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Contact Form Fixed - Resubmit Author Applications

As it turns out, the contact form has been broken for a long while, without me knowing. Not sure, how, or whatever, it just hasn't been working, which I just now discovered. I know a few people have submitted applications to start writing here, but either I got the application too late, or they never received my reply email. The contact form has been changed to a newer one that seems to have a fail-safe in place, which it not only emails me, but it also saves it server side so I can read it on the site itself. So please if you wish to write here, please resubmit the application. I have yet to deny a single application, so if you weren't approved, thats why. Please resubmit :) Thanks, and sorry about that. Click here to access Contact Form
Josh

Prison Architect Worth Playing Yet?

I wrote an article last year about how I was inlove with Prison Architect, but also about how it wasn't worth playing at the moment due to the performance. Once you got above 400 or so Prisoners, the game would lag so bad where you'd probably get 5fps, which made the game pretty much unplayable. 400 Prisoners might sound like alot, but it's really not. You can reach 400 prisoners within minutes. Each time there is an update patch for the game I like to scan through the patch notes to see if they addressed the performance. I do really love the game, and want to play it. Update after Update the performance never got dealt with until recently. They released a patch this week (Update Patch #6), which surprised me by finally addressing the performance: I decided to load up the game and see if they had improved it, and was greatly impressed. My older prison with only 400-500 prisoners that used to lag so badly, now ran smooth. Seems they fixed the performance issue. My current prison has over 1,000 prisoners, and it runs fine. My problem with the game now is that it requires so much micromanaging. Prisoners are overly fussy criminals, and have so many needs, or it could just be that I'm playing it wrong. I play it in sandbox unlimited cash mode, my reasoning for this is because I wanna learn the game, and its dynamics first, and then get deeper into the game and suffer, but holy hell, the game is a challenge even in this mode due to the micromanaging. For example, I cannot get the Rioting under control, no matter what I do. It could be because I'm receiving new prisoners so quickly, but even with new prisoners disabled, and enough rooms, and food for the current prisoners, they still seem to riot, which is becoming so damn annoying that it prevents me from wanting to play the game. My first step to stop the rioting was to separate the classes. So I made a building for just minimum security prisoners, one for normal security, and another for medium security, and each of these buildings had their own showers, yard areas, canteens and kitchens. Didn't help much. The devs recently added warmth into the game, where weather and temperature alters the behavior of the prisoners. The way to alleviate prisoners being pissy about the temp is by using and placing radiators to generate heat - all over the place, the radiators themselves need to be attached via HOT WATER PIPES to water-boilers, which they themselves need to be attached via regular water pipes to the water system, along with electrical cables to connect it to the power grid. [caption id="attachment_4245" align="aligncenter" width="768"] The annoying overly complex utility - power, water, hot water, etc system in Prison Architect, as seen in my Minimum security building.[/caption] Once I figured out the warmth/temperature system, I thought I had the rioting under control, but nope. Some how some way, some way.... my prisoners started a fire in a FUCKING SHOWER ROOM, WHICH IS BASCIALLY AN OVEN AND SHOULD ITSELF CONTAIN A FIRE....  which quickly spread uncontrollably throughout my main prison building. AHHH! The game does have firemen which you can temporally hire to come put out the fire, but they're stupid and seem to do a better job at dying than putting out the fire. [caption id="attachment_4241" align="aligncenter" width="768"] Fire![/caption] Turns out that the game has a sprinkler system that you need to install by placing sprinklers all over the place, which too, need to be connected to the water system. I thought maybe having armed guards patrol the areas where prisoners usually riot, which is usually around the showers, and canteen areas, would dissuade potential rioters, but it seemed to have the opposite effect. All the armed guards seem to do is trigger even more riots. But the good thing about having armed guards is they'd take out the dangerous threats that were previously killing many of my guards. I also placed a few snipers around outside to help put an end to the outdoor riots, fights, and staff deaths. Which didn't seem to help much over all. I then became angry at the prisoners for their bullshit, so I found some mods via the Steam Workshop that would allow me to give all the guards tactical sniper rifles so that they could defend themselves against these fussy prisoners,  which turned out to not be a very good idea, ha. Within a minute, over half my prison population was killed off.. I suppose prisoners don't take kind to witnessing their mates be killed, and it triggers them to riot themselves, so just a domino effect, either way... it felt very satisfying. [caption id="attachment_4239" align="aligncenter" width="768"] Prison Massacre[/caption]   It seems the rioting is uncontrollable, but I'm sure that i'm overlooking something, such as a basic need. I'll have to start playing but slower, and perhaps look at the tutorial or something, ha. But its a fun puzzle to solve, and I'm sure that I'll get there, that is if i don't punch my monitor due to a fit of  game triggered rage. But over all, the game is VERY PLAYABLE now. Perhaps even TOO playable due to having so much things to do related to all the micro managing. My only previous complaint was the performance and all the lagging, which seems to be entirely resolved and not an issue now. Get this game, its fun! Especially if you have alot of time, and are into complex simulations. https://www.introversion.co.uk/prisonarchitect/ Be prepared to lose hair due to stress.
Josh

Prince - Just Some Thoughts

I'm going to be honest. I wasn't a very big fan of Prince. I liked a few of his songs, but meh. In a way I suppose I was destined to be anti Prince since I grew up as a huge Michael Jackson fan, and they were rivals, so it makes sense. but then again, it wasn't a big, or even a real issue in the MJ community. I guess you may be confused as to why I'd be turned off as a child by Prince's weirdness and not Michael's. Michael's weirdness was always childlike to me, while Prince always came across as a weird perverted type of thing, which would freak out nearly any kid. It was always a different type of weirdness. For example, Michael would pretend he's Peter Pan, while Prince would be half naked making weird noise on stage. Due to that, I honestly never looked or read into Prince. His recent music that was released within the past 15 years didn't do anything for me either. With that said, I am a huge fan of several of his early songs, such as: "Most Beautiful Girl In the World", "When Droves Cry", "Raspberry Beret", "Little Red Corvette". But my admiration stopped at just listening to the songs themselves, until recently when his death sparked some interest in my now adult-like brain. I discovered a few interesting things which I wanted to share, assuming you too don't know much about Prince. Turns out that Prince wrote and composed the song "Nothing Compares 2 U", which he gave to Sinéad O'Connor to release. I found a Live V ersion of the song that Prince performed last year at a concert in Louisville Kentucky, and wow, I liked her version, but his version has so much emotion and energy in it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxkXtfk3AOo I then came across Prince performing "Purple Rain", during the Superbowl Halftime show in 2007. What made this incredible is that he was able to perform it, while playing the guitar during a pour down rain storm. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Fv_6bH8WUA Oddly, I never really listened to "Purple Rain" until recently, which I say is odd, because its one of his most popular songs. While his singing isn't the greatest ever on the album version of Purple Rain, I really really love the instrumental, and the over all sound. Interesting thing I discovered yesterday about the album version of Purple Rain, is that the vocals were recorded LIVE at a performance in 1983, which could explain why the vocals aren't top studio perfect quality that you'd expect to be on an official track, and with that in mind they really aren't that bad. You can watch that performance here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fkLRyZSXAo I don't know too much about Prince, but I recently read that his death was most likely related to prescription pain medication, which is sad, and its a cause of death that many people seem to be concluding their lives with these days, which is too bad. Just shows you that it's best to not get on these pain pills, or if you do, use them very VERY responsibly. I can understand how someone would suffer this fate, such as Prince who's seems to have had a long battle with pain in his hips and knees. He doesn't strike me as a drug addict, just another guy in pain. These pills are dangerous. It's too bad.
Josh

Real time Simulation of Titanic Sinking & Upcoming Video Game

Many, including myself, have always been fascinated by the Titanic. So it's no wonder that this latest Titanic related video is making its rounds on the internet generating huge interest. The video simulates the sinking of the Titanic in real time - the entire 2 hours and 40 minutes - with "accuracy and attention to detail." https://youtu.be/rs9w5bgtJC8 The video was created by  developers of an upcoming game called "Titanic: Honor And Glory", which I think is an adventure/exploration/mystery/puzzle type game, where you actually live and work on board the Titanic, and perform certain crewman tasks, solve the mysteries and escape the ship before it sinks. The actual sinking of the Titanic is the time clock, which you must achieve all the tasks, which is 2 hours and 40 minutes. Game Trailer: https://youtu.be/ziC3Bacopj0 I've long wanted some type of virtual Titanic that I could walk around in and simply explore. This game seems to provide not only that, but a more immersive interactive feel, by adding tasks, people, sounds. The devs state on the website that there is a "Tour Mode", which allows you to ignore the main game mode,  story, plot, puzzle, etc, and just explore every inch of the ship, and talk to historical figures if you chose. Sounds perfect. My first thought was "Surely they wont recreate every section of the ship, and only have the main areas created and explorable" - but the Devs assured us in their FAQ that the entire ship will be available to explore by replying to the question question "how much of the ship will be remade" with: Fingers crossed! The devs have currently put up a PC and MAC demo on their website that anyone can download, and get a feel of what the game should be like.  I have checked out the PC demo, which only includes a couple rooms, and wow, truly amazing. The attention to detail is there, and everything looks and feels authentic. There is a breathtaking view when you get are at the bottom of the staircase and look up to see all the floors. Beautiful. They have provided tons of info and other medias on their website, which you can check out at http://www.titanichg.com/
Josh

Rant: Outlook.com Spam

ARGGH! Okay, I've finally had it with the spam on Microsoft's Outlook.com service. Spam has periodically been a problem for years where it seemed like the spam filters would randomly break and spam would get through for days at a time, then all of a sudden it'd stop and would be fine for weeks. But not anymore! For the past few months to a year spam getting through has been constant! The most annoying thing is that it's obvious spam, that any common sensed filter should catch, but some how it gets through Microsoft's crappy service. You can't get any support for any Microsoft product because it seems they only do internet forums, which are answered by Indians who seem to not seem to understand the English language because their replies are rarely ever helpful, which i learned recently when i was having a weird MICROSOFT DRIVER ENUMERATOR virus issue. A quick search finds other people who are having the same spam issue, and are only getting the same nonsensical replies from Genreb and Syed. Maybe Microsoft is too big that's why they outsource their support, and maybe that's why they allow such obvious spam. [caption id="attachment_4076" align="aligncenter" width="345"] Obvious Spam[/caption] The annoyance really is that I receive several notifications when a new email is arrived, At least one on my phone, and another reminded on desktop. Even if i only get 3 spam mails a day, that's several annoying notifications, along with other notifications for legit emails. It just all adds up to a bowl of annoyance shit stew. I started to wonder if my desktop client (mailbird) didn't communicate to Microsoft when I marked something as spam, and this was why the obvious spam with the same titles kept getting through. So, within the past few months I started to try to log in via the browser to outlook.com to use their actual service to mark the mails as spam, which made the problem even more annoying. Sometimes I'd successfully mark the email ass spam, but the majority of the time I'd get an error stating that I couldn't connect to outlook.com, WHAT THE HELL? Either way, marking the mails as spam via outlook.com didn't stop them from getting through either. [caption id="attachment_4065" align="aligncenter" width="768"] Outlook.com Cant connect[/caption] Due to this, I finally decided to leave Outlook.com. I pretty much only used it due to the short email address I was able to grab back when they opened up registrations for @live.com addresses all them years ago. But back then good Microsoft email account was valuable due to having so many uses for their once great services such as Live Messenger, which they stupidly killed. Now I am looking for alternatives. I think I'm going to stay away from the big free email providers. I think Gmail has the best spam filters. I've had gmail accounts since they first started invites back in 2003, and rarely get spam on those. Problem with Gmail though are the long annoying addresses. I hate the long addresses due to the complications in typing them on a mobile device. I have a short @ymail.com Yahoo! addy, but I'm certainly Yahoo! allows companies to pay them to accept spam. I have accounts on Yahoo! that I never used which get flooded with so much spam. Plus, Yahoo! is slow to support third party clients and such. I think they only recently started to allow IMAP, decades after everyone else allowed it. Anyways, I don't want to use Yahoo! Mail because i'm trying to get away from spam. I have a super short [email protected] address, which is from AOL, but AOL is all over the place, and keeps changing their email service (I used it back in their AOL PHOENIX days). I've long been weary about using my own personal domains for email. My hosting was never that good, and I just couldn't rely on it. Plus I've sold so many of my domains that I never wanted to really be tied to one, i mean what if someone offered me a great price? However recently I accepted that I'll at least own JoshX.com until I die, after that I wont need email anyways, and also I discovered you can still use third party email hosting services, such as Google APPS, and Zoho. The problem now comes to price. Google Apps is like $60 a year for one account, while Zoho is free for 10 users, and I think gives 5gb of storage. The signup page says 1gb, but shows 5gb in my usage. And it seems to be add free, and allows you to use desktop and mobile clients via IMAP and pop, which is great. Then if you need more space you can upgrade to the cheapest Standard Plan which comes with 10gb storage for $24 a year, which is MUCH MUCH cheaper than Google APPS. I don't really need file storage, or documents, or any of that other weird stuff. I use Amazon Cloud Drive for all that and  I wish Google, and Zoho offered lower cost services that doesn't come with all this other stuff. I suppose these services are intended for businesses, so that's fine. I couldn't find much info online about people complaining about Spam issues on Zoho, so since it's free, I decided to give it a try, and so far it's been great. The service is fast, and I've had no issues fetching mail via my desktop client MAILBIRD, and via iOS mail on my iphone. The web based interface is nice as well. I'm happy. [caption id="attachment_4077" align="aligncenter" width="768"] Zoho Browser mail version[/caption] If spam does become an issue, I can easily just pay for Google Apps, and import my mail client. Cloud flare would allow me to switch the MX entires without much downtime if any at all. So if you are looking for a easy email solution, and don't have many people that you need to provide an account for, check out ZOHO! If you already own a domain, you can easily point the MX entires to ZOHO's service via cPanel, or any other control panel your webhost uses (cpanel is most common), but i suggest using CloudFlare for DNS due to DDOS protection and other conveniences. Cloudflare offers a free plan which I use on some of my sites as well, work s great. Check out ZOHO! it's great. Edit: April 16th, 2016 What the hell Microsoft? Can't even access Outlook this morning. Thank god I left outlook. I only randomly log in now to see if i've gotten actual emails from sites that I've forgot to change my email on. [caption id="attachment_4085" align="aligncenter" width="768"] Outlook.com - Something Went Wrong[/caption] Update: April 21, 2016 
I haven't been using Outlook.com as my main email for about a week now. But I have been logging in every now in then to make sure no important emails were sent to it.  I just checked it after 2 days, and dang - Instant reminder of why I had to leave Outlook.com. I suppose me checking it every day and deleting spam as it came made it seem like it wasn't that much. Perhaps I was getting much more than I thought I was. Most of the spam was obvious spam with the same titles as spam mail i marked hundreds of times in the past. Ridiculous.  
Josh

Quick Look: Miscreated

------ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJJwdv1yA_o   Miscreated is a game that Steam has been flashing at me for years due to being similar to the other games I sometimes play such as DayZ and H1z1. I remember first being suggested it years ago, and all the reviews said it was crap, which is the case for nearly all of the Early Access/Zombie Survival games out there, so I didn't pay it much mind and certainly didn't buy it. I'm forever looking for a good Open World Sand Box survival game. I wrote an article a couple months ago about DayZ Standalone being worth playing yet, which i said yes, but I have since changed my mind. While DayZ Standalone works good when you're in a isolated area, the engine is such crap that the FPS is so low in city areas, which I discovered when I tried to get one of my friends to come play it with me, and I was attempting to meet him in a coastal town. Most of my time playing it alone was at the Airfield far away from the towns, so I was getting good FPS. I don't think DayZ Standalone can be fixed, and that's due to the engine. I even recently started attempting to play ARMA 3 since I upgraded my graphics card to a EVGA 980 TI FTW edition, and it still struggles to even perform, it's simply the engine. So no hope for any game based on it, which has been obvious all along, which is too bad. I love the atmosphere of the engine. H1Z1 is still a weird mess. I'm not so sure why I don't like it. The of the movement/controls, atmosphere - such as visual and audio is just off. The zombies are awesome though. But meh, I just can't get into it the way I do DayZ. Maybe it seems too arcadish. Since I'm still looking for a decent Survival game, I decided to give Miscreated a shot, and I got a really good deal on it over at G2a.com (use them at your own risk). And man did Micreated really surprise me, and made me wish that I had tried to much sooner. [caption id="attachment_3994" align="aligncenter" width="768"] Miscreated - under an Overpass[/caption] Micreated comes with a proper server browser, which displays the player count, ping, and other info in the server title. I decided to join an empty server so I could run around and see how the game acts. At the current time, there are several servers to play on. Keep in mind that its 4am when i took the following screenshot, so many people are probably asleep. During daytime hours there are several servers with 30+ people in them. [caption id="attachment_4020" align="aligncenter" width="879"] Miscreated Server Browsers[/caption] While connecting to a server, the game displays the recent patch notes, and it seems the devs are actively adding to the game. March alone had 4 patches, one which added bicycles, and another which added a new AI system. So they're actively supporting the game. I spawned into a world that actually looked like something crazy had happened . Over grown weeds, grass, moss and vines on the buildings. The towns actually look abandoned, unlike the copy and paste of buildings that you see in DayZ. Also although alot of the buildings in Miscreated are the same, the interiors are often different, such as curtains, furniture, and loot, and by the way, the curtains blow with the wind. Not static as in DayZ and H1Z1, although I'm not too sure where the wind is coming from since the windows they're covering are still in place. [caption id="attachment_3987" align="aligncenter" width="768"] Abandoned town in Miscreated[/caption] Another thing that caught my eye is how filthy the windows looked, as if they have a grime on them, as you would expect in a post-apocalyptic world. The audio too is amazing and immersive, could hear wind, insects doing their noise making, trees. The game has an amazing atmosphere. I haven't heard any silly sounds, like random sticks breakingin the forest (one thing that annoys me about DayZ, sounds shouldn't happen unless there is an actual reason for them to be happening). The game does have close range voice chat built in, which seems to work pretty good. Also has the text communications as well. The graphics are really nice . I pretty much maxed them all out, and get great performance. I like to leave v-sync on which gave me a constant 60fps. Low graphics setting in DayZ wont even give me 30fps. But there is a major issue with the graphics in Miscreated and how it loads objects. There currently is no setting for view distance, so trees, some structures, and other things vanish as you get a certain distance from them, which isn't a major issue since you'd have to be standing on a tall structure or mountain/hill to notice this. But the weeds load in front of you, i'd say with 50-100 yards, both of which ruin the immersion to a point. The issue with the weeds is common and every game has it. Hopefully the devs include a View Distance setting in the future. Being able to climb up high to have a nice view would be nice. I know keeping this setting low helps people with less powerful machines, but if we have powerful enough machines, we should be able to take advantage of them. [caption id="attachment_4000" align="aligncenter" width="768"] Miscreated - Grunge on the windows![/caption] I started walking around and wow, the devs have paid so much attention to detail, which is a constant reminder in the game. When you walk through tall grass, bushes, weeds, etc they will bend and bend back behind you as you clear them, not only is this a visual effect, there is also a sound effect that goes along with it. You can easily follow/track someone because your feet leave tracks in the dirt, mud, sand, etc as you walk, and the foot prints lasts a least a couple of minutes. Shadows match up with everything else as well, unlike other games such as Rust which have odd clunky shadows. I'm not sure why the simple things amaze me so much anymore, but even turning on the flashlight gives a shadow where you can see your thumb move to flick it on - amazing!   [caption id="attachment_3997" align="aligncenter" width="768"] Miscreated - Be careful, you leave a trail behind.[/caption] [caption id="attachment_4042" align="aligncenter" width="768"] Foot prints match your steps, whether you side step, walk backwards, or what. Also a glimpse at the nice lighting and shadows in the game.[/caption] [caption id="attachment_4055" align="aligncenter" width="768"] TRACKS![/caption] The lighting in the game is really nice as well, and it affects the way you play. For example the flashlights come in handy because if you're doing fast and quick looting, it takes a while for your eyes adjust to the light after you run into a garage or building out of the sun. Which is really cool, and adds to the immersion. Another nice thing to do with the lighting is that the clouds actually cast shadows, which you can see slowly moving across the ground. THAT ATTENTION TO DETAIL! The game has both first person, and third person view modes, which can easily be changed by pushing f1, or using the mouse scroll wheel. I wish it didn't have third person since people can use it to cheat by seeing around and over things, but its helpful at times. I usually only stay in first person in these games, for the immersion, plus they seem to work better for me, but for many of these screenshots I took in third person to help display the graphics, and my current action. [caption id="attachment_4019" align="aligncenter" width="768"] Miscreeated - Kicking is fluid![/caption] The controls in the game are very fluid, and work very well. I'm not having any issues aiming, changing weapons, jumping, crouching, or anything. It all works pretty good. You can kick or punch enemies very easily and smoothly. [caption id="attachment_3999" align="aligncenter" width="768"] Miscreated -Dead Thorn hand mutated guy...[/caption] I am a bit tired of Zombie games, I would really just enjoy a realistic survival game, but since nearly every survival game has zombies, we might as well judge them, and how the devs implement them. I must give credit to the devs for not calling the threat "zombies", but instead they are referred to as "grotesque mutated humans".  There are several different types of mutated peeps in the game, some look stronger, some loot liked old me, and some have spiked arms. The AI doesn't seem to great at the moment. Some of the mutated fellas spot you in the distance, while others go on their way. Tracking is kind of stupid, once they spot you, they seem to know exactly how to get to you. The only way I've found to lose them is to run and run and jump over fences or maybe go through alot of houses. They seem unable to jump over fences, but weirdly they know to go to the closest opening in the fence, and get to you that way. I know the new AI system is, well new, so they'll have to tweak it here and there. The mutants aren't bad, and are a threat, but just need to be smarter and more intuitive. For example, they should be able to slowly crawl or climb over fences.   [caption id="attachment_4034" align="aligncenter" width="768"] Miscreated - Oh no! I've been spotted[/caption] [caption id="attachment_4023" align="aligncenter" width="768"] Miscreated - Being attacked by a mutant![/caption] [caption id="attachment_4028" align="aligncenter" width="768"] Miscreated - Dead Mutant[/caption] I'm not too sure how the game spawns the mutants, I'm not sure if they're spawned by the server and always exist, or are like DayZ and spawn and despawn based on the player. But I don't see mutants randomly popping out of light poles as they do in DayZ, which is good. I've only ever seen a random mutant here or there, but most of the mutants I see around towns and neighbor hoods, where the population used to be, which makes much sense. [caption id="attachment_4045" align="aligncenter" width="768"] Being chased by two mutants. The skinny one is much faster than the muscle one, about as fast as players are.[/caption]   [caption id="attachment_4005" align="aligncenter" width="768"] Miscreated - Looting a house - very dark other than the sunlight shining in through window, flash light is very helpful[/caption] [caption id="attachment_4054" align="aligncenter" width="768"] Bones![/caption] [caption id="attachment_4044" align="aligncenter" width="768"] Looting, found corn on the stove! Using a Flashlight in doors, makes it much easier![/caption] The game handles loot very well. I'm not too sure of the loot spawn cycle such as in the time for the original spawn, and then respawn, but there always seemed to be enough loot, especially food. Weapons don't spawn as much as other loot does, but I was able to find a pistol, shotgun, and plenty of melee weapons such as bats, axes (which can also cut wood apparently), and knives. I'm satisfied with the loot system. Seems to certainly work much better than the system H1Z1 has in place. There is a food and hydration level in the game and a hud that displays your levels. Your levels will eventually drain, and you have to eat and drink to raise them again. It's a decent system, and isn't overly annoying as in DayZ or H1Z1. The levels go down at a realistic pace, and isn't much of an issue if you're drinking and eating every now and then. I hope they keep it the way it is, and don't make it as stupid as it is especially in DayZ where it seems you have to drink every 30 seconds, and THANK DEVS, that there aren't any "I feel thirsty" messages that pop up every 10 seconds as well! [caption id="attachment_3990" align="aligncenter" width="503"] Miscreated Inventory Screen[/caption] The inventory screen is pretty much what you'd expect in Survival games, and really looks no different than the one DayZ or H1Z1. There is a tab system where you can click over to crafting, and the Clan info. Also displays your weight, I haven't noticed any weight affects in the game, such as unable to carry more items, but this is a great idea if it does go that route. For example, carry as much as stuff as you want, as long as its not too heavy. I wonder if this effects your food, and hydration levels. Micreated has a crafting system, which I only fiddled with a bit. I'm still new to it, so i haven't came across enough resources to really craft all that much. I'm constantly finding things that you can use for crafting, such as lights, rope, cloth, and many other things. I've only made things such as a backpack, which worked flawlessly. You can use an axe to gather wood to craft many things, and objects to build bases, i think you can do the same to gather barbed wire, which is used in alot of crafting recipes. Unlike DayZ, it pretty much tells you which ingredients you'll need to craft, and it doesn't make you "discover" recipes like H1Z1 does by fiddling with randomly loot,  NICE! [caption id="attachment_3989" align="aligncenter" width="768"] Miscreated - Cycling past user built Bases which look identical to ones you'll see in H1Z1[/caption] I see bases that other people have built, which really much look identical to the bases in H1Z1, but from what I understand, you can place objects any which way you'd like, and it's not a snap together thing as you see in other games. It's more freeform. And I think there is a base protection system. The game has a clan system built in where you can create clans, add members, etc and only those people can alter your base. [caption id="attachment_4056" align="aligncenter" width="768"] Claimed Land[/caption] I think you have to claim land in order to build, and you can see these claimed land signs at new bases. [caption id="attachment_4022" align="aligncenter" width="768"] One of the vehicles that you can fix up and drive in the game. A nice grungy truck.[/caption] The size of the map isn't too big, but isn't small either. I've played for several hours and I'm still finding new places, and also getting lost still. I think the map currently is only 8km x 8km, which is total  64² km. The devs have stated that the map is only 20% completed, and will add to it over time.  The map is large enough that traveling can be a chore, and thankfully, the Devs have already added vehicles and bicycles for traveling. There are also lot of rivers and streams in the game, and they added boats so you can navigate via water! [caption id="attachment_4041" align="aligncenter" width="768"] Miscreated - Map. the red areas are parts of the map that have yet been added to the game.[/caption] There are in game maps that you can discover amid the loot, which look, and work realistically. For example, you have to actually equip the map one of your object slots, and physically have to open it and look at it in first person view, which I thought was amazing. Like I said, the immersion and this game is amazing, and the attention to detail such as this really adds to it. There are several vehicles in the game, which work kind of the way they do in DayZ. You have to find parts to the vehicles, such as wheels, spark plugs, batteries, engine belt, fuel and oil. I haven't messed with the vehicles too much. I did spend time fixing up a quad on a empty server. I found all the needed parts but the oil.  The fuel level constantly goes down, which means you have to constantly look for more fuel. I find fuel all over the place so it's not an issue really. The devs recently added bicycles. They're in a early state, so they don't seem to go faster or slow, just the same pace all the time, and there is no pedaling animation yet, but they work and get you to places faster. I think the bicycles despawn if no one touches them for a certain amount of time. [caption id="attachment_3996" align="aligncenter" width="768"] Miscreated - Abandoned Gas Station.[/caption] I haven't had any issues with PVP in the game. I usually stay to myself far away from populated areas in survival games, but periodically run into other outsiders as was the case earlier. I was running around looting houses, and I ran into one and as my eyes adjusted, I spotted a guy standing directly in front of me, he was probably as shocked as I was, and he immediately said Hi to me over voice. I didn't have my mic hooked up, which wasn't much of an issue because the game has many gestures built in, such as hands up, waving, etc which are easy to access since they are the Function keys such as f2 f3, etc, so I immediately put both of my hands up to show that I wasn't hostile, and then we talked over text chat. He didn't seem to have any weapons, so i gave him my Axe, Hunting Knife, and a shot gun I had found. Then we used the wave gesture, and both went separate ways, which was a really nice moments. So many times in H1Z1 and DayZ, i would've been punched or shot immediately. [caption id="attachment_3998" align="aligncenter" width="768"] Miscreated - Waving goodbye to a new friend![/caption] I'm not too sure why Miscreated has gotten such a bad rap. I'm not too sure why Miscreated has gotten a bad rap. It could be due to the logo being a nearly identical rip of of Day'z Logo concept (white letters, silhouettes of zombies/people cutting out the lettering, etc), and the art on the loading screen is nearly indentical to the art style used by WarZ/infestation blah blah blah,  so people may assume its a cheap copy/rip off, or maybe people are just really burnt out on Early Access titles. It's too bad though because this game is really great, and it'll be the survival game i'll be playing for now on. I'm perfectly happy with it, and I haven't came across any game breaking bugs or issues. I hope the Devs keep up the good work, and the game only gets better. [caption id="attachment_4057" align="aligncenter" width="1195"] Miscreated LOGO and Art style might chase people away.[/caption] Micreated has the most realistic feel and atmosphere out of any of the Survival games I've played so far, and the immersion is amazing. Keep in mind that this is still early access, and isn't feature complete and there are some bugs, even though I haven't ran into any. Like many other Early Access titles, it can go downhill quickly. But in its current state, it's amazing and i'm really enjoying it. Links: Steam Store Page - $19.99 Miscreated Wiki Page - All the info you need to know! Official Website
Josh

Picasa APP Replacement - Windows 10 Photos?

Google announced last month that they were killing off the Picasa App for windows, which has been my main photo app and organizer since about 2003 when it was paid software, long before google acquired it. This news was horrible for me, but not surprising, since the program hadn't been updated in a super long time, other than small UI tweaks and buttons to link to Google Services such as the Picasa Web Service, but it was still bad news. The reason I really liked Picasa was it would automatically index my photo folders, and quickly add them to the database and sort them via date, Detect faces, easily allow tags to be added, lightweight, fast, and used very few resources. The program still runs fine, I never have any real issues with it, and I could potentially use it for many more years, but the fact that it wont be updated or supported means that it's probably best to try to at least find an alternative. I've tried many programs over the years, such as Adobe Lightroom, ACDsee, and Windows Live Photo Gallery, none of them seemed to achieve what I was wanting, which was to organize my photo collection and sort them by date. Lightroom is great for editing and tweaking photos, which is what I mainly use it for, but its resource intensive and slow. You have to manually import Photos/folders, and it sorts them via a folder list. I want the program to take all my photos from all the folders in my list, and sort them via date, as Picasa did. I can't seem to get Lightroom, or an other Photo Organizer to do this. Lightroom will allow the thumbnail list be sorted by date, but it's very unintuitive and hard to differentiate since its all bunched together. Which is too bad, because over all Lightroom is nice. It could just be that I need to give lightroom a bit more time and mess around with it more. [caption id="attachment_3974" align="aligncenter" width="768"] Lightroom[/caption] ACDsee has a nice new feature called "Photos", which sorts images in a timeline, but much like Lightroom, it too is bulky and slow, and you have to manually tell it to rescan the folders to detect changes such as removed, or added photos. I was really learning towards ACDsee, but while writing this article I decided to check out the built in Photos APP in Windows 10. I suppose I never bothered to look at the Windows 10 Photo App because I assumed that it was just a simple app for quickly viewing photos. I opened it and I was immediately shocked. Not only did it open super fast, but it displayed my photos immediately and sorted them by date. Also the app automatically scans and refreshes the database which is indicated by the animated updating icon. [caption id="attachment_3959" align="aligncenter" width="634"] Windows 10 Photos APP[/caption] I noticed that the left is lacking a tree folder/date list that I've grown used to in other apps, but instead there are options: Collection, Albums,  and Folders. I believe "Collections" is what I've been looking for in a photo viewer. What I think it does is collects all the photos from your predetermined photo folders (mine is MY PICTURES, which is default and why it was already loaded), and sorts them based on date regardless of the folder they are in. This feature seems to work amazing. The thing I don't like about this feature is it doesn't show the months in a tree on the left nav, instead you can scroll down to goto the previous months, or click on the Month title and it'll load a month view. This feature would be better if it'd show some thumbnails, but thankfully the program is so fast and lightweight that everything opens and loads fast, so you can click on a month and quickly view the photos. Tip to Microsoft: Automatically put the month list on the left pane when someone entered Collection view. [caption id="attachment_3960" align="aligncenter" width="634"] Windows 10 Month List[/caption]   The photo viewer is very nice as well, and plays videos too very smoothly. The viewer also comes with basic editing tools and filters. [caption id="attachment_3961" align="aligncenter" width="634"] Windows 10 Photo Viewer[/caption] I actually don't really understand the Albums view. The app seems to create albums automatically based on time, location, and what it detects in the picture? Maybe it  creates albums that contain water, fish, and maybe people. I don't know. For example, here's an album it automatically created for "Days in Wellington, and Geuda Springs Ks". WTF? [caption id="attachment_3964" align="aligncenter" width="634"] Windows 10 Photo Albums[/caption] While there is no tree view on the left as with many photo organizers, there is a folder button, which shows you the folder view: [caption id="attachment_3962" align="aligncenter" width="634"] Windows 10 Photo folders[/caption] While I don't see any face detection features, the Windows 10 Photo's app looks like its going to be my replacement for Picasa, and to be honest, It seems to be working so great that even if Picasa hadn't killed Picasa, I might have started using it anyway. I'm kinda kicking myself for not using it sooner. It seems to be the perfect photos album. The Photos app comes built into Windows 10, or if for some crazy reason your Windows install didn't come with it, or perhaps you previously deleted it, you can download it from the Windows Store for free.
Josh

Media Lies Against Donald Trump

I've been watching CNN for the past few weeks in total disgust. I used to think it was only Fox News who twisted, took things out of context, and even just made stuff up, but as it turns out, its the entire "media" in general. The only reason I even attempted to bother with CNN is because I subscribe to Sling TV, and CNN is their only real, well if you want to call it "real", Mainstream News Channel, and I wanted to watch the GOP Debates and such. I never knew how bullshit the news media was until recently. Well, I had a slight clue during the Michael Jackson trial back in 2005 when they took nearly everything out of context, and also made stuff up. When I say THEY i mean all of the mainstream News Media (MSNBC, CNN, FOX, etc). Fox was actually a little bit nicer back then I remember Michael going on Fox several times and having an interview with Geraldo Rivera. There as zero actual evidence in that case, and the media just reported it as if there was. Michael always knew this, and always said "Fuck the Filthy Press". I know that CNN and other media outlets have taken Trump's words out of context since he announced his candidacy, but the KKK thing made it crystal clear. CNN first started to raise alarms when Jake Tapper kept asking Donald Trump about the David Duke KKK endorsement over and over again, even after Donald Trump Disavowed David Duke and the endorsement several times prior. I literally watched Trump disavow David Duke at a huge press conference the day before on February 26th 2016 when he was asked, in which CNN was a participate. Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEQ1tTnQEn4 For some reason, Tapper thought it was okay to repeatedly ask Trump the question over and over again, I admit Trump did provide a weird reaction and response, which didn't seem to make much sense (Trump later said he had ear piece issues and could hardly hear, which kinda does make sense, I mean why would Trump disavow the guy multiple times, including the day before, only to all of a sudden not? I mean comon). To me, even now looking back, it's obvious CNN was baiting for Trump to get tired of the repetitive redundant questioning, and just to give a  weird response, which they did eventually get. And boy did they take advantage of his response. No, they didn't air the reply and answer Trump gave the day before to the question, they just replayed over and over again the weird response, and analyzed it to death in such a negative light. The even weirder thing for me is, Romney immediately used this as fuel for his Anti Trump speech, Coincidence? After-all, Why would The mainstream media be so against Trump? It doesn't make much sense, unless they are being controlled by the establishment on both the Republican and Democrat sides. Why else for all the obvious hate of Trump, and  taking his words out of context? So in a way, it seems like alot of this is in a concerted effort by all sides to pull Trump down. Trump does have a long history of disavowing David Duke, If Tapper, and the other trolls over at CNN and in the media were actually wanting to report the news and not create it, they could've easily looked it up on the internet. For example, way back in 2000 Matt Lauer asked about David Duke in which Trump called Duke "a bigot, a racist, a problem", and went on to say about Duke: "this is not exactly the people you want in your party."  SOURCE A few days later in 2000, Trump said Duke was a "neo-Nazi", and went on to say that "This is not company I wish to keep."  SOURCE Trump has went on to continue to disavow Duke numerous times up until this past week when he gave up, and told a "reporter" to sit down, when the reporter asked about the KKK again. Trump finally had enough and seems to be refusing to answer the question anymore. He made it clear, as it always had even over a decade ago that HE DOESN'T SUPPORT KKK OR DAVID DUKE. Recently, this entire Michelle Field's thing is caught some fire in the media outlet, where Field's, a reporter for Breitbart claimed that while attempting to ask Trump a question, she was "jointed backwards" and  "Someone had grabbed me tightly by the arm and yanked me down. I almost fell to the ground, but was able to maintain my balance". She then claimed that it was Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski. And went on to say that he "aggressively tried to pull me to the ground." Of course the mainstream media had a hay day with this, even though there was zero evidence other than some pictures she claimed were of the bruise, and some audio. The media and pundits treated this as if it were fact, and acted as if Trump and his team were a bunch of "Evil-doers". (as George W Bush would put it...). Finally yesterday a clearer video emerged that showed nothing of what she said happened. She was overstepping asking Trump questions when they were clearly trying to get Trump out of the room, for whatever reason. If anything happened to her it was a small Shrug. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NoMPxomjiw Hours after this video emerged, Michelle Fields quickly resigned from Breitbart, along with editor Ben Shapiro, who defended Michelle even without evidence. They claim to be resigning due to Breitbart's treatment of Michelle over the incident, which turned out to be all mostly made up anyways. Do you think CNN, Fox News, and the others will apologize to Trump's Campaign especially to Mr. Lewandowski who've they been dragging through the mud in the past weeks? Do you think they'll ever the new video which clearly shows she greatly exaggerated, if not just blatantly lied? I don't think they will, since it'll hurt their effort to paint Trump  as an Evil Bigot who batters women. Motive? Turns out Michelle has a book coming out in a few months, which gives motive as to why she'd want publicity and then be on all the networks talking about it. All this also coincides with the Media painting Trump instigator of Violence and other such acts at his rallies, which really just started recently due the planned and paid-for rioting at his rally in Chicago. The media is all over this, trying to paint a narrative that Trump and his supporters are violent, which isn't the case at all. The violence comes from the protestors, who bring their hate signs, hold their middle fingers up in the air, tell everyone to fuck off,so on and so on, while claiming its Trump who is committing hate Speech. When in fact, Trump ALWAYS talks about unity, and love, and to be nice to the protestors. Trump fights back, and so does his supporters, which is why he is leading in the polls. We love that. We're tired of being used, manipulated, lied to, and abused. We're not going to sit back and allow some asshole to disrupt a private rally by shouting, screaming obscenities, flipping us all off, and so on. It's just not going to happen. The media likes to quote a line that Trump said at a Rally in Las Vegas last month in which a protestor was allegedly swinging supporters and the security, to which Trump said: An incident that you can watch here, skip to the 34:48 time mark. The media only airs the part where he says "I'd like to punch him in the face". Trump was being honest, and everyone in the room was thinking the same thing. Trump wasn't enticing violence, nor hate, but was being honest about a smug asshole who thinks he has the right to disrupt a private rally, and attempt the ruin the night for all the attendees. Trump talks to us as if we are people, not as if we were slaves. He doesn't talk down to us. Think of what he says in that context. Another event the media likes to take out of context is at a rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, there were rumors that some disrupters would be there and attempt to throw tomatoes at Trump, and trump told the crowd: Who the hell want's to be hit in the face with a tomato? Either way, the media takes this out of context and only airs the part that "I will pay for the legal fees, I promise you". Trump wasn't saying attack "protestors", he was saying they saw someone about to assault him with a weapon, stop them. It's not hard to figure out. Look, I've been to a Trump rally. Honestly, There is noting but love in the room. It's a huge family. Other than the violent disruptors insulting everyone. Trump rallies have tens of thousands of people usually, and no one has ever been injured, and violent protests are very rare, so the idea that the media is trying to paint Trump rallies as violent is just frankly bullshit, and silly. It's obvious if anything, he'd prefer no violent protestors come as well. The thing that happened recently in Chicago was neither Trumps, nor his supporters fault. This was an organized RIOT and all the protestors who went there, did with the intention to disrupt, and even cancel the event, which eventually is what happened. Some how, for whatever reason, the media is trying to blame Trump for this. You can easily google and view who the aggressors were, it was the disruptors who were attacking, and threatening the supporters, along with the police, and also blocking ambulances. The aggressors were carrying Bernie Sander's support signs, so why does the media put all the blame on Trump? What about Bernie? The weird thing is, the media portrays the disruptors as "peaceful protestors" and Trump and the supporters as uneducated, evil, racist, violent, bigots. Even though in reality, Trump's supporters come from all races, all backgrounds, and all successes. Yesterday, CNN even had a guy on as if we were some hero, who in the day before tried to rush Trump on stage, and had to be stopped and tackled by Secret Service. Seriously, what the hell? Who knows what the lunatic intentions were. The scary part is that the idiot is already out and free, which kinda entices copycats due to the fact that you can do something so foolish, and be free the next day. The above instances are only a few examples of the media blatantly lying about Trump. You can view more instances in the "UNTRUTH ABOUT DONALD TRUMP" videos which I'll post at the end of this rant. If anyone is to blame for enticing violence its the media, Mitt Romney, amongst others who repeatedly tell everyone that Trump is a racist, and take his words out of context. Yeah Tapper, this is on you. Trump went on Jake Tapper's show yesterday, and called Tapper's bullshit on nearly everything, and told Tapper that if CNN would report honestly, most of these issues wouldn't be a problem. Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mySmINhVv1E [caption id="attachment_3922" align="alignleft" width="172"] Screenshot on Jake Tapper's facebook page that displays people are noticing[/caption] This all goes back to the concerted effort by the left, the right, the media to stop Trump. Nothing has worked thus far, and to be honest NOTHING WILL. Trump supporters are far more intelligent than the media and haters like to paint us as, and besides, what Trump speaks is common sense, no amount of education can teach common sense, I've known alot of overly educated idiots. No one gets their info from the mainstream media anymore. Sorry CNN, and Fox News, the internet is here now. We can all find out the truth for ourselves online, and people are on to the media, which becomes evident if you read the comments on Jake Tappers and even CNN's facebook, you can clearly see that the mass majority knows what CNN and the media is up too, and we've been knowing it all along. They're just becoming so desperate lately because they've been saying all along since Trump announced his candidacy that he wouldn't make it far, and have been trying to stop him since day one, but haven't been able to, and now he's on the path to win more delegates and even the nomination soon, and they're getting so desperate, and trust me, it shows. The bottom line is, political system in the US is flawed. Nothing ever gets done, we're being lied to, pitted against each other (Obama's race baiting), the Country is going into debt, there are no good jobs, no money, no nothing. Politicians are obviously  in it for the money which they get from the lobbyist, and we the people have had enough. The career Politicians are scared because they know that Trump IS NOT ONE OF THEM, he doesn't their money, or any more money at all, and that he'll actually work for the people, and not for the lobbyist. They are doing whatever they can to stop him. As I said, we have the internet now. We don't need the media which the establishment and lobbyist have controlled for year. We can get the facts and real news ourselves. It's also not hard to dispel the lies the mainstream media and establishment spew, because alot of it can be debunked with plain common sense. If you want to avoid the channels such as CNN, MSNBC, etc, you can catch most of Trump's rallies streamed live online at the RIGHT SIDE BROADCASTING's youtube channel. They also cover and stream his news conferences and another events. Stay strong Trump supporters! Get out and vote for some REAL CHANGE! I also suggest that you watch the two following videos, which correct many of the lies from the mainstream media about Trump. The guy who produced the videos, Stefan Molyneux, doesn't only just say what he thinks to be the truth, he links to all the sources as well, and uses them as directly in the videos. He also has very good videos about other issues, which you can find on his channel. He does a much better job with this stuff than I ever could. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gw8c2Cq-vpg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwJZGlC5lXM
Josh

Our Minecraft Server for Mature Players! Join Us :)

Edit: Minecraft server closed down - also the host sucked, stay away from MinecraftServers.net - Shady people
original article:
mc.hyzteria.com or 104.218.101.37
  I know many will say that since I am 32, I am way too old to be playing minecraft, but thats not true at all. For me Minecraft is really meditative. I like to simply load up the game dig some holes, build a shack, farm some plants, ride some horses, etc and think out my real life problems, and it be honest it works really good. I'd say nearly as good if not more than having a real nature walk. The problem with minecraft is that ALOT OF annoying kids play it, and they're probably the top group of people who do play the game, so I've pretty much been limited to single player, which I'm okay with, I play the game to think out problems and to relax my brain, not to be social. I've been thinking about putting up another Minecraft server for a while now. The good thing about running a server is that you can mod it and add features to it. You may be able to do this to single player to a limited extent. The only thing that was stopping me from putting up a server is all the BS and having to babysit kids. I don't care for power, i don't want to be an admin. I only like to set up my own services, and servers so I can make sure there is no admin abuse, and that they work properly. I just want to play the game, and not have to constantly deal with kids who are trolling or being total dickwads. Anyways, I decided to give another server a shot, so I set one up. I want the server to be more survivalish, so i'm tryin to only add features to the server to help make the game funner itself. I didn't want to use any protection stuff, such as land and chest protection due to this removing the survivalish feel, but I know in Minecraft we need this, so i set up a few things like lockette where you can lock checks (i might remove this though) and Factions which will allow you to gain members into a group, build your own community in the Minecraft world, and gain power to claim and protect land. I like factions because its not permanent power. The more your faction members die, the less power you have, which therefore leads you to lose land. So its not some magical power thing. Chests and other things are locked on your land from enemies or people who arent in your faction, so the lockette plugin might be removed due to this. [caption id="attachment_3895" align="aligncenter" width="730"] Map of our Minecraft World[/caption] I've also added some other features, and a real time map, which can be viewed at http://mc.hyzteria.com:8123/ I decided to use the HyZteria name for the server. I wanted to use the server to promote Grunch in some way, but I gotta understand that these need to be separate identities/services, etc. I want to have a gaming community on HyZteria for DayZ, Minecraft, and other Survivalish games, which don't really require zombies. There are many more features and ideas, which you can lean about by navigating to the info page: http://www.hyzteria.com/minecraft-server/ For right now All new members need to be manually approved by me. hopefully in the future known trusted members will be able to promote guests to membership status where they can interact in the world, but like i said before, i dont want to have to babysit people so i dunno. Mature players only, you can be promoted to member by chatting with me in the comments on here, hyzteria, or talk to me on the server. lets have a cool fun super awesome server :D mc.hyzteria.com or 104.218.101.37
Josh

Trump Rally

The day before yesterday Donald Trump's campaign released a statement that they would be skipping CPAC and were instead going to be campaigning, and added a stop in my home town of Wichita, KS. At first I thought "cool?" I assumed the rally would be in the evening, at the time that I work, so I assumed I just wouldn't be able to attend, but then I learned it was early in the morning at 9am, which then I realized that I could actually goto this. I usually don't bother going to... well anything. Especially not political events, especially not rallies, or anything like this. But Trump is a HUUUUUGE hero of mine. I don't like to debate politics in this form, so I really don't want to get into why I like his policies and stances, but I will say that Trump attracts alot of people due to his honesty, rather its negative or positive, he talks to you and not at you. And to sum of his policies = America first, and America should be first. Any country should hold themselves first, along with common logical sense. I got online and started to look at info on what was required to attend the rally. I know these rallies usually have pretty long lines, and I'd want to get as close to the front as possible, who wants to be in the back? Also it was going to be a pretty busy day in the area due to the Caucuses that were happening at 10am in the same area. So I'd have to get there not only early enough to get in the front of the line for the rally, but early enough to find a parking space. The campaign used a site called Eventbrite to register and receive tickets. So, I signed up for an account on there, got a ticket to the rally, which can either be digital using the EventBrite app, or you can print off the ticket in paperform. It's about a 30-40 Minute drive from where I live to Wichita, and I wanted to get there by at least 4am, the Rally was at 9, doors opened at 7am, so hopefully this would give me plenty of time. I finally got to the place where the rally was raking place, and ended up parking an super empty parking lot half a block away at about 3:30, and walked to the building where the even was taking place, was surprised to see a couple of people in line already, maybe 5, and they were all together. Great thing about Trump supporters is that WE ALL LOVE EACHOTHER. They instantly embraced me, i don't mean like a hippie hugs, but they said HI, asked me If i was a Trumpster, in which i said HECK YES, and welcomed me. None of us were sure that we were in the right place though, there were no signs, nothing to indicate where we should stand and form a line, so one of the guys walked around the building to make sure we were at the correct spot, and it turns out we weren't. The entrance as on the exact opposite side of the building. The building is round with many entrance so even after we thought we found the proper entrance we still weren't sure. [caption id="attachment_3864" align="aligncenter" width="656"] Police having a meeting in the lobby of the rally entrance.[/caption] There were alot of police having a meeting in this area I suppose to prepare for Trump's Security, we asked them if it was the spot, they said yes, and then we knew for sure when we looked into the window and saw the rally room, and the GLORIOUS PODIUM! [caption id="attachment_3866" align="aligncenter" width="656"] RallyRoom. This was only half of it, the room was much larger than it appears.[/caption] I was then amazed by all the Secret Service. I didn't think Trump would have so much Secret Service for only being a Presidential Candidate, but he had so much. It makes sense I suppose since he is front runner, and his ideas are scary to the establishment, and other power figures that the threat to his life is very high. I think Trump also uses the security to create a powerful persona, which it does work. He's great at that sort of thing. Eventually a truck load of Secret Service agents and officers showed up and started setting up metal detectors. [caption id="attachment_3865" align="aligncenter" width="369"] Secret Service setting up metal detectors[/caption] I was hoping to get a red MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN hat, but there was no one anywhere selling them at first. Eventually a few people showed up who seem to follow Trump rallies to sell stuff, and they had some hats. They were selling the hats for $20, i told the guy i only had a $10 bill and he sold it to me for that. I don't think these are official hats, they seem like cheap ones you can order and have whatever printed on them, but either way I had a red hat for the rally, ha Slowly but surely groups of people would start showing up and lining us behind us. Before 6 am there was a line all the way out to the street, which was a few hundred yards. The secret service finally opened the door and started letting us in about 6:30am, 30 minutes earlier than the 7am planned time for the doors to open. We quickly got to the front row, I didn't get front center, which i didn't really want, I got front but a little bit to the left, where i thought I had the perfect view of Mr. Trump. [caption id="attachment_3869" align="aligncenter" width="656"] The Podium![/caption] The music was super loud, and quickly became annoying due it being the same 4 songs on repeat. There was a lady there getting the crowd excited. I forget her name, and I can't find it anywhere, but as soon as I do i'll put it here. She said she was on the Apprentice years upon years go. She was hyping the crowd and giving away gifts/prizes etc. She actually did a pretty good job, and I can see why Trump would have her there. Time went by pretty fast even though we all had to sit there for hours listening to the same 4 songs on repeat, but there was so much excitement in the air. The room quickly filled up, even on the higher decks, and Trump is right in his rallies when he says there are thousands outside still trying to get in, which was also the case here. The room itself was much larger than it looks in the photos, but it's still a smaller building, and could probably hold a couple thousand max. Eventually two speakers came out, a Pastor to give a prayer, and The Kansas Secretary of State who endorsed Trump. He kind of annoyed me because his family showed up to watch him, so they put an extra row of seats in front of us to make room for his family to sit, which is bullshit because we showed up at 3am. The people I was with moved up to one of those seats, I stayed. Could still see as good as I could prior to them adding another row of seats, so it was cool. Eventually cooler sounding music started, and extra Secret Service started to come up front to the sides of the stages, and in front of it, and a voice announced LADIES AND GENTLEMAN, the NEXT PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, DONALD TRUMP! Huge Applause, everyone stood up, there was the man. It was really surreal really. I've never really seen or cared to see anyone famous, but Trump is someone I really admire, and I watch so many of his Speeches, it was just so surreal to actually see him. I didn't want to record the speech with my phone because I wanted to experience it and not worry about my phone, and I knew that the speech would be recorded by the media and archived online anyways. But i did record some shots and small video clips. I tried to record the excitement at the time when he first came out onto state, but I guess in all the craziness i hit the wrong button and it wasn't recorded, oh well. Full video of his Wichita, KS speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSUseuYyvrI Even though most of us had seats, besides the back of the room which was standing only, everyone stood up once he came, and never sat back down. [caption id="attachment_3874" align="aligncenter" width="369"] The Trump![/caption] Everyone in the crowed loved Mr Trump. He's right when he says his rallies are love and full of love, besides the few attention seeking protesters. Everyone was so welcoming of eachother, and we all felt like family. I haven't really experienced that before, anywhere. The weird thing was, being there was just like watching the speeches on youtube. Pretty much felt the same. I'm not sure if it was because I hadn't slept in along time or what, but it was still an amazing experience. The speech was shorter than most at his rallies, and this was due the rally starting a little after 9, and the caucuses in Kansas started at 10, so it was a shorter speech than usual, which I don't think anyone minded. It was just nice to see him. What really amazed me was how personable he was with the people. Not like a phony politician who just acts like he's a friend, he actually came across as sincere and friendly. An older man who rushed to the front see who is a Veteran really wanted an autograph, Trump explained that there was no time to give autographs because everyone had to get over to the Caucusing area. Trump actually took alot of time to explain to the guy. It might have took less time to just sign the autograph, but Trump was right. If Trump had came to the fence to sign autographs, Secret Service would have to rushed forward, and all the guests would rush to the front as well, which would've taken alot of time to deal with. The most annoying part for me was after the rally, there were so many Mexican protesters outside. People driving around with Mexican flags all over their vehicles. Really? This annoys the hell out of me because they should be prideful of the country that they live in, who is taking care of them. Not some other country that obviously isn't that great or else they'd be living there inside. Doesn't make sense. Be prideful that you're in the USA. I don't have anything against Mexico, but they don't live in Mexico. The area outside was full of people who wanted to Caucasus. In the end, Trump came in second place. Cruz some how won first place, not sure how. But oh well. I did notice that alow of the rally goers did immediately leave after the event and didn't vote. At least not at the sight itself. (many would have to drive back to their own counties to vote). I think that all this is new for newer voters who Trump pulled in, and not much has been sad about how the process works in Kansas. I honestly didn't even know that The caucus would be happening that day. But I guarantee you that all of these people will be voting on election day. Was a great experience! Video I shot of Trump leaving the stage and signaling to everyone to go around and Caucasus. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J05NLmn5yJ8
Josh

Short Takes - February 18th 2016 - Brain fog - Donald Trump biased Media

Where Have I been?
As You may have noticed, New content on Grunch is sparse these days, and this is the reason: So for the past 15 years i've been suffering, or should i say living with weird health systems. I don't really want to dive into all that right now, but the main symptom I have is severe brain fog. What is brain fog? Well mine is lack of mental clairty, and over all the inability to think. It's like something in my head is preventing signals from connecting, I can't really explain it. I used to think it was memory issues, but i figured out that it was just slow processing, which affects memory, and all the rest of things, including and especially concentration. Sometimes i get a weird tired/fatigue spell, and the brain fog is much worse. For the longest time i could just deal with it, and slowly work my way around it, but for the past few months it has been so bad that even when i tried to think my head would  literally hurt and the symptoms/fog would get worse. I thought maybe the bad shape of my teeth and the abscesses and other related infections were contributing to it, but I had all that stuff dealt with back in September, which hasn't helped any. A couple months ago I finally decided to start trying to find the cause of my symptoms. I ordered some hormone and thyroid blood tests from WalkInLab.com which i recommend (save money, and order the tests you want yourself), and every thing came back as okay, but I have a Vitamin D Insufficiency. At first I didn't think too much about this because nearly everyone these days has it, but i as researched it, it turns out that this Vitamin D is really a hormone that has receptors in nearly every sell in the body, especially including the brain, As i started to think, maybe this could contribute. The timeline does make sense: The winter sets in, days get shorter, etc less sun = symptoms getting worse. I'm still not sure, but I have been taking the normal treament for such insufficiency which is 10,000 IU of D3 a day. My symptoms have been up and down, but for the most part haven't mproved much yet, although today they are okay enough for me to even write this. When this bottle of D3 is empty, i'll order more blood tests and see where my levels are, i also want to get tested for Iron, Zinc, and other things. I've read reports of people who have had similar issues, and they were resolved a few months after taking treating their Vitamin D levels, so we'll see, but I'm not getting my hopes up. I'm starting to think that my issue might be digestive related since my other symptoms include constipation and such. But I'm not sure. I don't want to get sucked into this weird gluten thing, but certain foods don't make my head worse, and if they do its delayed so hard to spot. i dunno. By the way: For anyone who says "why not just goto doctor", well I have wasted thousands of dollars on doctors years ago, only to come up with nothing and to be let down. I actually gave up on trying to find out my issue, until it got much worse lately. Once i detect something crazy in my levels, i'll then goto doctor if its not something i can treat myself. I must point out that this issue doesn't make me stupid, just slows down some processing. It's like an internal thinking thing, because I still appear witty and sharp to others (as they say sometimes), and I don't seem to appear to be having this issue to anyone else in person, so i don't know. But it doesn't mean I'm stupid. ha Wanted to make that clear. But I should state that it does make me a pure, raw thinker. For some reason I don't think with emotions anymore. I think with what i feel is common sense and go with that, which is a good thing. I thought about closing Grunch down for now, since obviously i can't keep it active, but meh, no one really comes here anyways, and the archived content might help. Also i noticed that pushing myself to produce is create content helps my brain. I am still looking for other bloggers or writer people to join me here. Grunch is a nice site, b rand, whatever. I pay for it, come join ,ha. ABC is so anti Trump - Deleting Pro Trump posts
I knew the media was so anti Trump and biased against him, but  I hadn't witnessed it first hand. If you head on over here to this article ABC ?NEWS? posted about Trump inviting a guy up who dealt with a rude protester, and a army vet and police officer to the stage to honor and thank them, You can see how they kept all the crazy anti trump posts, but deleted anything logical or positive about Trump. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYZPKYecRGM Someone was crying saying that Trump is against free speech, I merely replied to them stating that Trump pays for these private venues in order to give his rallies. His campaign sets up areas outside for protesters to do their thing. They have no right to disrupt his private event. Some how, they post along with all the other pro Trump comments were deleted, but all the posts comparing him to Hitler (rolleyes) were left. Really? [caption id="attachment_3817" align="aligncenter" width="594"] My Deleted Pro Trump Post[/caption] I suppose I could've left the "victim" part out, but im so sick of people anymore feeling as though they are victims. No one is entitled or owed anything, but maybe mutual respect. Even the guy I replied to suggested that the replies weren't bad, so has no idea why they were removed. [caption id="attachment_3818" align="aligncenter" width="1490"] OP Doesn't even understand why the replies were deleted[/caption]   Sorry ABC News, but you aren't going to be able to stop. Supporters and free thinkers are on to the media, and your distortion only makes us stronger. I don't really want to make this post about why I like Trump, but just wanted to point out the obvious Bullshit that the media is doing and how biased they are, which Trump points out constantly. Don't trust what they say. Nearly everything that they've said so far about Trump such as things he's said, have been taken completely out of context. He's never said anything racist, or crazy. Everything makes sense once you hear what he says in the full form and original context. Use your own ears. I plan on writing a full Trump article soon if my brain allows me, ha.
Josh

DayZ Standalone worth playing yet?

Lately I've been really missing and wanting to play DayZ Mod. It's been nearly a year since gave up on it and closed own my servers, and really haven't looked back til recently. DayZ Mod has always had bugs and issues, but the game was still very fun, and the positives used to outweigh the bugs, but the ultimate game killer for me was after the GameSpy network shut down, and no one was able to reliably find and connect to servers. The GameSpy network controlled the login and auth/server systems for ArmaII/DayzMod. Bohemia did to a half assed attempt as moving the system to Steam Auth, but it rarely worked. Due to this I finally gave up, and closed down my popular server. [caption id="attachment_3766" align="aligncenter" width="768"] So much ground to cover, and this is only a tiny portion.[/caption] DayZ Mod was always a very special game to me, and instantly hooked me a few years ago when I first played it. The rawness, realism, and authentic atmosphere of the game combined with the vast open world map as simply amazing, and created something special which I've never witnessed in any other game. I remember at the time driving a car in real life, and thinking "wow this is just like in DayZ", ha Traveling in DayZ Mod took a very long time, so knowing that you could die at any moment and lose all the progress really intensified the gameplay. No other game has made me so paranoid, anxious, nervous, and had my heart beating so hard when I encountered another player, or a crazy Zombie. In Battlefield, or even Minecraft, you just simply respawn, there is no real threat. So DayZ is really special. I was very excited a few years ago when it was announced that they were creating a Standalone version of DayZ, which meant more features, more optimizations, and an over all improved game. However, the standalone was a huge buggy disappointment when it was finally released on Steam Early Access nearly two years ago. Of course Early Access titles are going to be buggy, and lack features, but the Standalone while having improved graphics, lacked most of the content and features that were even in the Mod. And for the majority of the time since it's original release, the game has been without Zombies. Personally I don't care too much for zombies, They were always more annoying in DayZ Mod than a threat, which I'll get to later, but they are nice to have just for that added fear. Also there weren't any vehicles for the longest time in DayZ, not even a bicycle, which is annoying due to the huge size of the world map, which is much much larger than the map in the mod. The progress has been very slow since its release, so slow that many of us had forgotten, and in most cases gave up on it ever developing into something worth playing. I did check in every now in then, only to see that not much has changed. Most of us just stayed playing the mod, which was still fun and playable up until last year. Since last year some other similar games have been released which seemed promising, such as H1Z1, which turned out to be a huge buggy let down, and an apparent cash grab. Don't get me wrong, H1Z1 is fun, and perhaps maybe has bit more to do and craft than DayZ. It has basebuilding and even some vehicles, but overall H1Z1 seems arcadish, and just isn't as immersive as DayZ is. Also the devs seems to have totally abandoned the Open World Survival aspect of the game in favor of developing the "Battle Royale" mode in which all the players drop from the sky at the same time, and you have to survive and kill everyone else, and the last one alive wins. They sell special crates for this gamemode, and it really seems like its a crash grab. I've played it several time, and while it was fun, it wasn't the Open World Realistic Sandbox Survival Game that it had promised to become. Also the game is infested with more Cheaters/hackers than Zombies. There have been many other  games released, that were huge disappointments, and aren't even worth mentioning. There is a game currently underdevelopment that I've been following for a long while now, and it looks so promising. I'm a bit jaded by the other games which turned out to be flops, so i don't want to get my hopes up. The game is called Survive The Nights, and it looks awesome. The devs don't want another broken Early Access title out there, so they are waiting til the game is worth playing before they release it, which is really respectable. Shows that they are in it for the fun of developing the game, and not just for a quick cash grab. I think the game is going to do well.  But then again, i said the exact same thing about H1Z1. Back to DayZ, Like i said, I've been really craving and wanting to play the game lately. I miss walking 5 miles only to be killed, and having to spend the next real hour running the distance again, ha. I tried to go back and download the old DayZ mod Launchers, such as Commander, and one simply labeled DayZ Launcher, which allowed you to find servers better than the built in server browser did, but due to the already mentioned gamespy closing, they barely work. It seems the dev of DayZ Commander gave up, it doesn't work at all. I couldn't get the other Launcher to work either. I then tried joining a game from within the built in server browser, which only gave me error, and constantly kicked me from the server. I didn't want to spend the next day trying to get DayZ Mod to work, so i gave up and deleted it. which is too bad. The game once was amazing, but now its hard to even get working. I then decided to give the Standalone version another go. I heard that a new engine was being worked on, new features, etc and a big recent patch that readded Zombies. One thing i hated about The Standalone were the lacking of vehicles, which are kinda needed in a game with such a map as big as whats in DayZ. They actually improved the map and made it much larger than was previously in the mod.. but, they finally added a few vehicles, and soon they'll add even a LittleBird, which is going to be awesome. So Standalone seemed like it was going to get better, but to be honest, i didn't expect much. I thought it was going to be like all the other times when I attempted to play DayZ Standalone, only to be disappointed, and almost immediately closing it. I launched the game, looked for a 24/7 DayTime server because I wanted to test the game, and not be stuck in the pitch black wilderness, i found a private server (which i prefer), and hopped right in. [caption id="attachment_3794" align="aligncenter" width="768"] Sunrise over Electro[/caption] Immediately noticed how beautiful it was. DayZ doesn't have the greatest graphics, but its not too cartoonish either, It looks nice, realistic, and immersive. It ran so smooth as well. I don't get like 60 FPS constantly, but I get a high playable FPS, which is much better than it was on the mod. I spawned in over at the Coast in Solnichniy, and did want I always do when first spawning into DayZ, which is pretty much an instinct, which is to run my ass off to get away from the populated Coastal line. Don't try looting, just run til you get far enough away. So I ran into a deep forest. I then made a plan to do what I usually do next, which is Travel up to North East Air Field to gather some quality gear and loot, such as decent weapons. [caption id="attachment_3756" align="aligncenter" width="768"] Admiring the View![/caption] The noticed that there weren't any Zombies anywhere, which was kind of a disappointment. In the Mod, Players would spawn like 10 local zombies each, and they would even spawn out of light poles in the middle of an open field, which was stupid, and didn't make sense, but it happened, so its rare that you don't see zombies. I wasn't seeing any, so I thought maybe they removed the zombies again. So instead of zombies spawning in the middle of no where, they made zombies spawn where it makes sense, since as in what would've been populated areas such as towns, bases, etc. I finally got to a small village, and there it is, my first zombie sighting. It was casually walking down the middle of the street obvious to me. This was my first zombie, so i wasn't sure how it was going to act. They said they were really working on improving the Zombie AI in the standalone, so I just hid and watched it. It totally wasn't aware of me at all. I then saw another zombie in the town, I maybe saw 2 total, and they were obvious to me, mostly because I was hiding from them, which is amazing. After playing for a bit, i realized that they GREATLY improved the Zombie AI, which weren't so intelligent in the mod, which were more of an annoyance than a threat.  They could see and hit you through walls, they could see you a mile away, not to mention the weird way they spawned. So if you were around any thing that could spawn a zombie from, such as a light pole, they would spawn.  Doesn't matter how much you tried to avoid them, if you were even near them they would spot you, and hit you through walls and chase you until you finally killed them. They were just horrible, and didn't make sense. [caption id="attachment_3770" align="aligncenter" width="768"] Just killing zombies...[/caption] However, the Zombies present in the current version of the Standalone are amazing. They don't have a super turbo speed as they do in the mod, where the zombie would be 500 ft behind you, then some how boosts its speed to end up 5 ft behind you and then slow down to a realistic running pace. This was stupid, it didn't make the game harder, it made it annoying and stupid. Make the zombies act in a way that makes sense, which they seemed to have done in the Standalone. [caption id="attachment_3771" align="aligncenter" width="768"] Watching and Sneaking around a Zombie.[/caption] You can easily out run zombies now (assuming you're in good health and are uninjured) , or even running through forests or around buildings can confuse and lose them. They aren't easy, they just make sense. [caption id="attachment_3772" align="aligncenter" width="768"] Out Running Zombies., Lost all these quickly.[/caption] But even if you don't wish to engage with them just hide and walk slow, they will remain obvious. AWESOME! They are not easy though, don't get me wrong. If you make a loud noise, such as a gun shot, ALL of them will come running at you. You can out run them again, but if you're in a heavy gun battle with another person, this can cause an issue. So the Zombie AI is amazing, and near perfect. They're not easy, nor an annoyance; they just make sense. [caption id="attachment_3775" align="aligncenter" width="768"] Waiting....[/caption] There still are some bugs with the zombies. From day one of the Standalone there was an issue with Zombies spawning under ground, or some place. You could hear but not see them.. This still seems to still be an issue but i'm not sure if its an actual zombie spawning under ground, or just an audio bug. Sometimes when a zombie is chasing you, you can hear growls from all around you from all sort of directions, so maybe its just an audio issue to cause suspense, i don't know, but its stupid. They said they made the world Zombies more dynamic in the way that they spawn. I think they said its half player spawned, and half on the server, or something like that. Which is nice because in the mod,  you could always tell if other players were around by the presence of zombies, since they were player spawned. Now, you can't really tell, which is a good thing. [caption id="attachment_3788" align="aligncenter" width="356"] Zombies in the far distance are static and don't move. they come to life when you get close.[/caption] I have noticed a weird bug where zombies in the distance just stay still, which is weird. I thought there other players in the distance, so I got my binoculars out, and noticed that it was only frozen zombies, which came to life the closer I got. This could be to help FPS performance and other issues, but its weird, i'd rather them just not be there. Reminds me of the weird issue in H1Z1 where anything in the distance such as zombie or player would look like a weird blocky stick figure. I think this could create an issue just as the player spawning issue did in the mod, which is it could indicate if there are any players in that area due to the zombies being animated. The loot spawning in the game is awesome as well. You wont find too much in one place, for example you can find a gun, but you wont find any ammo for it at the same spot, you'll have to look around, but eventually you can find some ammo. Many games limit loot in a way that it makes looking for loot feel like you're wasting your time. DayZ seems to have resolved this issue because you'll usually always find something, which provides a nice satisfying feeling. So the loot spawning is great. [caption id="attachment_3782" align="aligncenter" width="451"] My Modded Weapon[/caption] I really love the weapon customization feature, which I thought i'd hate when I first heard about it years ago. Usually you'll find just a single plain weapon without any sights, or addons and so on. You can find sighs, silencers, and all sorts of things by looting. So far I've been able to find a broken sight, better grip, and a nice silencer for my gun. If a part breaks, simple find another part. It's nice. I have found several broken down vehicles in the game, which all need working parts to operate, and I haven't been able to find all these missing parts to get one working, so i can't really judge how well vehicles work in the game.  I am current looking for parts of a truck I found, so hopefully I can report back on that soon. The movements and controls in the game are nice. Still a bit clunky and nice. I have came across several bugs, which arent game killers, but are annoying.  I like having two large rifles with me, so i'll have one attached to my back, and the other in my arm. The one is my arm always gets set on the ground when I go to eat, or drink, or interact with anything in the game. and several times now the gun has simply vanished. I had a very good rare FN Fal gun, and several other modded guns lost because of this. I now know to only keep one main weapon with me, ha. Which sucks, but it's better than losing a great gun. Another annoying bug that randomly happens is I lose control input in the game, meaning I can't move my guy around, nor bring up the menu to exit the game. I have to ALT+TAB out and close the game via task manager. This has happened Several times, and so far it hasn't caused any real issues, but I could imagine how annoying this would be if it happened during combat with another player. [caption id="attachment_3784" align="aligncenter" width="369"] My collection of Canteens. I'll never a near death thirst attack again![/caption] The most annoying issue I've ran into so far is a weird constant thirst. You can't go 30 seconds in the game without becoming thirsty. At first this was a huge annoying issue, but once you get enough storage, you can stock up on canteens and have enough water for a while. I found that the best way to deal with the weird thirst is to stay ahead of it and keep your Hydration level in the super green. I nearly died from dehydration and lost all color in the game. Keeping the indicators in the green restored my color and health fast. I suppose I do constant speed run around the map, but it shouldn't cause constant near death thirst levels. I remember this being a major issue when Standalone was first released, hopefully it gets reduced to a level that makes sense. Luckily the constant illness doesn't exist anymore. [caption id="attachment_3778" align="aligncenter" width="768"] Get used to constantly filling up several canteens in order to stay alive![/caption] The game also still has the annoying sounds as the mod had, such as random sticks breaking in the forest and bangs and booms here and there. I know this is added for suspense, but its artificial and is stupid. All sounds should be actually caused and triggered by something, not just for the sake of it. Another thing that some might not like is how the dead bodies despawn after like 10 minutes. This probably for server performance (many dead bodies = wasted server resources), but many people like having their bodies remain longer because if they accidentally die they can attempt to run back to their bodies to gather their loot, which happened alot in the Mod due to the bugs and glitches. Also if you have more of a chance at getting all your gear back, then dying really isn't that big of a deal. 10 minutes is enough time for killers to loot your body. Is the game worth playing yet? ABSOLUTELY YES! finally! I'm not sure if it was the latest update .59 or whatever, (haven't played in awhile), but its definitely worth playing now, and I can stay that its far better than the Mod. While you may not have the variety of weapons and vehicles as whats in the mod, you certainly have more quality weapons, and over all features. It's still early access, so I assume they'll be adding more vehicles and content. It may have taken 2 years to get to this point, which is sad, but we're finally there! Not to mention how much better the game runs compared to the mod. I have an Ultra wide Monitor, and the game renders and plays smoothly on on Ultra settings at 2560x1080 res with an older GTX 7704gb, which isn't 4k, but its decent which most games have a hard time rendering on, and AAA games like Call Of Duty Advanced Warfare don't even render my resolution period, I haven't cared to check if Black Ops III does. I thought I'd hate the standalone due to the devs not allowing custom modded servers, but in all honestly, you really don't need them because the entire point of modding and customizing the Mod was to add features, buildings, and to correct bugs that were present in the game. Most of these features are already built into the standalone. So the need to make the Standalone playable isn't there, since it already is. I was really shocked by how much fun I had in the Standalone. From this point on, I can see it only getting better. The Devs have stated that they plan on the game leaving Early Access and being a full release in 2016. I'm happy to be finally able to recommend this game, you can pick it up on steam for about $35.  
Josh

Rant - A Small Orange

The past few weeks have been such a headache. You my have noticed that I haven't posted anything in a while. This was mostly due to ASO (A Small Orange, My Host), messing up, and having issues. I used to strongly recommend this company, but I am now reconsidering this. A few weeks ago Grunch was down for nearly an entire week, as were nearly every other Cloud VPS customer of ASO.  ASO didn't provide much info as to why they were down, only that they were working on bringing the servers back up. This went on for nearly a week before the servers finalyl came back on. They never did provide any information as to why the server went down, but I gave them benefit of the doubt that something major must've happened, while other customers were constantly complaining and shouting that they're leaving ASO and getting hosting elsewhere, and I should follow as well. Since then, the Hosting as pretty much been working, but the control panel has been off and one, which is crazy because that means I'm unable to restart the entire VPS. I can use cloud commands to restart and things, but i'm not too sure if thats the same kind of restart, Either way I can't turn the service on without access to the cloud command, so it was a scary thought that if it did crash, i'd be screwed. I noticed sometime last week that ASO did something very shady that I think its far worse than the actual downtime, and that is they disabled all public messages from users on their Facebook. During the week long down time their facebook was the only way for us users to figure out what was going on since ASO wasn't saying anything to any of us. The fact that they disabled the public messages, and deleted all the comments that were posting shows that they aren't taking responsibility for the downtime and other issues, and are trying to hide it. I don't know, it just seems shady. Thankfully they can't see to do this on Twitter, but Twitter isn't as easy for many to use, and i still don't know what I'm doing on it, but at least we have that. The final thing that happened to make me want to leave was about a week ago I some how got banned from my own site/server. I could access the website from a browser, which I think is due to me using CloudFlare DNS, so it might filter my actual ip, but I wasn't able to login to FTP, SSH, or any of the important things that any server/webmaster person needs. At the time i wasn't too sure how it happened. I assumed it was something screwy on their end, so i contacted support. The first guy via live chat said that they had just installed a LEND, or something like that, and soon i'll be able to access my files again. Hours and a day pass and I still can't access the site, so i contacted support. Support at ASO is so lackluster. I don't get it. I never had to deal with such lazy support before from any company for anything. And with ASO, you'll be lucky if you even get lazy, at least that's something. Days can go by without a single reply to the support ticket. Luckily for me I don't really need that much help, as long as I can actually access my site and the server control tools to perform tasks myself, i'm mostly okay, so a lot of time went by before all this happened when I didn't even need to contact them, so I wasn't aware of how crappy they were. I saw the first signs of their crappy support a month ago a week or so before the entire system crashed, which I think was connected. Their Cloud Control Backup thing just quit working, when it worked wonderfully in the past. This is an issue because although I can create a backup manually of the site files via SSH, I can't back up all the customized server files and settings without the main backup system. So I contacted their support, which gave me a few crappy unhelpful replies, and then eventually said that they don't even support the Backup feature and that its just there to use whenever, and sometimes it works. What the hell? They advertise it all over their pages, or maybe thats another backup system that we have no control over, who knows. But I was very disappointed. It really just seemed like they were being lazy and didn't want to fix the issue at hand. The backup system worked great for months upon months. I suppose it bit them in the ass in the end because I think it was connected to the eventual crash of the entire system. Anyways, back to last week. I contacted their support about being unable connect to the server IP. They asked me to do a trace route, which showed a block after their COLO4 datacenter in Dallas. Then nothing for days. Eventually I gave up and started looking for another host. The thing is, I really like the speed of ASO, especially for the price. I got a good deal and prepaid for an entire year of hosting. So I'm tryin everything to not leave and goto another host. But this crap is really adding up. During my search I went back to the article that I originally found ASO on back in September. The guy who wrote the article and performed the test seems to really know what he's talking about and I fully trust him. I started to consider some of his other Recommendations such as Cloudways, and even started to consider giving Godaddy Wordpress hosting a shot. Even though I though I thought that their shared hosting was crappy and slow, but it was years ago that I tested it. Their Wordpress hosting has been getting some good reviews, and its super cheap! I posted another comment to his article providing a little description of my issues with ASO (who he no longer recommends), to which he replied to and actually provided alot of info and tip, and one of which was that I perhaps locked myself out of my VPS. I actually never even considered this. I've been able to connect to my server via my phone, or from another IP addy, so I knew it was related to my IP. I was able to login to my server via SSH on my phone and disabled IPTABLES, which handles IP bans, and sure enough, I was then able to connect. I then started the process of trying to figure out how to unban myself. ASO does have some knowledgebase articles, but its all scattered, confusing, and can be hard to find. I found my way figuring problems out by using typical linux/centos/nginx commands that I can find via google. But for some reason I wasn't able to unban myself. No matter what I did it kept re-adding the ban.  I then had a rare spark in my brain that suggested maybe there is another script or something that keeps banning me that is separate from IPTABLES. Did some searching and luckily I came across this ASO Article, which talks about Brute Force Firewall, and other things, which was unknown to me. I used the APF commands and was able fully unban myself, and then i immediately whitelisted myself. The situation is so stupid. I didn't even know that ASO had this Brute Force Firewall thing, and it's something they could've told me or even suggested that I look at on day one. The idea of that and them ignoring me for days pisses me off more than being unable to connect does.  AHH!!! The support really is horrible. i know the hosting is "undamaged" but for damn sakes. Anyways, all seems good now, ha. I decided since this was more user error or whatever, that I'll go ahead and stay on this ship as long as I can ,even though some water is coming through tiny holes. I really hope that ASO pulls its shit together. Due to this, i retract all my previous statements recommending ASO. I'm hoping things can go back to where I don't need to contact their support, and the service just works. we'll see how it goes from here. Rant over.  
Josh

Tip: Get Adguard Premium Lifetime License for only $8.51

I know many people are looking for a proper adblocking solution. I posted a trick just yesterday on how to block ads in the Edge browser. Adblock and such work good as a browser extension, but whats better is to have a way to block ads SYSTEM wide and in programs and ads, and software such as Ad Muncher and Adguard do that. I've been an Ad Muncher subscriber for years, and it's sad to see that software dying. Luckily, we have an alternative: AdGuard. [caption id="attachment_3653" align="aligncenter" width="551"] Adguard Currency Trick[/caption] This is an amazing tip/trick that I came across last night. By using a currency conversion glitch or whatever, you can save $50 and get a Lifetime license for Adguard Premium for only $8.51, normally priced $59.95. You can get it even cheaper if you wish to not have the premium version, which only comes with Android support. It seems the iOS version is free, and even cheaper if you get a year subscription, which is pointless since the lifetime is so cheap. The glitch happens when you select Belarussian roubles as the payment, and then convert it to USD in paypal. Use this Link to order a Premium Lifetime license: https://adguard.com/en/license.html#new/5/PREMIUM/36500/1/ You can change things up, just make sure the currency stays as Belarussian roubles. [caption id="attachment_3654" align="aligncenter" width="544"] Paypal Conversion of Belarussian roubles to USD[/caption] At first when I came across this trick I was skeptical, and was shocked when I clicked payment in the cart and paypal converted the price to only $8.51. I was still a bit weary of this, surely they are against people using this glitch, but after a quick google search, I found many people talking about the same exact thing years ago back in 2014. So it's a known glitch that they seem to be okay with. After submitting paypal, Instantly got a license, that activated and works just fine. [caption id="attachment_3656" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Two AdGuard Licenses in account[/caption] Weird thing is, they sent me two licenses. I thought it glitched but the order ID and everything was the same. I didn't want to feel secure in using either License because i thought maybe they'd shut one off, so I contacted their support letting them know of the double license that they had sent me. Though I was worried that they would see i used the currency glitch and suspend both licenses, which is okay. [caption id="attachment_3658" align="aligncenter" width="468"] AdGuard Support Ticket[/caption] I was shocked by their reply, they simply said that there is some glitch in the system that sent me to licenses, and that I can keep both and gift one to a friend if I'd like. WOW! So not only to they seem okay with this currency glitch, they are also okay with a glitch that sends double licenses out. It's almost as if its intentional, ha (my dad used the currency trick and got two licenses last night as well) The company seems to be great, and have nice friendly support. I think the company is Russian, so it's not a surprise that they aren't as greedy as other company's in the US and Europe seem to be, which is a breath of fresh air. [caption id="attachment_3657" align="aligncenter" width="675"] AdGuard Client UI[/caption] So far, AdGuard is working great. The Client is very sluggish and laggy moving around its settings and such, but it works, and the iOS version is really nice. Not only does the software block ads, but it also blocks malicious and phishing sites from connecting, which is a great addon. Also I don't need to use the host file trick that I posted yesterday to block ads, AdGuard blocks ads in Edge just fine.  
Josh

Tip: Blocking Ads in Edge Browser

The Edge browser has been out for nearly a year now, and due to lack of browser support, I haven't actually given it an actual shot until now. I have essential plugins/extensions that I need to use, which one is LastPass. Microsoft has stated that an update will come out... someday... that will make Extensions available in Edge. Hopefully that day is soon. However recently I've started to have problems with my browser of choice which is Firefox. For some odd reason, certain sites now refuse to work properly in Firefox. On some sites features wont load, and on others the features just don't work such as buttons to login and such. I have no idea why all of a sudden this is happening. I thought perhaps it was an issue with my Firefox profile, so I wiped it and started clean, but the problems still remained. I thought maybe it was a problem with Firefox and windows 10, but I have no idea, and i can't figure it out, i really wish i could because otherwise firefox is the perfect browser for me. It's weird that no one else seems to be having these issues. So, I have to jump ship on Firefox, which is way too bad. Sadly, there aren't very many choices out there for Browsers. There used to be a lot of choices, but not anymore. Now we pretty much have Firefox, IE, Edge, and Chrome. There are some other reskins and such like Opera, but they're all pretty much Chrome. [caption id="attachment_3631" align="aligncenter" width="586"] Example of Font Rendering Issues in Chrome, Seriously Google?[/caption] I've tried using Chrome for the past couple of months, but Chrome is just so ugly, and the font rendering is on many sites is just horrible. This new theme on Grunch has parts that render so ugly in Chrome I also don't like the weird way the LastPass extension works on it. Due to this, I'm going to try to use Edge. So far, its really nice, very light weight, seek, and very clean, and the font rendering is beautiful. I've only came under two issues while using Edge which are: Passwords, and Ads. The password issue I'm just going to have to deal with manually. Since there is no addon/extension support right now, I have no other choice. I'm finding the password issue not so troublesome. Since Edge has its own password manager as with most modern browsers, I only have to enter the logins once, and it remembers them. For easy access to my logins/passwords I have downloaded the LastPass desktop app, which conveniently sits in the tasktray, so when I need a password, I just go down there, find it, copy, and paste it into Edge. Takes a few seconds only, so its okay. It'll have to due for now. So now the ad problem... Oh how I've forgotten how annoying ads are. It's been years since I've not used an Adblocker, and it hasn't improved, and in fact, it has gotten worse. There used to be annoying flashy flash animation ads that would auto play and drive everyone nuts, now they have full videos and sound that play. What the hell?  I seriously don't understand the point of that. No one is going to watch a random ad video when they're reading articles on the internet. It's stupid. My admuncher doesn't seem to block ads in Edge, and to behonest, I need to start looking for an alternative to AdMuncher. The main guy over at admuncher made the program free, and has seemingly abandoned it. He hasn't visted his own site and forums in like a year. He has a buddy there that says he can't even get in contact with the guy much, and the buddy is the one who seems to keep the ad list updated. So, the days of Admuncher are limited anyways.. I've seen some shady looking programs that advertise blocking ads in Edge, but they're third party tools by people I have no idea who are, and like I said, they just look shady and are probably adware if not malware. I have gone with the old school method of dealing with ads, which is editing the host file. I thought it was going to be a headache to manually ad tons of code to the host file daily if not weekly to stay upto date, but I discovered a tiny program that will do it for me called HostMan. [caption id="attachment_3622" align="alignleft" width="338"] Hostman[/caption] Hostman is a tiny program that you can install, or open without installing in the portable format, and what it does is it'll allow you to subscribe to lists just like in any other adblocking software, and it'll auto download and apply that list based on a schedule, which is really neat. Hostman comes with a few default choices which you can easily enabled, but you can easily and quickly add your own source if you wish. I initially had a issue with the program disabling my internet and freezing windows, I think this is because I subscribed to the hpHosts lists, which contains like 300k blocks, and for which ever reason it blocked my internet from working, and kept freezing my windows. I eventually had to go into safemode and restore my old host file, which was made easy due to Hostman automatically creating backups. I think this issue was because windows has to read through that entire list when it makes a connection. [caption id="attachment_3625" align="alignright" width="505"] Hostman Comes with Default Sources to chose from,[/caption] I subscribed to another list called Cameleon, which seems to work great. No ads so far. Hostman and these adlists not only block ads, but they can also block malicious sites, and tracking as well. Overall this method seems to be working out well, and I'm happily using the Edge browser. I think its very sad that in this day and age we still have to deal with annoyingly offensive and intrusive ads that ruin it for everyone. I know ad revenue is the only way some sites are able to stay online so its very important, but the risks of allowing whatever ads and malicious sites to connect simply aren't worth it. I'm not sure if there is a way to whitelist trusted sites using the host file method, but if I find a way I'll be sure to post it. Hopefully Edge will get addon/extension support soon, and we'll have a intuitive adblocker for it that'll allow us to easily block bad sites, while whitelisting sites that deserve the extra ad revenue.    
Josh

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