Back again

Had a hectic few months moving house among other things so back again with my blog.


Had mental weather here in Ireland felt like i needed a boat to get anywhere.

Have been addicted to the Anime and manga of One punch man it is the type of show/story that seems tailor made to appeal to me.

My review of the Fractal Define S computer case

I was lucky enough to win a competition for this case and thought i would do a review of it

So first thing that struck me when i took it out of the box was the solid front panel it has no space for the optical drive which for me is fine as i have not used a optical drive in years, and when you remove the front panel there is a dust filter. On the top front of the case there are two usb 3.0 ports, audio in/out/, power button (and LED) HDD activity LED and the reset switch . On the top behind the interface there are three module fan slot covers which are very easy to remove and they all have sound absorbing material which i thought was very useful. I do wish there was a dust filter on the top though.

On the base there are 4 black rubber feet plus another dust filter. I removed the windowed side panel which both panels have handy thumb screws which has no sound dampening material unfortunately, though i guess as the window is quite big i am not sure if any material on the available space would have made much of a difference. But when i saw inside i really got a idea of what type of case this is. There is a lot of space inside with no optical drive cage or Hard drive cages there is plenty of space for cooling options and even has pre drilled holes for pump mountings and has two 140mm fans that come with the case.

I removed the the other side panel (which does have sound dampening material ) and this is where you can put the hard drives enough space for 3 of the 3.5" drives on the left part and two 2.5" drives behind the motherboard trays. And i have to say i really like that set up as it makes things very neat with cable management as it has three velcro straps and quite a large slot for the cables to go through so would not get to cramped.

So overall i do like the case  when everything is set up it is very neat and tidy and while i do not use water cooling i can see it would be handy though i would say though if you have a set up that has more then three 3.5 " drives then you might need to go for something that can hold them.

Also done a video on the case as well (which repeats whats mentioned here but shows footage of the case)

Vodafone Smart ultra 5

So recently My galaxy S4 got a cracked screen so needed a replacement phone i had seen the Vodafone Smart ultra 5 so here is some early opinions but first the specs

BODY	Dimensions	154 x 77 x 8.4 mm (6.06 x 3.03 x 0.33 in)
	Weight	159 g (5.61 oz)
	SIM	Nano-SIM

DISPLAY	Type	IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors
	Size	5.5 inches (~70.3% screen-to-body ratio)
	Resolution	1080 x 1920 pixels (~401 ppi pixel density)
	Multitouch	Yes

PLATFORM	OS	Android OS, v5.1 (Lollipop)
	Chipset	Qualcomm MSM8939 Snapdragon 615
	CPU	Quad-core 1.5 GHz Cortex-A53 & quad-core 1.0 GHz Cortex-A53
	GPU	Adreno 405

MEMORY	Card slot	microSD, up to 64 GB
	Internal	16 GB, 2 GB RAM

CAMERA	Primary	13 MP, 4128 x 3096 pixels, autofocus, LED flash
	Features	Yes
	Video	1080p@30fps
	Secondary	5 MP 3000 mAh battery

Looking at those specs they are quite impressive while camera specs/clock speeds and ram have been increased on newer phones what i have not mentioned is that this phones killer feature is the price...Prepay no contract it was only 170 euro and for the specs it is a killer deal. From what i have used of it compared to my Galaxy S4 while it may be lacking a lot of features and perhaps the performance is not as smooth it does everything i need. The camera is simpler but i found the pictures were  decent here is a comparison with the S4.

Ultra 6 photo

S4 photo

The battery is bigger but really in my day to day use i did not notice a huge improvement in battery life. The screens i bigger and it being a ips i really thought it looked great. So all in i thought it was tremendous value and a great phone . 

Cons

-Volume controls and lock controls are really close so would often accidentally lock the screen

-Performance does stutter at times

-Screen is a smudge magnet

-Lacking features you might have got used to with previous phones

-no removable battery

Pros

-Screen quality is immense 

-camera is decent ...personally i found it better then my s4

-that price....170 euro

-has a radio...small thing i know but something i like
-call quality is really good and if on a speaker you can hear the other person very clearly

Shock horror a proper blog post about life.

Have been living in Ireland for about 15 years this year was planning to move back to England but after a lot of research and checking the finances just could not do it for several reasons, firstly the cost of just getting over there was going to be a lot but the biggest drawback was the actual cost of living with huge rents + council tax it was only going to give us a few months to find jobs. But then there was the drawback of wages for jobs me and the wife could do we would both need to work to get by and it was just a to big a risk.

So with staying in Ireland the plan is to find work or do courses continue with blogging and making Youtube videos and writing articles for websites

Oh and teaching the wife to drive.....

More fav one liners

I am trying to invent itching powder i had to start from scratch

I bought a universal remote control and i thought well this changes everything

I say what i think...that is why i say nothing

I bought a custom made ruler....in fact you could say it was made to measure

I met my wife on the net....we were rubbish trapeze artists

Publishers dropping previous gen console

So it happened before and it happened again publishers focusing on the current gen of console rather the previous gen. Now of course it makes sense to move everything to a more current hardware but the thing that really puzzles me is why they cease development on the previous gen so quickly bar the odd token game.

Heard a few things lately in regards to games for the previous gen for example Mortal Kombat X was supposed to have been made but was cancelled due to not making the quality expected.....and i believe that is rubbish while graphically it would have took a major hit fact is you could have got the game play as it built on what Mortal Kombat 9 already did. Then you have the next Call of duty not having single player and just multiplayer because they said the previous gen could not handle the single player. And i say ...it could handle a single player mode probably have to be cut down a bit but still could have it.

It all boils down to the publishers not putting the time or money into previous gen versions and for both Mortal Kombat x and Call of duty : Black ops 3 for previous gen they were farmed out to other developers and not getting the main developer to work on it.

Of course i understand that things have to move on i do get that but the thing that puzzles me is combined there is over 180 MILLION xbox 360s and ps3s out there and while the PS4 and Xbox one are doing well with combined sales of over 35 million but still far short of the previous gen. And i just do not understand how they can ignore that user base.

Games i would love to see remastered or remade

Ideally remade but failing that a remaster would do....and these are for older games i really do not see the point in remastering games that were only last gen ....cough cough God of war 3 among many others.

Panzer dragoon series....all of the games 1, zwei, saga and orta (i think there was a game gear version aswell). These games were a major part of my teenage years and good enough with a remaster and improved graphics to stand up now

Otogi 1 and 2. Now these two games flew under the radar for most people on the original xbox but these were two very good games which had a really satisfying combat system and smashing demons through small houses was great fun and the destruction had a points aswell.

Crimson skies. Now there were two games one for the pc and one for the original xbox and i would love to see a remake of the xbox one as it was such a fun game.

Mechgames....now their are so many earthsiege/mechwarrior/mechassault so would ideally love a remake of any of them that takes influences from others