Monday, October 31, 2016

My Two Cents on the Nintendo Switch (UPDATE)


Nintendo has been in a little bit of tough spot these past few years. With Microsoft and Sony surging ahead with the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4, Nintendo's Wii U is looking pretty obsolete these days and the only thing that seems to be churning out the most success for the underdog of the Big Three is the 3DS. Nintendo has had a new console codenamed NX in the works for while now and it could supposedly be their ace in hole to put them back in the running against Microsoft and Sony, but not much  has been said of it... until now. Say hello to the Switch.

Wednesday, October 19, 2016

iMac G4 Optical Drive Replacement & Autopsy

Vision problems.
As I noted in my review of the iMac G4, the optical drive was not working. Essentially what occurs was the drive would try to read a disk for about 30 seconds and then spit it back out. This can be one of two things, one is that the lens may be dirty and needs cleaning; this can be done with some specialized products. The other is that the drive may have just flat out shit the bed for some undiagnosable reason. Because the replacement I found wasn't much more expensive than a drive cleaning kit, I decided to do the extra labor for something that's guaranteed to work; plus I get to see the inside of the thing finally. Lets get started!

Tuesday, October 18, 2016

Nerf Rival Atlas XVI-1200 Review (9/10)

Twice the pain. All the fun.
I've covered most of the new Nerf gear already, the ones I haven't touched yet being the Mastodon, since it's so expensive, the Tri-Strike because it's pretty lame, and then there's this; the Atlas. This blaster been quite elusive to me for quite a while now and I just now found it after bouncing between several stores in search of it over the past month or so. This is the Rival line's first shotgun type blaster so lets see how it performs.

Saturday, October 8, 2016

SBNC is Quitting Nerf

So long and thanks for all the foam!
I just found out about this today on Reddit and sad to say that Rob who runs a rather well known Nerf blog out of Australia known as Southern Brisbane Nerf Club is throwing in the towel. SBNC has been my go-to blog for Nerf news and whatnot ever since the big three(NM&R, Tactical Tag, SG Nerf) have ceased operations. I didn't have time to watch the full video but apparently Rob's leave is due some serious personal matters and I think it will better for me just to link the video below rather than try and explain things myself. I hope everything works out for him.


Wednesday, October 5, 2016

Apple iMac G4 Review

Grab life by the neck.
I typically give Apple a lot of crap for a number of things, namely their general lack of innovation and their attempts at breaking standards but I've always held a curiosity for their old hardware. You know, before missing headphone jacks and shitty laptop keyboards. Apple's old hardware was strange, yet they we're very capable compared to the hordes of terrible Windows machines that existed back in the 90's and early 2000's. One particular model caught my eye in particular, and to satisfy my curiosity on the matter I drove an hour out of my way to pick this up: an iMac G4 and to say the least I've never used anything quite like it.

Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Buzz Bee Ultra Tek Destiny Review (8/10)

Bringing the rain like it's the year 2000.
There was a time many years ago where people didn't use springs or flywheels to hurl foam at each other. Well nobody really did in general actually, they were all too busy with their Super Soakers. But of the few who had the pleasure of enjoying dart blasters in the late 90's to early 2000's most of them were powered by air pressure. Blasters then had a massive variety of how they operated using air pressure; it could be used for highly powerful single shots, rapid semi-autos, and of course insane full auto fire. The days of wearing your arm out pumping these things and springing leaks eventually fell out of fashion in favor of plunger and electric power, however a few still carry the air power torch today. This is Buzz Bee's latest entry into that field: the Destiny, the fastest firing stock blaster in history and it's fun, lots of fun.

Tuesday, August 23, 2016

Oculus Rift Review

The future is here.
Ever since the beginning of the modern technological age we have dreamed of machines that could transport us to lands beyond our imagination; virtual reality. While the closest thing to VR at the time were giant simulators used purely for such things as pilot training, the concept began to pick up steam in the 80's and in the 90's, fully fledged VR gaming platforms began to emerge but their popularity was short lived. The technology was expensive, not many existing platforms supported it, and most of them just weren't very good. There was a lot of snake oil involved with marketing VR in the 90's and a lot of it contributed to the sheer amount of disappointment that revolved around heavily marketed VR systems. The Virtual Boy for example was heavily marketed and proved to be a colossal turd, selling only around 350 thousand units out of it's projected 3 million. Between bad hardware and ones that were solid but either too big for home use or too expensive for the average consumer, VR failed in the 90's and died with the coming of the new millennium. The idea was still there, but nobody really wanted to dive back into something that already failed. The 2010's however saw a resurgence in the interest of VR and with the great advances in technology over the past decade, VR began to make a whole lot of noise once again. After nearly five years of development, one of the companies that helped fuel a renewed interest in VR finally released it's product. This is the Oculus Rift, virtual reality for the new generation.