More PC trouble.

 

It looks like my PC has decided to play hell with me once again. It’s been holding back on the freezing enough for me to use it generally and play Final Fantasy IX through an Emulator. However, whenever I try to produce the video I recorded in Camtasia, it' locks up EVERY SINGLE TIME. I’ve tried hundreds of times since Saturday night and there’s been no change. I was ready to blame it on the program, but then I extracted the raw video file and tried to convert it with PowerDirector. I had exactly the same problem. As I am typing this I am once again trying to produce the video in Camtasia, this time not in 1080 hd though. This time I am trying the programs YouTube preset which will give a quality of 480. The good news is it’s not frozen yet (obviously if I'm still typing this), if it doesn’t freeze at all then I will have to experiment with different resolutions. It may turn out that I'll have to upload my future videos at 720p, or maybe even just 480. The quality would be a million times worse, but at least i’d get them produced and uploaded without my damn PC locking up every three seconds.

**update**

I’ve just checked the progress and it was over 84%. Normally it wouldn’t even get to 50 without locking up. This is a good sign (though I ain’t gonna hold my breath just yet. It’s still not finished and there’s ….

**update**

well, it looks like it finished converting just as I was typing that. Just seems like my PC gets the arse whenever I try and produce video at 1080p (which it shouldn’t, considering my spec. There’s still a serious problem.

The Most Useless Blog Post I’ve Ever Written

 

Well, this is one of them few times when I write a post without actually having anything in particular to say. For those of you who don’t know, it was my Birthday on Sunday. Wasn’t all that great tbh. I turned 24 and spent most of the day feeling pretty ill. Ah well, such is life, eh?

Also, I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned before, but my PC (the Powerhouse one I have the specs of on my Geeks profile) has the annoying habit of locking up randomly for no apparent reason. I’ve spent nearly a year and a half (almost the entire time I've had it) attempting to sort it out with the store I purchased it from, but have got no further today than I was in the first place. The store’s head office ended up going bust or something, meaning they lost many of their connections, including their supplier. I’ve recently found out this means that the store can’t send my motherboard (the prime suspect in my PC freezing issue) back to Asus as they would have to go through the supplier which they no longer have connections to. That point’s kinda irrelevant anyway considering we got nowhere after the board was sent through the supplier before, so we were intending on sending it direct to Asus. Apparently this all means that I have to email Asus myself with the board’s serial number and then post it to them. The only issue I have with this is while I was rebuilding it myself when I FINALLY got the board back the first time, I accidentally snapped one of the clips on one of the RAM sockets. I wouldn’t be majorly surprised if this resulted in them saying “we can’t do anything for you because the board is damaged” which would mean I’d have completely wasted my time. I HAVE, however, got my old PC (a little Dell Optiplex  which I modded to have 1gb of Ram plus a DVD writer) back from my girl’s mother after selling it to her a while back, so I wouldn’t be entirely without a PC if i were to send this one off. Which I MAY do eventually, when I feel up to it.

In other news, it’s March now, and O2 are supposed to be launching a home phone service this month, meaning I could save money with a package deal and leave TalkTalk behind for good. Can’t remember the exact date, but I certainly know I can’t wait (though have to top up my mobile at some point VERY soon to maintain my Broadband discount, otherwise home phone with them will be the last thing on my mind when I get disconnected cause I can’t afford the bill).

That’s all I can think of for the time being, but that should be plenty for you to sink your eyes into until I can be bothered to write another post. Thanks for actually taking the time to read my rants. I don’t know how you manage it, I even bore myself sometimes.

TalkTalk can suck my fucking dick!!

 

Sorry guys. I’m just incredibly pissed right now. TalkTalk phone/broadband company have given me never but hassle ever since I joined them for my calls and today’s issue was the last straw! Even if it costs a little more, as soon as my broadband company (O2 home broadband) launch landline around March time, I'm switching to them INSTANTLY!

Ok, so here’s the story:

I had received my usual Email to inform me that my latest bill was ready, so I thought I’d pop over to the site to see when they’d be taking the payment. Now, bare in mind that my average bill amount is around £15-£17 MAX. This time however, it turned out to be £23.06! Around £5.00 extra!! Now, obviously, I knew something wasn’t right, so I checked the itemization, and I was right. There WAS some mistake. Fucking TalkTalk had charged me for international calling which was supposed to be free and inclusive!!

Well, I contacted “customer services” regarding this matter (and another regarding marketing calls) and they admitted it was a mistake on their part and I shouldn’t have been charged that extra £5-odd. Fair enough, I thought. At least they understood it was their mistake/responsibility. However, all they were willing to do was credit this amount towards my billing account so it would come off my NEXT bill! They couldn’t give a shit about me not actually being able to AFFORD that amount. They were gonna charge it anyway!

Well, understandably, I was furious by this time and went off on them. I told them straight have dissatisfied I was and how I’d be leaving them as soon as O2 started doing calls. They told me all I could do was call my bank (bare in mind this would also cost me) and request this ONE debit be cancelled and for the debit to be reinstated after that. Well, by this time, I was spent. I had no more argument left in me. I’m a grown man yet still I felt like fucking crying, so I just accepted what they told me, not knowing what else to do.

So apparently, it’s MY responsibility to make sure my bank to let this money get taken out even though it was THEIR mistake in the first place! This hasn’t been the first problem I’ve had with them, and I suspect it wouldn’t be the last either.

I’m gonna make sure I do all with in my power to let anyone and everyone know to stay WELL clear of fucking TalkTalk! If they put as much into their “customer service” as they did Advertising, they might have been a half decent company.

Ah, who am I kidding? They’d still suck!

</rant>

A brief welcome to my fellow Lockergnome geeks

 

 

I have just finished merging my blog with the one located on lockergnome.net. So now (possibly), my blog will receive more hits. This means I need to buck up and start putting more thought into my posts. My brain went into a relative stupor after realising nobody really cared what I had to rant about resulting in my blog posts becoming very watered down and minimalist. Eventually I started neglecting the blog altogether. I will also try to cover some more interesting topics (like that’s really gonna happen though :\) and attempt not too veer off subject too often.

For the Lockergnome (and geeks) and Pirillo community at large who are new to my blog, I’ll try to explain it (try being the operative word here :\). People who know me personally will know I am a highly opinionated and original person. My opinions tend to differ from the norm on many occasions and I am usually rather passionate with expressing them. I created this blog as an outlet. Somewhere I could rant till the cows come home without upsetting anybody or any major issues occurring. So even though the blog may contain many topics, some vague, some personal, it will also nearly always contain my own personal views/opinions on the subject. If you agree, that’s great! If you don’t… well, that’s fair enough. Everyone has the own opinions, just please don’t get upset over mind.

With that out the way, I guess there’s just one thing left to say.

Welcome!

Mass Effect is NOT an RPG!

 

Ok, so maybe it’s technical genre specific name is Action RPG. Maybe it IS an Action RPG. Still doesn’t FEEL like an RPG to me though. Action RPG games to me are ones like Oblivion, Fallout 3, Might and Magic, Dragon Age (console version only) and a few others. Mass Effect, to me, seems too much of a shooter to feel like an RPG in any way, shape or form. Now everyone’s entitled to their own opinions, it’s just a shame that everyone doesn’t see it that way.

I voice my opinion on YouTube and some twatfaced fanboy goes on a pussyrant. Insulting me, my taste in games, my opinion, and practically everything else he can think of. You know the funniest thing? He totally flies off the handle when I express MY opinion, yet he doesn’t find it a problem to express his opinion that all FF series fans are 40 yr old versions (in which case I prove him wrong cause I'm 23 and haven’t been a virgin for a few years now). I just hate guys like that. They basically have no life whatsoever and get joy out of trolling other people on YouTube. Anyway, I could go on, but it would only end up as pointless drivel anyway so I’ll leave it at that for now.

Phew…rant over.