Friday, December 18, 2009

First semester ended... Choices?

Friday, December 18, 2009
Alhamdulillah, yokattane~

The final exam was really spicy. Delicious and spicy. XD

Just now I checked up icputoday, glad to find many kinds of reaction from former ICPU student regarding their choice and experience before coming to Canada. I still feel something's missing though, I would be happy to hear some news from those xICPU who stay at Malaysia, about how they are doing.

I've certainly gone through all those choices that people had to make. In summary for what will be written below, I think the hardest choice I had to make was after SPM.

Reflecting back, it was quite a journey I've had. Starting from pre-school at St. Franchis kindergarden, to SK St. Stephen Bau primary school, then to SM Sains Kuching secondary school, then to Taylor's College, and here I am, at the very next stage at University of Alberta studying Engineering.

I remember, after SPM was the real critical moment where I had to acknowledge all my available options to the future, the "should I go here, or there, or there?" kinds of thing. I had a big dream which was... urm nah, I don't want to tell. But one way to achieve at least part of my dream is to be an engineer, no not really. Any professional job would do. Doctor, lawyer etc. I wanted to be doctor actually, but for the idea of being a 'doctor' I had those day made me feel like they are less likely to be free in the future. I remember one time when my cousin told me that no one among us cousins are going for a doctor profession, and with me going for engineer, what he said are definitely true. Ahaha, so sorry, warukattane~.

Form 2 or Form 3, I'm not quite sure but around those, was the time when I decided that I should choose MECHANICAL engineer. Ahaha! There is this little person who came to my school to give some talk about job. While I was thinking that it was just another useless program organized by the school, I'm glad that I actually pay attention to his speech. So, I took a while to get some information about being an engineer and yes! It will do. Engineering as stepping stone... is my plan. =)

Back to the story, so I knew I should go into engineering, but which one should I choose? I said to myself. There was one time after SPM when I gave up looking for right choice. That is the sort of low-will-powered guy I was. XD So I just pretend I don't know anything and sit at home playing games like an idiot. But then there is this one guy, whom my father is working under, talked to me one time. I forget what the he said XD, but I remember the feeling. Do you ever feel being at lost and someone goes to you(in contrast to you search for them) and say, "that way". It was certainly cheating in one kind of perspective, but somehow I was deeply motivated. I'm so grateful for that, alhamdulillah. Ahah!, there I goes, picked MARA.

Picking universities was lesser much of deal I should say. Because among all those choices that I have, whichever I pick, I certainly know the right junctions afterward. Why UofA?

なんで だろ。。。 ^^

There are reasons but not related to this post, haha.

Whatever they are, I'm very grateful to live a wonderful life. Alhamdulillah.
Looking forward to 5 years ahead.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Resident Evil 5

Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Yay! Capcom did it again!

 They have just released Resident Evil 5 for PC. Since I have been a fan the resident evil series... (started with 4 actually, so I don't mind if I'm not being acknowledged as pure fan), I can't help but dXXXXXXX it right away! Haha!
So now it's perfect. Last year a post of Capcom's Devil May Cry 4, this year; today, with RE5.
For post on DMC 4, here's the link  http://shahrism.blogspot.com/2008/08/devil-may-cry-4.html. However, the test on DMC 4 was on my previous laptop.

Bear with a lil prologue;

  Well, I have an exam on the next few days so I didn't bother finishing it. ah... de ja vu....
(well de ja vu coz, my previous post also sounds something similar; "I have more important thing to do so I'll leave it for now")

  Although I changed laptop already, it is still under entertainment category, not gaming laptop. I could have opt for the latter, but... 'Shahro budget 2009-2010' forbids and reviews for the cheapest gaming laptop in my area claimed that it couldn't last longer than 4 hours which'll be my concern for next few years.

In summary, I doubted it can let RE5 run smoothly. The PS3/xbox360 version looked sooo intense in graphics compared to DMC4. I just hoped that since DMC4 is playable at above 60 fps with high quality turned on, this one can get at least above 40fps.






So, with that in mind, I installed.
.
.
----------------
So after installation, which eaten up 8GB of my disk space, I searched for the Readme.txt and looked for the min requirement. I didn't run it, just to create some suspense atmosphere to myself. XD

Minimum System Requirements

CPU:
 - Intel(R) Pentium(R) D processor or higher
 - AMD Athlon(TM) 64 X2 or higher
System RAM:
 - Windows(R) XP : at least 512MB
 - Windows Vista(R) : at least 1GB
Video Card:
-DirectX(R)9.0c/Shader3.0 compatible with at least 256MB of video RAM
  - NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) 6800 series or higher
  - ATI Radeon(TM) HD 2400 Pro or higher
Sound Card:
 - DirectX(R)9.0c compatible sound card
DVD-ROM Drive:
 - DVD9 compatible Drive
Monitor:
 - 800x600 (SVGA) or higher

Compared each of those with my pc and then I said the following...
"WHAT??"

Ahaha, my PC passed all of them XDXD. Well, I expected the readme would sounds something like that aha! In fact, I predicted future game spec requirement b4 picking my battery-eco laptop so that it can 'at least make those famous games titles playable'. Ah that's not the point here. I was still hoping for the fps value.

I ran the game =)... Upon clicking the 'Press any key to start', I can hear the nostalgic evil-like pronounciation of "Resident Eviiiillll.. Fiiiiiveeeee!!!" Ahaha. Before this it was " Resident Eviiiil..... fouuuurrrr!!!" XDXD

And yeah! I love it, Capcom maintained the trend by putting an option to test PC performance, but this time there are 2 sub-option; variable and fixed. I think the variable option is more similar to DMC4's PC test, so I used that, so that I can compare. The result:



Another PS3 game is playable on my PC!!! Although with the minimum resolution, it manage to get the above 60 fps average with overall medium quality turned on. Yay!

Alas, now I have something to play during the holiday-to-come =).

--------
  Last year, I managed to completely finish DMC4 and unlocked ALL the modes by myself without any cheat/trainer,(Yeah, including the Hell to Hell and 101 Lvl Bloody Palace, but sadly not as skillfull as those people on youtube =(... ) . However I'm not sure about this one... This one has the fear element. I hate the unpredictables monster!Last time with RE4, I cheated to get through all the stages so that I know enemy's location and stuff before playing it for the second time. That way I won't be shaking my hand playing, ahaha.

  About completely finishing the game; In DMC4, you just exchange/unlock a combos, then you can use it limited to your will. But RE4, sigh*... you can buy/unlock new weapon but the amount of ammo you have depends on how many you gathered,... and stronger weapon usually requires different and rarer ammo.
SO HOW DO YOU EXPECT YOU CAN HAVE FUN KILLING ZOMBIES??? RE requires you to CONSERVE ammo!!!

Whatever, let just see what RE5 has to offer. Maybe something new I'll be interested at? Ahaha.
Okayz, that's all this time.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

First experience w/ Win7

Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Ah, the title can't be any more direct can it? XD

OK!
So on the last weekend, I finally received my Win7 upgrade kit sent by people from Dell, containing an instruction booklet, an Upgrade Assistance DVD and a Windows 7 OS installer DVD.


I was... very excited XD

However, I got some assignments to be done that night, so I don't dare to do the installation immediately. I ran the upgrade 2 days later.

Romaji: Windows 7 he no appugure-do.

Now to the process part.
Basically, I knew that that the Upgrade Assistance DVD won't help much, but I just run it... for the sake of completeness. So I insert the DVD, run the autoplay exe... It backed up some settings from my existing Dell applications, see which program that will not be compatible for the upgrade, remove any software temporarily.... etc etc.

*I could skip the Upgrade Assistance because I know which driver should be installed on my dell. If you can't recognize which one you should use among the many that are listed on your manufacturer's website, my advice, RUN the Upgrade Assistance. Yeah, w7 also has the drivers built in, but they are generic. Your devices won't perform at theirs top notch without the real driver.
...and the Upgrade Assistance DVD apparently (I think) created another partition (coz I see a new partition listed on my machine during OS installation) on your hard disk to store the back up files... since of course, they cant be written on the DVD.

After all the backups, I removed the Upgrade Assistance DVD, and insert the OS installer. I restarted, boot from DVD instead of HD... and walla...
If you have tried installing a vista on any machine, you will know that the interface is similar. I think MS will keep this interface as their trend starting from Vista.
Not much to show, so not much to say either... I finished the installation and introduced to the new GUI =)
Whoa I can't express how much I love the new taskbar.  Oh yes, I had to reinsert the Upgrade Assistance DVD back and it restores updated version of my previous drivers on vista.

That's it, everything's done in around... 3 hours.The only things left are... reinstalling all my applications =.=.... which takes 1 whole day if done continuously.

Like I said in Facebook, that night, I bid my farewell to Vista,
Sayounara =).
Buh bye!

This is how my desktop currently looks like =) It's not empty... only... simplified...
The taskbar has done all the jobs. Things look spacier. I thing I can live without clicking the Start Orb at all =)


I don't plan to customize it further for now =)
The little Dell Dock at the bottom is exceptional, because it is provided by Dell. =)

So in conclusion, despite my various hates toward those big companies, thank you for sending me the kit =)
 
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