Well I saw the announcement back in August about Lost Coast, and thought “Oh, it’s not gonna be much difference”. But now, I find out I was wrong! Half-Life 2: Lost Coast is amazing! The sheer amount of detail in everything makes it look so different, especially when played at high resolutions with full graphical settings, including 8x AntiAliasing, 16x Anisotropic Filtering and Full HDR.

My only complaint is that it is too short; therefore there isn’t enough time to enjoy the scenery (unless you spend a minute killing each Combine soldier)

Here is an in-game screenshot, one I’m actually using as my new wallpaper it’s such good quality!

- Fr3d

Well I’m now back from my short break in Devon, which is in the South West of England. Some interesting words could describe my holiday, the most appropriate ones being rainy, windy and cold. From the time just after we arrvied to the time we had driven away again, it rained. From the second day there it blew seriously strong gales all day and all night. And the cold… Well it’s just naturally cold from September all the way through the year round to June, so I can’t really complain about that as much :P

My grandparent’s small cottage, which is *somewhere* in Dartmoor, Devon . From there they run a small hand-made chocolates business.

- Fr3d

While looking around on my hard disks for files and folders to delete in order to free up some space, I found a screnshot of how my desktop used to look, exactly a year ago tommorow!

Here it is!

If you want some info, this is what I can remember :P

Window Blinds theme: K-Tek
Object Dock theme: Apollo (I think, possibly modded)
Windows Icons: K-Tek
Wallpaper: K-Tek

I think there was a mouse cursor scheme too, probably with the same name.

All these skins can be found at WinCustomize.com

- Fr3d

I ordered a new motherboard, cpu and graphics card last week, (and a new wireless router), which arrived yesterday afternoon. After spending several long hours trying to configure my new router to do what I needed it to do, I gave up. As it happens, it can’t do what I want until I upgrade the firmware of my other router that I want to link it to, and I can’t do that until Draytek release a new Beta. :P

After that I spent another hour checking I had backed everything up, burnt my custom XP Pro install disk (which didn’t actually work, but now’s not the time…), and turned the PC off. After wrestling for about 10 minutes with all the various cables, screws and components I managed to get the old CPU, graphics card and motherboard out. Another 20 minutes later, the new stuff was in and I was nearly ready to boot. However, I did take the time to read the manual before all of this :P
Now, after the install, a little tweaking of windows and updating of motherborad firmware the system is running fine. I got a massive 6520 points in 3DMark05 - This doesn’t sound like much but don’t let it fool you

So I now have a kick-ass gaming PC that can do anything I want (and a lot more), and it actually looks good, plays good, and sounds good (in other words, it doesn’t sound like a hoover anymore! :D)

I’ve skinned Windows this time too, and made a new custom wallpaper:

And for those who are really interested, here are the specifications of what I bought:

• GigaByte Geforce 7800GT
• Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe
• AMD Athlon 64 3000+

And what I already had:

• Hiper Type-R 580W
• Maxtor DiamondMax Plus9 80GB SATA
• Maxtor DiamondMax Plus10 160GB SATA
• NEC DVD±RW Dual Layer
• GigaByte 3DCooler Ultra

Anyone interested in where I got all this from, or where they can buy PC components from should visit Scan Computers

- Fr3d