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Recently graduated from Birmingham City University, specialising in Graphic Design. I like all things digital and everything that generally looks cool. I also play a lot of video games and treat them as a source of insperation rather than "time killer".

This blog is a place for me to reflect on things that I find interesting and worth sharing, some of my own work will be posted here as well.

Which one to get?

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This year was pretty exciting: The Avengers, The Dark Knight, Windows 8, Microsoft Surface and finally, Windows Phone 8.

Since I bought my Lumia 800, I didn’t miss much from iOS ecosystem, there were few apps and cool things that I’d like on WP8, but nothing I couldn’t live without. Today Nokia announced new upgrades to their phone line: Lumia 820 and Lumia 920. Now, when I bought my original Lumia 800, I knew that Lumia 900 will be coming out in the couple of months, but considering the specs and other differences; I decided to go with Lumia 800 instead. For the next phone, looking at what information Nokia gave us, Lumia 920 seems to be the way to go, considering there won’t be any serious delays.

 

In term the actual specs, there is no major let-downs, at least for me:

1280x768 4.5 inch

Dual-core 1.5Ghz

1GB of Ram

32gb Storage

8.7px Camera, PureMotion HD+, looks impressive

Appling thermal paste is the most frustrating thing in PC building.

When I did build former rig back in February 2010, I did not give much thought to the amount of RAM I will need. Normally, 6 RAM is enough for most of A4 projects but when I started working with higher scales, I did notice my system lagging behind which forced me to take unnecessary steppes to complete tasks I wanted.

Intel Core i7 920 2.80GHz @ 4.00GHz

Asus P6TD Deluxe Intel X58 (Socket 1366) DDR3 Motherboard

Corsair XMS3 6GB DDR3 PC3-12800C9 (1600MHz) Tri-Channel DDR3

It would be simpler to just add another 6  more gigs of RAM, making it total of 12, but I didn’t simply do that because, the memory controller on P6TD was faulty, thefore it required additional restart after initial boot to load full 6GBs of RAM. It was slightly annoying to deal with and I don’t know why I didn’t replaced it when I could. Apart from that, another reason to make a full upgrade was  that PC market is at this sweet spot right now, where hardware was worked out of initial kinks and prices are 10-15% down.

Now, my current rig updated to:

Intel Core i7 3770K, 3.5Ghz 650 MHz GPU @4.3GHz

Asus MAXIMUS V GENE, Intel Z77, S 1155, DDR3

Corsair DDR3 16GB (4x4GB) Vengeance (1600)

With plenty of USB 3.0 ports, decent overclock and 16GBs of RAM, I do not think ill be needing an upgrade in the next 4 years. Adding Crucial RealSSD M4 256GB was a nice upgrade, booting speeds under 15 sec and Adobe Suite performs on amazing speeds. The weakest link, which might be needing a replacement, depending on how things go, is my graphics card: Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 1GB.

 

Max Payne 3, how was it?

It took me 9 hours to complete whole campaign on “medium” difficulty. Did I enjoy the game? Yes, I did. Was story better than Max Payne 1 and 2? No, it was not. The story and gameplay made it so it is very similar to other shooters on the market like Far Cry. I know that bullet-time is a signature mechanic of the game, but it felt like the whole game is another shooter – not story driven as 1st and 2nd Max Payne. Hopefully in the next one Max comes back to New York. Graphic novel layout vs cut scenes I personally a bit disappointed that they did not use graphic novel style for cut scenes, that was one of the points that made previous games great. Score 7/10

Windows 8 “Surface”

I knew that tablets are going to be the future of mobile computing when Apple ipad first came out, and ever since I replaced my iPhone for WP7 Lumia 800, I was eager to see what Microsoft is going to introduce to the market.

Finally, today I woke up to articles about brand new Windows 8 tablet: “Surface”. I think that, by the simple fact of having SD and USB 3.0 slot puts Surface ahead of iPad, moreover, I cant wait to use Metro UI on a day to day basis and get  away from traditional grid of icons.

It will be logical and unsurprising if I buy WIN8 tablet right when it comes out, but my head tells me not to for two reasons: Apps and early build bugs. I been using ipad for two years now and naturally invested into quite a few paid apps and since I no longer have an iPhone, replacing ipad will mean that I will leave iOS ecosystem for good. Another of my hesitations is the first release bugs. Just like with any counsumer electronic device there are bound to be mistakes with the design or software and as a rule of thumb, people tend to wait for the second release or until bugs are fixed.

So far I’m thinking to do the same what I did with WP7 – wait a couple of years, give it time to settle in, developers to fill in the gaps on Market Place and all supporting vendors realise their tablets.