Parts are ordered!

Today is the day! I've ordered my computer parts and they are already on the way. I've got track and trace, wich is a code you can use to check where your package is. I'm super excited.

In this computer, as it is not the first I've build and will build, I get to use that Bitfenix case. I've grown quite the fan for that brand as I've build a pc for my mother that house the Shinobi. I expect this case to be of same value to build quality and cannot wait to see it when it comes in.

Then there is a hidden passion I have to confess. A hidden passion for fans that (arguably) have the best color scheme on the market. Ofcourse I'm talking about these Noctua fans. I love how they take special care, making sure they always add those nifty low noise adapters and rubber gromits. These will make the system a breeze to listen to. Now, I've ordered 3 so far, I will check if the noise from the CPU fans will be acceptable. If not, then I will have to purchase myself some more Noctua swag.

Then there is the Seasonic PSU. I've seen that over at the G+ community someone shares the same love for well build PSU's. If there is a brand that screams quality all over, then Seasonic is definitely amongs those. I would've loved to get a PSU with more juice, however this pc doesn't need it. ( photo taken from Hardware.info, Hollands best community when it comes to actually building computers )

Then there is the proc and motherboard. It was my initial choice to get the 8320-FX and the Extreme3, yet wasn't completely sure it would be compatible. Luckily someone caught my blog in time and informed me that he actually ownes a build with that proc and mobo inside it. He confirmed for me that the combination works like a charm and so I added those back to my list. My mothers pc also runs the Extreme3, I'm familiar with the product and happy for it to be back on the list.

Kingston, another A-brand that never let me down; although I have to say that my gaming pc runs Corsair's Vengeance; and that besides that pc, only one experience that can back up that statement. However. It's a great brand and it's always cool to get something from great, big brands. I didn't pick it out, but hey! It's cool!

Then there is the EVO drive. Easily the best money to performance ratio on the SSD market here in Holland. The new drives from Crucial came to the market just a few days ago, however, those are pricey and still hot to the touch. If i have to believe the benchies than these score a tad more stable than the EVO's.

Last but not least, "The Mugen" with it's killer title "PC Games Hardware Edition". Already used it, compared it against others and this is one of those products that is hard to beat when it comes to bang for buck. This little beast is meant for "Gaming pc's" but I figured that having a CPU sink is better than having that small piece of tin that AMD provides with their processors. To mention I still got 2 of those laying about, unpacked and still boxed :)

That said, there is lots for me to be excited about. I will now just shut my piehole as this post has been going on for way to long.

Chrome - Repaint all your text as a temporarily bugfix

This bug in Chrome ( i'm using Chromium as it's more stable on Ubuntu, however this bug has also been seen by me personally on OSX running Chrome ) has been plaguing me lately. It has to do with the font not rendering. What I've found so far is that it only seems to happen whenever the font, or more specifically in my case; Google font, is being loaded under the header response "304 Not modified". Whenever the fonts get loaded under "200 Ok" everything goes fine. Now, I've got no material so far to back this up, but I'm not the only one having this problem.

The appearent fix was that you could refresh using the URL, by clicking in the urlbar and pressing enter the page would load this fine or hovering over the element that contained the unrendered text to trigger a render.

After a bit of searching i found the following snippet ( that i modified to work, and absolutely work in my situation as the snippet I found wasn't working in my case but i guess i'm just saying it wasn't me coming up with this brilliant solution. ) as whenever you would resize the window the font also seemed to be triggered to render correctly, that was one of the methods I was using often in the last couple of days to get my text to render.

// Chrome fix for repainting text
$('body').css('padding-left', '1px').promise().done(function() {
     setTimeout(function() {
          $('body').css('padding-left', '0px');
     }, 10);
});

I need to mention that the snippet above is wrapped in document.ready(). It's a bit overkill to do a promise on css, however, I need this to work everytime without any failure and this is only a temporal bugfix; or at least. That's what I'm assuming as more people in similar situations are having the same results as sought their answer in either CSS or Javascript to fix it.

I've measured the performance before and after the fix, to me, the results were neglactable and not worth mentioning in this post. I still had pages that loaded around a solid 200-400ms so that little snippet didn't worry me in the least.

HTML - Newline and carriage return within textarea

This post helped me solve a problem today that kept me puzzling for an good half hour. I was fiddling with the newline as I had to get the textarea to recognize the newline. It happends to be, to my unknowledge, that a textarea doesn't automaticly take /r/n into account. Specifcally those two in combination.

The first approved answer happened to be my solve. My journey towards that answer costed me an hour of research into why that is. I was loading my content out of a database with PHP and this dazzled me at first as when I printed the text, it would nicely make a line break. Yet, whenever I entered that very bit of code into a textarea, it didn't.

Another experience richer and more knowledgable. I used preg_replace() to convert "/r/n" into "
". I'll post the actual snippet later in this post.

Debian machine try 2

I was able to confidently compose the components to a good desktop development system. Thanks to the hardware compatibility check over at linuxmint.com. Now, it does differ from the other build, yet it stays the same at some levels.

Component	Name	Price
Processor	AMD FX-8320 Black Edition AMD FX-6350 AMD FX-8320 Black Edition	126,- 95,77 126,-
Mobo	ASRock 990FX Extreme3 ASRock 970 Extreme3 R2.0 ASRock 990FX Extreme3	82,60 61,- 82,60
HDD	WD AV-GP WD5000AUDX, 500GB Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm	49,42 46,86
Case	BitFenix Shinobi BitFenix Comrade Wit	54,50 34,80
CPU Sink	Scythe Mugen 4 PCGH Edition	36,50
GPU	Sapphire HD 6450 2GB DDR3	50,22
Memory	Crucial Ballistix Tactical BLT2C4G3D1608ET3LX0CEU Kingston HyperX KHX1600C9D3B1K2/8GX	60,50 62,04
PSU	Seasonic Platinum Series 660 Watt	128,04
SSD	Samsung 840 series 120GB Samsung 840 EVO 120GB	115,47 68,90
	Total :	635.96

This system is cheaper, however, that came as a small bonus as I had no intention to make it cheaper. I just coundn't take the risk of maby buying a component that would be badly supported or somehow not work in combination with another component.

The whole linux world is fairly new to me, i'm in the learning process as they call it. Post a comment on what you guys think. I think this build is final, unless someone eyes out a component and has a better reason to buy another.

Thanks for reading!

Debian Development build

In this post I want to post the build that I will buy soon. This is going to be a development system and also my first step towards the future.

I'm already used to Linux. It's a fantastic system and use Ubuntu at work to develop, as i'm a web developer by trade. That's one of the reason's why I cannot wait to get my build. Now, it's not far away, however. I've made the initial build a little bit to ambitious. That, in the sense that I didn't look for compatibility when building the system online. That's why I have to give it another go. I will have to check for compatibility before adding it to my wishlist.

I'm close to having the money to actually get the components but enough time to do some proper research in what components I should invest. This is going to be a development build, so by all means, if you have an opinion on parts or about the current list of components, input is what it's all about in an community.

Component	Name	Price
Processor	AMD FX-8320 Black Edition	126,-
Mobo	ASRock 990FX Extreme3	82,60
HDD	WD AV-GP WD5000AUDX, 500GB	49,42
Case	BitFenix Shinobi	54,50
CPU Sink	Scythe Mugen 4 PCGH Edition	36,50
Memory	Crucial Ballistix Tactical BLT2C4G3D1608ET3LX0CEU	60,50
PSU	Seasonic Platinum Series 660 Watt	128,04
SSD	Samsung 840 series 120GB	115,47
	Total :	653,03

Now, This is what i've got so far. It might change completely. It all depends on what I will research in the next couple of weeks. I've gotten some good input from forums that I've found through Google.

I've asked a bit around and maby I can get around with an onboard videocard. My linux sources say it might just be enough. However, I want to be able to run 1080p though, as a somewhat higher resolution is just easier to work with.

I will let you guys know more when I know more. Peace.

Starting to learn a new language

Python is my next language to learn. It makes all the more sense to me as I'm going to migrate to the OS Debian soon. I will still keep my gaming machine, and will post about that later. Python.

I've been meaning to start learning this language for a long time as this language is widely spread among every industry. You can pretty much apply it to everything.

This language is easy to pick up to far and has a pretty quick learning curve. Well documentated and fast as hell when you run it through console. As a "Hello World" i made a registry class that kept instances of created objects. I'm going to play with Python in the next couple of days and check out the bigger frameworks for it. I've made a pretty cool start so far and expect to use this as a powerfull weapon amongs my arsenal of knowledge.

If there are some frameworks I should check out, then comment them. I wish to know what you guys use and what is widely used among 'Pythoners'?

Guildwars 2 - Transfering worlds!

There is a limited time to where you can transfer worlds for free. Take the opportunity to transfer if you are in need of such service. You can refer to the transfer rate table over at the website to see when and where you can go with this wonderfull news.

The've done this ofcourse because of the WvW Tournament, but hey, if you're not all that into WvW you can still take the opportunity to get some of the good stuff anyhow.

It gives me the chance to change worlds and get to be with friends that are on the other servers.

Playstation 4 vs. WiiU

This is a post with a rant. Sony has been on there arse since the release of their big console. I've wished many times I would like it more than I do. I'm a Sony fanboy, or I guess I should be. We, and by we I mean me and my boyfriend considered heavily on the question WiiU vs. PS4. The latter lost. This has a few good and solid reasons.

We've made this choice based on our research to both consoles. I also want to add that in a later point in time we will also own a PS4. Yet for now, our favor goes to the WiiU.

The first being the price. The PS4 is a heavy price to pay. It's well worth it's price when you look at the components. Thats something that I cannot deny. However, the PS4 is being devalued for now because of it's small game library. This, over time, will grow and make the PS4 a more valuable weapon in the arsenal of the gamer. The WiiU on the other hand, might not be as powerfull when you look at the components but blowes the PS4 out of the battlefield for the moment.

The games were our second reason. The current set for the WiiU is bigger, but it doesn't stop there. The PS4 has a pretty low steam when it comes of future titles; but when it comes, it comes with a bang. There are a few great ones among those, I cannot deny, titles that will put all consoles to shame and predecesors that are legends of games.

We ofcourse think of titles like Infamous, Uncharted and a God of War. The last one on that list isn't confirmed but i'm pretty sure Santa Monica Studios is going to richen our lives with another epic tale of gods and demigods.

The WiiU has also some pretty strong liquor in their stomach. Think of games like Hyrule Warriors, Mario Kart 8 and an Metroid game to look forward to. These really compete on the 'enjoyable' factor of games mentioned above.

We all know that PS4 is more for the hardcore gamer and the WiiU, or better said, Nintendo for casual. There is no point in fighting that front of the battle. We just had a luxury choice to make as in the end, we will have both side by side, next to DS'ses, PS3, PS2, PS, Gameboys, Gamecube, Gaming PC's, Xbox and an Xbox 360. We welcome both to our powerfull arsenal of game consoles and into our gaming life, yet for now the WiiU makes more sense to buy.

The PS4 still has a pretty long road ahead of itself. A road, that perhaps, and preferable we will not walk all the way. WiiU here we come, show us what u got! It is time to slay some monster in Monster Hunter.

Guildwars Sea of Sorrows

After having read Ghosts of Ascalon, Seas of Sorrow was next up in my list of to-read. This book is amazing. I like Ree Soesbee's style much more than that of the writer of Ghosts of Ascalon. The difference is night and day in comparison to GoA. The writer uses slightly harder to understand words, yet so far, I've managed to understand. I googled if I came across some words I didn't knew.

This book has a much better sense of time and pacing is more balanced. It feels like everything is in place. I like how you can read how the great city of Lions Arch rose and Orr rose; how influencial chracters of the rich lore fit into the larger picture. It's all in much detail described and nothing left untold. The characters grew on me much more than they did in Ghosts of Ascalon.

I'm almost through with this book as I've read most of it by now. I've started reading this book about two weeks ago while on vacation in Austria. Great read. If you haven't read this one, than definitly pick it up. Really recommend this one!

Ghosts of Ascalon Recap

I've went to Austria on wintersport vacation. It so came to that I had the time to finish reading Ghosts of Ascalon. I have to say that the book kinda disappointed me. I liked the way the writer wrote the book, easy to understand and reads pretty quick.

However. The book has a pretty amazing start, detailed and rich in all it's glory. I liked how the group came about and how their journey progressed. I read more and more of the book, only to result in wanting to read more. In the times between the reads, I would think of what would happen or try to imagine the scenes as they were described by the book to give it a place in the game.

All and all, the book is very paced and balanced. Yet the ending is so disappointing. After I was done, it seemed like the whole book was a build-up, to result in an ending that was stuffed into the last 50 pages or so. In my next post I will tell something about the next book im currently reading and almost through with. The Sea of Sorrows.

Anyway, Ghosts of Ascalon is a nice read. I'm not a die hard reader, enjoyed it, but did expect more from the ending. The book really deserved a better ending than it did. As I read through the book I had a gut feeling from about halfway through that the ending was going to be rushed. Turned out, to my disappointment that I was right.