Final Fantasy XIII-2!

Yep, you read it correctly!  Square Enix announced about a week ago that they are making a sequel to Final Fantasy XIII!  This is ridiculously exciting news...I'm a huge FFXIII fan.  Not many veteran Final Fantasy gamers were excited about the game, or this news for that matter.  A lot of people criticized XIII for its linear gameplay as well as some annoyances of the voice acting/dubbing.  I didn't really know this until today, but apparently there is a huge difference in the style of games between the West and the East.

We (being the US) are known to produce games that invoke multiplayer capability and are more focused on quick, fancy, and dramatic gameplay.  That is, with franchises such as Halo, Call of Duty, World at Warcraft, etc., the dimension of social gameplay is slowly shadowing over solo-only games, like Zelda.  The East, on the other hand, focuses on quality, plot, and development of the story and characters throughout the game.  This is where differences tend to collide.  Many gamers were not very happy with the result of Final Fantasy XIII because it lacked a lot of components that are almost seemingly required in games now days.  Furthermore, the English dubbing was a bit much at times.  I can't recall how many times I would get annoyed with Hope's annoying remarks, let alone his voice.  However, in the East, this is completely different.  The voice acting, the lines, everything is remarkable.  In the Asian countries, these voice actors are almost literally celebrities.  They are very well-known for the roles they play voices for.  You look back at us, and voice actors are sometimes almost unknown to us.  I mean, yeah, you might know Ali Hillis, who played Lightning's voice, but have you ever heard of Georgia van Cuylenburg, who played Vanille's voice?

Anyway, I'm pretty pumped about this.  Square Enix has already announced that the world of the next installment will be "dark and mysterious," and the game is set to begin right where you left off, on Gran Pulse.  So, this is already a promising sign of more freedom right from the beginning.  Who knows?  I guess we'll just have to wait for more information out of Square Enix.  In the mean time, here's a screenshot of the new Lightning in seemingly Valkyrie armor:

So awesome.

Until next time,

Corey

Making Ringtones for your iPhone.

As an avid PC user, it's always difficult trying to find programs that work the way I want them to, especially when it comes with importing things into iTunes.  Such things include importing videos to fit the dimensions of your iDevice, removing restrictions on certain songs, and worst of all, ringtones.  After messing around, I have compiled the steps that are needed to create any ringtone of your desire.


What you'll need:

• iTunes (duh)
• An audio editor (there are many freeware applications, such as Audacity.  My personal favorite is GoldWave.  There is a free trial with this program, but you'll have to pay for a license [or illegally obtain a key code :P])
• iPhone of any model

Instructions:

1. First, open up iTunes and pick out a song that you want to edit.

I'm a big FFXIII fan, so I'll choose this song, "Blinded by Light."
2.  Next, open up your audio editor and drag the song onto the application.

If only I could make this my ENTIRE ringtone...
3. Trim the segment that you'd like to hear as a ringtone.  For iPhone users, the limit is 30 seconds.

What better snippet to use than the main melody of the entire game?
4. As soon as you're done, save the segment as an MP3.  Now, open up iTunes again and drag the song into your library.  To make sure we do the conversion right, we will make sure that the settings are correct.  In iTunes, Go to Edit and click Preferences.... Within the middle of the window, there should be a setting that says When you insert a CD, and the Import Settings button should be to the right of it.  Click that button and make sure that the import setting is on AAC Encoder, as shown below:
5. Now, right-click on your media file, and click Create AAC Version.  After iTunes chugs its engines, it'll spit out a new file with the same metadata, except its new extension is .m4a!  Now, drag this file out of iTunes and onto your desktop. Make sure your extensions are visible (to do this, open up Windows Explorer, click on Organize on the top left corner, and click Folder and search options. Then click on the View tab, and uncheck "Hide extensions for known file types.")  Right-click on the file, and click Rename.  Change the .m4a extension to m4r (r for ringtone).  You'll get some pesky error message saying:

In this case, it will not render the file unusable.  Click yes.  Now, drag this under your iTunes library, specifically under Ringtones.  The file should show up!  Now all that's left is to sync your phone, and voila! You have a custom-made ringtone for your iDevice!

Now, I'm sure there are programs that are out there that allow you to create ringtones with easier steps; however, I have found that these programs are typically shareware, and/or they produce inadequate sound quality (by means of doing some weird converion process from mp3 directly to m4r).  So, this is the easiest method I have created that will produce high-quality ringtones on Windows machines.  Of course, Macs have it easy since this is right up their alley, and converting mp3 to m4r is a breeze with GarageBand.

Have you found other ways to make ringtones?  Send me your ideas!

Until next time,

Corey 

Green Machine

So, my videos are currently being uploaded, so I might as well blog to multi-task.  Anyway, here are some pictures of my machine:

Cable management at its finest.

A clean computer is a better-ventilated computer!

That green cathode really makes the room light up.  You can't really see it in this picture, but it is BRIGHT.

View of the back panel.  Still, the green cathode radiates vividly.

View of the front side.  Those green fans look great.

The result of a successfully modded 200mm "Big Boy" fan! :) I'm glad the LEDs I bought matched the colors already in the Antec fans.

View of the side panel.  Cables begone!...for the most part.

And of course, a view of the desktop with the lights on.  It's still fairly bright.

People still ask me though...why green? Why not stay with blue?  

Easy enough. Green is easily my favorite color.  That's my reasoning.  Yes, it did cost me a bit of money and time to successfully make my machine green, and it was definitely worth it!  A lot of people buy this specific case because it's nice, has great airflow, and cable management is great.  I don't like being the same (well most of the time), and so I decided to change the colors.  After seeing many people configure their machines with colors like red or orange, I convinced myself that I would re-design my machine to be green.  And besides, who doesn't like looking at a green machine in the dark? :)

Now I know a lot of you might be wondering...why not do school colors? Burnt orange?  Well, luckily for you, I made a video of what my machine would look like if I had installed such colors:

Anyway, here is my video. Enjoy, and post comments below if you have any questions or comments!

How to save plenty of money on HDMI cables!

Hey guys.  In this generation that we are living in, things are becoming more "high-def." Starting off with 6-channel, gray-scaled televisions, to the analog color television, and now with flat-screen digital televisions, we expect to receive sharper and more vivid images coming from the screen.  With resolutions, contrast ratios, and framerates gradually increasing, technology demands more powerful wiring to transmit data from peripherals, such as your DVD/Blu-Ray player, or your game consoles.  Meet the HDMI cable.

so simple, yet so powerful!

This little wire can transmit both audio and video at a typical rate of 2 Gbps (think about sending about a quarter of a movie to your computer in a second [a typical movie in DVD format is about 8 Gigabytes]), and a high speed rate of 10.2 Gbps (smaller wires).  These wires are powerful, but a plethora of manufacturers sell them at high prices for even the shortest wires.  Take a look: 

Best Buy sells a 6.6 foot cable for almost $40. Monster brand.

Fry's Electronics sells a 6 foot cable for almost $25. Belkin brand.

Walmart sells a 4 meter (approx. 13.12 feet) cable for $20. TreQue brand.

I got fooled by this a while back when buying an HDMI cable; that is, my parents had bought me a Monster brand HDMI cable from Walmart (sold for about $35!).  However, take a look at this:

Amazon sells a 2 meter (approx 6.6 feet) cable for $2.84. DVI Gear brand.

Isn't that astonishing? It even shows the list price being about $40, and yet the price is cut down 93%! I find that incredible.  This is by far the number one selling HDMI cable on Amazon, and if you need one, I strongly recommend this.  All HDMI cables are virtually the same...brand does not matter.  Some companies (such as Monster) claim faster speeds and better picture quality, but the differences in how the cable is made are subtle, and not even noticeable.

So, next time you need a hi-def cable...buy it off of Amazon cheap! :)

That's all for now. I'll post another blog revolving around my Green Machine eventually!

Corey