Last year I spent $100 in total on PC games (for 36 games IIRC, that year in gaming summary post has been lost with the previous version of the site). This year I already passed that, and Kickstarter is largely to blame (with Steam Gifts taking another part of the blame). I’m not one of the people paying hundreds of dollars, but considering that most of the games I bought last year were under $5, and the most I paid for a game total (City of Heroes MMO)

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(Funny how any time I want to post something which requires work, such as capturing images, that stops all my posting. I guess it’s better if I just stick to short text messages.) It amazes me that in this day and age Windows still has dialogues which go back over 15 years. I tried the Windows 8 preview a while ago (when it came out), and was surprised to see that it still has small non-resizeable dialogue boxes, such as for internet options. The device manager also goes

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I mentioned Faerie Solitaire before. It’s the single player game I played the most in 2011. It’s simple but addictive, and I mentioned that I pre-purchased the Faerie Solitaire 2 Collector’s Edition and got promised a spare copy, which was a nice surprise. Well, Brian Kramer, founder of Subsoap (the company behind Faerie Solitaire) is now offering the Infinity Bundle, a chance to get access to every game the company will ever make (or has already made) for a one time sum as low as $27. The amazing

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MediaPortal worked out decently enough. A little painful to install and configure, and I couldn’t get the Android remote to work, but it did play my movies and looked good while doing it, and worked with a generic remote. A little .NET exception message here and there, but I figured I could solve it. Problem was, the USB capture card didn’t work. I know, I should have listened to the advice to install 32-bit Windows, but I’ve been using x64 for years… Well, that EasyCap 60+ only has

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Faerie Solitaire was the non-MMO game I played the most last year (as I mentioned in my year or gaming post on the old site), so I was pretty excited to see that Faerie Solitare 2 will arrive shortly. Developers Subsoap took a page out of the Kickstarter book and are offering a multitude of packages starting from $10 and ending at $1000, giving all sort of bonuses as well as access to the pre-release game starting at the end of this month. I couldn’t resist temptation and

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I’ve been dreaming of an HTPC for a while, especially since I won a passively cooled half height Radeon HD 5550. I finally convinced my wife it was a good idea and inexpensive, got the parts and now have a reasonably small PC that would fit in the living room. I plan to discuss the hardware and the software I’m trying and using in further posts. For now, here’s the hardware spec: Enermax Laguna case. It’s a decently small and good looking case that can fit a microATX

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I like giveaways which is why I share them on my Facebook page. I post mainly giveaways that interest me (even if I’m not eligible). I normally post PC hardware giveaways, and occasionally some others. I don’t post any giveaways which require having specific hardware to enter, such as a specific brand of product or overclocking and folding contests, unless they also give random prizes. Given that my number of fans have grown I decided to ask you, my fans, what you’d like me to post. Are you

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The Double Fine Kickstarter project made me want to write a game of my own. Not that I expect to end up with a full game, but I do have an idea I want to try. I haven’t done any game related programming for a while, and though my experience is mainly in Direct3D I initially decided to write it using OpenGL, because it’s cross platform and because more experience with it will help my current job. That didn’t go as smoothly as I’d hoped though (it never

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I’m still waiting to see what effect WordPress will have on my posting. So far the ride hasn’t been as smooth as I’d hoped. The problem is that WordPress defaults to a font size that’s bigger than what I want, and while the theme I first selected, Admired, has font control it doesn’t have control over the size. Problem was the moment I tried to touch the page Javascript the font became incredibly tiny and impossibly to read. I’m sure I reverted any changes, but that didn’t help.

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I have to admit, I enjoy using stuff that’s not mainstream. I like finding out that special software or platform which looks to fit my needs, which I will dedicate time to getting to know and tailor in non-standard ways. I don’t like going the easy way. But sometimes that’s not the best way to go. Sometimes going with a well known platform makes things easier, and that makes them work. I learned that when I created my Facebook page to post about giveaways I come across. Facebook

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