#am i posting what is technically the beginning of a series after posting four installments of said series?

[an-inky-fingered-lass]

A story for the moment you realize things are going to be okay. Even if -- in that moment -- you didn't yet know you would be, too.

This was routine, in a lot of ways; they’d been here so many times together, so many different places. It made it feel a little less like the world had already ended, like the planet was cracked apart outside the window.

It was kinda a stupid question at this point, but Phil asked anyway. “You okay?”

May’s answering snort was soft, a little less sardonic than it might have been. After a long second, she nodded. “Been better, but.”

“It’s okay to not be, you know.”

She shook her head. “Pot, kettle.”

Phil huffed a slight laugh. May’s gaze flickered over to him, either looking for or seeing something no one else could see. Somewhere along the line, her shoulders had finally fallen into a sloping, exhausted line.

Read the rest on Ao3.

#am i posting what is technically the beginning of a series after posting four installments of said series? #erm. kinda. #but see i wasn't ever expecting this one to work for me. it was a PAIN. #but it also contains some of my favorite bits of dialogue i have ever written. #so. #sigh. #aos fic #agents of shield fanfiction #melinda may #phil coulson #jemma simmons #daisy johnson #gen fic #tw for non-graphic depictions of medical procedures #philindaisy #inkspinner fic #series: get out my machete and battle with time once again

[scarletwelly-boots]

Books Read 2019

It’s time again for my annual books read post (a little earlier than usual, but I couldn’t wait). I read 24 books in 2019, 4 books more than last year, though two are in progress and I expect to finish them by the new year.

It is year four of the reading challenge from Popsugar. There were 48 categories this year, so I got 50% again. Unlike last year, I did not change any categories, but I may have taken liberties with some again, we’ll see. So, without further ado, let’s begin the list. [Under the cut]

1. How to Train Your Dragon, by Cressida Cowell (A book becoming a movie in 2019). Okay, so there have already been two movies in this series, but the last one (*sob*) came out this year, so it counts. I read this book and a few of the others in the series a few years ago, but revisited the first one this year. It’s really good, but don’t go into it expecting it to be like the movies. The character names are the same, but that’s about it. If you can get your hands on the audiobook version, it’s read by David Tennant, which is excellent. Definitely recommend; it’s just as good as the movies.

2. Little House in the Big Woods, by Laura Ingalls Wilder (A book that makes you nostalgic). This is another reread. My dad read the whole series aloud to my sister and I when we were barely older than Laura is in the first book. It was the series he read before the Harry Potter books came out, and we both got sucked into that series. So yeah, very nostalgic. This is a series of semi-autobiographical stories chronicling Wilder’s pioneer childhood, and this is the first in the series. Some of the language doesn’t really age well, but for the most part it’s a delightful book.

3. An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, by Hank Green (a book you think should be turned into a movie). Holy. Shit. I was very, very pleasantly surprised by Hank Green’s debut novel (and yes, John Green is his brother). This is a mysterious book about first encounters and internet fame, with a queer young adult (like, really YA, as in post-college) protagonist. She’s kind of shitty sometimes, but I would argue all twenty-somethings are shitty sometimes (I mean, I literally typed “*sob*” two entries up, like I’m channeling my 2009 self, and I didn’t delete it.). I would highly, highly recommend. And apparently, SOMEDAY, there’s supposed to be a sequel, thank GOD.

4. Loki: Agent of Asgard, by Jason Ewing (a reread of a favorite book). I could actually get away with a reread for this one! I love this graphic novel series. I love how they depict Loki, how he finally gets a goddamn redemption arc. It’s a really fun read. Check it out.

5. The Beast Within, by Serena Valentino (a book inspired by mythology, legend, or folklore). A companion novel to Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. I don’t really remember much about this book. It was weird. But like, it plays with the timeline and the curse a little bit, where the beast gets cursed but doesn’t become a beast immediately. He slowly transforms as his behavior gets worse and more cruel. Apparently he used to be friends with Gaston, but Gaston forgot about him once he finally transformed. Really weird. If you’re obsessed with this fairytale like I am, give it a shot. If not, it probably won’t be that interesting.

6. Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen (a book you see someone reading on TV or in a movie). Another reread. I know it’s a classic, but I seriously just love this book. 

7. Howl’s Moving Castle, by Diane Wynne Jones (a book about someone with a superpower). Another reread of a favorite book, what can I say. The movie is my favorite movie, but the book is better.

8. Carry On, by Rainbow Rowell (a book told from multiple character POV’s). Okay, listen. I had to reread this book, because it had been a few years and the sequel came out this year. Think of this as generic brand Harry Potter if Draco was a vampire, was Harry’s roommate, and helplessly in love with Harry. I’m serious, it’s generic brand. But damn if I don’t love it. @JKR, this could be us but Harry had to be the jock that married his high school sweetheart and grew up to be a cop. Definitely read.

9. Franny and Zooey, by JD Salinger (a book with no chapters/unusual chapter headings/unconventionally numbered chapters). My brother got me this book for my birthday. Before this I had only read Catcher in the Rye, which I started out hating when I was fourteen but turned into loving when I was nineteen. Honestly I think this novel is better than that one. I really loved it. Highly recommend. What’s it about? Who the fuck knows? But to quote my brother: “At its core, I think this book is about a smart brother and a smart sister. I think we can relate.” So read it and buy it for the smart brother or sister or sibling in your life.

10. 1916, by Tim Pat Coogan (read a book during the season it is set in). This is an Irish history book about the Easter Rising of 1916 and (what I didn’t know when I started reading it in April) everything that came after that can trace its cause back to the rebellion, all the way to the centennial of the Rising. The Easter Rising was the catalyst of Irish freedom. It was like the Boston Tea Party of Ireland, rather than the Battle of Yorktown (as in it kickstarted the War for Independence but didn’t immediately result in freedom), that is, if the instigators of the Boston Tea Party were rounded up, imprisoned in Kilmainham Gaol, and a week later almost all executed by firing squad. It’s a tedious read if you’re not into Irish history or history in general, but I enjoyed it.

11. Loki: Where Mischief Lies, by Mackenzi Lee (a book set in space). Okay, technically it takes place on Asgard and Earth, but those are planets, and planets are in space, so it counts! I’m still reading it, but I really like it so far. (Honestly I maybe just like the idea of Loki in knee high black boots marketed towards women and black nails. I never promised not to be gay.)

12. Norse Mythology, by Neil Gaiman (a book set in Scandinavia). I’m sorry! I read this book every year. Neil Gaiman is an amazing writer, and we all know I’m gay as shit for some good Loki tales. 

13. Artemis Fowl, by Eoin Colfer (a book that takes place in a single day). Okay, I know people love this fantasy series, and since it’s Irish I fully expected to, too. But I didn’t like any of the characters enough to read the rest of the series, least of all Artemis himself. I struggle to enjoy stories if I don’t like the main character, and Artemis was kind of a shit. Sorry, I did not like this one.

14. Skulduggery Pleasant, by Derek Landy (a debut novel). I just started this one, too, but I really like it already. I think the audiobook is read by the same guy that read Artemis Fowl, but already this is way better than that one. The characters are likable, for one (god, the bar is so low for fantasy books for me right now). It’s a mystery and a fantasy, and the main-ish character is literally an anthropomorphic skeleton detective. It’s excellent. I’m going to read the whole series. (I have to; my mom accidentally got me the 12th installment for my birthday.)

15. Red, White, and Royal Blue, by Casey McQuiston (a book that’s published in 2019). I read this twice. It’s so beautiful. I really expected it to be a shitty YA novel, but it wasn’t! It was very romantic (once they stopped “hating” each other), and gay. The premise sounds far-fetched: First Son of the United States falls for the Crown Prince of England. But, guys, it’s soooo gooooood. Highly, highly, highly recommend. 

16. The Wisconsin Road Guide to Mysterious Creatures, by Chad Lewis (a book featuring an extinct or imaginary creature). I mean, you can make your own decision whether these cryptids are real or imaginary. This is a travel guide to cryptids in Wisconsin, which I got on vacation earlier this year. I liked it, but reading a road guide for pleasure is admittedly kind of weird. Recommend if you’re planning a road trip through Wisconsin and want to stop at some cryptid, ghostly, or Nessie-like hotspots. Or if you just want to fuck Mothman, like me. (Dustybae’s not in this particular travel book though.)

17. Take Me With You, by Andrea Gibson (a book recommended by a celebrity you admire). Okay, so it was by a celeb I admire, not recommended by. This is a very quick read, of quotes from Gibson’s poetry. They are a queer spoken word poet with some really good pieces. They’re on spotify and apple music, probably among other sources. Recommend their work, but the book is very short, so maybe only purchase if you enjoy their work.

18. This is How it Always Is, by Laurie Frankel (a book about a family). This book was really, really good. It was passed around the aunts in my family until it got to my mom and I, which was really kind of a magical thing. It’s about a family navigating the challenges and gifts of raising a trans child. I cried a couple times, and it was so good. It’s written by a parent of a trans child, so it came from a place of understanding, and it was interesting to read this type of narrative from a parent’s perspective, when usually being genderfluid myself, I tend to consume media that is from the perspective of trans characters themselves. I had some very interesting conversations with my aunts and mom about it, and I really think this book changed my family a little bit, and I didn’t expect it to change me, too. Highly recommend. 

19. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, by Suzanne Clark (a book that includes a wedding). So the wedding is at the very beginning, and sadly not between Strange and Norrell. But it’s really good. Lots of magic, lots of regency-era Britishness. The book is huge, but there is a miniseries on Netflix based on the novel and that’s really good too. Highly recommend, and still in love with my man John Childermass. Hnng.

20. Wayward Son, by Rainbow Rowell (a book by an author whose first and last names start with the same letter). Sequel to Carry On. Sheer madness. I loved it. Think of it as generic brand Harry Potter post-DH, if Harry sprouted dragon wings during the final battle, is gay as shit for Draco, and a year later Harry, Draco, and Hermione are set loose on America with .5 seconds of research, severe culture shock, one cell phone between them, and a half-assed plan to rescue Ginny who may or may not want to be rescued. Shit show, but well done and I’m fully invested and ready for the third installment.

21. Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman (a book with a two-word title). I’m sorry, I need to shift to caps for this. GUYS I FUCKING LOVE THIS STORY YOU HAVE NO IDEA IT IS THE GREATEST THING THAT HAS EVER COME INTO MY WORLD! I MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE WATCHED THE AMAZON SERIES THIRTEEN TIMES TO DATE AND IMMEDIATELY DEVOURED THE BOOK IN THREE DAYS. You don’t know what it’s about? Where have you BEEN?! An angel and a demon who are gay as shit for each other and love humanity way more than either of their respective sides. One downside is that as the miniseries came out like twenty years after the novel, my two favorite parts were only written for the series, and are not in the novel. But the book is still very, very good. 15/10.

22. Dumplin’, by Julie Murphy (a book revolving around a puzzle or game). I took game to mean competition, so this is about a beauty competition. I watched the Netflix movie first. I honesty thought I was not gonna like it, but holy shit it was amazing. Admittedly I think the movie was better (despite having Jennifer Aniston in it), but the book was really good, too. Recommend.

23. The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde (your favorite prompt from a past Popsugar reading challenge; a book with a queer protagonist). God, please read this book. This has been up there in my list of favorite books since I was fourteen. Oscar Wilde is a master storyteller, and Dorian Gray is intriguing and despicable and beautiful. I’ve already read this, but I love it too much not to.

24. Terrible Queer Creatures, by Brian Lacey (a book set in an abbey, cloister, monastery, vicarage, or convent). Okay, so it’s not set there for the whole book, but gay monks and nuns are things. This was another birthday present, and an absolute hit. Combining two of my favorite things: Irish history and queer history. I had no idea a book like this existed. I’m still really excited about it. The only issue I have is that most of the one chapter dedicated to gay women involve biographies of people that were actually probably trans men, like Dr. Barry. They could have probably had a separate chapter and then a chapter of the clear lesbians and bisexual women (including trans women, of course). Lumping them in with the women in a chapter specifically dedicated to queer women did not seem particularly inclusive. But overall I really enjoyed the book.

Top Ten Books of 2019 post will be forthcoming.

#books #Book Recommendations #book recs

[carafinn]

Crash Landers

pairing: kageyama tobio/ tsukishima kei  prompt: tsukkikage + pacific rim AU (SASO ‘17) summary:  In which Tsukishima Kei, J-tech mechanic extraordinaire, tries to stop an infuriatingly stubborn Kageyama Tobio from piloting his Jaeger solo. Pacific Rim AU.

also on ao3.

“I’m not doing this,” Kageyama snaps, making a beeline for the exit, only to be manually dragged back onto the bed.

“Pilot induction program,” Tsukishima announces, and Kageyama splutters. (It is not one of his prouder moments.) “Now sit down and listen.”

“I’ve been piloting for four years,” Kageyama retorts, feeling personally attacked in spite of himself.

“Which is why this is long overdue,” Tsukishima says, coolly. “Now, pay attention to point number one on the screen. Did you know that, even after controlling for confounding variables, the odds ratio of mortality associated with piloting solo is-"

It’s 5 AM on a Thursday morning when Kageyama is awakened by a series of furious tapping on his door, followed by the sound of something crashing, and - "Listen up, you crazy lunatic," announces the tall, blonde-haired stranger looming at his doorway, impervious as to 1. Kageyama's withering glare, 2. the fact that it is 5 AM in the morning, 3. the fact that Kageyama is wearing nothing but boxers, and 4. any concept of basic human decency and personal space. "I heard the higher ups cleared your request to pilot my jaeger alone." Kageyama barely has the time to interject with the half-choked sound of an enraged animal before the stranger continues on, in his infuriatingly obnoxious tone, "While I don't particularly care about whether your brain turns into soup, I'll have you know that Delta Lux was built to withstand five point three billion volts of electrical energy, three hundred and twenty-two tonnes of Kaiju waste, but not sheer human idiocy." It takes a while for Kageyama's brain to process the crazy asshole's soliloquy and the accompanying insult, in no small part because the speech, while impassioned in content, was delivered via a quiet, deadpan monotone. "Who are - why is - fucking 5 AM," is all that Kageyama manages. He winces. "Tsukishima kei, because I built Delta Lux, and a good morning to you too," the stranger says, each syllable slow and deliberate and positively oozing vitriol, before breaking into a particularly sadistic grin. When he leaves the room the door slams behind him. Kageyama spends the rest of the morning in a particularly livid mood, but promptly writes off the incident from his mind by noon. The Tsukishima guy’s probably another crazy weirdo, which is no anomaly because Shatterdome's teeming with them; living in a confined environment, and the incredible pressure of being on constant alert, will do that to anyone, even those in possession of any reasonable degree of coping skills. Not that Kageyama’s being a hypocrite about it; if someone calls him bonkers - well, he's never pretended to be anything else. (He really should've known better than to just write the incident off, though; crazy lunatics are nothing if not perversely obstinate. That’s how he’d gotten the clearance from the higher ups to do solo piloting to begin with, by refusing to step foot into a jaeger so long as it meant working with anyone else.) (That, and the fact that Kageyama Tobio is the most promising pilot Shatterdome’s seen in five years, and also because the one person he used to be drift compatible with is now gloriously and irrevocably dead. Not that Kageyama blames himself for it, or anything. No, these things happen to the best of them. Every night Kageyama sits in his room, smokes cigarettes after cigarettes, and his hands shake but his eyes do not water.) The next day, this time at 3 AM in the morning, Kageyama is awakened yet again by the door being flung open unceremoniously. This time without even knocking. Just how low can this Tsukishima guy sink? Kageyama starts to splutter indignantly (”but I installed a lock last night!”), to which Tsukishima just looks at him pityingly with a glance that clearly states “a contraption of that calibre wouldn’t be able to stop a cognitively challenged three-year-old toddler, to say nothing of the accomplished technician that I am.” Before Kageyama has the time to grab the nearest alarm clock and smash it into Tsukishima’s damn face, however, his finds his senses assaulted by a powerpoint slide being projected onto the wall, titled, Why You Should Not Pilot Solo. Upon closer inspection, Tsukishima seems to be holding a projector in his hands. It takes Kageyama a few moments to suspend his disbelief because, firstly, do these things still exist? “I’m not doing this,” Kageyama snaps, making a beeline for the exit, only to be manually dragged back onto the bed.

“Pilot induction program,” Tsukishima announces, and Kageyama splutters. (It is not one of his prouder moments.) “Now sit down and listen.” “I’ve been piloting for four years,” Kageyama retorts, feeling personally attacked in spite of himself. “Which is why this is long overdue,” Tsukishima says, coolly. “Now, pay attention to point number one on the screen. Did you know that, even after controlling for confounding variables, the odds ratio of mortality associated with piloting solo is - ” “What is wrong with you!” “I’d leave all questions until the Q&A section after the presentation,” Tsukishima informs him loftily. “Unless you’re interrupting because you can’t understand the technical terms, in which case I still do not care. Moving on -” This cannot be happening. Fifty five minutes and seventy convoluted slides later, Tsukishima turns off the projector, switches the lights back on, and throws Kageyama a long, withering glance that somehow manages to convey the very specific message of “if Delta Lux gets destroyed because you died while piloting it, it will be entirely your fault, and I will spit on your grave”. (By now, Kageyama is starting to suspect that Tsukishima’s entire repertoire of expressions can be divided cleanly to either ‘intensely dispassionate’ or ‘oddly specific derisiveness’, with nothing in between.) Tsukishima then stalks out of the room without a single word. So much for the Q&A section. Because Kageyama is one more sleep deprived night from being driven well past the point of irreversible insanity, he feels approximately zero remorse in storming into the J-tech headquarters the following day and demanding for directions to Tsukishima’s desk from the first person he sees. “Tsukishima’s office is on the right, two aisles down,” says the stricken looking boy at the front desk. So the asshole’s bigshot enough to get an office to himself. Whatever, Kageyama doesn’t care. Anyway, the lesser the audience when he beats the guy into a pulp, the better. He storms down the aisle purposefully and flings the door open. “Stop breaking into my room every morning, you sick lunatic,” Kageyama begins, brimming with indignant rage, only to realise that he is speaking to an empty room. Or rather, an uninhabited room. To call the place empty would be a far stretch of the imagination; for someone whose entire persona exudes stick-up-his-ass, Tsukishima’s office is surprisingly messy. There are random jaeger models littered on the floor, volumes and volumes of papers weighted down by an equally alarming number of books, and post-it notes covering almost every inch of wall space possible. The only desk in the room has been delegated to a sad corner, although Kageyama cannot reliably tell if it is indeed a desk or a block of wood that has been scribbled on and covered by a stack of blueprints that probably weighed more than it. Kageyama is about to leave the room when he catches sight of a photo pinned onto the wall, and his heart stops cold. It’s Kindaichi. Or rather, it’s a piece of paper with Kindaichi’s mugshot stuck onto it, along with a photo of the jaeger he’d been piloting when he died. Underneath it are paragraphs after paragraphs of furious scribbles: ejection pod JAMMED: backup energy for future models???? alt energ sources? discuss w Y ^date engine model -> DO NOT SACRIFICE STABILITY FOR PROPULSION/SPEED recalculate/redesign - KIV discuss next meeting ??funding?? KIV - change contractors?? SM wing material carbon fiber - durability?? SM contact - LM That’s when Kageyama realises that the entire wall has been covered with these papers: photos of jaeger pilots who’d died in the line of duty, complete with painstakingly tedious analyses of every possible flaw pertaining to the jaegers they’d flown, and methods for improvement. Jaegers that Tsukishima had helped to build. Pages after pages of them, tacked on with a dizzying amount of post-its and increasingly desperate scribbles. Whatever goes through Tsukishima’s mind when he looks up from his work and sees these reminders on his walls, day after day? When Tsukishima stormed into his room the other day, said things like, “Delta Lux was built to withstand five point three billion volts of electrical energy”, it wasn’t because he was trying to show off. It’s a startling realisation, Kageyama thinks, not least because this is a very different side to the impervious man who’d rattled off statistics and numbers in that oddly detached tone, just hours ago, as if he were reciting a sales pitch to a blank wall. It’s a startling realisation, to realise that anyone cares for you at all.

Driven by two-parts curiosity and one-part something he can’t quite name, Kageyama Tobio slips into the HR office later that day, and discovers a few things about Tsukishima Kei: 1. Tsukishima Kei is the youngest jaeger engineer to ever join Shatterdome, but he has spearheaded more than six major projects in an equal number of years. 2. Tsukishima Kei specialises in making jaegers that feature heavily in defense, especially against Kaiju Blue. Delta Lux, his newest creation, has an additional novel function of detoxifying Kaiju waste. 3. Before he became a technician, Tsukishima Kei had trained to become a pilot for a year. 4. Tsukishima Kei’s brother, Akiteru, used to be a jaeger pilot. He died in battle six years ago. When Kageyama drops by Tsukishima’s office in the evening, he finds Tsukishima glaring pointedly at a life sized blueprint of what looks like a design of the jaeger’s driver seat, with a sort of single minded ferocity that would likely induce a secondhand headache in Kageyama if he stared for ten more seconds. “I - I went back to Ops,” Kageyama blurts out, and is promptly awarded with the rare (and oddly satisfying) sight of Tsukishima startling before he whips his head around and stares. “Told them I changed my mind. They’re gonna start finding drift compatible partners for me starting tomorrow.” Tsukishima looks at him for a long, unnerving moment, his face impassive. “Good for you,” he finally says, as if this isn’t the intended outcome he’d spent two days tormenting Kageyama for. He turns back and continues to glare determinedly at the blueprint without another word. Kageyama almost goes up to shake him and maybe yell really loudly, or something, but decides to exercise extreme self-restraint and keep his mouth shut instead. There’s a few more seconds of radio silence, and then - “You know, if you could adjust the - the design of the seat to allow it to withstand the pressure during acceleration and deceleration, it would help a lot. Not so much for the impact when we launch but more like - when we exchange blows with the Kaiju and the impact sends us crashing into things, especially in cities or mountainous terrains - ” Tsukishima turns to stare at Kageyama again, but this time his gaze has sharpened with renewed interest. “Anyway, I’m just gonna - get going now,” Kageyama continues, hastily, as he inches towards the door. “Just don’t come barging into my room again tonight -” “No,” Tsukishima says just as Kageyama is almost out the door, causing him to almost reel back in surprise. “Tell me more.” Kageyama blinks. "You mean tell you more about the design?"

"No, I meant tell me more about your horoscope," Tsukishima snaps. Jerk.

Kageyama scowls. “I mean, it’s like when you’re turning and the jaeger goes ZNNNG and then you’re like BAAAM and - ” “Are those even human words?” Tsukishima interjects, looking two parts aghast and one small, tiny part almost amused. Kageyama is beginning to realise that Tsukishima is, in fact, capable of conveying expressions other than complete apathy and/ or derision. “I’m trying to be realistic,” Kageyama retorts, sounding a lot more annoyed than he actually is. “What, do you need me to do it in a powerpoint?” It earns him an unexpected smirk from Tsukishima. He's wildcard, this Tsukishima guy. “You know, that would be great.” It’s going to be another long night, but this time Kageyama thinks that he doesn’t actually mind. (Sometimes Kageyama catches Tsukishima staring at the rows of photos on the wall, an unreadable expression crossing his face; and then Tsukishima will notice Kageyama staring, and hastily look away. Kageyama doesn't say anything, doesn't have anything to say, but the knowledge settles, quietly, like a deep layer of dust on his heart.) It takes them five months to find Kageyama a drift compatible partner. Hinata Shouyou’s a wild, inconsistent thing, runs on too much pure instinct and too little restraint; drifting with him is like wielding a razor thin blade without a hilt. Kageyama, on the other hand, has precision down to a fine art. It is a recipe for an unthinkably disastrous outcome, and they really shouldn’t work out but they do. Above and beyond all else, however, Hinata is malleable. Kageyama has witnessed pilots bending and breaking under the sheer pressure of the battlefield, even during simulations and before stepping into an actual jaeger; Hinata might bend, but no matter how despairing the circumstance he will always remain forgeable. In their field there are few qualities more important than resilience. “We’re gonna be kept off duty for a while,” Kageyama tells Tsukishima the night after his first successful drift with Hinata. They’re lounging in Tsukishima’s office (when did this become routine?), although it’s not so much lounging as it is perched precariously amongst haphazard islands of blueprints and engine models. “Hinata’s gonna need six months’ worth of intensive training, and then we’re gonna pilot Delta Lux.” Tsukishima snorts, and doesn’t look up from the stack of notebooks he’s scribbling furiously into. “He can wait that long?” “He’s busy being ecstatic over the fact that he’s found someone drift compatible,” Kageyama acknowledges begrudgingly, and Tsukishima lets out something between an amused snort and a dismissive tch before diverting his complete attention to his notebook. Kageyama’s not jealous of a few pieces of paper, don’t be ridiculous. “What about you? Are you glad?” Kageyama asks, not sure as to why he’s asking, but does so anyway out of sheer curiosity. “That I found someone drift compatible, I mean.” This time Tsukishima doesn’t turn to face him, but the hand holding onto the pencil hovers, momentarily, in mid-air. “Don’t ask ridiculous questions,” is the reply. “You were gonna have to find a co-pilot eventually.” A pause, then: “We’ve finalised the pilot seat design based on what you told me the last time. If I harass the team frequently enough, they’ll be able to make the changes by the time you pilot the jaeger.” And even though it is not quite the answer he is looking for, Kageyama smiles anyway.

Kageyama doesn't know how, much less why, he ends up spending most of his free time lounging in Tsukishima's office, but it happens anyway. Sometimes they discuss jaeger designs; other times they engage in something that almost approximates small talk. Mostly, though, they go about their own work in a comfortable silence. If Tsukishima was initially resistant against the idea - "stop hovering around, you're distracting me" - his resistance against Kageyama's presence dwindles considerably as the days go by. Kageyama even makes friends with Tsukishima's colleague, Yamaguchi, whom Tsukishima is surprisingly tolerant (and perhaps, shockingly, even fond) of; sometimes even Hinata joins in the fray, and Tsukishima will throw a half-hearted hissy fit about how disruptive everyone is being, he's going to kick everyone out of the damn office, but for the most part no one takes his threats seriously. (One day, too tired caught up in training for his daily round of hovering around Tsukishima's office, Kageyama returns to his dorm room way past midnight and crashes into his bed. When he wakes up there's a large carton of milk on his dressing table, and a familiar neon green post-it note, the blue ink smudged from coming into contact with condensation: collected this from breakfast drink BEFORE 11AM or it WILL SPOIL. Kageyama laughs in spite of himself, takes a long swig, goes back to bed, closes his eyes, sleeps.) Kageyama will, much later, learn to look back at these days as one would an Indian summer: fondly, and wistfully. Always with nostalgia. As it turns out, they end up piloting Delta Lux two full months ahead of schedule, before Hinata can complete his training program. The Kaiju’s been attacking more frequently and with greater intensity, smashing through entire cities like they were made of paper mache; the general consensus was that nobody could wait that long. Right before he sets off, Kageyama stops by Tsukishima's office. Partly out of habit. "I'm leaving now," he tells Tsukishima, who's perched atop a mountainous pile of blueprints, fiddling with an engine model and a particularly nasty looking screwdriver. On the surface Tsukishima looks like he's going about doing his work as per normal; yet every so often the mask will slip, and his gaze will fall, inevitably, on those photos pinned onto his wall. "Just thought I should tell you." "See you," Tsukishima says, simply, and it is testament to how far they've come that Kageyama picks up a bestseller between those two words. Kageyama turns to leave the room, but stops abruptly in his steps. "You'll take them off when I come back, won't you?" Kageyama asks. "Those notes and photos of the ex-pilots on your wall." And Tsukishima Kei, being the fucking wildcard that he is, breaks into a smile (a smile smile, not a smirk or a sneer), says, "it's a deal." Addendum: As promised, the photos and notes and post-its are removed five days later; the wall is empty for approximately two days, until hinata decides to decorate it liberally with photos of the four of them.

#haikyuu!! #tsukkikage #my fics

[opticor]

yesterday i had queued a text post, and it started like this: “it’s not my style to review books while still reading them (or, indeed, ever) but i wanted to tell you that i’m reading Ninefox Gambit right now and it’s giving me a lot of feelings; not exactly in the “so many feels” way, but rather in the “a lot of very conflicting feelings” way, which while less memetic is no less overwhelming.” but since then the post became obsolete, first because the book descended (ascended?) straight into the so-many-feels territory, and then because i actually finished it, and what a book it is! i want to say some things, so this post, while not a review, is probably not spoiler free either. you have been warned!!

so, this is subjective stuff, i won’t pretend otherwise. the reason i mentioned conflicted feelings (let’s say, i was in the first half of the book then) was, well, i’ve consumed some amount of media through the years, so unfortunately i often think of things as being like-other-things (unless they are totally-unlike-other-things) and so, i was reminded of things, such as the Divergent faction system (which i don’t like) and certain scenes in the early instalments of Hellsing (which, embarrassingly, i do like) and quasimagical warfare in The Solstice War (which i love; in my opinion, if you liked Ninefox Gambit you are likely to enjoy The Solstice War as well! the opposite may also be true, depending on what you like the most about The Solstice War -- give it a shot!)

there was also a scene that unpleasantly reminded me of an unhealthy pattern in a past relationship. that was rather painful because it was also a scene i really liked, actually the most Hellsing-like scene. i am actually not certain anymore if anything exactly like it happened in Hellsing and i am not in the mood to check right this moment, but i seem to recall an episode where Alucard in his many-eyed form terrorized Seras with the intent of teaching her some important lesson about being a monster. there is nothing improper about monsters being monsters, and it’s a soft spot for me. i liked it. in the book, though. well, in that scene Jedao torments Cheris until she’s completely broken and it’s a game, a test. he apologizes and is awfully nice afterwards, but it gave me a pause. i mean, by this point this is more of a personal post than anything remotely resembling a book review but i still want to stress that i absolutely don’t want to say anything bad about the book as such for having this in it! it was just, viscerally unpleasant to me personally in light of, you know. and it made me think about my embarrassing preference for hurt/comfort in fiction (is... is it hurt/comfort if they are provided by the same person? i am not even certain) in contrast with the same in real life; and also what would this dynamic look like if the roles were differently gendered. i guess it is also a mark of a great work that it makes you think, about stuff?

so i thought about that some, then decided thinking about it does no good, scheduled my text post and went on about my evening. but regular activities were unengaging because what i really wanted to do was continue reading the book. and so i did. and i couldn’t stop reading. not to say there weren’t horrible, gruesome, heavy things from there on. it’s not harmless and virtuous. it, actually, not only made me cry, but was painful enough that it physically hurt which a book hadn’t done to me since i read Stephenie Meyer’s New Moon at age eighteen. but there wasn’t anything displeasing to give me a pause, or a stop, after that tenth chapter. book just kept going and went from an uncertain four to a solid five and, i don’t know, i don’t think it’s got anything to do with its technical qualities. just how it went for me. that was certainly an Experience.

speaking of technical qualities, i thought it was paced really well. i’m not an expert but i don’t enjoy fiction that doesn’t live up to my personal standards for good pacing, stuff like slow pilot episodes or filler or what have you -- though not, mind me, infodumps. the menace of infodumps is a blunt instrument applied by amateur critics to scare readers and authors alike away from exposition, and is, just like tvtropes, probably not real. i had, actually, read a scathing review for Ninefox Gambit that condemned it for its infodumpiness, among other things. well i am happy to say that that-reviewer can stuff it. information about characters and setting is, in my opinion, elegantly inserted and never out of place. i may have more thoughts on this after a re-read of course since it takes time to ease into the specific terminology, but that is my initial impression.

which brings me to the plot. where, after all, is this wonderfully paced story going? spoiler: a good place. was it twisty? well... no, i wouldn’t say, for something mentioning many a multi-layered plan. hindsight is a harsh mistress. near the beginning, the book gives you a problem: why did this character do that horrible, monstrous thing? and it gives you a hint: the answer is not insanity. if you assume, as i did, that Jedao is a good (for some measure) person, i don’t think that could lead to many significantly different answers, in the context of this book. and answering that question, there are not many directions it would make sense for the story to go. i don’t think this a defect, by the way. i think it’s good writing. of course, the answers could potentially change as it is, among other things, also a first book in a series. it’s something of note on both pacing and story. it’s definitely a part-one and there are some subtle things that are impossible to fairly judge a part-one on. story, i guess? or, more like, how satisfying is the story arc overall? as it is, it would be called open-ended, i guess. so i won’t say anything about it. i just don’t want to be saying something like “it’s a good first book in a series” -- it’s a good book, period. but also, a first book in a series. speaking of which the second one is coming in just a few days and i for one cannot fucking wait to read it

thank you for taking the time to read this wall of text, i am awfully flattered that you value my opinion on books this much; i also apologize for putting a very long post on your dashboard, and i may put a cut in it after i see it on a real browser. i wish we had LJ’s functionality of only putting some of the text in a readmore, rather than everything

the part i’d leave outside of a cut is this: if you want to read an actual, nicely written review, there are many but i particularly recommend this one, over at Strange Horizons

and since it’s a recommendation, content warnings include: graphic depictions of injury and body horror; death, violence, and other war tropes; torture, emotional abuse, rape

#nath reads things #long post #i want to tag it for convenience but im afraid of fandom #oh! something i wanted to mention but forgot #i liked how courteous Cheris is to servitors #but at the same time i didn't like how she is an exception for it #and it's like a defining character trait #it is a GOOD trait i support but since it is so isolated it made her seem like a Disney princess a bit #which ? #ninefox gambit #machineries of empire

[museemagazine]

Woman Crush Wednesday: Ellen Carey

When did you initially become interested in color? 

In my childhood, I was raised Catholic, so looking at color in the stain glass windows at church is an early memory. The name Ellen, in Gaelic, Irish, Celtic means “light” or “bringer of light” a prescient gift from my parents, introducing fate and destiny. At Kansas City Art Institute (KCAI), my undergraduate freshman foundations program introduced me to Josef Albers and his color theory. My final project was an installation that freshman year was a wall of color; I did color printing in lithography. At SUNY@Buffalo, my MFA graduate thesis at Hallwalls was my black and white “Self-Portrait” series that experimented with a monochrome palette in the over-painting, later adding color.

Years ago, you experimented with black and white abstractions, so Struck by Light is quite the jump.

Yes and no. As stated above, color was always in my life and work, however a more concentrated effort began with my large format Polaroid 20 X 24 “Self-Portrait” series (1983-1987); I tried the large format Polaroid in black and white; it was not as visually exciting, although really early work was with the SX-70. Polaroid’s instant technology and the soft brilliance of its dyes are exceptional, but when the Polaroid Artists Support Program ended in 1987, I went back to the darkroom, starting my research on photograms. My question: ”What does an abstract photograph look like?” begins here. You are correct, in that it was years ago, and I did struggle. I began with black & white photograms, but when I turned to color, with the photogram, I realized light, photography’s indexical, was radically different, the palette electrified the composition, whether it was expressed in muted tones or bolder hues. Color is an artist’s universe and photographic color theory (RGBYMC) photography’s planet. Characteristics imbedded in our medium revealed themselves anew --- light and shadow --- with themes of interest --- love and loss, beauty and joy --- full of artistic potential, working within the visual breakthroughs found in the tenets of Abstract Expressionism, Minimal and Conceptual Art. Less-is-more is one of my experimental guide posts, rethinking photography vis-a-vis process, this eliminates the picture sign, re-arranges the hierarchy of an image that captures something “out there” to a photographic object that expresses itself “in there”; its visceral and visual, referencing the elemental wonder of photography, inside the black box of the color darkroom, which is light-tight. So I began a commitment to my discipline, a concentrated study of color in art and photography, its history and practitioners around 2000, leaving black and white behind.

How did you react after finishing your first photogram?

In black and white, I knew I was on to something, but color was the key, the turning point, opening the door to my imagination. I reacted to its wonder, imaging this is how it must have been, this incredible experience, for the earliest practitioners.

Did you know right away you wanted to go forward with making more?

Absolutely!

I saw your work at AIPAD, and what struck me when I first saw them, after being struck by the color and vibrancy, was the way they were displayed. Do you often display Struck by Light in a grid form, or does it depend on the space in which they’re being shown?

That large installation of “Dings & Shadows” was conceptually designed that way, 4 rows of 5, as RGBYMC, 20 unique color photograms total; I have done two more, one is the same size, the other slightly smaller. Size and scale are important in my work, as Robert Smithson said: “Size can be a crack in a wall or the Grand Canyon”. The “dings” are my “shadow” catchers, a “ding” is taboo in our profession, and so I am breaking with that tradition. The grid references one of the universal codes in art, the square; the other is the circle. My grid-as-photogram installation has the colors as RGBYMC, a split filter reference in the image as well as photographic color theory, a unique characteristic of our medium, like the shadow. In that particular artwork, the colors have to seamlessly flow and blend, into one-another or ricocheting off of each other, making new colors, hues or shadows. All four edges create mini-compositions, another grid, the over-all gestalt and the synoptic clarity is pristine, compelling in its color variations, with hues and high-tech vibrancy, containing high visual impact.

You’ve worked on this series for about 23 years, between 1992-2015

WOW. That is a long time! It actually extends to 2017; I have more ideas, more work to do!

How did you decide the project was finished?

By project, do you mean the whole “Struck by Light” project? Or one picture?  A series, or an installation? I work until the whole image is perfect, my standards are very, very high, the ratio is 1 perfect photogram out of 5 try-outs, some days are better, and some days don’t go well. The color darkroom is light tight; so I am working blind, pitch black, different than the amber light of black/white darkroom. I love making color photograms, will continue to print as long as the paper and processor lasts!

Do you still feel the project is finished?

It is very obvious to me, and anyone who has witnessed me working, that the “object speaks back” loudly and clearly! I have my own rules, what I call the 4 C’s: Concept, Context, Content and Citation (or Site), so it works or it does not. My work is experimental, randomness and chance play key roles, followed by choice in palette and form, like automatic drawing in Dada and Surrealism; one doesn’t know what eventually will be seen, these play key roles. As you pointed out, several decades of printing have helped; the physical aspects, gaining experience over time and time is important to an artist: time to think, read, make art, write, reflect, look at art, travel, nature is wonderful too. I don’t see an end to the project; I just tried a few new ideas. “Struck by Light” is an expansive, umbrella concept.

I appreciate the number of historical references made in regards to this project, dating back to 1834 with William Henry Fox Talbot and noting Anna Atkins as the first woman practitioner and the first in color. Did you want this project to be homage to Atkins, or did it transform into that after working on it for so long and learning more and more about photograms and color?

I am working on a curatorial project and as the curator; named “Anon.” this underscores my concept of exclusion/absence in this new area of scholarship. ”Women in Colour: Anna Atkins, Color Photography and Those Struck by Light” opens mid-August thru September at The Rubber Factory (Lower East Side), the owner, Mike Tan, is hosting this group exhibition.

Briefly stated, in my research on color photography, I noticed that a lot of women were using color, a completely different skill set from black and white photography (technical, expensive, color chemistry etc.), which prompted a question: “Where would women color practitioners be without the work of Anna Atkins?”; often my project start with a question.

Colour/color photography begins with Anna Atkins, photography’s first female practitioner, first in color, with her blue cyanotypes. She also did the first photo-book, predating Talbot, and she is first to use writing in her pictures, a precursor to Word Art. Her compositions, in my opinion, point the way to minimalism and abstraction in photography, in their use of: off-frame space, a reductive palette, transformative power of color, size and scale plus many other tenets in her stellar compositions, no bigger than a page in a book. She made thousands of images, giving them away, so her gifts were literally gifts.

Colour, the British spelling, highlights that color photography has its origins in England; Atkins followed by Sarah Angelina Acland, the late Victorian, who specialized in the Sanger-Shepard process. My research found out that a DNA gene, tetrachromacy, is only carried by women; if they have this gene, women can discern color better than men, who have a higher percentage of color blindness.   

So my project pays homage to Anna Atkins, whom we know very little about, while opening up a new field of scholarship on women and colour/color photography. I used my photogram practice “Struck by Light” to include many references: the twin aspects of photography and its indexical, light; as a phrase often used for inspiration, which includes the inspiration of photography, its earliest photogram as drawing with light; that history as the photogram continues today. It’s a record of light seen found in the end result, the photographic object, and with that object, light-sensitive paper was struck by (another) light. As the project’s author, my name Ellen means light and color is light, seen in nature’s rainbow, which is full of color.

WCW QUESTIONNAIRE

How would you describe your creative process in one word?

Exhilarating

If you could teach a one, one-hour class on anything, what would it be?

How to Make Color Photograms that Teaches Photographic Color Theory with a Lecture on Anna Atkins and her Cyanotypes Plus Women+Color+Photography

What is the last film you saw or book you read that inspired you?

Documentary Film: Ron Howard; “Beatles: Eight Days a Week”

Book by Henry Adams: “Tom & Jack: The Intertwining Lives of Thomas Hart Benton & Jackson Pollock”

What is the most played song in your music library?

The Greatest Hits by Barry White

How do you take your coffee?

Dark Roast with Milk - Hot!

#Woman Crush Wednesday

[ismaelqcho280-blog]

9 Ways Mediabox Hd Apk Can Make You Invincible

Listing of most prominent smartphone applications

We do not commonly suggest streaming services to people. After all, everybody has their very own choices and also there are plenty of excellent choices out there.

The app additionally allows you share jobs and entire classifications with other individuals. This makes it wonderful for family usage, small groups at work, or other such groups. It's likewise wonderful for things like grocery store lists, honey-do listings, or any type of other listing. You get all of the features free of charge, albeit in a somewhat limited capability, such as two pointers per task (costs makes that infinite). Some other outstanding choices in the area consist of Todoist, Microsoft To Do, Any.do, and Ike.

The apple iphone XR was the top-selling smartphone model last quarter.

And also, you can publish your pictures to Imgur without limits for sharing to various places. However, there are a lot of amazing choices that don't cost you anything. These solutions are typically sustained by advertising, sponsorship of some type, or another thing. However, there are still some absolutely exceptional apps available that you can utilize free of charge without paying a penny. This is a best all-time listing, type of like hall of fame, so the majority of these apps aren't necessarily new.

Then pick "Digital Wellness" alongside the icon of an umbrella. The attributes are instantly secured by a four-digit pass code so kids can not turn them off on their own. From there, moms and dads can decide to turn on Screen Time Monitoring, which restricts individuals to two hours on the application per day, and Restricted Mode, which obstructs some web content. Bear in mind, Restricted Setting isn't foolproof, as well as even with the filter on, children utilizing the application by themselves could find age-inappropriate videos. As of 2020, there's a Family Safety and security Mode attribute that lets moms and dads connect their very own accounts to their youngsters to manage time frame as well as Limited Setting, and also it includes straight messages as well.

Top Apps Worldwide for Q1 2019 by Downloads

YouTube is the biggest host of videos on earth and also provides monetization choices to customers. I believe the rewards as well as coins earningvia coins is in fact a rip-off. I in fact made 70.00 through the app after playing their coin video games. I have still yet to get anything, so no 7-10 is not accurate.

With a monthly subscription, you can pay attention to albums in order, remove advertisements, and download songs for offline listening. When you have a smartphone at your fingertips, making life considerably much easier is not just possible however probable. Apps are fun, as well as nowadays, they're additionally quite darn beneficial to automate the majority of life's ordinary processes. Use these amazing apps to get the liquor off the beaten track-- like managing to-dos, intending dishes, and making payments-- and also obtain your time back.

Data Go by Google, Ranking: 4.6.

Or you can use your phone calls or social media fans to find close friends already on the app. Lots of youngsters on Tik Tok like to produce video clips, but plenty of individuals do not upload themselves-- they just use the application to locate and comply with content makers.

SHAREit is the very first non-Google performance application to make the listing. This decade has been a time of amazing growth for the mobile economic situation. With a 5% rise in downloads, and also 15% development in customer invest (leaving out third-party Android) year-over-year in 2019 this looks readied to continue in 2020. For a much deeper check out the most effective apps and also games of 2019, examine our blog post on the mobile highlights of 2019.

Price: Free on iphone App Store

Which apps are most successful?

At a rumored $400 price tag, it will likely be the iPhone for people that are anti-Face ID and big-screened phones. But if you want a bigger phone with the latest bells and whistles, then it's a great time to buy any of the phones we recommend above, as Apple likely won't update its core range until September 2020.

Nonetheless, we truly like the combination of YouTube Music and YouTube. For one price, you obtain limitless songs from YouTube Songs with sufficient tracks to compete with Spotify and also Apple Music.

Submit surfing is something everybody unavoidably has (or wants) to do, so you may also do it with a qualified, amazing documents web browser. Strong Traveler is pretty much like it gets in the file explorer apps world. It includes Product Layout, archiving assistance, assistance for the most preferred cloud solutions, as well as even some more power individual stuff like FTP, SFPT, WebDav, and also SMB/CIFS assistance. It looks great, it's extremely secure, and it simply functions well. There is a 14-day cost-free test with a $2.99 cost at the end of it.

What apps are trending?

iPhone and Android are two different systems, so it's natively impossible to get Android apps on iPhone (iPhone 7 and iPhone 6S). And Android apps are mainly designed for Android phones. Also, you cannot install applications that are not authorized and owned by Apple.

The 15 Best Two-Player Mobile Gamings to Play Anywhere.

The number of mobile apps downloaded and install in 2017 is 1 Billion. What it does is allow you check your credit score absolutely free. On top of that, the app will certainly alert you when there are major modifications to your credit report. It is an OTT service offering ad-supported unabridged attribute films for free. The Application is had by Screen Media Films (SMF), so you can anticipate a constant inflow of movies distributed by the SMF. The service also organizes internet series as well as initial programs which can be streamed without paying a single penny.

What is replacing Showbox?

Crackle. Sony's Crackle is one of the most popular free movie apps on mobile. It boasts a bunch of hit titles, various TV shows, and a bunch of genres to choose from. It even has Nielson tracking software so you can be a part of the stats when it comes to popularity.

I was looking for totally free IPTV service for flicks, boxsets as well as live TELEVISION. It has a built-in library available to conserve your favored movies as well as enjoy it later on. Without making use of HDD or data manager space of your smartphone you can conserve movies or dramas into the collection of the application. This application is the heart of countless customers as well as boosting each day as a result of the best service giving. Additionally, it lets you enjoy films trailer as well as know other needed details concerning the movie.

Truecaller APK For Android

The charm of the website is the top search box which is timely as well as easy. One can quickly find the episode number which they desire to watch. There are many video services, legal ones, there not a great deal of cash and some have ads to pay for some content or there is membership. SHOT MOVIE HUB. FROM GOOGLE PLAY SHOP. SHORT 15 SECOND ADS BEFORE YOU BEGINNING THE FILM. NO TELEVISION REVEALS BUT ALMOST JUST AS GOOD AS SHOWBOX FILM COLLECTION AND ALL LEGAL. ShowBox is Dead for good, the programmers have actually stopped the assistance of the Application.

Regardless of which kind motion picture you love to enjoy, you are https://mediaboxhd.site going to discovered right here all category films like Action, comedy, computer animation, adventure, as well as biography and so on . My Download Tube can be your famous choice if you can endure that. Else, you can consider my other choices for top totally free motion picture streaming sites no Register. TorOWL is a brand-new film streaming site, no register needed. Therefore, you can arrange flicks easily making use of numerous filters like groups, formats, ranking, ballots and also even more.

Yes films.

The solutions of Hulu into Live TV began in 2017, before that it simply use to hold a series of TV programs both new as well as old, motion picture as well as various other infomercial programs. It works as a crossbreed of Sling TELEVISION and also Netflix, using both TELEVISION Shows in addition to Online TV to its individuals.

Can you go to jail for streaming movies?

One more method to use Netflix without a Credit card is by using a Netflix gift card. You can buy Netflix gift cards on Amazon or eBay and you can also get them as a gift from your parents or friends. After grabbing your gift card, you need to enter your voucher id to activate it and use Netflix.

Titanium TV as well has a huge catalog of films and TV shows. From the lately released films to the latest episodes, you will certainly find all of it here. I am also impressed with the quality of video clip playback this application offers.

How can I watch movies online for free on my phone?

Technically, yes, movie box is illegal. You are streaming a movie/tv show without the original owner's permission. MovieBox does not have the rights to show owner's copyrighted material. As for getting caught, however, the chances are slim to none.

I needed to assemble this list because Showbox lately obtained shut down permanently. Showbox APK was just one of the most widely utilized streaming apps for flicks and also TELEVISION shows. Given that Showbox is not working anymore, it just made good sense to locate its substitutes.

[theycallmeshaggyrogers]

Essay Two: The Pokemon League Champion Archetype

March 25, 2018

This post will contain MAJOR spoilers for all mainstream Pokemon games. There, I'm guiltless. You'll thank me later.

I can't stress the importance of the previous disclaimer. Since the inception of the Pokemon franchise, the league champion effectively acts as the game's final boss. By design, a final boss should be something we are emotionally invested in, whether it pertains to a crucial plot point in a game or is a character we are able to feel strongly towards. I think I speak for the majority of gamers, casual or not, when I say that the plot of a video game matters to the overall experience we will have playing said game to begin with. If a game's story is good, or at the very least memorable, we are more inclined to remember it better and more fondly than say, a game whose story is bland or otherwise poorly-written. There are exceptions of course. In my opinion, the three games that make up Fire Emblem: Fates have particularly awful storylines. At best, they are bland and rely on the standard narrative trappings which Fire Emblem games are known for. At worst, they are so narratively broken that their exceptional terribleness is remarkably memorable. That said, FE Fates' “Conquest” route is salvaged only by challenging level design and game mechanics. The degree of polarization regarding Conquest's quality between the quality of its story and gameplay is remarkable to say the least, but it is simply from said polarization that the game is memorable to me personally.

Pokemon, however, is much, much different than Fire Emblem, which prior to 2013 was just a niche series for introverted elitist weeaboos like myself, and the popularity of both franchises in the two decades both have been around very much determines the memorability of an individual title. Perhaps I speak from bias when I say that every mainstream Pokemon game is equally memorable to me, given my twelve or so years as a fan of the franchise. I even started with one of the blander installments, Pokemon LeafGreen, a remake of the original Pokemon Green from 1996. That said, Pokemon is very much a formulaic series. Very little changes from iteration to iteration, from its story to its battling system. As the fandom likes to poke fun at time and again, you often play as a prepubescent Asian child who starts off in a small boonie town that happens to be within proximity of the laboratory of some biologist whose last name is in reference to some kind of a kind of plant. Said plant-named biologist offers you a Pokemon to start your adventure in exchange for collecting more of them to fill up a digital encyclopedia as you travel throughout the game's map (a task you will likely never complete). Oftentimes you have a rival who is also a prepubescent Asian child and also on the same journey to keep you in check as you build your party. You are both likely challenging gym leaders in hopes of one day reaching the penultimate title of champion. There's also at least one organization of bad guys wearing impractical uniforms whom you and your rival have to curb-stomp whenever they pop up in the story, but you've likely trashed them and emasculated their leader by the time you get to the champion themselves. I'd say every game has exceptions to these tropes, but the fact that I am able to give a succinct idea of how these games function narratively should probably queue you into the fact that Pokemon is a franchise rarely allows itself to change. And sure, helpful mechanics have been added over time to service the metagame, such as abilities, natures, IVs and breeding, but once these mechanics are in place, they are there for the long haul. Perhaps that is why I keep coming back. The games never feel incredibly alien even if I don't play one for more than a year.

I don't think the same could be said for these games' plots however. Every game leads up to battling an incredibly strong trainer, usually referred to with the prefix of “Champion”, and the reveal of the champion is meant to be a shock to the player. In almost every game, the champion is a recurring supporting character who at times helps the player on their journey to varying degrees of frequency. Oddly enough, the acting champion never tell the player about their high status in the Pokemon League, and this never has never been explained or justified within the canon. I completely understand this merit from a mechanical standpoint though. In the case of Pokemon, you don't know who the champion is because the game itself is encouraging you to build a well-rounded team to take them on, diverse in species, movesets, type and function. It is worth noting that while some champions specialize in a certain type of Pokemon, the majority of them tend to diversify their team for the very reason I stated.

This deliberate withholding of information also works from a storytelling standpoint too. Like any good JRPG, fighting the final boss of the game needs to feel earned to be memorable. These fights tend to be long, difficult and exhausting, but to ultimately prevail over them is deeply satisfying. In the case of Square Enix's Chrono Trigger, arguably one of the greatest JRPGs in the history of the genre, the final boss has three stages, incorporating movesets from all previous bosses while also possessing its own attacks that the player has to figure out as they continue to fight it. Final Fantasy 6, while less impressive in both aspects than Chrono Trigger, also has a multi-stage final boss fight, whose epicness is amplified with choirs and vaguely Christian imagery, as the boss himself is effectively the reigning god of a now-ruined world, one whom you would not initially expect to be the final boss until the original candidate has been eliminated. The fight is also very much a grudge match, as the final boss, Kefka, is a power-drunk psychopath. To date, Pokemon has only used the grudge match-type final boss fight twice, one of whom is not even the final boss, but a fake-out miniboss of sorts.

The exception to this unspoken rule of not disclosing the champion's identity is Alder, the Pokemon League Champion of Pokemon Black and White's Unova Region (which incidentally, is the first game where you are in fact no longer a prepubescent Asian child, but rather a teenager of indeterminate race because we're in New York City now, baby). In fact, he is introduced as the champion the moment you meet him! Going into Pokemon White in 2011, I knew that Alder was going to be the game's champion because I had listened to a rip of his battle theme posted on YouTube, but I did not expect him to be revealed outright as the champion. I only learned later as I progressed that Alder was not the true final boss of the main game, but instead your mysterious, slightly autistic wunderkind rival, N. By the time you defeat the four obligatory minibosses, dubbed the Elite Four, you find that N has already defeated Alder, and as the proclaimed chosen one by the dragon thingy on the opposite game's box art, he challenges you to a penultimate battle on the top floor of his massive Long Island castle as proof that he is the true king of Unova or something.

And then!

And then!!!

After you catch the guy from the boxart and defeat N, Ghetsis, the leader of the evil team (who is incidentally N's Machiavellian paternal guardian) throws a shitfit and battles you, revealing him to be the game's real final boss. When you defeat him, you reconcile with N, who sees the errors of his ways and leaves Unova on the guy from the other game's box art, then the credits roll to awesome fanfare. (Sidenote: I seriously consider Black and White's credits theme to be one of the best songs in the series). But there, you have finally completed the game, which was in my opinion had Pokemon's most ambitious and best plots to date. Alder can still be battled as champion, sure, but at this point he technically counts as a postgame boss, similar to Red at the end of Pokemon Gold, Silver, Crystal, and its remakes, or Steven in Pokemon Emerald.

I think Generation V was when the writers over at Game Freak realized that the series was getting predictable. Not counting the Gold and Silver remakes, the plot of Generation IV's Pokemon Diamond, Pearl and Platinum versions very much adhered to the same story beats as its predecessor, Generation III. Similar to Gen III, in Gen IV, the big ol' dragon from the boxart makes an appearance because they are summoned by the evil team's leader, seeking their powers for himself. After you beat said leader and catch the boxart-Pokemon for yourself, you are allowed to finish up your adventure, collect whatever gym badge(s) you still need to get, then you head on over to the league to fight the Elite Four and then the champion, who has shown up to help you in small ways throughout your journey. This had also been done to a lesser degree in Generation II, as assisting Lance in uncovering Team Rocket's hideout in Mahogany Town and later liberating the Goldenrod Radio Tower is what ultimately prevents you from reaching the eighth and final gym badge required to challenge the Indigo League. Generation V decided to do away with this formula entirely by making N the rival, evil team leader and de-facto champion, only to throw a curveball by making Ghetsis the real threat, when he had been established this whole time as someone who had long since released his own Pokemon as per the moral duty of Team Plasma's Seven Sages. Black and White's plot makes me happy for all sorts of reasons, but departing from Pokemon's traditional roots of setting up final boss fights made the battles between N and Ghetsis more memorable overall, but I'll get to that later.

From what I've observed, the champion archetype in your mainstream Pokemon story goes as follows: the player encounters the champion early in the game, usually after winning their first gym badge. When encountered, they express their interests a bit, then give you an item with a varying degree of usefulness from game to game. Their appearance throughout the story usually triggers other scripted events required to progress the game along and give you access to the next city or objective you must travel to. Regardless, the story reveals very little about their background, exchanging personal history for a brief explanation of their ideals or motivations. They are often absent from your adventure, but pop in at times to give advice or another item. They will be present for, or at the very least involved in the final confrontation with the evil team as a supporting character while the player confronts the boss. They thank you afterwards and do no appear again until the end of the game. As it stands, this formula applies to four champions, but components of it are subverted in the more recent games (discounting remakes of course).

I want to argue that this champion-reveal archetype started with Generation II rather than Generation I. In Gen I, the champion was your smug, cocky rival who was always three steps ahead of you despite starting at the same time that you did. He belittles you on your whole adventure, even after you beat his over-leveled team. During your run-ins with Team Rocket, he is not involved in those confrontations save for one time, where he battles you in an enclosed area in the Silph Co. building before your second battle with Team Rocket's boss, Giovanni. It is also worth noting that there is no eleventh hour crisis in Red and Blue; that trope doesn't start becoming a thing until Ruby and Sapphire. If anything, the champion archetype of later generations isn't applicable to Gen I because Red and Blue have very different story goals. While it is very much an adventure RPG with the set goals of filling the Pokedex for Professor Oak and becoming the strongest trainer, the core of the narrative is the dynamic you share with your rival. His reveal as the champion works because it has already been established that he progressed through the league challenge faster than you did, not to mention his ceaselessly deprecating attitude towards the player character makes dethroning him all the more satisfying a conclusion to the story.

I personally think Gen II did the champion reveal the best. Lance was established as a strong trainer who asks for your assistance in investigating a strange radio signal, which in turn reveals that the culprits are in fact Team Rocket from the previous games. After you help Lance out, he more or less just disappears without any hint of returning until you challenge him. If you played Generation I or its remake, you would know that Lance was a member of the Elite Four, so assuming that he is still part of the league is warranted. It is only by the time you defeat Karen, who has taken Lance's place as the fourth member from the previous game, that the notion that he may be the champion is not far-fetched.

Gen III's Steven Stone shows up a few times to progress the plot in some arbitrary way or another, is around to express concern when the Hoenn Region starts flooding or drying up (depending on which version you're playing) and he is established as a very strong trainer, but his lack of any spoken association to the league makes his reveal a little less powerful in contrast to Lance. Part of me thinks Wally could have worked as a champion just as well, if not better than Steven did. Here you have this timid, waifish kid who you meet early in the game and encounter about as infrequently as with Steven. He may not deliver on a memorable battle in the two instances he challenges you, but his presence as a champion would have been a nice surprise considering his outward frailty, not to mention given the face that the Hoenn Elite Four's typing is strikingly similar to that of the original Elite Four from Gen I, the rival posing as the champion would have been a nice little thematic reference to the original games, even if it would probably make the reveal more predictable. Regardless, I appreciated Steven as a champion in Ruby and Sapphire than Wallace in Emerald, a character who, while breaking parts of the formula, we do not meet until the evil team-induced crisis is in full swing. The most we know about him is that he was once the gym leader of Sootopolis City, but stepped down and was replaced by some cheesy artsy French fop with a Spanish name. He really only makes a lasting impression in the remakes.

Gen IV's Cynthia meets the archetype beat by beat, and even more so in Platinum when she joins you on your search through the Distortion World to find and confront Team Galactic's Cyrus. Barring Alder, the first champion to subvert the archetype established by Gen II, Cynthia is probably the most plot-active champion to act within it, with the exception of Steven in Gen III's remakes, Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire. She also delivers one of the most challenging champion battles in the series, as her team will likely be 10-20 levels higher than that of your entire party unless you decide to train your Pokemon and challenge the league later. She also makes use of some of the most powerful and rare Pokemon in the series, namely Garchomp, Spiritomb and Milotic. From what I can tell, Cynthia is also extremely popular as far as champions go within the fandom, having appeared in every main series game since as an optional postgame encounter. I want to attribute this popularity to both her design and the intense difficulty of your battle with her.

Alder, as already discussed, broke the slowly encroaching archetype set for champions, but is explicitly the champion in name only because it is crucial to the plot for him to possess that role. By the time you battle him, the main story is over and you are likely well into the postgame at this point. I don't consider Alder to be a champion-proper because to be a champion in a strictly gameplay-based sense would imply that his battle isn't optional, which it very much is. The Gen V games in general give you a remarkable amount of stuff to do once the main story has concluded, all of it completely optional. The battles against both Alder and Cynthia in Black and White, along with their sequels, are completely optional too. Hell, I'm pretty sure on a playthrough of Black in 2015, I never bothered to challenge the postgame league. What Alder primarily serves within the games he appears in is that of a role model. He's this lighthearted, virtuous old dude who loves his Pokemon and is not opposed to challenging the worldviews of others, as he does with your milquetoast smart-guy rival Cheren, in order to help them grow as people. He is not nearly as threatening as Cynthia, but he is far and away the most multifaceted champion to date.

However, for the sake of argument, let's say Ghetsis counts as Black and White's champion, even if he is not one in name like Alder. While he fits the archetype well, he is also a subversion of it. You first encounter him delivering a speech in Accumula Town, encouraging the locals to question the morality of owning Pokemon. His speech is offset with a foreboding piano piece, indicating that he will inevitably be a threat to the player in the future. Much of his role on your adventure throughout Unova is to discourage and intimidate the player, but not by way of battling. Anyone who has played the previous generations prior to Black and White will likely assume that Ghetsis will be revealed as the boss of Team Plasma, and while he is the mastermind using N as a puppet leader, the game does not present it this way until you reach N's castle and learn about his upbringing as Ghetsis' groomed successor. Ghetsis' unique design sets him apart from the Seven Sages and establishes him as their leader, but then that would only imply that he would be a higher-ranked admin of Team Plasma, not the leader itself.

Because Gen III and Gen IV had very similar story beats, I honestly thought Ghetsis' arc was going to play out as Cyrus' had in Gen IV. I assumed that you would have to raid the hideout of Team Plasma and face Ghetsis down and fighting/catching boxart-guy afterwards, and only then would you be allowed to complete the gym challenge and subsequently face the league. This was of course flipped on its head when N reveals to the player three gym badges in that he is the king of Team Plasma, and Ghetsis serves under him, not the other way around. This makes Ghetsis' reveal as the final boss shocking, but not too much so that it feels forced. We know that Ghetsis is threatening, emotionally manipulative and of higher standing within Team Plasma's administration than the Seven Sages based on his actions and character design, so the possibility of facing him after facing N becomes a realistic expectation. To be blunt, Ghetsis doesn't fuck around. His team very much feels like a properly-balanced champion team, with Hydreigon acting as his team's resident pseudo-legendary, and his theme music is composed of foreboding drums and choir vocals. He feels more like a champion than Alder does. Ultimately, I would say Black and White has two champions: a story champion and a  gameplay champion. Alder fits the former while Ghetsis fits the latter, and while I love this dynamic for its creativity in a very formulaic series, I wish we had more of it. None of the Pokemon games since  Black and White had this degree of ambition in integrating and subverting the series' narrative and game-play trappings by way of a fake-out final boss, even its direct sequels, who perhaps played it a little too safe.

In Black and White's sequels, Black 2 and White 2, Alder's role as a mentor becomes literal, as he helps the player character get better accustomed to the game when they reach Floccessy Town (which incidentally is supposed to be based off Newark and I think that's hilarious). Instead of acting as the Unova League Champion, Alder is revealed to have stepped down from the league and has been replaced by the former Opelucid City gym leader Iris instead. Now, Iris adheres much more to the champion archetype than Alder does, but that really isn't saying much. In B2W2, she appears in Castelia City at the same time and for the same story function as she did in the previous games: you have to help her track down Team Plasma. That's it. You could argue that she meets the archetype better if you take her role within the predecessor game into account, since in Black and White, Iris is present during the eleventh-hour time of crisis, along with the gym leaders from all of Unova's cities (barring one) rallied up by your other, comparatively less annoying rival Bianca. If you are playing Pokemon White, you will have to face Iris in order to win the final gym badge, which makes her somewhat more relevant as a character, though only in White alone, as you fight her mentor Drayden in Black instead. In spite of this, I wouldn't say that Iris is a very memorable character within both stories she is in, and the time between these encounters are massive. By the time you meet Iris again in Opelucid City in White, it is to challenge her, whereas in Black she acts as a move tutor without any relevance to the plot. In B2W2, she will appear in Opelucid City to wish you luck with your battle with the city's current gym leader, but you won't see her afterwards until her big reveal as the new champion of Unova. While her theme music is catchy, I wouldn't really say the battle itself is incredibly memorable. To this day, I can't recall her team save for her Druddigon without having to look it up on Bulbapedia. It is worth noting that B2W2 have incredibly large postgames that near-eclipse the amount of content provided from the main story, which itself was less ambitious than Black and White and took a more Diamond and Pearl approach regarding to pacing the story with gym challenges, so Iris' memorability can easily be overlooked in a game with so much content.

Now if any champion meets the archetype the least, it is Generation VI's Diantha, and when I say “least”, I don't mean the least faithful to the archetype, because as previously explained, that title goes to Alder. Rather, Diantha's lack of screentime within the main story leads to a weak champion reveal by the end, even more so than Iris or Wallace. In Pokemon X and Y, your two encounters with her prior to the Pokemon League are incidental, as you run into her first at a cafe in the not so subtle stand-in city for Paris, and then at a monorail stop in where I can only assume is Normandy. She doesn't give you any important item or clears any obstacles for the player to advance the plot. Rather, she talks about herself a bit and expresses a desire to battle the player in the future. I probably wouldn't have remembered her leading up to taking on the league were it not for her character design, which fans have likened to that of Audrey Hepburn, and I can kind of see it? It's a fitting comparison given that Diantha is supposed to be a well-respected actress, but that aspect of her character alone is problematic from a storytelling standpoint should you choose to turn off your brain; if Diantha is this insanely famous actress, why wouldn't she immediately be identified as the Kalos League Champion as well by NPCs whenever she's out in the public? Last I checked, Parisian cafes and monorail stations aren't necessarily private venues, and it's not like Diantha is attending these places incognito. One line that particularly annoys me in her first encounter is, “I'm a Trainer myself, in my off time. I look forward to us battling someday!” To me, this line feels like a deliberate misdirect on the part of the writer, because what kind of league champion would brush their battling career aside as a hobby despite being the named strongest trainer in the entire region? There's just something incredibly dishonest about what is ostensibly supposed to be a throwaway line. It implies that we are not meant to assume that Diantha is an exceptional trainer of note, and are meant to see her primarily as an actress instead. This makes her reveal as champion ultimately fall flat, and you as a Pokemon fan could probably assume from thematic shorthand that she was going to be the champion simply because she had nothing better to do in the story.

Diantha's lack of presence in the narrative is what ultimately sells her short. Unlike previous champions, she does not appear during the obligatory time of crisis, though I wouldn't call this subversive, nor is she present during your recurring run-ins with Team Flare (aka the French fashion mafia). To be honest, I think some extra screentime in the vein of Cynthia would make her reveal less forced, or at the very least some hints on the part of random NPCs hinting of her battling prowess. This isn't to say I don't like Diantha as a character, or even X and Y's story for that matter. I actually quite like it. I just wish I saw Diantha more frequently. She is implied to be acquainted with Lysandre, who is revealed to be the boss of the French fashion mafia. Why couldn't that be explored? Hell, I even would have taken a part in the game where you wind up on a film set and you see Diantha performing! Pokemon X and Y took a much stronger influence from the part of the world it is based on than Black and White did, so it's kind of a shame that an aspect of French culture as a famous as their cinema was more or less pushed to the wayside.

At the time of this writing, I had recently finished my playthrough of Pokemon Sun. I accidentally spoiled myself to the champion reveal via YouTube, discovering that your final obstacle before becoming the first ever champion of the Alola Region was Professor Kukui. Compared to Diantha, my battle with Kukui was incredibly memorable, because I lost twice against him before finally emerging victorious. Of course, recency bias is very much a thing and my feelings regarding the quality of the battle are subject to change, but I think it's telling that a lot of thought went into how difficult this final challenge was supposed to be. I have issues with Pokemon Sun and Moon's balancing system, namely the fact that most trainers don't have more than one Pokemon until you're halfway through the game. I understand that the contrary would make the Exp. Share as insanely broken as it was in Gen VI, but in hindsight it appears to have been a necessary evil. By the time I challenged Kukui, both of our teams were almost perfectly balanced, making the battle less about sweeping the opponent's Pokemon as quickly as possible with the right type matchups and more about the strategy it takes to get there.

I would also be remiss not to mention the uniqueness of Kukui's champion reveal, because he is not the champion at all! Technically, you, the player, have become the first champion by being the first to beat the Elite Four, a feat achieved only by your rival in Red and Blue. This final battle you have with Kukui is a formality, as it is explained in the story that he has spearheaded the efforts to establish a Pokemon League in Alola, integrated in with the traditional Island Challenge. Kukui makes it very clear that he studies Pokemon moves, making battling an integral part of his research. It makes him a little one-note at times, but I don't think Pokemon has had as active of a champion character within the main story since Cynthia, and I mean champion in the sense that Ghetsis could be considered one. That said, I don't think anyone would have a problem if SuMo went the route of Black and White and making Lusamine in her drugged up possession form the final boss. My biggest issue when battling Kukui is that I didn't really feel strongly about the character himself.

Obviously I'm speaking from bias, but I think the past twelve years of playing Pokemon have conditioned me to champion trainers who, if they weren't depicted as calm and collected, were at the very least formidable and intimidating. Kukui is probably one of the most high-energy characters in the entire game! Previous champions all had an air of mystery behind them, whereas you practically spend 1/3 of SuMo's 3-hour tutorial being guided by Kukui. You pick up his mannerisms, you find out what he's all about, you find out he's married to a physicist, etc... Even if the game threw a curveball and actually made you the champion before anyone else could make a claim, Kukui's reveal as the final boss feels... underwhelming. This guy has been holding your hand and supporting you practically through your entire journey, and while Alder had a similar role in B2W2, it was not nearly as pronounced by comparison.

That spark of intensity you feel battling a champion like Steven and Cynthia just isn't there. What do you have to prove about yourself as a trainer if there is no champion to challenge at the end of the long road? This is honestly a shame because I was actually hoping around the time of Gen V that we would get a game where the story throws a curveball you become the first champion, albeit with the caveat that you have to compete with someone for the penultimate title. I still think this is possible, but from what Kukui has shown us, it needs to executed differently. I have not picked up Ultra Sun or Ultra Moon yet so I don't know whether or not Game Freak decided to switch up Kukui with someone else (though I'm gonna assume now that it's either Hau or Gladion), but I would honestly welcome a change, not to mention better battle music.

This current generation of Pokemon signals a shift in the way these games will likely be made for the years to come, both in terms of gameplay and narrative. I wasn't a huge fan of the Island Challenge in hindsight, but it was a fresh take from the past 20 years of  gym battles. While the story of B2W2 may come close at times, I don't think we've had two successive generations that followed similar story beats like Gens III and IV did. That said, I very much adhere to the notion that Pokemon needs to continue making memorable final battles for the player. Each story in a mainstream Pokemon game has remained memorable to some degree, but I strongly believe that the games which hold up better are the ones who execute their champion reveals the best, even if it means adhering to a pre-established archetype. Archetypes aren't a form of bad writing, but their overuse turns them into cliches.

#shaggy essays

[daleisgreat]

WWE Network Original Special First Half 2017

I am posting this a little later than I wanted to, but I am finally here with my recap of original content for the WWE Network for the first half of 2017. I want to kick off this installment picking up where two new series that premiered last year left off and see how they have since progressed.

Holy Foley - WWE released the final five episodes of their version of The Osbournes in January of this year. The first five episodes reminded me why I detest most reality TV shows with so many painfully telegraphed family issues being pushed to the forefront. Once again, the focus is on Dewey breaking in as a WWE storyline writer and Noelle trying to make it as a wrestler, or as she likes to painfully call it in corporate WWE speak several times every episode ‘Superstar.’ Mick is also up to some hijinx in each episode in his post-wrestling career, and most are unfortunately insufferable to endure. A lot of the primary plot lines in this second batch of episodes are a chore to get through with only a sprinkling of genuine entertaining scenes like Noelle getting five star tutelage in promos from Enzo. If you are looking for a reality show fix on the WWE Network stay away from this and stick with some of the original Tough Enough seasons instead. 205 Live - When I last talked about 205 Live, it was only several episodes into its run and Neville just debuted on the 205 scene. Since then Neville has stole the show and is one of the few legit high marks of 205 Live as he has been the main draw of the show and its champion since January of this year. His three-PPV feud with Austin Aries was the promotion’s runaway best rivalry for the first half of 2017. I was bummed to see Aries ask for and was granted his release shortly after his feud with Neville wrapped up since Austin could have been a great mentor to newer talent.

The other feuds on 205 Live have been more lighthearted in nature, and since they rarely get spotlighted on PPV, they kind of drag on for two-to-three times longer than they should, for better or worse. On the last WWE Network blog I mentioned how Alexander and Noam Dar were vying for Alicia Fox’s affection, and that whole angle played out until just a couple weeks ago when Dar finally dumped Alicia after several months of the two being constantly hot and cold in their relationship. Drew Gulak and Mustafa Ali had a lengthy feud over Gulak protesting Ali’s high-flying style and Gulak promoting his grounded/technical style more. Their feud finally wrapped up with a PPV quality, 2-out-of-3-falls match this past week. These are just two examples of feuds with wrestlers that probably would not have been promoted as highly on RAW and Smackdown. 205 Live is missing something keeping it from being destination programming and must-see like the Cruiserweight Classic tournament last year. Hopefully they can work in those missing pieces this year, or else I fear the writing may be on the wall for the cruiserweight division. Talking Smack - Wrestling fans reading this likely heard the news last week that WWE has cancelled the Smackdown Live post-talk show, Talking Smack as a weekly show which is horrible news. WWE did say it will stay on following Smackdown-branded PPVs however. Renee Young and Daniel Bryan have great chemistry and shined as hosts on the show. I loved seeing them interview talent who were sticking to their characters but did not have all their verbiage scripted out for them like they do on television which allowed the wrestlers to be more like an amped up version of themselves and get great practice at finding their voice for their on-screen personas. Speculation as to why WWE cancelled the show is because they had to wait an extra hour for 205 Live to finish before starting Talking Smack, and Shane McMahon not being as plugged in and engaged as a backup co-host while Daniel Bryan was away on Paternity Leave.

I loved watching Kevin Owens, The Miz, The Usos and Baron Corbin the most on Talking Smack. All four of them are great natural heels, especially Owens as he went the extra mile to mess with the hosts. A recent Talking Smack will also mark the only time that Eric Rowan was legit entertaining in his sole appearance on the program that had me cracking up at how unpredictable he was and how he was throwing Renee off her game. I will also give mad props to the Usos doing fantastic work as heels this past year, while also having some of the best segments on Talking Smack when they team up with Bryan for the most endearing improv rap sessions in pro wrestling history (just check out how affable Daniel is with his rap hat in those videos and you will know what I mean). Rest in peace, Talking Smack, at least it will still be on once a month. Legends with JBL - Speaking of cancelled WWE Network shows, JBL’s shoot-interview series got cancelled this past February after it aired its final two installments with interviews for Stan Hansen and Jimmy Hart. Of those two I would recommend the Hansen interview because he has rarely done interviews with WWE before and he has a ton of classic stories from his career that will likely be new to those hearing from this legend for the first time. Just like before, JBL does his research and asks tons of good questions and follow-ups, so make sure to binge through his entire archive if you have not before.

Bring it to the Table - This is a new show that debuted this year that WWE runs around once a month. Radio personality, Peter Rosenberg is joined by Corey Graves and JBL as they breakdown the latest main event storylines and behind-the-scenes news in a ESPN PTI/Around the Horn format of time limit debates. It makes for an interesting show, as everyone is trying to be quick on their feet with their two cents and sometimes will get called out on the following show for sometimes biting off a little more than they could chew like Corey Graves was called out for when he gave his thoughts on Shane McMahon. Nothing will beat Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith debating sports in my book, but I will give WWE credit for trying something new and I will keep tuning into this since they occasionally dive into some insider news that would surprise me they would touch on. WWE UK - WWE has premiered its UK division at the beginning of this year capitalizing on the hot UK wrestling scene from the past couple of years. They signed a lot of top UK talent and placed them in a 16-person tournament for the new WWE UK Title in Blackpool, England and had it transpire as a two-part special on the WWE Network. The atmosphere was something special as the UK fans always bring a unique dynamic to a wrestling show. Their singing and other soccer-style chants had me distracted and cringing for a good chunk of the first part of the special, but after the first round matches when most of the competition and matches amped up, the crowd also got serious and put their shenanigans to the side and got more engaged and their unique chants seemed more organic than distracting and helped made the gritty, strong UK style really pop.

Nigel McGuinness made his WWE debut announcing for the UK Championship tournament, and him and Michael Cole had a natural chemistry together, which was kind of surprising on two levels because I always thought of him as an average announcer at best before from his RoH commentary, but something must have gelled right with the two here because Cole especially stepped up his game and delivered easily his best commentary ever. Most of the matches in the tournament delivered with a unique rough, ‘smash-mouth’ style that is not that common on WWE TV, but if you were a fan of William Regal’s work then you will really love what the UK competitors bring to the ring. WWE only did the two-part special in January, and a follow up UK special in May for their UK division shows so far. From what I understand WWE is planning a weekly UK show for the Network and already has locked down dates to record their first several weeks worth of programming in the near future so be on the lookout for that premiering soon. Miscellaneous - There were four installments of WWE 24 so far this year. The one highlighting Kurt Angle stands out the most as it is nearly an hour and covers most of the key highs and lows throughout his career. They even track down former head of TNA/GFW, Dixie Carter for her thoughts on Kurt. There is also a nice piece on Finn Balor focusing on his recovery from his brutal injury last year, and two 24 specials focused on Wrestlemania 32 weekend from Dallas in 2016. I will continue to promote Ride Along and Table for Three as entertaining and low-cost programming for WWE since it only involves placing a couple cameras around a dinner table/rent-a-car while the wrestlers talk shop and reminisce about their past. WWE pumps out about one installment a month for those two shows, and my favorite ones of 2017 so far have featured Jericho and Owens in one of their last car rides before their on-screen breakup and Maryse and Miz celebrating their anniversary in their car ride. Table for 3 has had a lot of good installments this year with the newest edition featuring a Nation of Domination reunion having a lot of good stories between Mark Henry, Godfather and Ron Simmons. WWE dug up Eve Torres, Kelly Kelly and Maryse as the trio stood up for their work during the controversial ‘Diva Search’ era of the women’s division. Also make sure to watch two explosive personalities collide as Michael Hayes does his best to keep the peace between Eric Bishoff and Jim Cornette.

Thanks for sticking with me through this. For the second half of 2017 I am anticipating WWE debuting its weekly UK show, as well as the 32-person Mae Young Classic tournament starting next month. WWE gave a sneak peak introducing all the competitors last week and after how well WWE produced the cruiserweight and UK tournaments this past year I have only high expectations that the women will step up and deliver just as effectively. Huzzzah for the WWE getting me excited about tournaments again, for the longest time WWE treated them as throw-away filler, with even the last few King of the Ring tournaments lacking the pomp and circumstance that the tournaments on the WWE Network manage to pull off. Join me again in several months to see how well they pulled it off! Past Wrestling Blogs Best of WCW Monday Nitro Volume 2 Best of Monday Nitro Volume 3 Biggest Knuckleheads Bobby The Brain Heenan Daniel Bryan: Just Say Yes Yes Yes DDP: Positively Living Dusty Rhodes WWE Network Specials ECW Unreleased: Vol 1 ECW Unreleased: Vol 2 ECW Unreleased: Vol 3 For All Mankind Goldberg: The Ultimate Collection Its Good to Be the King: The Jerry Lawler Story Ladies and Gentlemen My Name is Paul Heyman Legends of Mid South Wrestling Macho Man: The Randy Savage Story Memphis Heat OMG Vol 2: Top 50 Incidents in WCW History OMG Vol 3: Top 50 Incidents in ECW History Owen: Hart of Gold RoH Supercard of Honor V RoH Supercard of Honor VI RoH Supercard of Honor VII RoH Supercard of Honor VIII RoH Supercard of Honor IX RoH Supercard of Honor X ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery Sting: Into the Light Superstar Collection: Zach Ryder Top 50 Superstars of All Time Tough Enough: Million Dollar Season True Giants Ultimate Fan Pack: Roman Reigns Ultimate Warrior: Always Believe Warrior Week on WWE Network Wrestlemania 3: Championship Edition Wrestlemania 28 Wrestlemania 29 Wrestlemania 30 Wrestlemania 31 Wrestlemania 32 The Wrestler (2008) Wrestling Road Diaries Too Wrestling Road Diaries Three: Funny Equals Money Wrestlings Greatest Factions WWE Network Original Specials First Half 2015 WWE Network Original Specials Second Half 2015 WWE Network Original Specials First Half 2016 WWE Network Original Specials Second Half 2016

#Wrestling #WWE #wwe network #table for 3 #bring it to the table #wwe 24 #Talking smack #ride along #holy foley #Mick Foley #mark henry #kelly kelly #eve torres #godfather #ron simmons #drew gulak #mustafa ali #noam dar #alicia fox #Kevin Owens #Chris Jericho #stan hansen #JBL #corey graves #peter rosenberg

[myupdatesystems-blog]

Breaking the Computer Buying Cycle

New Post has been published on https://myupdatesystems.com/2017/03/31/breaking-the-computer-buying-cycle/

Breaking the Computer Buying Cycle

If you are like most people when they go out and buy a new Personal Computer you probably get excited when you take it out of the box, turn it on and marvel at how fast it runs. When a computer is new it always seems to run faster and boot up quicker than your old computer. The applications and games seem to run without any slow down and when you get on the internet the pages load instantly on the screen, and you can quickly surf from one website to another. Overtime though, your computer can slow down and not run as quickly as it did when it was new.

This slow down can occur for a variety of reasons and when it happens it can be frustrating and spoil your computing experience. Often times when this happens it can be corrected by either cleaning up your hard drive, or running some diagnostics. Perhaps the computer has a virus and once you remove the virus, performance can be restored. What do you do though if you have done all those things and your computer is still running slow?

If your computer is running slow even after you have removed any viruses and attempted to improve system performance, it could mean that the demands you are now placing on your computer have exceeded the computer’s capability.

As we use our computers we tend to install new software applications and attempt to run more applications simultaneously. The new software we install can require greater computer resources such as more computer memory and a faster CPU, or central processing unit to run the software applications or games properly.

If you are like me you like to have multiple software applications running or multiple internet browser windows open at the same time and that can utilize greater amounts of computer resources as well. The more resources you use, the slower the computer will run.

This is a constant problem in computing because computer technology doubles roughly every 18 months. In a demand for more feature rich software applications, software developers create more resource consuming software programs. To meet the increased demands of the software, computer manufacturers continue to build faster, more expensive computers. This, in my opinion, is a vicious cycle where in order to maintain a fast and enjoyable computing experience, the computer user is forced to go out and buy a new computer every few years.

Fortunately for me I have never had to worry about that problem. I am a certified computer professional and have been building and repairing computers for over 15 years. When I want a faster computer I do not go out and buy a new expensive computer. I have learned how to break the new computer buying cycle by upgrading my computer. By upgrading my computer rather than buying new, I can simply make myself a faster computer at a fraction of the cost.

You can break the computer buying cycle too and you do not have to be a computer professional like me to do it. You only need to know a few things about computers, be handy with a screw driver and be able to follow a few simple instructions; but before you begin to think about upgrading your computer, it might be important to get a brief overview on how a computer works.

Computer Basics

Computers are made up of a combination of hardware and software working together. When you aren’t familiar with how a computer functions then they can seem very complex. You can reduce that complexity, once you understand how a computer works at a basic level.

At its most basic level a computer receives input and produces output. A computer receives input through input devices such as the keyboard and mouse (hardware). Every time we click the mouse on a link or move the mouse across the screen we are giving the computer input or an instruction to do something.

The computer receives the input as an electronic signal created by the mouse click or keystroke on the keyboard. This signal is transmitted through the computer and is converted into digital data where it can be interpreted as an instruction by the operating system, software application or game.(software)

The computer processes digital instruction data and produces output as either an image or words on the computer screen or perhaps as a printout on a printer.

What makes a computer fast is its ability to receive input, and produce output quickly. There are several components a computer needs in order to function but there are three primary components that directly affect how fast a computer can operate.

The three primary computer components which handle the processing of input and make a computer fast are the:

Motherboard or Main System board

CPU or Central Processing Unit

RAM or Random Access Memory

The Motherboard

Without getting too technical, the Motherboard is the computer component that connects all the hardware together on the computer. You could think of the Motherboard as a data freeway that links together all the components of the computer and allows them to transmit data between each other and and communicate.

Every computer component on the computer connects to the Motherboard either by being connected directly to the Motherboard or connecting via a data cable. The devices or components that connect to the Motherboard are the CPU, RAM Memory, Hard Drive, CD ROM/DVD drive, Video Card, Sound Card, Network Card, Modem, Key Board, Mouse and Monitor.

There are additional peripheral devices which can connect to the Motherboard as well through a variety of data ports which are connected to the Motherboard such as a printer, digital camera, microphone, and even a HDTV. These devices can connect to the Motherboard using one of several ports such as a USB, Parallel, Fire-Wire, SATA (Serial-ATA), or HDMI (High Definition Multimedia Interface) port.

In short the Motherboard provided the data communication infrastructure which allows communication between all the devices. What makes one Motherboard faster than another is the volume of data it can support being transmitted across what is called it’s data BUS and the speed at which it can transmit the data. One way to think of it is in terms of a street. Think of the data bus as a street and the data are like cars driving down the street. Older Motherboards communication was the equivalent of a two way two lane street with a speed limit of 25 MPH. Today the new Motherboards are like 8 lane highways with 200MPH speed limits.

New Motherboards are faster because they can allow more data traffic at higher speeds.

The CPU

The CPU or Processor is the brain of the computer. The CPU carries out all the instructions that you in conjunction with the Operating System, like Windows XP or Windows 7, asks it to do. CPUs can only carry out one instruction at a time but they do it so fast it seems like they are doing multiple tasks at one time or “Multitasking”.

Newer CPUs are faster because their “clock speed” or “clock cycle” is faster. The clock speed is the speed at which a CPU can carry out instructions. You can think of clock speed like the timing of a metronome, the device that helps musicians keep the right musical time. A metronome has a hand on the front of it which swings back and forth at a timing interval you set. As it swings back and forth it ticks like a clock. Like the metronome the CPU also ticks at a set interval but a CPU ticks at an incredibly fast rate which is measured in Mega or Gigahertz. The CPU carries out an instruction on every tick of its clock cycle.

New CPUs can not only carry out instructions at very high clock speeds but they can also be made up of multiple CPU Cores. Each Core can carry out its own instructions. When you have a Dual Core CPU it can carry out two instructions at the same time and a Quad Core CPU can carry out four. There are even six Core CPUs out now and like the newer Motherboards these CPUs also have a larger Data BUS to send and receive data faster through the Motherboard enhancing the computers overall performance.

RAM Memory

RAM or Random Access Memory is what stores all the instructions you have asked the computer to carry out. Every time we interact with our computer we are creating instruction data for the CPU to process and even the simplest interaction, like moving the mouse across the screen, requires many single instructions the CPU must carry out. You can imagine that playing a computer game or running an application like Adobe Photo shop can create a tremendous amount of instructions for the CPU. The CPU is fast and can execute a lot of instructions quickly but it can’t do them all at once which is why we need a place to store the instructions until they can be processed. This is why RAM was created.

RAM is basically the storage place for all the instructions that are waiting to be executed by the CPU. You can sometimes tell when you don’t have enough RAM when you have clicked on the mouse or hit the enter key to initiate a program and the hour glass just sits there spinning on the screen. It can appear that our computer has locked up or froze but what is actually happening is the computer is completing the series of instructions it has been given before it can perform any further instructions. When this happens we usually see it as the computer briefly locking up. It is also very frustrating.

The best way to resolve this problem is by simply adding more RAM to your computer. Adding more RAM is possibly the easiest way to increase the performance of your computer. Increasing the amount of RAM in your computer can help your computer run faster because it allows your computer store more instructions. This lets the computer carry out a lot of instructions while you continue to do your work and it reduces the computer freeze ups.

The speed of the RAM you use can also help the computer. If you use RAM that has a faster Data Bus speed it can send the instructions it is storing to the CPU at a faster rate. The faster the CPU gets the instructions the faster it can carry them out and the faster your computer will run.

The amount and type you can use is dictated by the type of CPU and Motherboard you use. The Bus speed of the CPU and Motherboard as well as the capacity of RAM the Motherboard can recognize will determine what type of RAM and how much you can use.

Some Motherboards will allow you to install as much as 32GBs of RAM and most Motherboards will recognize multiple Bus speeds so you can use several different types of RAM. Generally speaking the faster the BUS speed and the larger storage capacity of the RAM, the faster your computer will perform. The important thing to remember though is that with larger capacity and speed comes higher price.

What’s nice about upgrading RAM is most Motherboards can accommodate several different speeds and capacities of RAM so you can start out with a slower speed and smaller capacity, which will be less expensive reducing your initial upgrade cost and then later down the road you can upgrade your RAM to a larger capacity and high speed.

Replacing the Motherboard, CPU and RAM is actually a lot easier than you may think. The CPU and RAM are directly connected to the motherboard so you can replace all three components at the same time by simply swapping out the motherboard.

To do this you must first determine what kind of form factor of motherboard your current computer supports.

The Motherboard Form Factor

Many computer manufacturers such as HP, Compaq, Dell, Gateway, eMachine, and Acer build their computers based on 4 primary motherboard form factors or design specifications and they are:

ATX = Full Size Motherboard generally found in full size Desktop computers and Towers

Micro-ATX = Mid Size motherboard found in Mid Tower and Smaller Desktops

Mini-ATX = Small Motherboard found in Mid Towers, Smaller Desktops

Mini-ITX = Newest motherboards very small size found in new smaller towers and desktops

These form factors refer to the size of the Motherboard itself. The computer case is designed to accommodate a specific size of Motherboard. Once you have determined which form factor your computer model is, then all you need to do is purchase the correct form factor Motherboard that fits your computer models case.

It would work like this. Let’s say you have an HP Pavilion 750n desktop computer. This is an older computer with a single core processor. Nice computer when it first came out but very slow by today’s standards. You decide that you want to make it faster by upgrading it to a Quad Core CPU but you need to determine if you can upgrade it.

You can determine whether or not you can upgrade that particular computer by going to the HP support website. On the site you would type in your computer model and look at the hardware specifications for that computer. HP will list the form factor information in the specifications guide. Having done this many times, I already know the 750n uses a Micro-ATX form factor.

Each computer manufacturer I named has a support site on their webpage where you can go to determine your models form factor. You can also do a search on Yahoo, Google, or Bing and ask what form factor your computer model is. If that doesn’t work simply email me or leave a comment on this article and I can help you locate it.

Once you know the type of form factor your computer model supports you are now ready to decide what performance level you would like to upgrade your computer to.The performance level of the computer is generally dictated by the CPU it uses. You may recall I indicated the CPU is often referred to as the brain of the computer because it processes all the instructions and it sets the computers overall speed based on it’s clock speed.Since the computers overall speed is set by the CPU, you typically start your upgrade by determining the CPU performance level you want.

How you decide which performance level you would like to upgrade to can be based on how you use your computer and how much you want to spend to upgrade it. Generally speaking if you only use your computer to send and receive email, browse the web, and save and share digital images from a digital camera, then you may only need to upgrade to a Dual Core CPU to significantly improve you computing experience.

If you play lots of games, burns DVDs, edit movies or sound files, and work with high resolution images or graphics, then you may want to select a Quad Core CPU to increase performance and improve your computing experience.

From a cost perspective you can expect to pay more for a faster CPU than you would for a slower CPU and Quad Core CPUs are generally more expensive than Dual Cores. As a rule I believe you should purchase as much as you can for as little as possible that way you get the most for your money and you won’t have to upgrade again for quite a while.

When you are ready to select your CPU you will have choices based on manufacturer and type and there are also some differences between the various types of CPUs from each manufacturer which you should be aware of.

There are three primary CPU manufacturers Intel, AMD and Motorola, but for the purpose of this article we are only going to focus on Intel and AMD. Motorola is primarily responsible for making CPUs for Apple Computers. Apple computers, are a proprietary computer model and it can be more difficult and more costly to upgrade an Apple computer.

This article is focused on helping the budget conscious, who own what is generally referred to as an IBM compatible computer, upgrade their computer easily and inexpensively. IBM compatible computers are identified as those computers which primarily run a Microsoft Windows based operating system such as Windows XP or Windows 7. Intel and AMD manufacture CPUs that support IBM compatible computers so those are the two manufacturers we will focus on.

For the purpose of this article I am not going to go into great detail about the differences between Intel and AMD CPUs. There is already a significant amount of detailed information available on the internet which describes each manufacturers CPU chip architecture, as well as gives side by side comparison.

I would invite you to do a little research on how each manufacturers chips are designed and then review a website that benchmarks each CPUs performance. There are many links on CPU design, comparisons and reveiws on the weband this can help you make your CPU choice.

The prevailing sentiment regarding AMD vs. Intel is that both CPUs, in either Dual or Quad Core configuration, perform similarly with Intel being slightly faster. Intel CPUs have always been associated with executing business applications quickly while AMD CPUs run multimedia applications quickly. As you research their benchmark scores you will see Intel on a graph seems to dramatically out perform AMD but when you look at the duration of time between the two it is minimal.

Where you will see a significant difference between the two manufacturers is in cost. AMD CPUs are almost always less expensive than Intel CPUs. The question I always ask my clients is, “Is a 4 second faster speed difference worth an extra $200 or $300 dollars more by buying an Intel CPU?” To me it is not.

I am looking for an overall performance increase compared to what I am currently using. Once you upgrade your computer you are not going to be comparing it to another computer of equal performance, you will be comparing it to the speed of your last computer. If after your upgrade, you find your computer runs significantly faster than your last computer and it didn’t cost much for you to achieve that performance increase, you will be happy with your upgrade and that is what is important.

CPU Cache

Earlier I indicated that RAM stores all the instruction data being transmitted to the CPU and throughout the computer. The CPU Cache is another form of high speed memory only it is specifically devoted to the CPU. It has been shown that a CPU can process data faster if more of the data it must process can be stored on memory located closer to the CPU itself.

All CPUs come with a cache but some newer CPUs will come with an additional cache that is faster and can hold more data closer to the CPU. Typically CPUs operating at a higher clock speed and having an additional, faster cache will offer higher performance.

A good example of this is the difference between the AMD Athlon and Phenom Series of CPUs. Both the Athlon and Phenom series come in Dual and Quad Core configurations but the Phenoim Series has an additional L3 cache making the CPU faster. It also makes a Phenom series CPU more expensive than the Athlon Series.

Another interesting tidbit is there is now a version II for both the Athlon and Phenom Series. The version II offers a more faster cache hence both CPUs are supposed to be faster than their predecessors however the benchmark numbers show a relatively small increase in performance.

Be sure to do a little research on the differences between the AMD and Intel CPUs and select the one you feel will be appropriate for your computing needs while meeting your budget goals. Once you have chosen the CPU you want you will then be ready to select the Motherboard that supports not only your CPU but your computer form factor as well.

One last thing regarding CPUs are both AMD and Intel have different CPU form factors so when you are selecting a Motherboard for the form factor that meets your computers specifications you also need to select the one that fits your CPU choice. This may seem complicated but it is not that difficult once you start looking at the Motherboard and CPU combinations.

The resellers I have showed you have filtering options on their web pages which allow you to select Motherboards that can support either AMD or Intel. You can also filter by both CPU and computer form factor as well which can help you narrow down your decision making.

Once you have made a decision on the CPU, you want to select the Motherboard that will support the CPU you have chosen. As far as Motherboards go there are several major manufactures of Motherboards and they all produce the 4 main types of Motherboard form factors. The major manufactures are:

ASUS

Biostar

Gigabyte

MSI

Foxconn

ECSJetway

Zotac

This may seem like a lot to choose from but as you begin to filter on the CPU type you can narrow down your focus and make selecting the right Motherboard easier.

Each motherboard will come with common features that are necessary for standard computer operations and some can come with additional features that may or may not be beneficial to you. The primary thing to remember about the Motherboard is that all of the components connect too it and you can choose to customize your computer upgrade as much or as little you want depending on the Motherboard you purchase.

For example, you can purchase a Motherboard which has the video and sound card integrated into the board. This saves you both time and money because it eliminates the need for you to choose a video or sound card, but if you want a specific video or sound card, you can select a Motherboard that does not come with those integrated components and then pick the video and sound card you would like to install as add in cards onto the Motherboard.

Here is a list of common Motherboards features:

Keyboard and Mouse input often referred to as a PS2 connector

USB – Universal Serial Bus ports for connecting computer peripherals such as (Keyboard, Mouse, Printer, Digital Camera, external Hard Drive etc…)

Parallel Printer Port (not as much in newer motherboards as printers use USB)

Local Area Network or LAN connection for a network or internet connection

Dial-up Modem (not as common in newer boards due to high speed internet connections)

Optional Motherboard Features:

1394 or Fire-wire connection (higher speed data connection)

External SATA or Serial-ATA connection (higher speed data connection designed to connect external SATA devices such as a Hard Drive)

HDMI – High-Definition Multimedia Interface to connect an HD Monitor or TV, or to an external High Definition Audio component

We touched on RAM earlier and we know that the RAM you choose must be supported by the CPU and Motherboard you choose. To make it simple it breaks down like this when upgrading. The CPU determines the type of Motherboard you have to choose and your computer model determines the type of Motherboard form factor you select.

The Motherboard will dictate what type of RAM you will be able to use so that will make your selection easier. The only thing you will have to decide when it comes to RAM, is the size of RAM meaning the amount of Gigabytes, Gigs or GBs of RAM you choose and the RAM speed you select.

One other thing you must be aware of is the newer Operating Systems such as Windows Vista and Windows 7 require a minimum of 2GBs of RAM to run properly so you will want to select at least 2GBs of RAM when you upgrade. Knowing this can make your decision regarding the amount of RAM pretty straight forward. As far as the speed of RAM you select that again will depend on the speeds the Motherboard will support, the amount of performance you want and how much you are willing to spend.

As far as determining the speed of RAM your Motherboard will support that is not difficult to determine. As you begin to look at Motherboards you will see they clearly specify the type and speed of RAM they support.

I have covered a lot of information up to this point and I hope you have a better understanding of what is required for you to be able to identify the Motherboard, CPU and RAM components you would need to upgrade your current computer. Buying these components and upgrading them your self is far less expensive then going out and buying a new computer and I am confident with this information as a starting point you too can save money buy upgrading the computer yourself.

There are however, two important additional pieces of information you should know before you attempt to upgrade your computer.

1. Before you upgrade your current computer you should back up all of your important data on to an external storage device such as an external hard drive, USB jump drive or burn it onto a CD or DVD.

The reason this is important is when you upgrade those components you will be forced to reinstall the operating system and that will erase all the current data on your hard drive. In additional if you don’t have an installation disk for your current operating system, you will need to purchase a new copy of Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7 to install once you have upgraded the components. This may not actually be a major concern for you if you were already considering upgrading to a newer version of Windows. Also I can help you find an inexpensive copy of the Windows operating system if you it.

2. The new components you will install in you current PC will be more advanced from a power consumption standpoint and upgrading them will most likely require you to also upgrade your power supply.

The upgrade is not expensive and is a very easy to accomplish. The type of power supply you will want to select will be roughly 400 watts at least and will need to be a 20×4 pin or 24 pin power supply. This is the type of power supply supported by the newer Motherboards. Again the Motherboard specifications will indicate the power supply requirements.

To make your computer faster all you need to do is upgrade the Motherboard, CPU and RAM. You start by identifying the type of Motherboard form factor your current computer will support, and the performance level you want to upgrade to. Then you buy the CPU that fits your performance needs along with the Motherboard and RAM that fits both your computer model and CPU specifications.

The one thing I didn’t cover is the actual installation of these components once you have purchased them and are ready to install. At a high level the process is nothing more then:

Unplugging the computer and disconnecting all peripheral components such as the keyboard, mouse and monitor from the case

Before you open the computer, discharge yourself electrically or purchase a static strap to ground yourself to the chassis, this will help you avoid static discharge which can fry a computer component.

Removing the side cover off the computer case

Disconnecting all the power cables and Data cables from the old Motherboard

Unscrewing and removing the old Motherboard from the case

Unscrewing and removing the old power supply

Install the new power supply

Install the new Motherboard into the case

Reconnecting all the power and data cables

Powering the computer back up and listening for proper post sound

Now you are ready to install the operating system

I know once you decide to start this process you will have many questions which is why there is one last thing I would recommend you do before you begin to upgrade you computer.

There are many do it yourself computer repair and upgrade manuals available online and they can provide you all the help you need to do your computer upgrade. Many of the books will provide you step by step explanation on how to replace just about every component on your computer and provide you with detailed diagrams so you can see how to actually perform the removal or install. I would suggest you make a small investment and purchase one of these books.

[netmaddy-blog]

Breaking Computer Buying Cycle

New Post has been published on https://netmaddy.com/breaking-computer-buying-cycle/

Breaking Computer Buying Cycle

That New Computer Smell

If you are like most people when they go out and buy a new Personal Computer you probably get excited when you take it out of the box, turn it on and marvel at how fast it runs. When a computer is new it always seems to run faster and boot up quicker than your old computer. The applications and games seem to run without any slow down and when you get on the internet the pages load instantly on the screen, and you can quickly surf from one website to another. Over time though, your computer can slow down and not run as quickly as it did when it was new.

This slowdown can occur for a variety of reasons and when it happens it can be frustrating and spoil your computing experience. Often times when this happens it can be corrected by either cleaning up your hard drive or running some diagnostics. Perhaps the computer has a virus and once you remove the virus, performance can be restored. What do you do though if you have done all those things and your computer is still running slow?

If your computer is running slow even after you have removed any viruses and attempted to improve system performance, it could mean that the demands you are now placing on your computer have exceeded the computer’s capability.

As we use our computers we tend to install new software applications and attempt to run more applications simultaneously. The new software we install can require greater computer resources such as more computer memory and a faster CPU, or central processing unit to run the software applications or games properly.

If you are like me you like to have multiple software applications running or multiple internet browser windows open at the same time and that can utilize greater amounts of computer resources as well. The more resources you use, the slower the computer will run.

This is a constant problem in computing because computer technology doubles roughly every 18 months. In a demand for more feature-rich software applications, software developers create more resource consuming software programs. To meet the increased demands of the software, computer manufacturers continue to build faster, more expensive computers. This, in my opinion, is a vicious cycle where in order to maintain a fast and enjoyable computing experience, the computer user is forced to go out and buy a new computer every few years.

Fortunately for me, I have never had to worry about that problem. I am a certified computer professional and have been building and repairing computers for over 15 years. When I want a faster computer I do not go out and buy a new expensive computer. I have learned how to break the new computer buying cycle by upgrading my computer. By upgrading my computer rather than buying new, I can simply make myself a faster computer at a fraction of the cost.

You can break the computer buying cycle too and you do not have to be a computer professional like me to do it. You only need to know a few things about computers, be handy with a screwdriver and be able to follow a few simple instructions; but before you begin to think about upgrading your computer, it might be important to get a brief overview of how a computer works.

Computer Basics

Computers are made up of a combination of hardware and software working together. When you aren’t familiar with how a computer functions then they can seem very complex. You can reduce that complexity, once you understand how a computer works at a basic level.

At its most basic level, a computer receives input and produces output. A computer receives input through input devices such as the keyboard and mouse (hardware). Every time we click the mouse on a link or move the mouse across the screen we are giving the computer input or an instruction to do something.

The computer receives the input as an electronic signal created by the mouse click or keystroke on the keyboard. This signal is transmitted to the computer and is converted into digital data where it can be interpreted as an instruction to the operating system, software application or game.(software)

The computer processes digital instruction data and produces output as either an image or words on the computer screen or perhaps as a printout on a printer.

What makes a computer fast is its ability to receive input, and produce output quickly. There are several components a computer needs in order to function but there are three primary components that directly affect how fast a computer can operate.

The three primary computer components which handle the processing of input and make a computer fast are the:

Motherboard or Main System board CPU or Central Processing Unit RAM or Random Access Memory The Motherboard

Without getting too technical, the Motherboard is the computer component that connects all the hardware together on the computer. You could think of the Motherboard as a data freeway that links together all the components of the computer and allows them to transmit data between each other and-and communicate.

Every computer component on the computer connects to the Motherboard either by being connected directly to the Motherboard or connecting via a data cable. The devices or components that connect to the Motherboard are the CPU, RAM Memory, Hard Drive, CD-ROM/DVD drive, Video Card, Sound Card, Network Card, Modem, Key Board, Mouse, and Monitor.

There are additional peripheral devices which can connect to the Motherboard as well through a variety of data ports which are connected to the Motherboard such as a printer, digital camera, microphone, and even an HDTV. These devices can connect to the Motherboard using one of the several ports such as a USB, Parallel, Fire-Wire, SATA (Serial-ATA), or HDMI (High Definition Multimedia Interface) port.

In short, the Motherboard provided the data communication infrastructure which allows communication between all the devices. What makes one Motherboard faster than another is the volume of data it can support being transmitted across what is called its data BUS and the speed at which it can transmit the data. One way to think of it is in terms of a street. Think of the data bus as a street and the data are like cars driving down the street. Older Motherboards communication was the equivalent of a two-way two-lane street with a speed limit of 25 MPH. Today the new Motherboards are like 8 lane highways with 200MPH speed limits.

New Motherboards are faster because they can allow more data traffic at higher speeds.

The CPU

The CPU or Processor is the brain of the computer. The CPU carries out all the instructions that you in conjunction with the Operating System, like Windows XP or Windows 7, asks it to do. CPUs can only carry out one instruction at a time but they do it so fast it seems like they are doing multiple tasks at one time or “Multitasking”.

Newer CPUs are faster because their “clock speed” or “clock cycle” is faster. The clock speed is the speed at which a CPU can carry out instructions. You can think of clock speed like the timing of a metronome, the device that helps musicians keep the right musical time. A metronome has a hand on the front of it which swings back and forth at a timing interval you set. As it swings back and forth it ticks like a clock. Like the metronome, the CPU also ticks at a set interval but a CPU ticks at an incredibly fast rate which is measured in Mega or Gigahertz. The CPU carries out an instruction on every tick of its clock cycle.

New CPUs can not only carry out instructions at very high clock speeds but they can also be made up of multiple CPU Cores. Each Core can carry out its own instructions. When you have a Dual Core CPU it can carry out two instructions at the same time and a Quad Core CPU can carry out four. There are even six Core CPUs out now and like the newer Motherboards, these CPUs also have a larger Data BUS to send and receive data faster through the Motherboard enhancing the computers overall performance.

RAM Memory

RAM or Random Access Memory is what stores all the instructions you have asked the computer to carry out. Every time we interact with our computer we are creating instruction data for the CPU to process and even the simplest interaction, like moving the mouse across the screen, requires many single instructions the CPU must carry out. You can imagine that playing a computer game or running an application like Adobe Photoshop can create a tremendous amount of instructions for the CPU. The CPU is fast and can execute a lot of instructions quickly but it can’t do them all at once which is why we need a place to store the instructions until they can be processed. This is why RAM was created.

RAM is basically the storage place for all the instructions that are waiting to be executed by the CPU. You can sometimes tell when you don’t have enough RAM when you have clicked on the mouse or hit the enter key to initiate a program and the hour glass just sits there spinning on the screen. It can appear that our computer has locked up or frozen but what is actually happening is the computer is completing the series of instructions it has been given before it can perform any further instructions. When this happens we usually see it as the computer briefly locking up. It is also very frustrating.

The best way to resolve this problem is by simply adding more RAM to your computer. Adding more RAM is possibly the easiest way to increase the performance of your computer. Increasing the amount of RAM in your computer can help your computer run faster because it allows your computer store more instructions. This lets the computer carry out a lot of instructions while you continue to do your work and it reduces the computer freeze ups.

The speed of the RAM you use can also help the computer. If you use RAM that has a faster Data Bus speed it can send the instructions it is storing to the CPU at a faster rate. The faster the CPU gets the instructions the faster it can carry them out and the faster your computer will run.

The amount and type you can use are dictated by the type of CPU and Motherboard you use. The Bus speed of the CPU and Motherboard, as well as the capacity of RAM the Motherboard can recognize, will determine what type of RAM and how much you can use.

Some Motherboards will allow you to install as much as 32GBs of RAM and most Motherboards will recognize multiple Bus speeds so you can use several different types of RAM. Generally speaking the faster the BUS speed and the larger storage capacity of the RAM, the faster your computer will perform. The important thing to remember though is that with larger capacity and speed comes the higher price.

What’s nice about upgrading RAM is most Motherboards can accommodate several different speeds and capacities of RAM so you can start out with a slower speed and smaller capacity, which will be less expensive reducing your initial upgrade cost and then later down the road you can upgrade your RAM to a larger capacity and high speed.

Replacing the Motherboard, CPU and RAM is actually a lot easier than you may think. The CPU and RAM are directly connected to the motherboard so you can replace all three components at the same time by simply swapping out the motherboard.

To do this you must first determine what kind of form factor of motherboard your current computer supports.

The Motherboard Form Factor

Many computer manufacturers such as HP, Compaq, Dell, Gateway, eMachine, and Acer build their computers based on 4 primary motherboard form factors or design specifications and they are:

ATX = Full-Size Motherboard generally found in full-size Desktop computers and Towers Micro-ATX = Mid-Size motherboard found in Mid Tower and Smaller Desktops Mini-ATX = Small Motherboard found in Mid Towers, Smaller Desktops Mini-ITX = Newest motherboards very small size found in new smaller towers and desktops These form factors refer to the size of the Motherboard itself. The computer case is designed to accommodate a specific size of Motherboard. Once you have determined which form factor your computer model is, then all you need to do is purchase the correct form factor Motherboard that fits your computer models case.

It would work like this. Let’s say you have an HP Pavilion 750n desktop computer. This is an older computer with a single core processor. The Nice computer when it first came out but very slow by today’s standards. You decide that you want to make it faster by upgrading it to a Quad Core CPU but you need to determine if you can upgrade it.

You can determine whether or not you can upgrade that particular computer by going to the HP support website. On the site, you would type in your computer model and look at the hardware specifications for that computer. HP will list the form factor information in the specifications guide. Having done this many times, I already know the 750n uses a Micro-ATX form factor.

Each computer manufacturer I named has a support site on their web page where you can go to determine your models form factor. You can also do a search on Yahoo, Google, or Bing and ask what form factor your computer model is. If that doesn’t work simply email me or leave a comment on this article and I can help you locate it.

Once you know the type of form factor your computer model supports you are now ready to decide what performance level you would like to upgrade your computer too.The performance level of the computer is generally dictated by the CPU it uses. You may recall I indicated the CPU is often referred to as the brain of the computer because it processes all the instructions and it sets the computer’s overall speed based on its clock speed.Since the computer’s overall speed is set by the CPU, you typically start your upgrade by determining the CPU performance level you want.

How you decide which performance level you would like to upgrade to can be based on how you use your computer and how much you want to spend to upgrade it. Generally speaking, if you only use your computer to send and receive email, browse the web, and save and share digital images from a digital camera, then you may only need to upgrade to a Dual Core CPU to significantly improve your computing experience.

If you play lots of games, burns DVDs, edit movies or sound files, and work with high-resolution images or graphics, then you may want to select a Quad Core CPU to increase performance and improve your computing experience.

From a cost perspective, you can expect to pay more for a faster CPU than you would for a slower CPU and Quad Core CPUs are generally more expensive than Dual Cores. As a rule, I believe you should purchase as much as you can for as little as possible that way you get the most for your money and you won’t have to upgrade again for quite a while.

When you are ready to select your CPU you will have choices based on manufacturer and type and there are also some differences between the various types of CPUs from each manufacturer which you should be aware of.

There are three primary CPU manufacturers Intel, AMD, and Motorola, but for the purpose of this article, we are only going to focus on Intel and AMD. Motorola is primarily responsible for making CPUs for Apple Computers. Apple computers are a proprietary computer model and it can be more difficult and more costly to upgrade an Apple computer.

This article is focused on helping the budget conscious, who own what is generally referred to as an IBM compatible computer, upgrade their computer easily and inexpensively. IBM compatible computers are identified as those computers which primarily run a Microsoft Windows based operating systems such as Windows XP or Windows 7. Intel and AMD manufacture CPUs that support IBM compatible computers so those are the two manufacturers we will focus on.

For the purpose of this article, I am not going to go into great detail about the differences between Intel and AMD CPUs. There is already a significant amount of detailed information available on the internet which describes each manufacturers CPU chip architecture, as well as gives the side by side comparison.

I would invite you to do a little research on how each manufacturer’s chips are designed and then review a website that benchmarks each CPUs performance. There are many links on CPU design, comparisons and reviews on the wideband this can help you make your CPU choice.

The prevailing sentiment regarding AMD vs. Intel is that both CPUs, in either Dual or Quad Core configuration, perform similarly with Intel being slightly faster. Intel CPUs have always been associated with executing business applications quickly while AMD CPUs run multimedia applications quickly. As you research their benchmark scores you will see Intel on a graph seems to dramatically outperform AMD but when you look at the duration of time between the two it is minimal.

Where you will see a significant difference between the two manufacturers is in cost. AMD CPUs are almost always less expensive than Intel CPUs. The question I always ask my clients is, “Is a 4 second faster speed difference worth an extra $200 or $300 dollars more by buying an Intel CPU?” To me, it is not.

I am looking for an overall performance increase compared to what I am currently using. Once you upgrade your computer you are not going to be comparing it to another computer of equal performance, you will be comparing it to the speed of your last computer. If after your upgrade, you find your computer runs significantly faster than your last computer and it didn’t cost much for you to achieve that performance increase, you will be happy with your upgrade and that is what is important.

CPU Cache

Earlier I indicated that RAM stores all the instruction data being transmitted to the CPU and throughout the computer. The CPU Cache is another form of high-speed memory only it is specifically devoted to the CPU. It has been shown that a CPU can process data faster if more of the data it must process can be stored on the memory located closer to the CPU itself.

All CPUs come with a cache but some newer CPUs will come with an additional cache that is faster and can hold more data closer to the CPU. Typically CPUs operating at a higher clock speed and having an additional, faster cache will offer higher performance.

A good example of this is the difference between the AMD Athlon and Phenom Series of CPUs. Both the Athlon and Phenom series come in Dual and Quad Core configurations but the Phenom Series has an additional L3 cache making the CPU faster. It also makes a Phenom series CPU more expensive than the Athlon Series.

Another interesting tidbit is there is now a version II for both the Athlon and Phenom Series. The version II offers a faster cache hence both CPUs are supposed to be faster than their predecessors however the benchmark numbers show a relatively small increase in performance.

Be sure to do a little research on the differences between the AMD and Intel CPUs and select the one you feel will be appropriate for your computing needs while meeting your budget goals. Once you have chosen the CPU you want you will then be ready to select the Motherboard that supports not only your CPU but your computer form factor as well.

One last thing regarding CPUs is both AMD and Intel have different CPU form factors so when you are selecting a Motherboard for the form factor that meets your computer’s specifications you also need to select the one that fits your CPU choice. This may seem complicated but it is not that difficult once you start looking at the Motherboard and CPU combinations.

The resellers I have shown you have filtering options on their web pages which allow you to select Motherboards that can support either AMD or Intel. You can also filter by both CPU and computer form factor as well which can help you narrow down your decision making.

Once you have made a decision on the CPU, you want to select the Motherboard that will support the CPU you have chosen. As far as Motherboards go there are several major manufacturers of Motherboards and they all produce the 4 main types of Motherboard form factors. The major manufacturers are:

ASUS Biostar Gigabyte MSI Foxconn ECSJetway Zotac This may seem like a lot to choose from but as you begin to filter on the CPU type you can narrow down your focus and make selecting the right Motherboard easier.

Each motherboard will come with common features that are necessary for standard computer operations and some can come with additional features that may or may not be beneficial to you. The primary thing to remember about the Motherboard is that all of the components connect to it and you can choose to customize your computer upgrade as much or as little you want to depend on the Motherboard you purchase.

For example, you can purchase a Motherboard which has the video and sound card integrated into the board. This saves you both time and money because it eliminates the need for you to choose a video or sound card, but if you want a specific video or sound card, you can select a Motherboard that does not come with those integrated components and then pick the video and sound card you would like to install as add in cards onto the Motherboard.

Here is a list of common Motherboards features:

Keyboard and Mouse input often referred to as a PS2 connector USB – Universal Serial Bus ports for connecting computer peripherals such as (Keyboard, Mouse, Printer, Digital Camera, external Hard Drive etc…) Parallel Printer Port (not as much in newer motherboards as printers use USB) Local Area Network or LAN connection for a network or internet connection Dial-up Modem (not as common in newer boards due to high-speed internet connections) Optional Motherboard Features:

1394 or Firewire connection (higher speed data connection) External SATA or Serial-ATA connection (higher speed data connection designed to connect external SATA devices such as a Hard Drive) HDMI – High-Definition Multimedia Interface to connect an HD Monitor or TV, or to an external High Definition Audio component We touched on RAM earlier and we know that the RAM you choose must be supported by the CPU and Motherboard you choose. To make it simple it breaks down like this when upgrading. The CPU determines the type of Motherboard you have to choose and your computer model determines the type of Motherboard form factor you select.

The Motherboard will dictate what type of RAM you will be able to use so that will make your selection easier. The only thing you will have to decide when it comes to RAM is the size of RAM meaning the amount of Gigabytes, Gigs or GBs of RAM you choose and the RAM speed you select.

One other thing you must be aware of is the newer Operating Systems such as Windows Vista and Windows 7 require a minimum of 2GBs of RAM to run properly so you will want to select at least 2GBs of RAM when you upgrade. Knowing this can make your decision regarding the amount of RAM pretty straight forward. As far as the speed of RAM you select that again will depend on the speeds the Motherboard will support, the amount of performance you want and how much you are willing to spend.

As far as determining the speed of RAM your Motherboard will support that is not difficult to determine. As you begin to look at Motherboards you will see they clearly specify the type and speed of RAM they support.

I have covered a lot of information up to this point and I hope you have a better understanding of what is required for you to be able to identify the Motherboard, CPU and RAM components you would need to upgrade your current computer. Buying these components and upgrading them yourself is far less expensive than going out and buying a new computer and I am confident with this information as a starting point you too can save money by upgrading the computer yourself.

There are, however, two important additional pieces of information you should know before you attempt to upgrade your computer.

1. Before you upgrade your current computer you should backup all of your important data onto an external storage device such as an external hard drive, USB jump drive or burn it to a CD or DVD.

The reason this is important is when you upgrade those components you will be forced to reinstall the operating system and that will erase all the current data on your hard drive. In additional if you don’t have an installation disk for your current operating system, you will need to purchase a new copy of Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7 to install once you have upgraded the components. This may not actually be a major concern for you if you were already considering upgrading to a newer version of Windows. Also, I can help you find an inexpensive copy of the Windows operating system if you it.

2. The new components you will install in you current PC will be more advanced from a power consumption standpoint and upgrade them will most likely require you to also upgrade your power supply.

The upgrade is not expensive and is a very easy to accomplish. The type of power supply you will want to select will be roughly 400 watts at least and will need to be a 20×4 pin or 24 pin power supply. This is the type of power supply supported by the newer Motherboards. Again the Motherboard specifications will indicate the power supply requirements.

To make your computer faster all you need to do is upgrade the Motherboard, CPU, and RAM. You start by identifying the type of Motherboard form factor your current computer will support, and the performance level you want to upgrade to. Then you buy the CPU that fits your performance needs along with the Motherboard and RAM that fits both your computer model and CPU specifications.

The one thing I didn’t cover is the actual installation of these components once you have purchased them and are ready to install. At a high level, the process is nothing more than:

Unplugging the computer and disconnecting all peripheral components such as the keyboard, mouse, and monitor from the case Before you open the computer, discharge yourself electrically or purchase a static strap to ground yourself to the chassis, this will help you avoid static discharge which can fry a computer component. Removing the side cover off the computer case Disconnecting all the power cables and Data cables from the old Motherboard Unscrewing and removing the old Motherboard from the case Unscrewing and removing the old power supply Install the new power supply Install the new Motherboard into the case Reconnecting all the power and data cables Powering the computer back up and listening for proper post sound Now you are ready to install the operating system I know once you decide to start this process you will have many questions which are why there is one last thing I would recommend you do before you begin to upgrade your computer.

There are many do it yourself computer repair and upgrade manuals available online and they can provide you all the help you need to do your computer upgrade. Many of the books will provide you step by step explanation on how to replace just about every component on your computer and provide you with detailed diagrams so you can see how to actually perform the removal or install. I would suggest you make a small investment and purchase one of these books.

If I could recommend any do it you computer manual it would be “Self Computer Repair Unleashed”.This book covers all aspects of computer upgrade and repair in a clear concise format and provides full-color diagrams and step by step instructions to help you through any computer upgrade or repair. I can’t recommend this book enough. I have provided a link to this book on the links page of my website below in my signature.

I thank you for reading my article and I hope it has inspired you to go out and tackle what you may have originally thought was an impossible task. You can upgrade your computer yourself and save yourself a lot of money too.

[hopefulphantomwonderland-blog]

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Breaking the Computer Buying Cycle

That New Computer Smell

If you are like most people when they go out and buy a new Personal Computer you probably get excited when you take it out of the box, turn it on and marvel at how fast it runs. When a computer is new it always seems to run faster and boot up quicker than your old computer. The applications and games seem to run without any slow down and when you get on the internet the pages load instantly on the screen, and you can quickly surf from one website to another. Overtime though, your computer can slow down and not run as quickly as it did when it was new.

This slow down can occur for a variety of reasons and when it happens it can be frustrating and spoil your computing experience. Often times when this happens it can be corrected by either cleaning up your hard drive, or running some diagnostics. Perhaps the computer has a virus and once you remove the virus, performance can be restored. What do you do though if you have done all those things and your computer is still running slow?

If your computer is running slow even after you have removed any viruses and attempted to improve system performance, it could mean that the demands you are now placing on your computer have exceeded the computer’s capability.

As we use our computers we tend to install new software applications and attempt to run more applications simultaneously. The new software we install can require greater computer resources such as more computer memory and a faster CPU, or central processing unit to run the software applications or games properly.

If you are like me you like to have multiple software applications running or multiple internet browser windows open at the same time and that can utilize greater amounts of computer resources as well. The more resources you use, the slower the computer will run.

This is a constant problem in computing because computer technology doubles roughly every 18 months. In a demand for more feature rich software applications, software developers create more resource consuming software programs. To meet the increased demands of the software, computer manufacturers continue to build faster, more expensive computers. This, in my opinion, is a vicious cycle where in order to maintain a fast and enjoyable computing experience, the computer user is forced to go out and buy a new computer every few years.

Fortunately for me I have never had to worry about that problem. I am a certified computer professional and have been building and repairing computers for over 15 years. When I want a faster computer I do not go out and buy a new expensive computer. I have learned how to break the new computer buying cycle by upgrading my computer. By upgrading my computer rather than buying new, I can simply make myself a faster computer at a fraction of the cost.

You can break the computer buying cycle too and you do not have to be a computer professional like me to do it. You only need to know a few things about computers, be handy with a screw driver and be able to follow a few simple instructions; but before you begin to think about upgrading your computer, it might be important to get a brief overview on how a computer works.

Computer Basics

Computers are made up of a combination of hardware and software working together. When you aren’t familiar with how a computer functions then they can seem very complex. You can reduce that complexity, once you understand how a computer works at a basic level.

At its most basic level a computer receives input and produces output. A computer receives input through input devices such as the keyboard and mouse (hardware). Every time we click the mouse on a link or move the mouse across the screen we are giving the computer input or an instruction to do something.

The computer receives the input as an electronic signal created by the mouse click or keystroke on the keyboard. This signal is transmitted through the computer and is converted into digital data where it can be interpreted as an instruction by the operating system, software application or game.(software)

The computer processes digital instruction data and produces output as either an image or words on the computer screen or perhaps as a printout on a printer.

What makes a computer fast is its ability to receive input, and produce output quickly. There are several components a computer needs in order to function but there are three primary components that directly affect how fast a computer can operate.

The three primary computer components which handle the processing of input and make a computer fast are the:

Motherboard or Main System board CPU or Central Processing Unit RAM or Random Access Memory The Motherboard

Without getting too technical, the Motherboard is the computer component that connects all the hardware together on the computer. You could think of the Motherboard as a data freeway that links together all the components of the computer and allows them to transmit data between each other and and communicate.

Every computer component on the computer connects to the Motherboard either by being connected directly to the Motherboard or connecting via a data cable. The devices or components that connect to the Motherboard are the CPU, RAM Memory, Hard Drive, CD ROM/DVD drive, Video Card, Sound Card, Network Card, Modem, Key Board, Mouse and Monitor.

There are additional peripheral devices which can connect to the Motherboard as well through a variety of data ports which are connected to the Motherboard such as a printer, digital camera, microphone, and even a HDTV. These devices can connect to the Motherboard using one of several ports such as a USB, Parallel, Fire-Wire, SATA (Serial-ATA), or HDMI (High Definition Multimedia Interface) port.

In short the Motherboard provided the data communication infrastructure which allows communication between all the devices. What makes one Motherboard faster than another is the volume of data it can support being transmitted across what is called it’s data BUS and the speed at which it can transmit the data. One way to think of it is in terms of a street. Think of the data bus as a street and the data are like cars driving down the street. Older Motherboards communication was the equivalent of a two way two lane street with a speed limit of 25 MPH. Today the new Motherboards are like 8 lane highways with 200MPH speed limits.

New Motherboards are faster because they can allow more data traffic at higher speeds.

The CPU

The CPU or Processor is the brain of the computer. The CPU carries out all the instructions that you in conjunction with the Operating System, like Windows XP or Windows 7, asks it to do. CPUs can only carry out one instruction at a time but they do it so fast it seems like they are doing multiple tasks at one time or “Multitasking”.

Newer CPUs are faster because their “clock speed” or “clock cycle” is faster. The clock speed is the speed at which a CPU can carry out instructions. You can think of clock speed like the timing of a metronome, the device that helps musicians keep the right musical time. A metronome has a hand on the front of it which swings back and forth at a timing interval you set. As it swings back and forth it ticks like a clock. Like the metronome the CPU also ticks at a set interval but a CPU ticks at an incredibly fast rate which is measured in Mega or Gigahertz. The CPU carries out an instruction on every tick of its clock cycle.

New CPUs can not only carry out instructions at very high clock speeds but they can also be made up of multiple CPU Cores. Each Core can carry out its own instructions. When you have a Dual Core CPU it can carry out two instructions at the same time and a Quad Core CPU can carry out four. There are even six Core CPUs out now and like the newer Motherboards these CPUs also have a larger Data BUS to send and receive data faster through the Motherboard enhancing the computers overall performance.

RAM Memory

RAM or Random Access Memory is what stores all the instructions you have asked the computer to carry out. Every time we interact with our computer we are creating instruction data for the CPU to process and even the simplest interaction, like moving the mouse across the screen, requires many single instructions the CPU must carry out. You can imagine that playing a computer game or running an application like Adobe Photo shop can create a tremendous amount of instructions for the CPU. The CPU is fast and can execute a lot of instructions quickly but it can’t do them all at once which is why we need a place to store the instructions until they can be processed. This is why RAM was created.

RAM is basically the storage place for all the instructions that are waiting to be executed by the CPU. You can sometimes tell when you don’t have enough RAM when you have clicked on the mouse or hit the enter key to initiate a program and the hour glass just sits there spinning on the screen. It can appear that our computer has locked up or froze but what is actually happening is the computer is completing the series of instructions it has been given before it can perform any further instructions. When this happens we usually see it as the computer briefly locking up. It is also very frustrating.

The best way to resolve this problem is by simply adding more RAM to your computer. Adding more RAM is possibly the easiest way to increase the performance of your computer. Increasing the amount of RAM in your computer can help your computer run faster because it allows your computer store more instructions. This lets the computer carry out a lot of instructions while you continue to do your work and it reduces the computer freeze ups.

The speed of the RAM you use can also help the computer. If you use RAM that has a faster Data Bus speed it can send the instructions it is storing to the CPU at a faster rate. The faster the CPU gets the instructions the faster it can carry them out and the faster your computer will run.

The amount and type you can use is dictated by the type of CPU and Motherboard you use. The Bus speed of the CPU and Motherboard as well as the capacity of RAM the Motherboard can recognize will determine what type of RAM and how much you can use.

Some Motherboards will allow you to install as much as 32GBs of RAM and most Motherboards will recognize multiple Bus speeds so you can use several different types of RAM. Generally speaking the faster the BUS speed and the larger storage capacity of the RAM, the faster your computer will perform. The important thing to remember though is that with larger capacity and speed comes higher price.

What’s nice about upgrading RAM is most Motherboards can accommodate several different speeds and capacities of RAM so you can start out with a slower speed and smaller capacity, which will be less expensive reducing your initial upgrade cost and then later down the road you can upgrade your RAM to a larger capacity and high speed.

Replacing the Motherboard, CPU and RAM is actually a lot easier than you may think. The CPU and RAM are directly connected to the motherboard so you can replace all three components at the same time by simply swapping out the motherboard.

To do this you must first determine what kind of form factor of motherboard your current computer supports.

The Motherboard Form Factor

Many computer manufacturers such as HP, Compaq, Dell, Gateway, eMachine, and Acer build their computers based on 4 primary motherboard form factors or design specifications and they are:

ATX = Full Size Motherboard generally found in full size Desktop computers and Towers Micro-ATX = Mid Size motherboard found in Mid Tower and Smaller Desktops Mini-ATX = Small Motherboard found in Mid Towers, Smaller Desktops Mini-ITX = Newest motherboards very small size found in new smaller towers and desktops These form factors refer to the size of the Motherboard itself. The computer case is designed to accommodate a specific size of Motherboard. Once you have determined which form factor your computer model is, then all you need to do is purchase the correct form factor Motherboard that fits your computer models case.

It would work like this. Let’s say you have an HP Pavilion 750n desktop computer. This is an older computer with a single core processor. Nice computer when it first came out but very slow by today’s standards. You decide that you want to make it faster by upgrading it to a Quad Core CPU but you need to determine if you can upgrade it.

You can determine whether or not you can upgrade that particular computer by going to the HP support website. On the site you would type in your computer model and look at the hardware specifications for that computer. HP will list the form factor information in the specifications guide. Having done this many times, I already know the 750n uses a Micro-ATX form factor.

Each computer manufacturer I named has a support site on their webpage where you can go to determine your models form factor. You can also do a search on Yahoo, Google, or Bing and ask what form factor your computer model is. If that doesn’t work simply email me or leave a comment on this article and I can help you locate it.

Once you know the type of form factor your computer model supports you are now ready to decide what performance level you would like to upgrade your computer to.The performance level of the computer is generally dictated by the CPU it uses. You may recall I indicated the CPU is often referred to as the brain of the computer because it processes all the instructions and it sets the computers overall speed based on it’s clock speed.Since the computers overall speed is set by the CPU, you typically start your upgrade by determining the CPU performance level you want.

How you decide which performance level you would like to upgrade to can be based on how you use your computer and how much you want to spend to upgrade it. Generally speaking if you only use your computer to send and receive email, browse the web, and save and share digital images from a digital camera, then you may only need to upgrade to a Dual Core CPU to significantly improve you computing experience.

If you play lots of games, burns DVDs, edit movies or sound files, and work with high resolution images or graphics, then you may want to select a Quad Core CPU to increase performance and improve your computing experience.

From a cost perspective you can expect to pay more for a faster CPU than you would for a slower CPU and Quad Core CPUs are generally more expensive than Dual Cores. As a rule I believe you should purchase as much as you can for as little as possible that way you get the most for your money and you won’t have to upgrade again for quite a while.

When you are ready to select your CPU you will have choices based on manufacturer and type and there are also some differences between the various types of CPUs from each manufacturer which you should be aware of.

There are three primary CPU manufacturers Intel, AMD and Motorola, but for the purpose of this article we are only going to focus on Intel and AMD. Motorola is primarily responsible for making CPUs for Apple Computers. Apple computers, are a proprietary computer model and it can be more difficult and more costly to upgrade an Apple computer.

This article is focused on helping the budget conscious, who own what is generally referred to as an IBM compatible computer, upgrade their computer easily and inexpensively. IBM compatible computers are identified as those computers which primarily run a Microsoft Windows based operating system such as Windows XP or Windows 7. Intel and AMD manufacture CPUs that support IBM compatible computers so those are the two manufacturers we will focus on.

For the purpose of this article I am not going to go into great detail about the differences between Intel and AMD CPUs. There is already a significant amount of detailed information available on the internet which describes each manufacturers CPU chip architecture, as well as gives side by side comparison.

I would invite you to do a little research on how each manufacturers chips are designed and then review a website that benchmarks each CPUs performance. There are many links on CPU design, comparisons and reveiws on the weband this can help you make your CPU choice.

The prevailing sentiment regarding AMD vs. Intel is that both CPUs, in either Dual or Quad Core configuration, perform similarly with Intel being slightly faster. Intel CPUs have always been associated with executing business applications quickly while AMD CPUs run multimedia applications quickly. As you research their benchmark scores you will see Intel on a graph seems to dramatically out perform AMD but when you look at the duration of time between the two it is minimal.

Where you will see a significant difference between the two manufacturers is in cost. AMD CPUs are almost always less expensive than Intel CPUs. The question I always ask my clients is, “Is a 4 second faster speed difference worth an extra $200 or $300 dollars more by buying an Intel CPU?” To me it is not.

I am looking for an overall performance increase compared to what I am currently using. Once you upgrade your computer you are not going to be comparing it to another computer of equal performance, you will be comparing it to the speed of your last computer. If after your upgrade, you find your computer runs significantly faster than your last computer and it didn’t cost much for you to achieve that performance increase, you will be happy with your upgrade and that is what is important.

CPU Cache

Earlier I indicated that RAM stores all the instruction data being transmitted to the CPU and throughout the computer. The CPU Cache is another form of high speed memory only it is specifically devoted to the CPU. It has been shown that a CPU can process data faster if more of the data it must process can be stored on memory located closer to the CPU itself.

All CPUs come with a cache but some newer CPUs will come with an additional cache that is faster and can hold more data closer to the CPU. Typically CPUs operating at a higher clock speed and having an additional, faster cache will offer higher performance.

A good example of this is the difference between the AMD Athlon and Phenom Series of CPUs. Both the Athlon and Phenom series come in Dual and Quad Core configurations but the Phenoim Series has an additional L3 cache making the CPU faster. It also makes a Phenom series CPU more expensive than the Athlon Series.

Another interesting tidbit is there is now a version II for both the Athlon and Phenom Series. The version II offers a more faster cache hence both CPUs are supposed to be faster than their predecessors however the benchmark numbers show a relatively small increase in performance.

Be sure to do a little research on the differences between the AMD and Intel CPUs and select the one you feel will be appropriate for your computing needs while meeting your budget goals. Once you have chosen the CPU you want you will then be ready to select the Motherboard that supports not only your CPU but your computer form factor as well.

One last thing regarding CPUs are both AMD and Intel have different CPU form factors so when you are selecting a Motherboard for the form factor that meets your computers specifications you also need to select the one that fits your CPU choice. This may seem complicated but it is not that difficult once you start looking at the Motherboard and CPU combinations.

The resellers I have showed you have filtering options on their web pages which allow you to select Motherboards that can support either AMD or Intel. You can also filter by both CPU and computer form factor as well which can help you narrow down your decision making.

Once you have made a decision on the CPU, you want to select the Motherboard that will support the CPU you have chosen. As far as Motherboards go there are several major manufactures of Motherboards and they all produce the 4 main types of Motherboard form factors. The major manufactures are:

ASUS Biostar Gigabyte MSI Foxconn ECSJetway Zotac This may seem like a lot to choose from but as you begin to filter on the CPU type you can narrow down your focus and make selecting the right Motherboard easier.

Each motherboard will come with common features that are necessary for standard computer operations and some can come with additional features that may or may not be beneficial to you. The primary thing to remember about the Motherboard is that all of the components connect too it and you can choose to customize your computer upgrade as much or as little you want depending on the Motherboard you purchase.

For example, you can purchase a Motherboard which has the video and sound card integrated into the board. This saves you both time and money because it eliminates the need for you to choose a video or sound card, but if you want a specific video or sound card, you can select a Motherboard that does not come with those integrated components and then pick the video and sound card you would like to install as add in cards onto the Motherboard.

Here is a list of common Motherboards features:

Keyboard and Mouse input often referred to as a PS2 connector USB – Universal Serial Bus ports for connecting computer peripherals such as (Keyboard, Mouse, Printer, Digital Camera, external Hard Drive etc…) Parallel Printer Port (not as much in newer motherboards as printers use USB) Local Area Network or LAN connection for a network or internet connection Dial-up Modem (not as common in newer boards due to high speed internet connections) Optional Motherboard Features:

1394 or Fire-wire connection (higher speed data connection) External SATA or Serial-ATA connection (higher speed data connection designed to connect external SATA devices such as a Hard Drive) HDMI – High-Definition Multimedia Interface to connect an HD Monitor or TV, or to an external High Definition Audio component We touched on RAM earlier and we know that the RAM you choose must be supported by the CPU and Motherboard you choose. To make it simple it breaks down like this when upgrading. The CPU determines the type of Motherboard you have to choose and your computer model determines the type of Motherboard form factor you select.

The Motherboard will dictate what type of RAM you will be able to use so that will make your selection easier. The only thing you will have to decide when it comes to RAM, is the size of RAM meaning the amount of Gigabytes, Gigs or GBs of RAM you choose and the RAM speed you select.

One other thing you must be aware of is the newer Operating Systems such as Windows Vista and Windows 7 require a minimum of 2GBs of RAM to run properly so you will want to select at least 2GBs of RAM when you upgrade. Knowing this can make your decision regarding the amount of RAM pretty straight forward. As far as the speed of RAM you select that again will depend on the speeds the Motherboard will support, the amount of performance you want and how much you are willing to spend.

As far as determining the speed of RAM your Motherboard will support that is not difficult to determine. As you begin to look at Motherboards you will see they clearly specify the type and speed of RAM they support.

I have covered a lot of information up to this point and I hope you have a better understanding of what is required for you to be able to identify the Motherboard, CPU and RAM components you would need to upgrade your current computer. Buying these components and upgrading them your self is far less expensive then going out and buying a new computer and I am confident with this information as a starting point you too can save money buy upgrading the computer yourself.

There are however, two important additional pieces of information you should know before you attempt to upgrade your computer.

1. Before you upgrade your current computer you should back up all of your important data on to an external storage device such as an external hard drive, USB jump drive or burn it onto a CD or DVD.

The reason this is important is when you upgrade those components you will be forced to reinstall the operating system and that will erase all the current data on your hard drive. In additional if you don’t have an installation disk for your current operating system, you will need to purchase a new copy of Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7 to install once you have upgraded the components. This may not actually be a major concern for you if you were already considering upgrading to a newer version of Windows. Also I can help you find an inexpensive copy of the Windows operating system if you it.

2. The new components you will install in you current PC will be more advanced from a power consumption standpoint and upgrading them will most likely require you to also upgrade your power supply.

The upgrade is not expensive and is a very easy to accomplish. The type of power supply you will want to select will be roughly 400 watts at least and will need to be a 20×4 pin or 24 pin power supply. This is the type of power supply supported by the newer Motherboards. Again the Motherboard specifications will indicate the power supply requirements.

To make your computer faster all you need to do is upgrade the Motherboard, CPU and RAM. You start by identifying the type of Motherboard form factor your current computer will support, and the performance level you want to upgrade to. Then you buy the CPU that fits your performance needs along with the Motherboard and RAM that fits both your computer model and CPU specifications.

The one thing I didn’t cover is the actual installation of these components once you have purchased them and are ready to install. At a high level the process is nothing more then:

Unplugging the computer and disconnecting all peripheral components such as the keyboard, mouse and monitor from the case Before you open the computer, discharge yourself electrically or purchase a static strap to ground yourself to the chassis, this will help you avoid static discharge which can fry a computer component. Removing the side cover off the computer case Disconnecting all the power cables and Data cables from the old Motherboard Unscrewing and removing the old Motherboard from the case Unscrewing and removing the old power supply Install the new power supply Install the new Motherboard into the case Reconnecting all the power and data cables Powering the computer back up and listening for proper post sound Now you are ready to install the operating system I know once you decide to start this process you will have many questions which is why there is one last thing I would recommend you do before you begin to upgrade you computer.

There are many do it yourself computer repair and upgrade manuals available online and they can provide you all the help you need to do your computer upgrade. Many of the books will provide you step by step explanation on how to replace just about every component on your computer and provide you with detailed diagrams so you can see how to actually perform the removal or install. I would suggest you make a small investment and purchase one of these books.

If I could recommend any do it yourself computer manual it would be “Self Computer Repair Unleashed”.This book covers all aspects of computer upgrade and repair in a clear concise format and provides full color diagrams and step by step instructions to help you through any computer upgrade or repair. I can’t recommend this book enough. I have provided a link to this book on the links page of my website below in my signature.

I thank you for reading my article and I hope it has inspired you to go out and tackle what you may have originally thought was an impossible task. You can upgrade your computer yourself and save yourself a lot of money too.