Tired Of Whiney Gamers and Looking For Real Reviews

I’m so sick and tired of whiney gamers that complain about everything about a new game they are playing. 99% of the time they are just overbearing and complain way too much about a game that they can’t even imagine programming or developing themselves. While I do believe it is important to have an honest personal opinion about things, I don’t think that people should preach criticism when they themselves can’t even create what they are talking about. That goes for certain hypocritical video game review sites and YouTubers as well. What they are saying is simply an opinion. It should not be taken as an authentic fact that applies globally.

When I look for a review of a video game, I try to look for the opinion of other game developers to see what his/her insightful point of view is. Often he/she will have a better opinion and will have a much broader viewpoint with constructional criticism.

If you are looking to online forums, YouTube or other sources of game reviews, where the gamers are the complainers, all you are going to get are whiney little babies that complain of what they didn’t get out of the game. Those types of gamers need to take a minute to focus on what he/she did get out of the game and why it was enjoyable.

If the problem is a serious glitch then, yes it should be brought to light so that the developers can patch it. If it is just ridiculous negative banter of why you couldn’t get this certain item, or how you wish this certain mechanic of the game was like another game, I just automatically tune-out of what this type of gamer is even saying because it just doesn’t matter to me. If you don’t like a game, don’t play it and shut-up! It’s that easy. If you are going to focus on the bad and none of the good, then your review and opinion is garbage to me. An impartial mind, can see both good and bad.

Often I just skip the bullshit and go straight to the review numbers so that I don’t have to sit through painful reviews that could potentially ruin a really good game. I go to www.gamerankings.com and just look up the name of the game and the average percentage it got. I have been using GameRankings for nearly 20 years ever since 1999 when it first launched and I find it way more accurate than other websites. Other review websites try to emulate the same thing but get ruined by negative gamers like www.metacritic.com . The word CRITIC is in the name for god’s sake. F#*% OFF!!

Ultimate PC Configuration - Q4 2018

Some time has gone by and I've only made one Blog post in the last six months. I've had alot of things going on. One thing is for sure though, and that's Moore's Law is going strong and there's new hardware to be discovered. I usually pick Intel Processor's but the new 2nd generation AMD Ryzen Threadripper blows Intel's i9 chip out of the water this year and is amazing and actually slightly cheaper.

Here's an expert enthusiast hardware configuration for an Extreme Performance Gaming PC with some of the most current and best rated hardware components. Keep in mind that this kind of build is not necessarily affordable. It is a fantasy build meant to show off some of the most current and state-of-the-art PC components:

Computer case:
Thermaltake View 91 Tempered Glass RGB w/ Amazon Alexa voice control.
=   $ 550.00

Motherboard (MOBO):
MSi MEG X399 Creation w/ DDR4 , 7.1 Audio, Triple M.2, Dual Gig LAN, Triple SLI
=  $ 670.00

Power supply (PSU):
ThermaltakeToughpower iRGB PLUS Platinum 1200W
=   $ 350.00

 Processor (CPU):
AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX 32-Core Processor Socket TR4
=    $ 2,500.00

CPU Cooler:
Cooler Master Wraith Ripper for Socket TR4
=  $ 170.00 

Memory (RAM):
G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 64GB DDR4 3200MHz Quad Channel Kit (4 x 16GB)
=    $ 1140.00

 Video card (GPU):
Gigabyte AORUS GeForce RTX 2080 Ti XTREME 11GB Overclocked 1770 MHz
=   $ 1750.00

 Storage 1 (SSD for Windows OS):
Samsung 970 PRO NVMe M.2 PCIe x4 SSD, 2TB Solid State Drive (3500 MB/s)
=   $ 880.00

Storage 2 (HDD for non OS files):
Seagate 14TB BarraCuda Pro HDD, SATA III w/ 256MB Cache
= $750.00

Monitor Display:
Acer Predator X27 27-inch 4K UHD HDR 144Hz G-Sync, IPS
=  $ 2,800.00

GRAND TOTAL APPROXIMATE COST = $ 11,560.00

That covers the core basic components needed to build a kick-ass PC Gaming rig. I don't cover the extra peripherals such as keyboards, mice, speakers, or headsets etc. There's such a diverse range of add-ons that it just comes down to your own preference. However with the base components, it is usually easier to determine what is the best and newest.
Ready for a throwback? Check out my previous blog articles on Ultimate PC Configurations.

Ultimate PC Configuration - Q1 2018

Ultimate PC Configuration - Spring 2017

Ultimate PC Configuration - Summer 2016 

Ultimate PC Configuration - Spring 2016

Ultimate PC Configuration - Fall 2015 

Ultimate PC Configuration - May 2015

Marvel Cinematic Universe Movie Chronology 2018

I'm a big fan of Marvel comics and all their super heroes and super villains. I have Spider-Man and Venom comics dating back from when I was just 10 years old and have been a fan of Marvel ever since. Remember the X-Men cartoons from the 90's?

Have you ever wondered what the order is for all of the different Marvel Hero movies and series are?

Following this paragraph is a list of the MCU movies that I've compiled into chronological order. Certain Marvel movies and series made by Fox studios are excluded from this list. The X-Men, Wolverine, Deadpool and Venom movies would be some examples. They are very important and iconic within the original Marvel Comics Universe but the movie equivalents of MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) are not quite as accurate to source material as fans would like. When it comes to converting them to the big screen, Hollywood movie company politics tend to influence and change writing to be different from the original source material and stories.

MCU Chronological Order:
    Iron Man (2008)
    Iron Man 2 (2010)
    The Incredible Hulk (2008)
    Thor (2011)
    Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
    Marvel's The Avengers (2012)
    Iron Man 3 (2013)
    Thor: The Dark World (2013)
    Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
    Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017)
    Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
    Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 1 (2013)
    Daredevil Season 1 (2015)
    Avengers: Age of Ultron (2014)
    Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 2 (2014)
    Jessica Jones Season 1 (2015)
    Ant-Man (2015)
    Daredevil Season 2 (2016)
    Doctor Strange (2016)
    Luke Cage Season 1 (2016)
    Captain America: Civil War (2016)
    Black Panther (2018)
    Agent Carter Seasons 1 and 2 (2015-16)
    Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Seasons 3 and 4 (2015-16)
    Iron Fist Season 1 (2017)
    The Defenders Season 1 (2017)
    The Punisher Season 1 (2017)
    Jessica Jones Season 2 (2018)
    Luke Cage Season 2 (2018)
    Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 5 (2018)
    Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
    Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
    Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
    Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)
    Captain Marvel (2019, to be released)

802.11ax Wi-Fi is Coming

802.11AX is coming and is set to be the next big consumer wide Wi-Fi standard. Wireless 802.11AX is looking to bring some exciting improvements to your Wi-Fi experience starting with speed. If you look at the spec on paper you might notice that the maximum theoretical speed for the previous standard, Wireless AC Wave 2 is 866 megabits per second for a single stream and then only 1201 megabits per second for wireless AX so it's higher but not a nearly the six-fold increase like when we went from N to AC but that is actually okay.

The theoretical maximum speeds for Wi-Fi are notoriously inaccurate anyway and real world performance can vary widely depending on range, obstacles, other signals in the air and the quality of your access point and your device.

To address this, Wireless AX aims to improve efficiency in a number of ways to give you consistently higher real world speeds than what you get with AC. Perhaps the biggest change is a feature called OFDMA (Orthognoal Frequency Division Multiple Access). What it does is chop up each wireless channel into many smaller partial channels which allows up to 30 different gadgets to talk to the access point at once over a single channel.

           

Even though these sub channels are smaller than the main channel the access point gets more flexibility allowing it to allocate bandwidth to each device based on its data needs. This should increase performance overall. OFDMA also works in tandem with multi-user MIMO. Multi-user MIMO allows an access point to address multiple devices simultaneously instead of one at a time sequentially. While multi-user MIMO was introduced for consumers with last-gen wireless-AC, wireless AX improves on it. Not only by allowing 8 simultaneous streams instead of just 4 but also by enabling it for both uploads and downloads.

Uploading photos or streaming video from a crowded area like a trade show or a concert venue with Wireless AX support should get a fair bit easier. Another cool feature is the addition of BSS color. BSS color is an identifier that is attached to each data chunk or frame to indicate what wireless network it came from. Access points typically wait to transmit if there's already another frame flying through the air. With BSS color an AP can tell which frames are coming from other networks and ignore them as long as they're below threshold of weakness to prevent interference. This should help avoid unnecessary slowdowns.

If all these improvements aren't enough Wireless AX can utilize both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands with tech companies currently trying to get even more spectrum in the 6 gigahertz range allocated to Wi-Fi.

For your battery powered devices it supports yet another new feature called target wake-up time that allows gadgets to negotiate how often and for how long they will need to transmit or receive data. This allows the Wi-Fi transponder to sleep when transmission isn't necessary which should help to preserve precious battery life once AX devices are available.

The first devices to have 802.11AX will be routers as usual with earlybird network vendors like Asus planning mid 2018 launches. Since the new standard is backwards compatible you could make the Wi-Fi upgrade early if you wanted to.

As for client devices the word on the street is that phones and laptops will probably start hitting the consumer market sometime in 2019.


References: Sebastion, L. & Martin, J. (2018, February 23) What is 802.11ax? , TechQuickie

The Top 5 Mistakes That People Make When Blaming Wi-Fi.

When connecting to Wi-Fi, people will sometimes experience slow or bad connections. That's not to say that the actual Wi-Fi is bad, but there are many other things to consider. These are my top 5 mistakes that people make when blaming Wi-Fi.


#5. Too many people using one hotspot.

     A Wi-Fi router or Access Point is a true bottleneck. Multiple users will be using the same hotspot. Take a look around and if there are more than 5 people using Wi-Fi, then chances are the connection speeds are going to be limited. These days, each person can have 4 or more Wi-Fi devices on their person at any given time. This includes, smartphones, tablets, laptops, cameras, and video game systems. Divide a single Wi-Fi connection by the number of users, times the number of devices they are currently using to connect and the bandwidth speed of the connection speed keeps getting smaller and smaller. The optimal number of devices on one AP/router should be kept at 15 or less.



#4. Distance.

     People often connect to the Wi-Fi but they don't even try to look at where the router or access point is. The farther away you are from it, the worse the connection will be. Let's say you walk into a building whether it be a store or a restaurant of some kind, and you connect to the free Wi-Fi but you are only getting 2 out of 5 bars of signal strength. You automatically say, wow this connection sucks. But did you ever take into account where the Wi-Fi is coming from? Can you see the actual access point?


#3. Noise.

     I'm not acutally talking about audible sounds type of noise. Noise in Wi-Fi terms is talking about interference from other radio frequency devices and noise most often comes from other Wi-Fi devices. So you're connected to a specific Wi-Fi network SSID but, when you were connecting to it, did you see the list of all the other Wi-Fi SSID network names in that list? Those ones are most likely interfering with your current connection. How about your neighbor next to you. Are they using their phone as a Wi-Fi hotspot to tether their connections to provide Wi-Fi hotspot for their other devices? Any other Wi-Fi network, other than the one you are trying to connect to is called a Rogue network, and can potentially cause noise and interference.



#2. Battery Life.

     How low is the battery on your device? If you are using a mobile device, like a smartphone or tablet or something compact, it usually means, the device is likely optimized for lower voltage to extend battery life and also that their Wi-Fi antenna won't be very strong to begin with. What that also means is that there is far less electricity to power the Wi-Fi antenna. As the battery drains past 50% or more, most devices will go into a power saving mode that will decrease electrical power and may also reduce the effectiveness of it's Wi-Fi. Some devices will turn off Wi-Fi entirely at a certain point.
 


#1. The age and capability of their device. 2.4 Ghz or 5.0 Ghz.

     Can your device detect newer Wi-Fi networks on the 5.0 Ghz band? If your device is less than 4 years old, then the answer is most likely yes. The 5.0 Ghz band, is the optimal way to use Wi-Fi as it will experience far less noise interference, and has a much higher connection speed. If the device can only detect and use the 2.4 Ghz band, then those connections will be much poorer and succeptible to interference almost always, and will have a much lower connection speed.



Conclusion.

People can be very quick to determine that the Wi-Fi sucks, but in reality it actually doesn't suck. All 5 of the things mentioned above need to be taken into account. The Wi-Fi router/Access Point could be the absolutely newest, fastest-speed one on the market, and people will still blame it for bad connections, rather than taking a minute to assess their own device and how it connects.

There are also other things to consider, such as the layers past the Wi-Fi router/AP, like "how fast is the actual internet connection?", and "are there problems on the rest of the wired network?"

My Newly Upgraded Gaming PC & Newly Built Streaming PC

I've been experimenting with VideoGame Streaming on Twitch and YouTube for nearly two years now since the summer of 2016. My focus was mainly to learn the technical side of how things operate vs trying to become famous on the internet. While doing so I've found that the video quality of my streams weren't up to the standard I would like them to be so just recently I decided to build myself a newer secondary PC dedicated solely for streaming videos, and processing videos. In previous years I had been using my gaming laptop to do the streaming part but have noticed that it is not quite powerful enough to get the 1080p 60fps video quality I was aiming for.

I have my main Gaming PC which I've upgraded and now I have my new secondary PC that will process the streaming. But some people may ask, "why do you have two computers for that? Can't you do it with just one?" My answer is yes you can do it with one computer, but the video quality will suffer. If a single PC has to handle the processing of not only the chosen videogame itself, but also the overhead of video processing/streaming, you are going to lose alot of frames per second within your video game.

If you have a single dedicated computer for each function, 1 for gaming, and 1 for streaming, there will be far less processing overhead and much lower chance for any dropped frames-per-second and slow-down.

So here's the breakdown of my builds so far in 2018:

PC#1 - Walt's Gaming Rig

Display = MSi Optix AG32C 31.5-inch 165Hz Curved LED Monitor
Power = CoolerMaster G750M 750 Watt
Mobo = Asus Prime X299-A LGA2066 with RGB lighting
Case = CoolerMaster Storm Stryker SE with RGB lighting
GPU = Asus GeForce GTX 1070 DUAL 8GB Overclocked
CPU = 7th Gen (Kaby Lake) Intel Core i7-7740X Quad-core 4.5 Ghz
CPU Cooler = Cooler Master MasterLiquid Lite 120 Liquid CPU Cooler
Storage = OCZ 256GB SSD + 1TB Seagate Cheetah HDD
Memory = G-Skill Trident Z RGB 32GB Dual-Channel DDR4-3866 RAM with RGB lighting
Keyboard = Logitech Orion Spark G910 Mechanical with RGB lighting
Mouse = Razer Deathadder Chroma with RGB lighting
Headset = Steelseries Arctis 5 DTS 7.1 surround with RGB lighting
GamePad = Xbox One Afterglow Prismatic with RGB lighting
MousePad = Razer FireFly Chroma with RGB lighting

PC#2 Walt's Streaming Rig

Display = AOC 27-inch 144Hz IPS Monitor
Power = CoolerMaster G650M 650 Watt
Mobo = MSi Z370 Gaming Plus LGA1151 with Red LED lighting
Case = MSi Edition CoolerMaster MasterBox 5 with Red Dragon logo
GPU = MSi GeForce GTX 1060 6GB Overclocked
CPU = 8th Gen (Coffee Lake) Intel Core i3-8350K Quad-core 4.0 Ghz
CPU Cooler = Cooler Master MasterLiquid Lite 120 Liquid CPU Cooler
Storage = 2TB Seagate Barracuda HDD
Memory = Adata XPG Z1 Gaming Series 16GB Dual-Channel DDR4-2400 RAM
Keyboard = Red Dragon Karura K502 silent soft-touch LED keyboard
Mouse = ShiRui L6 Silent-click Rechargeable RGB wireless bluetooth Mouse
Headset = Sony MDR-XB950 Xtra Bass studio headphones
GamePad = Xbox One wireless
MousePad = Razer Vespula dual-surface mousepad
Capture Device = AVerMedia LGX Live Gamer Extreme

Don't Get Duped by Fake CRA Scammers

Don't Get Duped by fake CRA Scammers. It is tax time in Canada and the deadline to file taxes is April 30th. It can be a stressful time for many as they rush to get their numbers crunched in order to file their annual income taxes. Scammers are out in full force, trying to fool you to give up your personal information, or to send them money so be careful and mindful.

The number one thing is that the Canada Revenue Agency, does not ever contact you directly. If you are getting text messages, phone calls, or automated voice phone calls from unknown numbers claiming that they are CRA or representing CRA, you can just ignore them. Or better yet, you can do what I do and call them out on it, and report their number to Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre online or by calling 1-888-495-8501.
The CRA will only contact you via secured mail with security envelopes, or via secured electronic message to your account on the Government of Canada website if you are registered.

Scammers will try to text your mobile phone and send you links to pay money.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/canada-revenue-agency-warns-of-text-message-phishing-scam-1.2296220

Scammers will call you by phone and pretend to be CRA and that you owe them money.
https://globalnews.ca/news/4128682/im-sorry-scammer-claiming-to-be-from-canada-revenue-agency-confronted-by-winnipeg-man

http://dailyhive.com/vancouver/west-vancouver-police-cra-tax-scams

Scammers will try to prey on your emotions and will try to convince you to send money. Don't do it.

DO NOT PANIC, and DO NOT SEND MONEY, and DO NOT GIVE PERSONAL INFO! Everything they are saying is fake and fraudulent. I received a message this year saying that I owe money to CRA and have a warrant for my arrest. Total bullshit. I already filed my taxes and got a return.

The government is fully aware of this and you can read their post here.
https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/corporate/security/protect-yourself-against-fraud.html

http://www.antifraudcentre-centreantifraude.ca/reportincident-signalerincident/index-eng.htm

Ultimate PC Configuration - Q1 2018

Happy New Year 2018 and greetings to all. I'm trying to get back into the swing of things and am finally recovering from yet another nasty winter cough and cold bug. Let's get started with trying to come up with a fantasy PC build with some of the latest and greatest of PC parts that money can buy for the first quarter of 2018.

Here's an expert enthusiast hardware configuration for an Extreme Performance Gaming PC with some of the most current and best rated hardware components. Keep in mind that this kind of build, is not meant to be affordable, but is meant to show off state-of-the-art highest end computer performance:

Computer case:
Corsair Crystal 570X RGB
=   $ 230.00

Power supply:
Corsair AX Series AX1500I 1500W ATX 80 Plus Titanium Power Supply
=   $ 550.00

Processor:
Intel Core i9-7980XE Extreme Edition 18 Cores Processor (24.75M Cache 4.20 GHz) LGA2066
=    $ 2,500.00

Motherboard:
Asus Rampage VI Extreme w/ DDR4 2133, 7.1 Audio, Triple M.2, 10G LAN, 802.11 ad, Bluetooth v4.2, 4-Way CrossFireX / 4-Way SLI
=  $ 815.00

Memory:
G.Skill Trident Z RGB Series DDR4 3866 RAM Kit w/ RGB LED Lighting, 32GB (4x 8GB)
=    $ 780.00

Video card:
Gigabyte AORUS GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Xtreme Edition 11GB 1721 MHz OverClock
=   $ 1300.00

Storage:
Samsung 960 PRO NVMe M.2 PCIe x4 SSD, 2TB Solid State Drive (3500 MB/s)
=   $ 1700.00

Monitor:
Samsung C49HG90 49in Curved QLED UltraWide IPS 144Hz Quantum Dot HDR
=  $ 2,000.00

GRAND TOTAL APPROXIMATE COST = $ 9,875.00