As I mentioned in an earlier post, I built a gaming system for my friend Chris because he fell head over heels for BF2142. So now that he's getting into PC gaming I now have (finally!) a teammate to play online with. So I bought the Fatality headphones/mic combo so we can discuss politics and gush online whilst we hoopeth thy ass. I've been playing the Battlefield series since BF1942 and it always been fun, obviously, but never as fun as teaming up with a friend. It changes the dynamics and strategy of the battlefield. You become more effective when you can just say to your team mate, "Hey! Come pick me up. I'm stranded," or awesome cliche lines like "I need backup! I'm surrounded. Watch your back, he's coming around the left side. Did you see him!? Where did he go?" Fun times for all.
On to the headphones. They're comfortable and they work--sort of. Ever since I installed the drivers and updated my X-fi sound card, which by the way the headphones are considered X-fi as well, my computer started acting like an asshole. BF froze with graphical glitches and it even locked up my entire system on a few occasions leading me to believe that something in my tower was overheating. After a lot of frustration, I nailed down the problem. Without the headphones plugged in, my X-fi soundcard enables me to set the audio quality in the game to Extreme High Quality Uber Awesome settings when running off the hardware (card). When the headphones are plugged in, the settings downgrade to medium running off software only. If you try to put the settings any higher the game and even your computer will freeze or shutdown. That seems pretty harsh for a set of headphones. The Uber setting is called "X-Fi" so why doesn't it work with "X-fi" headphones? Oh, and the mic doesn't work in game with BF's mic settings. It does work however with X-Fire, a third party app. But that is a BF/Vista problem. The only reason I'm not extremely pissed is because I can't really notice a drop in audio quality with the headphones on. In fact, I actually hear alot of sound effects I've never heard before. Audio quality is great, the mic works, and they are comfortable. Minus 1 star for pissing me off for 2 days straight though. It shouldn't require so much effort to plug in headphones.
I was looking through some of my projects to decide which one I should post for today when I came across some photos and flyers from my old band days in high school. Above is a picture of us hooligans back in the day. That's me, Jess, Sean, Matthew and Brian. We went through 3 band names, a few lineup changes, put out 3 E.P.s, a live album, numerous demos, wrote dozens of songs, played probably 100 covers and was the best memory I had of high school. I think we could have gone somewhere with it. I moved to college, our drummer joined the Air Force, and we all pretty much got "real" jobs. We played punk rock and were heavily influenced by 70's and 80's bands such as Stiff Little Fingers, The Adolescents, The Ramones, The Clash, The Misfits and X. We didn't write aggressive punk rock, it was more musically inclined.
I love music and I love graphic design so as long as I'm doing one of those, I'm made in the shade. Once I figure a way to post some songs on the blog, I will. Below is a flyer I made back when I was 17 before I discovered Photoshop. We were going by The Saps back then.
I figured that I would start posting random pieces of work that I have done personally and professionally. This ad is the first in a series (that have yet to be created) that showcases the new visual branding of LKQ. What was once very corporate and safe in regards to color and design has changed with a splash of green, a new tagline and a bit of an edgier look.
I've also incorporated this new visual identity to the tradeshow booth that will be on display at the International Autobody Congress and Exposition (NACE) in Las Vegas. It's the biggest collision repair autoshow of the year. I'll be there for a few days just after election day taking pictures and will post images of how the booth turned out. Above is a floor plan but we'll see how it looks in real life.
Over the weekend I built a computer for my friend and future brother-in-law Chris, A.K.A. Ultimate Photon System (see post below), and man, what a pain in the ass and awesome joy it was! I built my tower and have upgraded it here and there over the past few years so this was my second complete build. I got him hooked on PC gaming via Battlefield 2142 so now I have a gaming buddy! So we shopped on Newegg.com for all the components and ordered them about a week and half ago for just over $700. It’s not a water cooled quad core triple SLI sonuvabitch but it gets the job done. The beauty of building it yourself is that you can always upgrade down the line, the reason I convinced him not to buy say a proprietary HP or Dell system. His specs are:
Cooler Master Case
Intel Core 2 Duo E7200
2gb GSkill RAM
500gb hard drive
550 watt PSU
Vista Home Premium 64-bit
NVIDIA 7800GT (a hand-me-down from yours truly. His first upgrade will be the GPU but it plays BF2142 smooth as silk so he’s happy for the time being)
ABIT Ab9 Pro Motherboard <----POS
The motherboard. This picky piece of shit caused so much frustration that we ordered new RAM thinking that it was the reason it wasn’t booting up. Investigation into the matter from the hundreds of other people who had issues with this board indicated that it needs certain RAM from certain vendors with a particular voltage and specific timings. The new RAM didn’t work so I thought it was the video card. I swapped it out with my 8800GTX and still no dice. I then discovered online that the E7200 was troublesome on this board too. So F that, it wasn’t worth anymore time or frustration. We ordered the a board from Gigabyte and boom bam it’s up and running. So watch out for HawlendRion and...em...JellyBean2142... to frag yo ass! See you online.
Oh how I love Monday nights ever since the fall TV season started up recently. I get my triple dose of action via idiot box in the form of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Prison Break, Heroes and One Tree Hill. TV on DVD has certainly spoiled me but the new seasons are great so far. I think Wednesday, Friday and Saturday are the only nights Tivo isn't overloading. Tomorrow night is Fringe, an awesome sci-fi show from my favorite creator/producer JJ Abrams. Wednesday is a night to spend time with my loved ones, my computer... Thursday is The Office, Grey's Anatomy, and It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia and Sunday stars my favorite superhero- Dexter. All the while I'm still trying to find time to watch The X-Files. 30 Rock starts up soon enough, so let's throw that in there somewhere while we're at it. Lest we forget the classics that are always lighting up Tivo red, Seinfeld, King of Queens, The Colbert Report, Everybody Loves Raymond and probably a few others. I heart Tivo. I believe Tivo will eventually become Skynet. You heard it here first folks. Beware.
A new show I just got in to recently is It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia. Holy jeez, it's effin brilliant. It's like Seinfeld on crack after shooting up some Family Guy then smoking a bowl of Curb Your Enthusiasm. It's quite a party. The plot and subject matter of each episode is so far out there for a live action show it's hard to believe. For example, the gang finds a baby in the dumpster and instead of calling the cops they decide to profit from it by making it into a Gerber Baby only to find out that white babies are no longer selling, that in fact, Latin and black babies are the current trend. So they decide to take it to a tanning salon only to be turned away but in the end they try to paint the baby's skin with shoe polish before child services shows up. I think my heart almost stopped beating on a few episodes from laughing so hard. I bought the first 3 seasons on DVD and cranked those out in a few days. Season 4 just started last week on FX. I give it 3 thumbs up.
Today's Photoshop fun. As you can see, my friend Chris and I get a lot done at work. He makes the corrugated robot suit and I make him all powerful in Photoshop. Slow day at work equals awesome picture. I decided to post the "before" (slightly grunged up in Lightroom) and the "after."
Welcome to my blog! My name is Ryan, I'm 25 years old and I am a graphic designer living in Southern California. I'm a pretty laid back guy and enjoy the simple things in life such as movies, music, TV, games, art, and computers. I've started this blog as a fun tool to rant about my likes and dislikes and whatever may be on my mind. Sit back, stay awhile and enjoy!
ryan@noirgraphicdesign.com
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I built a gaming system for my friend Chris because he fell head over heels for BF2142. So now that he's getting into PC gaming I now have (finally!) a teammate to play online with. So I bought the Fatality headphones/mic combo so we can discuss politics and gush online whilst we hoopeth thy ass. I've been playing the Battlefield series since BF1942 and it always been fun, obviously, but never as fun as teaming up with a friend. It changes the dynamics and strategy of the battlefield. You become more effective when you can just say to your team mate, "Hey! Come pick me up. I'm stranded," or awesome cliche lines like "I need backup! I'm surrounded. Watch your back, he's coming around the left side. Did you see him!? Where did he go?" Fun times for all.
