More DayZ

   Well I have been keeping an eye on this mod and figured I would post some more about it as anyone who is currently playing knows it is still in the alpha stage. You play in Chernarus which is a 225 km2 map and when you first spawn on the coast keep the coast to your right to go north. If you feel like it you can always do a Google search for Charnarus map but if you do this make sure you take the name of your spawn point down so you can find your self quicker on the map. Make sure you are visiting the forums daily as updates are released frequently. Forums are another good place to try and find friendly players or maybe a group that you can regularly play with.
   Sense I last posted they changed you starting with a revolver to starting with the makarov pistol which is a 9x18 mm and from what I have seen they should bring back the revolvers as starting weapon.  I have watched several videos of people being chased by the hoard and just trying to out run them. You should actually run into a building because zombies have to walk in them and I have also seen zombies stopping and walking on bridges. While I have not played the game yet I have heard the key bindings can be daunting so I would recommend studying them before playing unless you don't mind learning as you go. If you ever need to have a blood transfusion you cannot perform it on your self so you will have to make friends with someone. Eating will restore 200 blood and eating cooked meat will restore 800 blood. Watch you're blood if it goes below 3000 you will start passing out periodically so if you are lucky at that point someone will give you a blood pack they have. Be careful moving at night as some players may have found a pair of night vision goggles. Some servers do show names of players so some times while playing you may see a name pop up even if you don't see the player. I will keep posting more info as I become more familiar with the mod.

DayZ survival

   Today I found out about an amazing mod called DayZ mod that is a modification of Arma 2 and you can download it at http://www.dayzmod.com/. This mod is a zombie survival mod that is both a fun and complex game play type. This mod required you to have ARMA 2 Arma 2: operation arrow head and if you want to have high rez character models you will also need Arma 2:PMC. When first spawning you will get the name of the location where you are but you do not start with a map or a compass. However when you first start you will have 2 baked bean cans, 1 water bottle, 1 pain killer, 2 bandages, revolver, ammo for revolver, back pack, morphine and 1 road flair.
   Because you can acquire different items throughout the time spend in game your character is saved and you can play that character on any of the servers. You need to be very careful when encountering other players and zombies because once you die your character is gone and all your items so you will have to start with a new character. You have the one road flair when you start and you can find other lights but remember that when you use lights at night they attract zombies and other players that may kill or rob you. When coming into a town you may announce your self as friendly but do this at your own discretion the other players may not be friendly. Players that have killed to many other players in game will have the ksk outfit so you may better identify them.
   In this mod you do need to eat food and drink water or you will die you can refill your water bottle and can search structures for food or you can take game but you need the correct tools to get their meat.
When you do manage to find a map and compass your position will not be shown on that map but with some work you should be able to find your location on it. This mod is set in real time based on the location of the server so depending on how much time you spend you may see the rise or set of the sun. Zombies in this mod have a heighten sense of hearing and smell so you may have to avoid them or just sneak past. A really big down point to this mod is that when you are looking at a player it dose not display their name so you wont always know who you are talking with. The mod is a alpha right now and hopefully dose not die but I do plan on dedicating some time to it as it looks really good. Right now I have not played the mod but once I get my pay check I will be purchasing Arma 2 so I can get started and I plan on posting updates about this mod.

My Fenix lights

   Ok I have discussed a little about being prepared while heading out doors during and now I am going to talk a little about some flashlight options that you may consider. Currently I have from Fenix the tk11R2 and the ta21 and both do work well out doors. The ta21 has a mas lumens of 225 with 12 different light settings on a revolving switch. Both of the lights are impact resistant and are ipx-8 waterproof standard. The ta21 on its lowest setting of 4 lumen will last for 170 hours and on the max of 225 will last only 1.5 hours. Both of these lights run on 2 CR123 batteries or 1 18650 li-ion battery the ta21 weighs 168 grams without the batteries and the tk11 weights 120 grams without the batteries. The tkllr2 general mode of 64 lumens will run for 10 hours and the turbo mode of 240 lumens will run for 1.5 hours. The cr123 batteries can be expensive if you purchase them one at a time but if you purchase them in a bulk pack from surefire they are much cheaper or you could purchase a rechargeable  18650 li-ion. If you plan on doing some camping in the woods I would recommend packing a flashlight or two and plenty of batteries. There are plenty of different brands of flashlights and what you chose to use is up to you so make sure you do some research when purchasing a flashlight.

Virtual horror

   Well I have started keeping up with the resident evil series as of late and am felling more disappointed by it lately. I honestly didn't know what to think when I read that cap com had no intention to make a return to the old school style of play. The cause behind this is profit, cap com wish to gain the cod market but while resident evil will not be returning to survival horror there is some good news. Shinji Mikami has recently announced project ZWEI which he will be the executive director and will be fully involved in the development. The genera of this game will be survival horror and Mikami states that "while big game companies make huge sales, we don't want to become a studio that loses sight of what is truly interesting or worthwhile." The one image released is nothing confirmed for in game just a tone setter. I personally cannot wait for this to be released but hope that it is not rushed in any way. I will post any updates I find as they are released. http://tangogameworks.com/project/index_en.html

Lucid Doom

   Well I have been keeping up with my lucid dreaming and I have been having more success after waking up in the morning and going back to bed. My latest lucid dream was sort of frightening but fortunately I have some control of what is happening. I was suddenly in a big room with a small station on the wall where I could purchase ammunition for a mini gun. There was one imp from the game doom3 and I was able to take him out really quickly that part of the dream did not freak me out but the next enemy made it worse. With out warning two huge hell knights started walking into the room and I was frantically purchasing as much ammo as I could and the thing that made me panic was when I started getting hit. I was killed and strangely re spawned but I still thought it was all real. The dream ended quickly before I had the chance to kill both the hell knights. I like having lucid dreams but feeling fear from some lucid dreams is not always cool. I will keep making updates when I have something else worth posting about but for now I will end this here.

Battle squad play

  So I finally joined a platoon in bf3 and have been sending and receiving friend requests and was very excited to play but when playing with them. We started playing on a hardcore server and I was immediately disappointed with the fact that I could only spawn on the squad leader. If you choose to use the battle log communication everyone has to be in you friends list so they can join a party to communicate. Even without voice communication  my self and squad mates have been successful in moving from point to point and capturing and holding flags. I would usually be the person that would setup behind cover and watch for enemy's as my squad mates would run from point to point. In doing this my squad was very successful in keeping all but two flags in our possession.
   While re capturing a flag a squad mate and my self were faced with enemy armor coming to the flag to try and stop us from taking it back. My squad mate distracted the armor by hitting it with an rpg and I snuck up and placed my c4 and destroyed the armor and the one person that was in the armor. Players on the opposite team started changing their tactics of just running and gunning when they realized that could not beat our playing style. The enemy team started playing really smart and had their LAV set up at G over looking E on karkand and were able to take back E. Even though the enemy team started using good tactics it was to far into the round and my squad was just playing to well for the other team to handle and we won by several hundred tickets.
   So my point behind this post is to show just how well tactics can work and not even heavily practiced tactics. I saved my squad mates and team mates by setting up and giving cover while they were moving in the open that most of my 30 kills of the round were defending team mates. So if you choose to use the battle log communication you have to create a party or join a party in the com center and then you can change settings near the bottom of the com center. The downside to battle log communication is that the people have to be in you friends list and I cannot just alt tab out to add someone to my list because if I do that my game starts lagging really bad and eventually crashes. So ultimately this post is supposed to tell you just how well tactics can work although not everyone wants to play this way some may but might think it wont work up against a bunch of people running around. But no matter how you play just try to have fun while playing.

Battle dedication

   The battlefield can bring pride glory and fame from a close few or from many. Scrims and tournaments are the foundation for many players and teams in the Battlefield 3 community. The road to success is not easy by any means and even the best of teams can be defeated. So I want to talk a little about what I have seen in successful teams. The biggest is well established communication on what ever software it is decided to use. Teams that do really well usually have different strategies they will chose to use for a particular team they are playing against and what map they may be on. Code names for different areas or specific points on the map so all players will be able to communicate the location of the enemy to team mates. Dedicate certain days and times for practicing all strats and work on communication things like coordination of movement and improving accuracy timing of executing tactics. Practicing different ways of defending objectives up close if able to hold positions or from distance as well as from armor and air. The entire team should be aware of how their team mates are doing and any issues should be addressed. I cannot stress how important having every one on the same page is so that everyone will know where they need to go and what they need to do. Over and over again my friend and I have died because we both had different names for parts of the map and locations. So good luck with selecting and training and playing with your team mates and as you should always try to have fun.

Meditation and technique

   Alright now I want to discuss meditation a bit and give some tips for people that want to start but have no idea where to start. In my research I have been unsuccessful in finding a definitive answer to the origins of meditation. I do however know that the word meditation was derived from the latin word mediatio. Meditation is mostly credited to India and Asia but I have wondered if it hasn't had it's origins from as far back as tribes have practiced spiritual ceremonies. People use meditatino for different purposes some for spiritual purposes others just to help clear their minds.
   I have started practicing meditation in a attempt to see if it would help with my lucid dreaming and to see if it helps my concentration. There are different ways of practicing meditation sitting, laying down closed eye, open eye, looking up at your third eye, staring into a flame, mantra, and many others. I have only tried sitting closed eye and have noticed a few times that I would start to see lights after a while of meditation but I would have to be able to keep all thoughts out. Most of the time when I lay down for bed and start focusing on the area of the third eye and I can feel the energy there and many times I can see really bright lights. Some times the light gets so bright that I open my eyes expecting to see someone in my room pointing a light in my face. If you are interested in trying meditation you should try the different techniques and see what one works for you the best.
   If you are like me then you will have to start by clearing your mind and for me the one way that I have found is to eliminate stimulation. If I am watching tv or listening to music I will turn them off and then I will read a few pages of a book although this is the only thing I have tried I would recommend trying other techniques. When meditating I try to be as comfortable as possible and I will usually be siting in my under ware only with a small blanket around me if needed and a few pillows to sit on. Don't be frustrated if you are having a hard time for the first few days you just have to find the best way for you to practice it and then from there you could start other techniques if you prefer. A lot more could be said but I don't want this to be extremely long so I am going to end it here. Remember there is a lot of information on the web about meditation all you have to do is look for it.

   Alright today I would like to discuss some things you should remember and take with you when you are out in the woods or just on on some trails hiking or biking. Every time that I go with friends to go hiking in the woods or just out in the hills biking I am always the person that brings what we need and every time my friends are great full. When preparing for a day out you should always bring enough food for your self and others for a few days I normally pack stuff like energy bars and beef jerky. The time of the year and area you are heading into should dictate what clothing you wear out and what extra you pack. Where I live during the summer months it stays nice a cool during the nights so I generally would pack my self a water proof coat or a big water proof overcoat. In my pack I like to keep two lighters just in case I need to make fire I have a higher chance of making it as well I have some cotton that has been in my pack for over a year now that will make fire easier.
   I keep in my pack I keep some rope that is a little over 40 ft you can do many things with rope catching food, shelter, supporting a injured limb. I also keep a thermal blanket in case I ever get turned around in the woods and have to spend the night I want to make sure I can have some sort of shelter in case it rains and just for something to fill with debris to keep body heat in. I always bring my self a knife with a sharpener for many different reasons primarily for me gathering wood but other things such as digging and skinning game. There is no perfect knife for all situations so choosing what knife you want to bring along is up to you and what you are planing on using it for. Some type of first aid kit should be brought along just in case you could possible fall on something that may cut you or when ever you may break something.
    Finally water I bring as much as I can carry even if I am just planing on being out for a few hours. Water is very important and in the summer time you can go through your supply quicker than you may think. Depending on how long you are going to be out you may want to bring something to boil water in you can use your water bottle if it is suspended high enough out of the fire. Bringing some toilet paper would be beneficial unless you know what types of leafs are safe to use. Bringing along some bug spray or just having clothing barriers suck as long sleeve shirt and pants a insect head net and if you could wear some gloves. In the end bringing what you may need is up to you and what you think you may need.  There are several more things I have not discussed purely for the fact that different situations require different tools and knowledge and this post would end up being a book. I am going to be doing some camping over the summer so I plan on putting up different posts with reviews of items I take out and discussions such as items that may have been better to bring or items brought that were worse.

Computer building ease

   To this day I still cannot believe how many people ask me why and how I build my computers rather than buy pre assembled. Every one I tell just how easy it is they usually ask me to help them buy parts and where they would be able to purchase the components. Well here I am going to explain to you just how easy it is to build your self a good computer. The first is finding a place to get your parts and a simple search will find you many sites to purchase and some computer and over clocking forums may have a whole section dedicated to selling older parts. Now that you have found a place to purchase from you can start researching parts and deciding on parts. Generally I start from the CPU so that I don't find a mobo that I want that ends up not match the CPU socket and the higher the GHz the quicker the CPU.
   After the CPU I jump straight to finding a motherboard and start reading reviews and specs of many different boards. Now that the mobo is taken care of you can jump from here but lets start at the ram. Ram or memory type will be listed in the motherboards specs as well as the maximum amount that is supported by the mobo. Next you can start looking for a video card and make sure you do research on the card so you may know if is the right card for you're needs and how many watt power supply you need to buy. If you are building a computer for just browsing the web and playing flash games it would be impractical for you to spend $1000 or more for dual graphics cards or even $500 or more for a higher end card.  Purchasing hard drives make sure the drives are compatible with the connectors on your motherboard and the amount of storage space you need and you can have multiple drives connected if you need to have massive amounts of storage.
   Next looking at cd/dvd/blue ray drive there is a good selection of drives and make sure you research what you are looking at getting and make sure it does every thing that you need it to do. Next if you want one or if the on board seams to be junk you can look at getting a sound card and then you can look into getting speakers and a good pair of headphones. Next look for a case that best suits what you need, motherboard format, how many fan slots, fan size, water cooling, hard drive bays, psu mounting spot, number of hard drive bays, and price. IF you are wanting to build a really high end gaming computer you can look into doing water cooling as a quiet and more efficient cooling method but more expensive. If you choose not to go with water cooling you can always purchase after market heat sinks for you CPU and GPU and if you chose to you should also purchase some arctic silver and a manual fan controller for your gpu cooler as you may be unable to control the fan speed from software.
   If you choose a aftermarket cooler you should make sure that you have enough space on the board for any other devices you are going to putting in any other slot like a sound card or a second video card. Next you should look at a power supply by looking at the components you have decided to purchase and determine how many watts you are going to need.  Finally you should look at what OS you are wanting to run windows, linux, it is up to you. Once you have your parts you can assemble every thing then from there install your os update mobo bios drivers and all other software. Make sure when first installing all hardware you connect ram before you're CPU if you have a aftermarket heat sink that sits over the ram slots. Your motherboard manual will tell you where the power and reset wires need to be connected to. Do as much research as you need before purchasing parts and if in doubt there are many forums with loads of information and plenty of good suggestions on what to get. Once you guys get into it you will find out that it is not hard at all to get your computer built and running so good luck and have fun.

Battlefield Armor trap terror

  If you are like me and have had extensive bouts with tanks in BF3 and trying to take them out on foot you will know some of the difficulties in this undertaking. One of the most effective depending on placement and the operator of the armor's awareness. I have found that setting a trap for tanks can be a more effective means of not only taking out the armor but as well as lowering you chances of being spotted by infantry on the ground. The best way i have found to make the most of setting a trap is to observe the usual spots that armor will sit and using that to setup your devious little trap. Depending on the area there may be certain directions of entry most armor will move into a area. This can be used to your advantage by placing c4 on a wall or surface that my be driven past that they cannot see the c4 on.
   Placing your charges in grass areas that have tree cover do make it more difficult for someone to spot your charges. Have you ever had someone in armor who just sticks to main roads and has a full crew ready to jump out and repair at the first his of a rpg? Study the direction the driver uses and place your c4 in his path and then use your supplies to hide it. depending on the amount of action happening around and just the fact that it is just a supply box in the road the driver may just drive over it letting you take him out. If you are in a squad and you are using a mic you can try to get your squad to help you by placing c4 on the eod bot and blowing it up that way. But of course with the new patch you can just have a squad of engineers ambush armor with their rpg or smaw and if someone has squad expl then you have more than enough rockets to take out armor. In the end you are just playing a video game so don't be frustrated when your tactics fail to work but when these tactics work I know that they put a big smile on my face.

Lucid dreaming confusion

   Lately I have been having more lucid dreams and for the most part a elusive cause sometimes causing frustration. Some nights they just happen and other nights they will happen when I attempt doing some known inducing methods. None of my dreams have been really strange just ordinary every day life or my self but living a different life. Every time I have one of these dreams they feel so real yet I have really little control of what is going on or what I am doing. Generally I forget that I have had the dream for mostly a undetermined amount of time after I have woken up. For anyone who has never experienced a lucid dream I will explain a little to give you an idea of just how real they can be. My latest dream I really thought that I was in a training class for a job and had forgot that I was supposed to be at a interview for a different job.
   Like all my others I did not remember as soon as I woke but later was able to recall it. In my first lucid dream I lived in a different town but still was my self and I still had the same truck that I drive now. In my dream I accidentally ran over and killed my dog and when I woke up the next morning I still thought that it had happened and I actually felt really sad till I realized it was just a dream. Here is just a quick run down of things you can do to possibly induce a lucid dream. Make sure you keep a journal of your dreams and one trick to help is to keep telling your self that you will wake after every dream and then you can either record with tape or write down on paper. Look for repetition in your dreams and once you have found something try doing some sort of check something like putting one hand through the other. Once it becomes more fluid to recognize you are in a dream you should work on making sure you are able to stay in and one thing is to use all your senses so you reduce the chance of being dropped out of the dream. I my self am currently working on improving this unique skill and hope that soon I may be having frequent lucid dreams. Good luck to anyone who wishes to attempt lucid dreaming.

Battle Progression

  Progress in BF3 can be fun and easy or a problematic undertaking that during some games may make you want to just quit playing. Teamwork obviously being the key you should communicate with your squad and see if they aren't willing to shoot you over a friend request. Even if no one wants to do that try getting the squad to at least stick together and work together. Your squad mates can provide you with some good covering fire or a flanking the enemy to help advance your position. The comm rose works much better now so you should make good use of it. Thanking your squad mates can be beneficial and really can promote good moral among the squad. One really important thing should be is a mic check first off if the squad is all on friends lit together. Back when I was playing project reality mod for BF2 a mic was a required because you had to coordinate with your squad on so many tasks.      
   I realized from that game just how important communication is and how easy it is to have your ears blasted because no one did mic checks to correct mic position. I have had the misfortune of single handedly coming up against a organized squad and they cut me down before I knew they were there.     The weapon attachments in this game allow any player to adapt to what the squad needs and any inbound threats. Of course players may switch class at any time but one should be ready to switch at the request of the squad if reason is sufficient. Hopefully by communicating with you squad's you can gain some good people to play with. While working with a squad dose not guarantee 100% success over time you should gain knowledge of what to look out for how camouflage works with the environment and overall better ways to communicate with squad mates. A major importance of having the whole squad acting together and communicating via mic is movement. If you are watching the rear of your squad position and are not paying attention to your mini map or checking back on the squad it can be easy for you to be left behind and have your movements exposed to fire without squad support.
   Snipers pose some of the biggest threat on maps such as metro rush and eliminating them can be very difficult. Having never used the mortar I don't know how fare our you are going to have to expose your self to be able to put mortars on top of the snipers. I have never seen it first had but I would suspect that using a mav and spotting for mortar would be a effective way to eliminate or even suppress snipers. If this tactic would work it would give way for a squad to move up and attack from the side of the target to allow someone from the from to move in and arm the charge.

Battlefield joy and pain

  Well I have been playing allot of BF3 lately and with the new patch there has been good and bad. I do think the suppression works better but is not completely amazing. Before the patch came along I literally had no suppression ribbons. It seams that before a suppression ribbon was just another way of saying congratulations you missed allot. I have noticed times where the hit-reg dose seam to be worse than before but some of it may only be changes in the weapons. I personally thought that armor was only op when it had reactive armor or had a fully stocked crew on TDM. I would love to see tanks hp return to prepatch and have the reactive armor unable to take so many hits. While setting traps for tanks may not feel as rewarding as before any time you take out a tank out on foot still feels good. I have seen a big decrease in amount of people that are using the famas now and i believe that to be a plus. I don't know what it is but I still see a lack of people playing team based and sticking with their squads. I try as  hard as I can so help my squad mates but must the time they just run around doing their own thing. It seams to be unanimous that this could be improved by just having VoIP although the upside to no VoIP is adding more friends to your list.

computer heat and the summer

Well now that the temps are rising I have decided to switch to a more efficient and quiet heat sink for my 5830. During the winter months I could warm my room by leaving my stock cooler fan to auto and playing some video games for a few hours. I did a bit of looking around and found the arctic cooling accelero xtreme plus ll for a little over $80 but I figured with all the good reviews I would give it a go. My bedroom is not a big room so after playing something like crysis of BF3 for a few hours with my card temps at 66C it was very warm in my room at night in the middle of winter so I knew that my card was running hotter than I would like it to be. I am really impressed with my new cooler with temps only reaching 35C after several hours of playing BF3 and on top of that my idle temps went from a max of 40C (usually around 37C) with the stock cooler down to 24C with the aftermarket. My house is really old and the insulation in the walls is not the best so it says hot in here even with doors and windows open in the summer time. I am glad that I will not be bathing in sweat over the summer while playing my video games. If anyone decides to purchase one of these coolers you need to make sure that you buy the correct mounting brackets because they don't supply them at all. For me the only down side is when I was originally doing 2 5830's The space was so tight that the plastic cover the stock cooler was almost touching my audio card. Another issue I have is that I am not able to turn up the fan speed of the accelero but I am going to purchase a manual fan speed controller and will hopefully see a bigger drop in temps.