A brand-new tutorial series is in pre-production!

Hi all!

So finally a blog update from me - seems I just can't break this pattern of posting in spurts and then disappearing off the face of the Earth, can I?

So this is really just a quick update to let you know that:

A. I'm still alive (cue GLaDOS)
B. I've started pre-production on my first-ever proper tutorial series.

     I'm going to be bringing an old tutorial request from 2 years ago back into the spotlight and making it as professional and well-built as I can. It's going to push my presentation, editing, and general recording skills to their current limit, but hopefully this can get my tutorial-creator juices flowing again.

     So I've actually spent the last 2 years not recording anything really worthwhile due to some personal issues I was having and am still dealing with (in short, a lot of self-criticism), but I've decided it's time to simply plunge and figure it out as I go. Learn to accept my shortcomings and work on improving them.
     I've been practising with Minecraft and I'm also simultaneously working on a new Let's Play series and channel - I've always wanted to get into Let's Plays ever since I started watching Chuggaaconroy's The Legend of Zelda - The Wind Waker and Paper Mario and the Thousand-Year Door series. I've gotten more and more interested in LPs as I've started to follow people such as Etho's Lab and GuudeBoulderfist and others of the MindCrack group, so I've finally decided to dive in and start my own.

     I've been putting a lot of thought into both my tutorials and the LPs, and I've started working on setting up my channels for both. The LP-specific channel hasn't been created yet; I'm still figuring out a banner and whatnot, as well as creating a backlog of episodes that I can then upload on a regular basis. I'll be doing the same for this tutorial series, so there may be a couple of weeks of work ahead of me still.

     If you're curious to know more about the series as it develops, check my Twitter and/or Google+ and I should post some updates on a semi-regular basis. I also tweet/share other things like Linux news, artwork, anime songs, gaming news and a few other things ;)
   For anyone wondering about my Facebook profile, I really only keep it just in case I might need it, but I never use it. I just don't particularly like the system - Twitter's the one to check if you want to follow me.

That's it from me for now. Keep an eye out for those production updates!


Philippe M., signing out.

A fight to the death - MeshWeaver VS Dust & Thermal Paste

So it's finally time for me to talk about a side-project I've been working on for a couple of months.

I'll kick it off with a comment concerning thermal paste and what it's for.  Of course, if you're already familiar with it, then feel free to skip ahead.
Thermal paste (also called Thermal Grease) is, obviously, a material used on various pieces of computer hardware and electronics such as processors - both central (ex. quad-core Intel i5-2320) and graphics-dedicated (ex. nVidia GTX560 Ti) - and it is usually applied between said processors and their heat sinks to improve heat dissipation through conductive materials like silver, aluminium, and other metals.  The Wikipedia article lists the different types as well as the general usage of thermal paste - for instance too much can increase the risk of over-heating, while too little won't help heat-dissipation as much as it should.
Thermal paste can also be relatively expensive considering the size of the tubes - over at newegg.ca you can see that they have three pages-worth of different brands and types, and they go for up to ~40.00$ CDN.

As I just mentioned above it's usually found between heat sinks and processors to help conduct heat generated by the processor over to the heat sink, which then usually air-cools and any excess heat is pushed out the back of your PC by the casing fan(s).

Dust, of course, needs no explanation - it's just really, really annoying to deal with.

And now on to the project - I mentioned it my last blog post but the only hint I gave was installing drivers for a nVidia GeForce 6200.  Well, time to let the cat out of the bag - I've been working on restoring a roughly 8 year old computer to working order.

All the geeky, geeky things...

So, I haz moar updatez for youz :D

First off, the Audi A5 Coupe.  To be perfectly honest, I haven't worked on it since I rendered that last WIP update, the model turntable.  I've been much busier with setting up Linux Mint (more on that later) and a bunch of other things like Minecraft, Star Wars Battlefront II, and Gran Turismo 5 :P  I'm planning on getting back to it this week, so keep an eye out (...gross) for those updates :D

So...From Freedom came Elegance, and from Linux Mint 12 came headaches and over six re-installations.  To be fair though, I love the interface and how the menus and so on work in Mint 12, and oddly enough it feels a bit more professional than Windows 7.  Maybe it's the absence of a few graphical flourishes Win7 uses, or maybe it's just that I'm expecting a Linux distro (aka distribution package/version) to be more professional since it's what they use over at the Blender Foundation in Amsterdam.  Who knows?
Anyway, about those multiple installations... they're all due to FAILs on my part.  Half of those fails were due to my crappy disk-partition management - deleting partitions that had the GRUB loader (what asks you which OS you want to use when you start up your computer) and therefore, I got GRUB errors that I couldn't fix by any method except re-installing everything.  So yesterday I finally got all my disk-partitions setup properly and Linux Mint 12 installed, updates installed and Nvidia GeForce GT520 drivers also installed - which means I also have my two screens setup awesomely.  I'll post a picture of my setup sometime :)
I'm still in the process of installing my essential programs, but hopefully I'll soon be regularly switching between Mint 12 and Win7 to do all my work :D

Yumm, minty chrome...

Two gaming-related updates too!  Yesterday I finally got my hands on...