General Geekery

Its been a while. It has been a busy few weeks. With birthdays and christmas seeming to come all at once and the end of the year screaming towards us, I thought I would best get one more post in before the the years end. So, with this in mind, I turn my attention towards the general geekery that has been happening in my life of late. Most of my free time is being eaten by HAWKEN. Its easy to think "i'll just pop in for a quick match" and it ends up being four or five in a row and suddenly you have lost an hour or more. My FPS skills are still rather rubbish, although I have still been having a blast. The community in general is pretty good and with the standard one or two exceptions here and there, most people are friendly and seem to want to grow this game. Unfortunately, there are the ego-centric that are rude/abusive or generally childish in nature and I sincerely hope that this attitude doesn't scare off new players. Its hard enough to get n00bs to stick with the game, especially when the majority of experienced players have been playing since alpha or have twitch-skills from other FPS's. Add this to the misconception that level is an influencing factor (it is currently  =< 5% advantage) - I do worry that many who would enjoy it provided an more informed learning curve may end up rage quitting.

I have also upgraded some of my PC gear of late. First to go was the power supply. The old unit had been starting to misbehave on me and after a series of random restarts and rather distinct electrical odor, it was time to update. After a bit of research on just how much power i would need, i settled on a Corsair HX650 (v2). Primarily because i don't tend to overclock much nor run any SLI/Crossfire on the GPU's, this gold certified energy efficient PSU sounded like just the ticket. My local retailer had it in stock for cheaper than online could provide (once you included postage), so off i set to the local store. After unboxing, removing the old PSU and installing the new one, it didn't take long for a rather strange noise to start happening. After isolating it to the brand new power supply, further investigation online revealed this to be a fairly common problem with this particular model of corsair's. Playing around with the power saving settings as suggested by corsair's own forums brought no fixes, so i had no other option than to return it. If i had RMA'd the unit, it would have cost me atleast $50 in postage. This sort of problem i might expect with some cheaper PSU's - as far as i know, it's the capacitor chirping - however on a premium product such as this, I would expect corsair to recall the affected units (from what i understand its a batch issue). In the end, i stumped up more money to go for the HX750 as i didn't want to risk replacing the unit with another defective unit. Besides, RMA'ing the original unit would have taken weeks and quite possibly more than the difference in price.

This is a video of the HX650 chirping

I've also upgraded my keyboard to a Ducky Shine II. It's a mechanical keyboard with cherry switches and dampening o-rings. It is back lit (available in numerous colours), features n-key roll-over with a hefty build quality and is available "locally" in the model i wanted. It was down to the choice between the black widow ultimate or the ducky shine 2, i opted for the "lesser known" brand because it was thoroughly endorsed whenever it was mentioned/hinted at in a forum. besides, the ultimate stealth comes with cherry-black mx switches, which are generally unsuitable for typing due to their zero actuation. I also stumped up for the leather wrist rest which is essential if you intend on using it to type/game on for extended periods and want to avoid RSI. It also has some nice effects with its adjustable lighting methods and modes. I was able to get the keyboard online from a trusted online store, however, the o-rings to mod the keyboard to decrease the switch noise when typing had to come from the US. buying online, it cost me less than $30 to DIY (inc. postage).

Found inside the box is a key-puller and red back-lit replacements for WASD, other key sets or entire custom keyboards can also be purchased online (although i could not find any back-lit compatible replacements). There were some inspiring examples of these in the stores gallery, however, i enjoy my back-lighting too much - so i will stick with the stock key-cap set. Generally though, the ducky has been in the "trenches" now for over a month of solid FPS action and has earned my  recommendation as a great product. My only criticism would be the quality of the USB cable (which is detachable, thankfully). I ended up having to replace the provided cable with another, which is unfortunate on a premium product such as this one.