An Annoying Irony for Thanksgiving

With Thanksgiving coming up, many people are going to, for a moment, compose a mental list of what they are thankful for. They will put on that list things such as having a job, having loved ones, and being appreciated by at least said loved ones. I, for any number of reasons, question those lists as far as just how thankful people are for them. I mean how many people that are thankful for a having job have ever experienced chronic unemployment? Are they thankful because they know what it is like to not have a job, and being unable to find one, or are they thankful because they have never experienced not being able to find employment?
Well, that should probably be modified. After all, some are going to be thankful for their current job because they had a bad job before. Those people will naturally have an appreciation for what they have now.

Well, This is Awesome

I've talked about it before and will talk about it in the future as well. Humble Bundle, that company that puts together bundles of digital media, typically video games, that are sold using a pay-what-you-want model where a customizable portion goes to charity, has launched the Humble Store. At the store you can purchase titles at any time, not just when they are in a bundle or a weekly sale. A portion of the price goes to charity too.
Now, technically the Humble Store has existed for awhile, as a payment processor used by some indie game developers. What was launched was a central site to browse and purchase those titles, instead of having to find and purchase from the developer's website.
To celebrate its launch, the store has been offering daily deals on numerous titles. Some have been in bundles before and some are fresh to Humble Bundle. Most interestingly, some have also been AAA titles from publishers that have not previously worked with Humble Bundle. Seeing games like Splinter Cell: Blacklist and Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon on sale was really awesome! Ubisoft, a major publisher, supporting Humble Bundle is pretty cool! I hope we see more support from Ubisoft, and from other companies. Maybe the games will not be DRM-free, but at least a guaranteed chunk of the revenue will go to some cool charities. Go check it out! Maybe you'll find a new distraction to enjoy.

It's Called an 'Investment'

I recently purchased a new graphics card; an EVGA GTX 770 with ACX cooling, to be specific. While it was a rather large expense, considering my current employment status, I do believe it will turn out to be worth it. For one, it is more powerful than my GTX 570, which is now set to run PhysX, so I can run games at higher settings with better performance. Given my game-reviewing work, that is important. It also, being a newer GPU, has support for newer technologies, including TXAA, which is nVidia exclusive for GTX 600+ cards. Honestly though, I'm not sure how sold I am on it, but perhaps as I see more games that use it, I'll warm up to it. The most important new technology though I can now use though would have to be ShadowPlay.
ShadowPlay is another nVidia feature, exclusive to the Kepler architecture, as it takes advantage of the built-in h.264 codec. This compression algorithm is generally used with mp4 and has become something of the standard codec for video today. Being built directly into the GPU, ShadowPlay is able to record video with minimal performance hit. Seriously, I have noticed no impact when using it, and I have been using it. Just about every game I've played since installing the 770, I have recorded video in. In some cases I deleted the video because I didn't need it for anything, but then I managed to catch some amusing glitches that I want to preserve. Will also likely end up using it for future reviews as well, and by likely I mean it will be.

Good or Bad, Change Is Change

I've talked about Humble Bundle before, so I'm not going to bother explaining what it is again.
On Thursday, the Humble Weekly Sale (featuring Team 17 games) launched and included a changed feature. Specifically the system for redeeming Steam keys was changed into something more efficient, and more locked down. Previously you would press a button and the key, as text, would be given to you for manual activation with Steam. Now you give Humble Bundle access to your Steam account for the redemption of keys, and pressing a button automatically redeems it to your account for you. One click and go.