MasterDex

Hot Heart has it right. The Rubberbandits have some entertaining stuff. If you ever wondered what the Irish equivalent of a chav was then the Rubberbandits would give ya a good idea.

KANPAI FROM A VERY DRUNK IRISH GUY! Thank you to Dean for creating such a home for us rejects and wannabes and allowing us the oppotunity to express ourselves free of the constrictions of journalistic "integrity". Thank you Gregg for your most helpful editing and thank everyone here at PXOD for showing me that no matter how nerdy I may be, that I have a place to call a home on the net. You have all driven me forward through a most difficult year. Though I may be sharp of tongue and quick to argue, I love you all. You are my friends without borders and I wish for the best of luck for all of us in the coming year. Here's to another year of fellowship and forging. Here's to Press X or Die.

Not enough Uematsu.

The first case you have there would be nice for a living room, especially since it can double up as a TV/Monitor stand.

Because trying to pick up women as a nerdy bacholor is a battlefield and I require one of these just to get to the objective:

I remember that one! I like it, I wouldn't buy it myself but it's a very modern looking case. I looked up that case you pictured earlier. It does have fans at the front behind the door so it's got some ventilation anyway. It does have noise-reducing foam though which I find traps heat inside the case. The last case I had that had that was terrible for heat dissipation...until I ripped out all that foam. It also had a door to it, as did my current one. They were taken off as well.

I wholeheartedly disagree. I think a handle on top should be standard. Why do you think it's over the top? It serves a purpose and one that anyone with a full, fitted tower should be glad of. Let's face it, carrying a hulking rig to and from it's station to work on it and clean it can be a pain and always carries the risk that a slip could happen. A handle on top, while not eliminating that risk altogether, certainly mitigates the chances of it happening. That's 100% minimalistic and not very functional from the looks of it. First off, it has a door on the front, eliminating a good amount of possible ventilation and foiling many hopes of adding front panels for something like an audio card, etc - unless of course you don't mind keeping the door open all the time but then what's the point of it in the first place? I'm going to assume that both sides don't have any ventilation based on the side shown, making it even more impractical for a serious gaming system. Granted, it's a fine case for a workstation but not for a gaming PC. As for the transformers comment, take a look at the Haf series. They're 99% function - apart from the LEDs and window but the case design itself is designed primarily for function over form, I believe the same is true of the Storm Trooper. I understand the aesthetic appeal of minimalistic design but I find it a bit narrow-minded to label anything that's not of a minimalistic/traditional design as OTT. /nerdrant over.

I'd say those cases you've never seen make up the bulk of the market. I wouldn't call the Storm Trooper or Thor OTT or minimalistic, I think they strike a nice balance between the two. Similarly, the other popular choices of the Antec 900, 1200 and 300 along with the HAF series lie either side of the scale with the HAF cases being a bit more boisterous than your average case and the Antecs being more subdued but still having some pizzaz. I guess it's all down to personal taste though.

It's more about functionality with me but I like to get something stylish while I'm at it too, especially since I keep my PCs raised up at eye level.

Did somebody say Storm Trooper? http://www.techspot.com/review/461-cooler-master-storm-trooper/ I should have it by the end of January if all goes well. Sooner hopefully.

I picked up Shadows of the Damned, Enslaved and Far cry 2 for PS3 today. €23 all together and since I had a €20 gift voucher, it cost me literally nothing.

23. I have a feeling I'll be using a no.1 blade by the time I'm 30.

I've been eyeing up this monitor for a while. It's cheap for what it is and seems like it's a good quality screen so it might be worth seeing how the price is on the other side of the pond. As for the 7950. It's worth waiting for it even if it turns out not to be what you want as AMD are sure to drop the price of their other cards. Personally, I find spending more than €250 or so on a GPU to be a bit of a waste as at any time within two years, you could find your card is outdated or superceeded.

No idea. I don't use Chrome. I may get a picture of myself with my new hairdo up at some stage. Hint: It's short. I haven't had my hair like this in like a decade...and back then, it looked a lot fuller. Now I'm stuck with this style since going longer reveals I'm balding...not that the receeding hairlines don't already give that away!

Oh yeah! Peteer is getting an SSD so my bit about partitioning isn't really valid here! Yeah, I'm in the same position as you regarding SSDs, right now, I'm not ready to hand over the cash they're asking for. It's that time of the decade again, Battra. I bet hardware sales this year and next year are going to be massive.

We don't say mail here at all. We've got An Post (An Pust) as our national postal service that sends post. Once the post is through the door, we go look at our post. I imagine it's the blackrock/Trinity contingent that are the only ones that say mail here. Oh and we've got Royal Mail....postboxes that are painted green. Back in the day, the government couldn't really afford anymore than some green paint. But by golly! We made use of it!

Let's just hope that words like Foshizzle don't catch on then!

Having spent a couple of weeks now getting my gaming fix from a GM950, I can vouch that Intel's integrated graphics are decent enough for some light gaming. If you're willing to spend a bit more on the mobo, I'd suggest changing it to this one: http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=P67%20Extreme6 It's one of the best P67's on the meerkat. I'd also get an external drive if you don't have one already. You'd be surprised how quickly a TB hdd fills up when you start installing everything to it. An external means you're always going to have room to save music, etc. And it's very handy for backing up stuff. Also, if you're partitioning the drive for Windows (A good idea as it means you can protect the rest of the data should Windows go belly up and need to be reinstalled), make sure to give it enough room. Anything from 60-100gb is fine. The updates and all the stuff that installs to the windows partition really fills it up.

If it's getting to Windows startup before shutting down, it sounds like a hard drive problem, possibly memory but I'd say the hard drive should be the first thing you look at. Often, when a hard drive starts to go, you'll get some more life out of it even while it corrupts further. If it is a hard drive problem, repairing windows could allow you that little bit extra to make any important backups.

Wikipedia says I'm right. What's always annoyed me about a particular British accent is when -ing becomes -ink as in Something becomes Somefink. The Irish have some horrible and hilarious accents but that shit annoys the hell out of me.

Which is British? Axe is American, right? I know Lynx is the branding in Ireland but then there's HB and Walls soooo, I'm confused.

I got myself The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo today. I've heard good things. I also got my sister a gift voucher. Much better than trying to decide what to get her. I wish I got more gift vouchers when I was younger. Stupid deodrant packs. WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO SAY?! *ahem* Bah humbug.

With my PC still down, I've had more incentive to try Dwarf Fortress again. This time, with the cumulated knowledge of the multiple failures I had previously along with a more carefree attitude to the interface, I'm doing pretty well. But I think I've hit a bit of a wall. I've got nearly 70 dwarves, half of which I'm sure don't have their own rooms and I've got an assortment of different workshops. I've got a militia squad and my engraver is working on smoothing out my dining room whenever he isn't drinking or sleeping. I haven't a clue what way to go for organising my dwarves' professions though and I can't get my metal industry started because I'm having no luck finding hematite or some other iron ore, which also means my militia squad is running around with their bare fists...apart from the one guy that has an axe. So, where do I go from here? How best should I sort out my labour and how the hell do I find some Iron ore!