The Country Geek

Last November Bellistik and I moved out to the country. We wanted to be free. Free from the slave chains of society. Everytime we camped out in the country we noticed our stress was completely gone and we are a hell of a lot more relaxed, so we said, lets just go. We've been out in the country for almost 4 months now. But what does it mean as a geek to be out in the country, beside the lack of stress?

Well I'll start this on a positive note. I have a Skywatcher Dobson 720p teliscope.

Being out in the country there is very minimal light pollution. This makes it a lot easier to see the stars and I don't just mean with the teliscope. With the naked eye you can see SO many more stars its amazing.

I didn't take these photos but its just like it. Through the teliscope I have also seen the rings of Saturn, Jupiter & 4 moons, and of course the moon up close.

But living in the Country isn't all peaches. Lets look at internet. The only internet I can get out here is ADSL 1. It's not slow but it is touchy. Playing Black Ops I can get 110 ping to Sydney. But when its having a bad day, which is more often then you would expect my ping fluctuates for 200 to 999. Its total unplayable. Downloads sometimes can take 30 min for 800Mb. Other times its faster. But don't try to do multiple things at once. I have found the best way to get a good ping in Black Ops is to disable wifi on ALL other devices. The NBN is coming to the rural areas, which I was getting excited for. Until I learned that our NBN is city ADSL2+ speeds.
So is the internet bad? No it's not. Is it annoying? OMFG YES!!!

There are other small things like, driving 35 minutes to go shopping, to find Country Target is a joke. But all in all, I love living out here and I will never move back. The town I am in is a real community based town. Everyone gets along really well and it quiet. No burn outs, no street fights, no drunken street wanderers.

Well thats about it folks.

Stay Geeky,

SighFye

It's Not Much, But I'll Take It.

Good Morning Reader, SighFye here.

A few years back Bel and I sold our computers to be closer to nature. To explore the hippy in us. I've lived game free for just over a year I think and moved out to the country. You see the idea was to buy a block of land and live as close to nature as possible. I don't regret my choice as I have learned a lot in the time away, but gaming will always be a part of my life and I do miss my computer oh so bad.

An Actual Place Not Far From My House

The specs were

Case: Raidmax Sagitta with 3 LED case fans and view window
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD3R-B3 with built in 7.1 surround sound
CPU: Intel Core i7 - 2600K
Graphic Card: AMD Radeon HD 6850 1GB GDDR5
RAM: 16G DDR3
Duel Monitors: DELL P2210 & Asus VW193D
Mouse: Steel Series WoW Catacylsm MMO Gaming Mouse
Keyboard: Logitech G510
Headset: Gamecon Plantronics 777 Ducktape Edition
She was a beast. I never had an issue with running anything. In fact, I did a test once and ran Call of Duty: Black Ops, Battlefield 3 and let the kids watch a movie. All at the same time. Ok I couldn't play both games as both windows could not be open, but I could play either one without any problem. So when I got rid of my computer, I bought a laptop to do mobile development and web development on. The specs are...
Brand: Compaq Presario CQ62 CPU: 2 x AMD Athlon II P360 Dual-Core GPU: ATI RS880M Mobility Radeon HD 4225/4250

As you can see the trade off was big. At the start the laptop was running Windows 7. But to be honest, I don't think it could handle it. The system kept crashing or being extremely slow. When Bel built her gaming rig recently I gave her the Windows 7 and installed Kubuntu (linux). Now this laptop isn't too bad. It did everything I needed it to and with linux, the crashes were gone. However, recently as I said, I have wanted to get back into a few games. Being on linux, most games I play must be run through WINE, a windows emulator, and out of those games, the laptop can't really cope with them. I can play Torchlight 2 on low settings and Vanilla Minecraft, also on low settings. I need a new gaming rig. My soon to be brother in law built a rig not too long ago but made the mistake of shared graphics. For those that do not know, shared graphics, basically it uses some of the RAM instead of having its own. This of course sucks for gaming. He gave me the shell consisting of the CPU, motherboard and case. I'm not too sure what the cpu or motherboard is but I have read you can override the shared graphics and install a graphics card so that is my plan. I went out today to get prices. To get the thing running I need HDD, RAM and optical drive. I don't get paid for two weeks and didn't really have enough to get them. My choice was to wait until I get paid again. However I did not walk out empty handed. No no no. I decided to boost the laptop just a little. I walked out of that computer shop hold another 2G of RAM... I know its not much, but like I said I'll take it. And for $30, twice the RAM, I'm happy. With just that small upgrade, the gaming life improved for me. I can now play Killing Floor, Minecraft FTB Lite. Dwarfs and F.E.A.R. From minimal specs I can also play Medal of Honor, Orcs Must Die! 2, Red Faction Armagedon and C&C: Red Alert 3. Those last four I haven't tested yet. So like I said before. Its not much of an upgrade, but it means the world to my gaming days. Until next time readers, happy gaming!

SighFye