Earlier in the year I endeavoured to update my frontpage site, its got a theme I haven’t been happy with and I felt like content was very thin on the ground (especially in comparison to my personal blog here). Also of course I would like to write more articles there remedying the lack of content – but as above I’d also like to have a more presentable site which is the top priority, it certainly doesn’t show off what I’m capable of.

To the right is a preview of my new theme, its a little ways off – though I am edging towards releasing a stripped back version (simply put the basic blog format, the frontpage part of which is shown here, is in addition and meant more to demonstrate what I do and present some of my work).

In anycase, progress with that will continue in due time – I’m dividing my attention up between two pieces of coursework, a side-project and of course this as my own personal project.

In other news…

Gaming wise, my time has been cut back – I haven’t had the greatest of urges to play anything, though the gracious gift of Deus Ex: Human Revolution from a gaming buddy means I am playing that through in bits and pieces. Having slogged round the first boss (not really, I’d read a tactic by accident and made use of it). Also Dungeon Defenders, which can be a bit of a time sink it seems – with some Sanctum sprinkled around too.

I’ve found myself listening to more music, and indeed opting once to just spend about an hour doing nothing but listening to music – its been a rather long time since I last did that, usually I am overloading myself with information from the web (not necessarily useful information either). Mostly I guess ‘original’ dub, I don’t follow closely but what I considered dub or dubstep is apparently a more modern flavour… I really can’t comment.

For those curious Skream, Boxcutter, Glyphic, Clubroot and Eskmo have been my choice listening. While some may not be able to work while listening to music, for me it is twofold – I enjoy music (preferring repetition and beat to vocal) it also drowns out computer fans and my ever present tinnitus.

L2R update

As a final word, my earlier Left-2-Right experience (switching from left handed mousing over to right handed) is complete. As a side effect my desk has had a shift in location within my room (I was due a change anyway) and really nothing about my gaming has changed much; at the couple of months since mark its become normal.

Ta-ta for now!

I’d hoped by now to have already been half way through The Witcher 2. Certain unforeseen circumstances saw to that not happening. Firstly, my university course started up – which wasn’t really unforeseen, but the amount of insta-work was – and the warm weather, oh the blasted warm weather. I don’t like it, and gaming takes a back seat if my computer just gets warmer; which is the second problem situation.

The final circumstance simply is…

Today I was hoping to sit back, enjoy Sunday dinner, have a few coffees, read some news and watch some YouTube… while also finalising my choice for my year long project for university. Now I did write recently about my new piece of equipment, the very sleek, wonderful feeling and clacky Razer BlackWidow conflicts my jealous Roccat Kova – they then decided to fight through the medium of my system and by means of driver conflicts. I just can’t have a quiet Sunday…

I hope I’ve solved it… but I’m unwilling to test it…

Oh, what a bloody beautiful thing – I’ve only had it for a few hours now and sure enough there are little niggles with it, coming from a well laid out Saitek Eclipse II… other aspects make up for it immensely though, primarily the action on the mechanical keys. Now I know what I’ve been missing!

Click for more lovely key action!

After a good few days of Minecraft and the Vindictus CBT I’m starting to feel like I’ve pretty much grasped (heh) the keyboard controls; even with backslash as my push-to-talk button I still seem to be coping. Of course, still waiting on The Witcher 2′s final update to play that game through, though its combat shares some similarities with Vindictus from what little I’ve played. Hence this will likely be the last update to this series unless the fancy takes me, though I might be writing some Minecraft pieces given the massive change with 1.8.

I did say at the start of this series that my posts would get further and further apart, though I intended to update yesterday. I’m still going at it, and there is still some residual confusion for my left hand, though my right seems to be doing things just fine. Today also saw my return to the Minecraft universe with the latest version (1.8) which makes it feel like a whole new game (or just one very polished game).

Read on to see my handiwork…

There was a time I attributed my rapid advances in accuracy with a mouse to Audiosurf, an indy game based on music, with lanes containing blocks, of which you must hit while surfing your music. Now Audiosurf doesn’t require accuracy, but your score can benefit highly from it – the ability to neatly switch between two lanes, hugging the line as you do so, is a nice one to develop. In addition to that it will occasionally require quick flicks to move across all lanes to beat the beat – so it has fast elements too. Hence why I’ve chosen to play it again.

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Onwards goes my ambidextrous shenanigans, I’ve had the odd stray thought about just going back to my old ways – as tempting as it is I’m determined to try this for a month at least, if not two, the grand finale will hopefully be a play-through of The Witcher 2 once version 2.0 has come out (including new DLC and whatnot). Though I’ve started to realise problems with the layout of things in my room…

Continue reading

So as this day begins to conclude, I’ve done a little gaming and already have observations to note. Its not noticeable if the game doesn’t have some pressure, for example Minecraft – I can feel something different but unless I’m in a hurry problems don’t really surface; and when they do more than half of them are my left hand – the fingers of which aren’t great at finding the WASD keys very well.

Then there is Left 4 Dead coop…

Back in 2010 I’d bought myself a Roccat Kova (the Roccat Kova+ is a newer model), and I spent a great deal of time looking for an ambidextrous mouse to finally come to that conclusion. The major reason is family, because being a primarily lefty guy I know all too well what using an uncomfortable mouse meant for righties felt like… horrible – and I didn’t want family members feeling that discomfort. Finally I’m not so lefty as ambidextrous, I just use my left hand for gaming because that is what I got used to. So today I decided upon an experiment… I’m swapping hands.

Read on for confuzzlement