my operating system until I change my hardware. Installing everything and tuning drivers is such a pain in the butt.

November 26, '07 - Monday - zomg, My Bad
Someone who wanted to chat pointed out to me that my new rabb1t email wasn't working correctly. It seems my dumb ass roommate who is hosting my stuff right now didn't check it from an outside source. Any internal email worked fine, thus why I sent myself email from my other domain and it worked, but apparently any outside emails failed completely. My bad. I have a temporary email set up now that works.

Additional appologies to anyone who was visiting from a link prior to the rabb1t domain. (Which would be anyone who hasn't updated the link to my site after July 2006.) I just noticed that the old page my site was housed at still had an old test shell for the site, instead of directions to the new domain. Of course, clicking on the menu would have brought people here, so hopefully no one has been missing out, but yikes! I hope no one got lost. I don't know how I missed updating that to the forwarding page from the old page.

My bad on both issues.

On a good note, this has prompted me to move forward with moving to a new hosting site and new email locations. Most importantly, the rabb1t domain URLs will properly show. No more hiding behind whatever URL you came in on, you will be able to freely see, and bookmark, any page.

October 10, '07 - Wednesday - New Job, woot
Got a new job. It pays pretty good. It is from home, so that's a nice bonus. The sad part is that it will be 9 PM to 5 AM. Normally I go to bed around 1 or 2 AM anyways, so that shouldn't be too terrible. The super roxor part is that I'll be working for a game company as a community support / tech support person on the boards and in game. I can't say which one though while I'm working for them. hehehe Maybe I can tell ya later. But if you knew, you'd be like ooooooooh.

September 28, '07 - Friday - Intarweb Still Semi-Down
Well, the Internet connection in my room is finally back up, went up two days ago. However, the connection speed has been too slow to actually do anything for some reason. I can't connect to hardly any of my sites, they keep timing out and I haven't yet been able to update my sites. I'll get this update up as soon as I can and hopefully I'll be back to full speed very soon.

August 29, '07 - Wednesday - Intarweb has been Down
What a bunch of crap. The Internet server here at the house has been down for a week and will likely be down for another week. I won't be able to post this update, or any of the other updates I did recently. You guys won't even see this till things are back up and running. This has completely gimped my ability to find a job, which I've really desperately needed lately, and totally stopped my ability to play/post in any of the alphas/betas that I'm in, as well as obviously preventing me from doing my daily tech research and occasional posting/updating to my site. Sorry guys, this is so 20 years ago. This has completely stopped my life for the time being until it's back up again. I just hope I haven't missed anything important during this time I haven't been able to access the Intarweb or my emails.

August 24, '07 - Friday - Wii for the Free, part 2
The Wii I won for the free a couple of months ago arrived today, woot! That's an extra special nice b-day surprise since I wasn't expecting it for about another month. Though, since I am still struggling for food money I have no money for the high-def cables, nor any games, so all I can do is play Wii sports for the time being. It did take me a while longer to get hooked up than I expected because it seems that the Wii-mote sensor bar is required. I figured that was optional; guess not. Wii bowling is pretty fun. That's my fav Wii Sports game. I got a 121 my first time, then I started to try and do fancy spin and stuff, so my score went down to 107, then 67. I stopped doing that and just let myself get used to the Wii-mote and got a 176 on my last game, woot! I'm up around a hair above 1000 (Pro) rating now. Golf seemed totally hard, but I've never really been one for golfing games. I think part of this is due to the Wii-mote being more 'paint ball' accurate than it is 'laser' accurate. Wii-boxing was a lot more fun than I expected it. I am surprised there was no Internet cable. I'll have to look up how to get that going so I can play online and stuffs.

Found my Wii code, thought it might be a while before I have the money to buy the network adaptor and get online - 7525 6786 5302 2668

August 20, '07 - Monday - Birthday / Bioshock demo - Link
zomg, there is a Bioshock demo up on FilePlanet and it r0x0rs my b0x0rs. This makes for a sad birthday, as I am still really struggling for money and can't afford to actually get the game. I've been looking forward to it for a really long time and I was hoping / expecting my life to have gotten back to normal by the time it released and been able to get it, as well as Vista for the DirectX 10 effects. I suppose I can't complain too much though. While my life is certainly at one of the lowest it has ever been right now, I do have friends that are letting me owe them rent, so I still have shelter with hot and cold water, power for my TV shows, access to teh Intarweb, and most of the time I have about 50-75% of my normal foods that I eat, so ... I suppose things could still be a lot worse than they are.

Edit: woot! My roomies surprised me with a game for my B-day, and I can totally exchange it for Bioshock. Yeeeeeea.

August 14, '07 - Tuesday - Ageia PhysX
I've decided to move the Ageia PhysX chip discussion off of my main site since I don't recommend it at this time. The reduced version of what I previously had is that the Ageia PhysX chip simply isn't worth the money right now, and, due to lack of adoption of the technolgy by games, it may wind up being a dead-end technology.

Here you can see some footage of what it can do in action. The most recent article discussing PhysX and the GPU physics based solutions can be found here at AnandTech, posted on 7/25/7. An article over at Tom's Hardware, written 7/19/6, is the first indication that there may indeed be a reason to buy the chip.

A few other articles: AnandTech, [H]ard OCP, PC Perspective, Hot Hardware

Competing alternatives are physics in their own CPU thread, as well the Havok engine off-loading physics onto the GPUs for acceleration via Nvidia's Quantum Physics and ATi's Boundless Gaming.

August 5, '07 - Sunday - New Intel CPUs, New systems page
Let's see, not much has been going on lately. I suppose a great part of that has to do with my still not having any monies. My roomie that houses my domains finally got my rabb1t.com email up, so my email is now all proper, woot. I don't know how to set my email to reply with that email addy accept through a big pain in the butt way, so I'll probably not change that till peeps actually start emailing me regularly.

We do have a few things to look forward too soon. Logitech has released a very sexy looking G9 mouse, which is now on my PC page and in a few system recommendations. Also, the G15 keyboard has undergone a revamp. I expect that to be on the market soon and it will also go onto my PC page and into a few system recommendations. BioShock should be releasing at the end of the month, so that is very exciting. The new Flash Gordon series starts on Sci-Fi next week. Um... that's all I can think of for now.

July 23, '07 - Monday - New Intel CPUs, New systems page
The new Intel CPUs are up on the retail sites. While the 1333 FSB speeds aren't a huge improvement over their 1066 FSB counterparts, they are typically a touch faster and a touch cheaper. The quad cores will benefit from the faster FSB speeds a bit more than the dual cores. Intel continues their dominance in the mid-range and higher-end markets.

New system recommendations are up, changes have been made to the PC page, and in a few weeks once supply becomes plentiful and prices settle a touch, it would be a very good time to consider that upgrade if you need one.

July 11, '07 - Wednesday - E3 has begun
I always thought it would be really cool to go to E3. This year has been the first year since the industry decided to tone down E3 and split it into a bunch of smaller event areas instead of one big huge one. Well, it looks like the E3 I wanted to attend may be no more, but they are continuing none the less.

Here is a list of the games I'm most looking forward to seeing that are being shown at E3 in alphabetical order. Army of Two, Assassin's Creed, BioShock, Crysis, Eye of Judgement, Gears of War (for PC), Halo 3, Heavenly Sword, Hellgate:London, Left 4 Dead, Mass Effect, Metroid Prime 3, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Unreal Tournament 3, Warhammer Online. There are, of course, others I'm watching, but I'm not as interested in those as the ones on this list.

zomg if even half of those release in the next 6 months I have no idea how I'll ever be able to afford them all. Normally I get about 6 games a year (selling almost all of those once I've finished), but I know 7 of those are slated to release in the next 6 months.

July 4, '07 - Wednesday - Happy exploding day
pew pew pew. Happy exploding day.

June 11, '07 - Monday - Sony Online Entertainment's "the Agency" - Link
IGN has recently posted some coverage of the upcoming Sony Online Entertainment spy game, "the Agency". While the thought of a spy game seemed pretty cool when I first heard about it I was wasn't sure if it would be something I might enjoy. This recent "trailer" really gives you a good idea of what it will be like, and all I can say is, woot!!11!! You can get a higher-def version of the video over at FilePlanet. Looks like it will be loads of fun!

June 8, '07 - Friday - Cute smileys
I got some cute smileys, so expect to see them here and there from now on.

May 31, '07 - Thursday - Warhammer Online r0x0rs - Link
Every time I see something new on Warhammer Online I get more an more excited about it. They just opened up beta applications (click this link to apply), woot! If you haven't been keeping up with Warhammer online you can quickly see why it will pwn by watching the Podcasts; specifically # 3, 5 and 7. If you haven't seen them yet I recommend that you do, they are pretty short, maybe 10 minutes each.

May 27, '07 - Sunday - Wii for the Free
OMFG woot woot woot. I won a free Wii in the Wendy's Frosty Float contest. Wooo wooooo wooo! This is r0x0r because I've been thinking of picking one up as soon as I was able to. Getting one for free is the super bonus deal. Unfortunately they aren't sending any of them out until 8 to 10 weeks after the contest ends, which means I won't actually have the Wii until sometime in September. *cry* Kinda lame they make you wait that long, but I guess it's ok in my case. By then my money issues should be all sorted out and I should be able to pick up several games that I've been looking at. OMFG yeeeeaaaa Wii for the free!!11!!

May 6, '07 - Sunday - Wii, Blu-Ray / HD-DVD, AMD's K10, ATi's DX10
Let's see, several things to blog about.

Wii is starting to look very attractive. They have a ton of fun looking games and are supposedly cranking out 45 more games slated for release during this Summer. They have shipped nearly 6 million units in the 6 months since launch. This is an astounding figure compared to the 10.5 million total units of the 360 since it launched 1.5 years ago, and less than 2 million for the PS3 which launched at the same time as Wii. Unfortunately, the sales have been so impressive the Wii may be in shortage for quite some time to come if demand remains as strong as it has been. I am actually seriously considering getting one in late Summer (my b-day) or around this Holiday season provided I can put what's left of my life back together and gather up enough monies.

The war between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD is still going strong, though Blu-Ray is starting to show as a favorite. Reportedly 70% of all high-def DVD sales during 2007 have been Blu-Ray titles, and Blu-Ray also has a slightly higher percent for the total high-def DVD sales since launch of both formats. The war is likely still far from over, but it seems that Blu-Ray is showing to have an early lead.

AMD is again starting to make noise about their new quad core design, now being called "K10". I won't bother mentioning the exact model names just yet, as it is still a ways off, but it looks like they will be dropping the "Athlon" naming scheme. There is no word yet on if they will be adopting DDR3 and PCIe version 2 anytime soon though. This is bad news, as it could mean they will be a full year behind Intel by the time they adopt those technologies. While that may be good from a cost standpoint it could spell trouble for bug finding.

ATi's DirectX 10 cards are around the corner. Maybe not quite as close as some had originally thought, it seems to be getting repeatedly delayed, but it is nearing launch. Unfortunately the early benchmarks aren't very favorable. The high-end part is not able to compete with Nvidia's 8800 GTX, and the ATi offering not only requires a new PCIe v2 power connection (which you can convert from a current PCIe v1 style) but it is also even larger than the 8800 GTX, which means only a very small number of PC cases will actually be able to house this new ATi DX10 monster. It looks like AMD is getting behind both in the CPU and now GPU arena.

April 18, '07 - Wednesday - Starving Student, literally *cry*cry* 
A while ago I lost my income. I've been trying as hard as I can to get a job, but things haven't been going well. I've had to start selling off my stuffs on ebay and I'm nearing the point where I'm going to have to sell more critical items. Recently I've quite literally become a starving student. I currently have no monies for foods or gas for my car. *cry*cry* If I have any fans out there reading this that can help, even just a donation of $5 would be immensely helpful to me at this point, any help you can send would be really appreciated and really great. - Donations can be sent via paypal to my email. (Click the link to the side to see my addy, don't want addy collectors to grab it from text.)

Please help spread the word if you know any other peeps who are fans of my site. I can really use the help. *cry*cry* Thanks for any help you can send. 


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