JiliK Builds a New PC: The Second Anniversary Spectacular

I'm not sure how much use a two-year old PC build is going to be to anyone, but damn it, I took pictures (which made this take at least twice as long) and pictures demand to be posted, even if they are just accidental Half Life 2 screen shots... Huh? Oh yeah, PCs! So, after quite a few years of faithful service, and a fair few upgrades, I was finally starting to hit some walls with the Dell Dimension 9200 I got back in 2007. I can't say I had any immediate plans to put together a new PC, but then I came across a couple of articles on the best new parts to get, started browsing around Amazon. One thing led to another and the next thing I knew, PC components were arriving in the door.

Here's what I got:



AsRock Z77 Pro4 Motherboard - £92.37 (€107.21)

For the motherboard, the Z77 Pro4 seemed to strike a good balance between performance and price. However, if I'd known that there was another one in the same range with a freaking floppy connector, firewire and goodness knows what other dumb stuff crammed in there, in 2013!, the allure of having all that archaic technology in my PC may have proved too much.



Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz SKT1155 6MB Cache - £175.42 (€203.49)

The Core i5 3570 seemed to be another solid, mid-range choice for the CPU.

HyperX Black Series 16 GB Gaming Memory Kit (2 x 8 GB) - £70.21 (€81.49)

Memory-wise, I've usually go with Kingston and this turned out to be no exception. I didn't know HyperX was just a sub brand at the time though; it just seemed to be a cheaper, well-reviewed alternative.

Actually, I was thinking about cheaping out even more on the memory here. 8 gigs seemed like it'd be plenty, at least for a while, so I was going to go for two 4 gig DIMMs here. The problem with that is that I'd be throwing those out if I ever decided to max out the motherboard's memory to the full 32 gigs it supported (and after doing that with my last PC, it was certainly a possibility). Seeing as they were only slightly more expensive, the 8 gig sticks felt like the smarter investment here.



Asus Radeon HD 7770 (1GB GDDR5) - £97.23 (€111.21)

Ooh, a controversial choice for the GPU: AMD and a budget card. :D I was trying to keep my budget under control here though, and with amount of time I spend playing graphically intensive PC games (hell, I barley play any PC games these days. Doesn't stop me from buying them though.), this card seemed like it could handle anything I'd be likely to throw at it for the foreseeable future.

WD Black 3.5 inch 1TB SATA Hard Drive -£71.71 (€82.29)

For the hard drive I wanted something reliable. I've had pretty good luck with various flavours of Seagate Barracuda over the years, but everyone seemed to recommend the WD Caviar Black, so you'd think that would be a pretty solid choice. You'd think.



LG BH10LS38.AUAU 10x Internal BD-RW Drive - £71.73 (€83.20)

A physical media drive?! In 2013?! What is this madness? I don't know, maybe I'm just crazy, but when it comes to games, music, movies, I think it makes more sense to be able to take advantage of both physical and digital media, rather than putting yourself solely at the whims of rights holders and pirates for your entertainment needs. And look at the price, for a drive that can freaking burn Blu-rays.

Zalman Z12 2x USB 3.0 Midi Tower Case - £54.91 (€63.73)

The case, I think, was probably the thing I spent the most time looking for. There's a lot of choice out there, but generally, most cases tended to be 1.  ridiculous looking things intended for someone you know refers to their PC as a "sick rig"; 2. cool-looking, but impractical ones with the disk drives or USB ports hidden behind doors (damn it, when I need to rip my copy of Now That's What I Call Music 1983, I don't want to be opening doors. I need immediate access to that disk drive. Love Town by Booker Newberry III isn't going to listen to itself, you know.) or 3. butt-ugly black boxes. This one had a bit of style, while also being nice and practical. Plus it came with two fans included. That seemed like a nice bonus...



NOCTUA 120x120x25 NF-P12 Fan x 2 - £35.00 (€40.46)

...until I powered them up for the first time. Several of the reviews on Amazon and elsewhere commented on how quiet they were. They were like freaking jet engines. And no tinkering with the fan speed seemed to help much. After a few days of that, I decided to replace them with two Noctua fans, which do make a little noise, but it's blissful silence compared to the Zalman fans. Well worth the money. They really are a gross colour though.



Corsair Builder Series CX 600 - €60ish (in 2011)

And finally, the PSU. Actually, I didn't need to buy a new one at all. I had this sitting around, unopened since 2011. Back then, my Dell was having some trouble that looked like it might have been power supply related, so I picked this up just in case. Ultimately it pulled through and rather than returning this, I thought it would come in handy when I was building it's eventual replacement. What do you know? :D I was a little worried that 600W PSU might be a little underpowered for this new build though, but after some research, I was confident enough that I'd be able to get away with using it. Just about.

On to the build!



Starting off very professionally, I put the case up on my desk next to my old PC. (In the days before I had a tablet, frantically looking something up after everything had gone on fire was a definite possibility.) I cleared all the wires out of the way, connected my new anti-static wrist strap,... and then realised that with the case up here, I actually had no room to put together the motherboard, CPU and RAM together before fixing the whole assembly in here. Screw it, I wasn't moving the case again. Safety be damned, I was taking the most delicate part of this process down to the carpet.



Well, on top of an anti-static bag and the motherboard box. It'll be fine. Probably.

The CPU was the first in: a pretty fool-proof operation, though I have to say pulling down the latch to lock it in place I was still half afraid that it'd snap it in two somehow. :D



The CPU fan was a little trickier actually. There were four plastic pegs that needed to go through the motherboard to hold it in place and two, maybe three of them needed quite a bit more pressure than I was comfortable with putting them under to go through fully.



Next, the RAM, which is always a bit of pain to install inside a case, especially when it's upright. Out in the open here though, it was no problem.



Motherboard assembly complete!

Another Bloody Reblog: October 2015 Pick-ups and More

Okay, I’ll admit it: it's been me all along! :D

No, not much in the way of rarities here, I’m afraid. This lot's mostly made up of a bundle of Mario-related games I bought a few weeks ago, mostly games I already had in some form, but never on the NES/Famicom. It’s been kind of neat to go back and play Mario 2 and 3 without the Mario All-Stars enhanced graphics for the first time though, and it’s proved to be a great refresher course for Super Mario Maker, even though I didn’t quite plan things out that way.

Also picked up a few Konami classics (the two Wai Wai World games and the Famicom version of Kid Dracula, which is super fun), plus Downtown Special: Kunio-kun no Jidaigeki da yo Zen'in Shūgō, a follow-up to River City Ransom set in old-timey Japan (JiliK: history expert). I was really temped to grab that one up on the Japanese Virtual Console, but there’s far too much text to try and play it in Japanese. Thankfully though there’s a translation patch out there though and with the cart, I can put it to use on my Retron 5.



Picked up a few Super Famicom and Gameboy games too. Puzzle platformers aren’t usually my thing, but I spotted a copy of Mario & Wario going for a few dollars and I couldn’t resist. Mystic Ark was much the same. All I know is that it’s an Enix RPG that involves collecting people that have been turned into dolls, or something. Eh, it was two bucks and there’s a (really well-done so far) translation patch. It’s got to be worth a shot at least.

The other two SFC games I’ve played a fair bit of already. Magical Taruruuto-kun (top left) looked like a pretty neat cartoony platformer in videos. From what I’ve played of it though, the platforming seems super basic, but the game’s also quite frustrating because if you take a single hit, you not only die, you go back to the freaking map screen. Heisei Inu Monogatari Bow: Pop'n Smash (centre left), I’m enjoying a lot though. It’s a wacky tennis meets soccer game, more or less, where both you and the computer have goals sealed off by blocks. The basic aim of the game is to smash the blocks by lobbing a ball off them with your tennis racket and getting it into your opponent’s goal. There’s definitely a bit of jankiness to it, but it’s been pretty fun, frantic action so far.

On the Gameboy side, I also got the portable version of Kid Dracula, as well as Metroid II and Donkey Kong Land, which I've actually been enjoying quite a bit. It’s impressive how much of the SNES game they managed to cram in there, especially in the animation department. Granted it looks kind of like garbage, and it can be tricky to play with the big character and limited view of your surroundings, but it features all-original levels and the Retron’s save states take a lot of the frustration out. I’d say it’s worth a look if you can get it for cheap and preferably Retron/Retrode it up.



Some new additions to the family. That brings me up to 13 amiibos now. I think. :D Definitely still a few out now that I’m thinking of getting. I’d be surprised if I make it to the end of the year without picking up Sonic and Fox, and maybe the Duck Hunt dog. Overall though, I find most of the amiibos they've released so far either fall into the categories of cool-looking figures for characters I have no attachment to (Palutena, Little Mac, Shulk, ROB) or characters I like with figures that I don’t (Gannondorf, Wario, Link). Chibo Robo will be mine though. Oh yes, he will be mine.



Club Nintendooo!!! Having blown most of my remaining points on the Link Between Worlds soundtrack a few months prior, I was just short of getting the MK8 soundtrack when it appeared, of course, at the eleventh hour before the service shut down, leading me to spend..... too much on eBay for a copy once they started going out to other members. But boy, that soundtrack’s awesome.
That’s not the only Club Nintendo soundtrack I picked up in the last while though. I managed to snag the Ocarina of Time, Animal Crossing and Kid Icarus: Uprising all for about €20 each thanks to a saved search I set up. Not bad. Actually bad though: Pokémon 2BA Master. Thanks, Laser Time.



If the Mario Kart 8 soundtrack hit at the eleventh hour of Club Nintendo, the Endings and Credits CD hit at the twelfth. This time though I wasn’t about to spend *cough* *cough* *cough* euros on the damn thing. Instead, I bought a few unused Club Nintendo codes on eBay, enabling me to clear out the last of my stars in style. (Though it really bums me out to think of how many more I'd still have to play around with if I hadn’t spent all my Gamecube era ones on all those terrible wallpapers. Damn it, Nintendo.)

Also grabbed the Mario 30th Anniversary double CD, and, let’s address the elephant in the room: I bought the Data Discs Shenmue soundtrack...



...which is pretty rad, but it’s the thing that finally got me to cave and get a turntable, and I held out for so long. Vinyl is just something I have no attachment to or nostalgia for. Now I have this bulky-ass player and (already) a stack of records that I don’t know where to put, and I'm just ripping everything to MP3 anyway. Couldn’t we have skipped the middle step and you could have just given me downloadable versions of hard to find/non-existent video game soundtracks, Data Discs/iam8bit?



But no, you had to get me out there buying vinyl-exclusive early Now compilations didn’t you, because hey, I might as well. I’m already swimming in a sea of the stuff!

Snowboard Kids (N64, PAL) Save File

As if Mario Kart 8 and Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed weren't enough kart racers for one year, I also played all the way through Snowboard Kids for the N64 last Summer - a fun little racer that, despite having controls took me a while to get used to, I thought totally lived up to the cult status it had back in the day. Having finished it though and unlocked all the courses, given my chequered history with N64 memory cards, I wondered if there wasn't some way I could copy my save off the damn card before it inevitable failed on me (Yeah, I don't know why I don't just stick to N64 emulators at this point either).

So, some poking around the internet brought me to this thing:



A DexDrive, which some guy was still selling a large quantity of new units of on eBay. This thing, you hooked up to your PC, allowing you to copy saves off of and onto your memory cards. Just the thing I needed, you might imagine, but being a US device from 1998...

Hmm

Umm

Uhh

...there proved to be a few issues getting it up and running. :D But finally I did and...... nothing. Of course, the DexDrive wouldn't recognise the third party N64 controller pak I had as valid, no matter what I did. But hey, at least it came with a pretty rad promotional booklet:

InterAct 1998 Booklet

In the end, after wasting what must have been like €50 on a DexDrive, a step-down converter and a freakin' serial to USB cable (which I'm sure is going to see a lot of future use), I discovered that the Retrode (and N64 adapter) I'd already bought a few months earlier could have done the same job the whole damn time.

Which is a pretty long-winded way of saying here's a completed PAL save for Snowboard Kids:

Download from MediaFire

You could transfer it to a N64 memory card with a DexDrive. I'd advise against it though. :)

Nintendo Digital Event 2015: Not-so-live Impressions

Goodness knows why, but I've given all the main Nintendo Directs the not-so-live treatment so far this year. Here comes the big one though and I think a few predictions are in order first. Given the frankly ridiculous amount of time I've spent mulling these over this time round, I'm feeling pretty confident about my picks this year:

1. Boom! Animal Crossing! I think the leaked amiibos make this pretty much a slam dunk, but still.
2. A Mario 3D World sequel. I'm leaning more towards Wii U than 3DS with this one, but either way I think they'll put one more of these out this gen before they put this sub franchise to bed. A Wii U one makes more sense because it's in more dire need of games, and they should be able to turn around a Mario Galaxy 2 style sequel relatively quickly.
3. Pre-made levels for Mario Maker. I think they're going to be providing some pre-made, playable levels for Mario Maker. Probably some on-disc and downloadable ones after that. Possibly some made by some game design celebrities.
4. A Zelda surprise teaser. there's no way they're going to let E3 pass without showing the Wii U Zelda in some form, right?
5. Lego Dimensions - Nintendo have a rare opportunity to showcase a new 3rd party Wii U game here, one that should crossover with their audience quite nicely. I'd imagine here's where we'll see the big Lego Dimensions showcase and I bet they'll have some exclusive amiibo based content for the Wii U.
6. I'm going to say that we'll see Retro's next project here. I'm not necessarily expecting Metroid. It could well be be Star Fox.
7. Starfox amiibos, of course. I'm guessing one for each team member and an arwing.
8. And speaking of Star Fox, I hate to be a downer here, but I'm predicting they'll have made some major mistake with that game that will end up spoiling everything.
9. While I'm on a negative tip, I really don't think we'll see any more 3DS games specifically for the New 3DS here. New 3DS owners can't be making up a very big segment of the market right now and I can't remember Nintendo making any great effort to support the DSi with retail exclusives. (DSiware was slightly different case).
10. Another Kirby game for the 3DS. It feels about time. 
11. And finally, some kind of Mario sports game, besides the Olympics one they've already announced. After the success they've almost certainly been having selling DLC for Smash and Mario Kart, I expect a new Mario Tennis or Golf if only as a venue to sell some more.

I'll be bummed if all they do is fulfil my predictions here, so hopefully they have a few surprises up their sleeves. I doubt they can outdo Sony conference, but hey, here's hoping.

Let's get started!

• 00:00 - Well, this looks like the right video. (Trawling through YouTube in the thick of E3 while trying to avoid spoilers is a perilous affair.) Here goes!
• 00:14 - Wait, is that a muppet?
• 00:17 - If not, Disney are furiously pounding out a cease and desist notice as we speak.
• 00:25 - Muppet Iwata. What the fuck

• 00:34 - Yep.

• 01:00 - I was expecting the Reggie puppet to be terrifying. This doesn't disappoint. :D
• 01:01 - Ugh.
• 01:23 - Oh no! Where's Miyamoto?
• 01:24 - There he is! Oh hey, just noticed the Starfox shirt. Please be good, please be good...
• 01:28 - Just letting the bizarre wash over me. 

• 01:35 - Is it just me, or is there something about the way they twist their heads as they move that makes these things creepy as shit. 

•  02:05 - And speaking of creepy, Now I'm imagining Miyamoto in a fur suit. Wow, that's... that's a disturbing image.

• 02:47 - Thank goodness! Our Nintendo executive fur pile nightmare is over. Now these guys I can get behind. (Not like that though.)
• 03:03 - I really want plush Peppy and Falco amiibos now. I'm sorry! I can't help it any more!
• 03:13 - Here we go!

• 03:29 - Looks nice. This looks like Star Fox 64 Corneria though. Hopefully this isn't just a remake of Star Fox 64 though.
• 03:52 - Ooh, some Starfox 2 stuff. Liking the music a lot too.
• 04:10 - I really hope all this gamepad stuff is optional though. Holding it up and moving it around to aim was what I took from last year. I don't see how that wouldn't be awful.
• 04:30 - No sign of on-foot missions yet thank goodness. Maybe this is finally it: the Starfox 64 sequel; the game that was all anyone ever wanted.
• 04:37 - Star Fox Zero. Holiday 2015. Colour me cautiously optimistic. I wonder who's developing though.

• 04:53 - It's Shiggy. Huh. I wonder if this being developed in-house after all.
• 05:07 - Whoah. So Starfox was inspired by Thunderbirds. Crazy.
• 05:26 - Yeah Pigma! Again, this looks really nice.
• 06:15 - Man, Miyamoto just dropping revelations here. I would have never guessed the in-game arches were inspired by a Japanese shrine.
• 08:21 - Oh shit! A wild Starfox 2 mention appears. Any chance of VC revival, I wonder? Got to say, I not liking all this talk of the gamepad screen. If you end up having to spend a bunch of time looking at that rather than at the TV, that's going to be a real let down.
• 08:29 - Heh. "Didn't make it out" is an interesting way of putting things. :D Yeah, doesn't look like Star Fox 2 is due for the Earthbound Beginnings type treatment any time soon.
• 08:37 - Landmaster! (Damn you, Sakurai!) Yeah, I don't mind the Landmaster. (At least in Star Fox) The submarine I could probably do without though.

• 08:46 - The gyro wing, which totally isn't a drone.
• 08:54 - What!? Was that a ROB coming out of the gyro wing?

• 08:58 - That's a cool-looking boss.
• 09:16 - "Not a remake" Thank you, based Miyamoto.
• 09:53 - That logo does look cool. Kind of Street Fighter-ish.
• 10:09 - Oh, hey Reggie. Say, what's that blue feather doing on your jacket?

• 10:15 - Ha! We do like to have fun here at NOA.
• 10:17 - Yeah, that opening was deeply distressing.
• 10:27 - That theme was.. hot sweaty yiffing.
• 11:27 - Guess we're ramping up Mario Maker here. Yeesh, the Wii U NES emulator looks horrible.
• 11:58 - "Who knows. Maybe even I'll be playing." But no, seriously, I definitely won't be playing.
• 12:12 - New amiibo. HYPE! HYPE! HYPE! HYPE!
• 12:27 - Calling it: here's the full-blown amiibo Skylanders-type  game I predicted last year. :D
• 12:37 - Wha? Vicarious Visions. Googlekata suggests they're the Skylanders devs. Are they doing an amiibo tie-in with this year's one?

• 13:14 - Yep. Donkey Kong coming to Skylanders this year. Looks more like a Skylanders figure than an amiibo though. Haven't messed with any kind of Skylanders yet. I'll probablly pick up a bunch of stuff once Activision runs the franchise into the ground and the firesales start. Just like Guitar Hero. :D
• 13:47 - This is some late Gamecube EA-style business here. (An unprecedented partnership, if you will.) I imagine it'll have a similar effect on the sales of Skylanders as it did on the sales of SSX: On Tour and NBA Street V3 on GC: not much.
• 14:14 - Oh, the figures are amiibos too. Nah, no sale; not into these ones.
• 15:38 - Weird that they didn't have some kind of Starfox tie-in though if vehicles are the big thing in this year's Skylanders. Anyway...
• 15:47 - This puppet stuff isn't doing it for me at all this year. It's certainly no Iwata/Reggie smash brawl. Than again, wasn't last year the Robot Chicken stuff too? Ugh.

• 15:56 - Huh? I guess they're adding Zelda stuff to Mario Maker. Makes sense, I guess.
• 16:04 - Or not. Zelda Triforce Heroes.
• 16:08 - Sounds like a Four Swords follow-up maybe.

• 16:12 - Yep, looks like it. On 3DS.
• 16:15 - There are totally going to be DLC outfits in this, aren't there.
• 17:37 - For a second there I thought this was going to be New 3DS exclusive. My prediction stands!
• 18:51 - Yeah, I'm never going to play this. I can't really say I ever found the ea of multiplayer Zelda especially appealing. Plus, local handheld multiplayer: just not happening.

• 20:10 - They're really leaning into the outfit stuff here. No way they're not pushing DLC for this one. DeNaaaaaaaaaaa!
• 20:37 - Oh, there is online multiplayer. Still not for me, I think.
• 21:19 - Ah, the 3DS Hyrule Warriors.

• 21:43 - That King of Red Lions attack looks rad! I'll bet it's no fun to use though. Looks like the crappy spinner lunge forward attack. (Stupid spinner. Man, what a complete disappointment that was. :D)
• 22:20 - Wait, are we getting another Wii U Hyrule Warriors here?
• 22:31 - Nope. More Hyrule Warriors Legends. Disappointing to see that this is (mostly) just a downport with a few new bits of content. Was anyone really crying out for this?
• 23:36 - Well, we're at about the halfway point now. Starting to get the impression tat this point hat this year's going to be a bit of a let down.
• 23:55 - Another 3DS game. (Come on, guys. Where's the Wii U love?)

• 24:03 - What?! This is a Metroid Prime game? Oh boy, judging by teh kiddy look of those galactic federation guys, I sense people on the internet are going to be pissssssed at this. :D
• 24:07 - Another 3DS multiplayer game. No, after eight years of no Metroid Prime, this is exactly the type of revival I was hoping for. Thanks Nintendo. Now I'm pissed at this. :D
• 24:33 - So was that Blast Ball thing they showed at the Nintendo World Championships just a prototype for the Blast Ball mode in this? Available 2016. Yeah, hmm. I don't know about this one.

Cooking: Fruit Scones & Buttermilk Pudding

Now that I think about it, it was this great scone I had in a coffee shop about a year ago that kicked it off: a quest spanning several months to find a really good, reliable fruit scone recipe on the internet. After a few decent but unremarkable batches, I finally tried out this one by Mary Berry. I did make a little modification, replacing the sultanas with the same weight of mixed fruit, including cherries, raisins, sultanas and mixed peel. The resulting scones were fully legit; soft, sweet and with a slight crunchy outside crust. Finally, the recipe I'd been looking for. I've made a ton of these since, usually making a big batch so I can use up a full 1 litre bottle of buttermilk and freezing most of them, and they freeze pretty well too.



Though I did also found a good recipe for using up a lot of excess buttermilk if you've got it hanging around afterwards. What you see above is a buttermilk pudding. A traditional South African desert, apparently, I found a recipe for it here. As it says on the site, the measurements are a bit strange, but the pudding is quite good. It's not too far off from a sponge cake in terms of texture and flavour, though it's a little denser. I found it significantly easier to make than sponge cake though, which has always turned out gritty and flat any time I've attempted it. The pudding above I threw a bunch of leftover lemon syrup over while it was hot , giving it a nice lemony flavour too.

Tumblr Doodles: August-December '14

For more doodley nonsense, check out jilik1.tumblr.com.