Revolve

I got inspired to make a L4D1 Campaign today. Why? I dont know, I just wanted to see if I could pull it off. So, I made this as a test.

http://www.therevolve.com/upload/uploads/common/deathhall.vpk

Just throw it in your addons folder. (Eg: C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\left 4 dead\left4dead\addons ) and double click it. I almost gave up at the Finale scripting, BUT IT PULLED IT OFF!

The only problem with it is I didnt add any poster / loading pictures. So they’ll show up as Pink checkerboards.

Enjoyzles!

I dont think many people know about this since I’ve been getting it quiet and only really telling close friends, But I am moving out of Concord, NH to get a place closer to Manchester, NH for college. I found a place, but if I want to keep my job at Concord Hospital, I have to drive about an hour to and from work (23 miles – 38 minutes one way). Thats a waste of time and gas. So I had to find a job closer.

One of the positions I applied for was at Elliot Hospital in Manchester, NH. I was shocked to get a call for an interview a couple days after submitting an application and Resume online. I went in for an interview today and it went quite well. The job title is MDS Technician.

Job Description:

Responsible for the distribution of incoming receipts to user departments and the restocking of consumable medical supplies. To provide for the exchange of supply carts and the movement of furniture. Exchanges supply and case carts from restocking to user areas. Picks up contaminated, reusable medical and clinical equipment and transports to decontamination for processing. Provides counting of inventory and restocking of consumable medical goods. Answers telephone and follows up with appropriate information or documents needed service.

At the interview, I was asked simple questions like. “Why did you choose Elliot Hospital?”, “Are you still working at Concord Hospital?” , “Name the hardest customer service experience you’ve had.”, etc. After the interview with Human resources (Which I believe went really well), she directed me to talk to Amanda (The MDS Manager). She walked me down to the basement, Asked a few more questions and showed me around. Not much to say about the job other than having to check stock on the floors for medical equipment and other small things.

I think the coolest thing I heard about the job was that I get to carry a Pager on the days I work by myself (At night). I’ve always dreamed of working with a pager to be honest, Something about it makes me feel as if I really achieved something. The other cool thing is that I get to bring with me a PDA used for checking stock on the floors (Similar to what UPS Drivers use).

PDA used for logging floor stock

Wish me luck everyone that I get the position. They apparently need this job filled quickly and my previous position at Concord Hospital should hopefully help!

- Shawn McHenry

Its been very quiet around here and I’m going to try and get that to change. I am done with Holiday break and school is coming to a close very shortly. So I will soon give polo 90% of my attention. :3

In the meantime:

34 Subscribers on my YouTube channel. Thats not great, but hey, It could be worse. Most people go to my videos to watch my GMod Wall Of Death video. 62% of views are because it was a featured video. :O Cool.

So, I’ll go and stop being boring.

The other day, I drove to Captain Ahabs house for a night over. However, When pulling up in his driveway, I noticed the check engine light was on. So I felt really uneasy about it because it could be anything. Akashe thought I may be low on oil, but I couldn’t see my dipstick well at all.

The next morning I drove to Autozone and had them do a code scan, and they found this:

TROUBLESHOOTING P0420
OEM Brand: TOYOTA

Definition:
Catalyst system efficiency below threshold – bank 1
Possible Cause
1. Air leak in exhaust before rear H02s (Heated Oxygen Senor) Bank 1
2. AF Sensor error
3. Fuel system fault
4. Faulty catalytic converter

After that, I brought the car to the dealer and told them about the Check Engine light (I didnt tell them about how I went to Autozone to get code reading). One of the mechanics got a code reader, walked out to my car, Plugged it in and did a few things. After about 7 seconds of him using the code reader, He said its nothing to worry about and he reset the code.

The check engine light is now off, But I have a feeling its not resolved. D:

Lilliput Mini USB Monitor

If you have any questions about the product,
Please feel free to email me, I am MUCH more active on Email: drraccoony(at)gmail(dot)com

Picked this monitor up off Thinkgeek and so far its pretty sweet. This little bad boy is a 7″ USB monitor, (Widescreen, 16:9). This monitor is perfect for carrying around to use with a Laptop. Its portable and has a single leg on the back that can be folded out and used to prop up. Plus this thing is really light weight (288g).

The Lilliput USB monitor is powered off USB, so no massive power brick to carry around. The device transfers data at 480Mbps over a USB 2.0 connection. The provided USB Cable has two USB connectors at the end. I believe one is for Power and the other is for Power + Data (According to the Manual), But it operates just fine with one USB connected. (Apparently the cable is a Y type USB cable)

After unboxing the unit, I found with it, The monitor, The Mini-USB connector cable, small manual, and a CD. After popping the CD in, it didnt autorun (No autorun on CD), so I clicked Explore CD. On the CD appeared to be a Setup file, But it wasn’t working for me. But I found that think-geek provided the Drivers on the product page. I was pleased to find that it supported Windows 7. After installing the drivers, Which was really easy, not much of an install wizard, I plugged in the Monitor.

After a moment or two, The monitor powered up and I found my desktop wallpaper on the monitor at quite a crisp 800×480 (Which may sound low compared to todays standards, But remember, this is a Seven Inch widescreen monitor.). The orientation of the monitor can be flipped in any direction (Portrait, or landscape). I personally prefer Portrait, Which I will get to soon. On the front on the device is Three buttons. One is power, when pushed, It turns the monitor off and disconnects from the PC (Windows detects it as being ‘Removed’). The other two buttons are for brightness.

Enough with boring talk, Lets try this thing! So I opened a folder and drug it to the side of the monitor and sure enough, There it was, Seamless, on the 7″ monitor. No noticeable issues or low frame-rate problems. So I decided to try something else, So I flipped the monitor 90 and set it to Portrait and moved my Buddy list over to the monitor, and it looked awesome. A nice perfect fit, with room to spare. So I almost moved Windows Media player over and played some music.

So I decided to put this monitor to the test and played a Flash video on the monitor and it played fine. I couldn’t even see a reduction in frame rate. Awesome, But I really want to push this thing to the limits.

In the manual, It states: Any software that requires Hardware 3D accelerator cannot be displayed properly with USB Monitor. Hmm, lets see how true that is. So I decided to test it with Portal. I open portal up on my Primary monitor, Set it to windowed mode, and turn the resolution way down, Then I drug the game over to the USB Monitor, and it actually displayed Portal on the device and it was playable and yet again, No huge framerate issues, I was getting 70 FPS through out.

One annoying thing about this monitor though is there is no Taskbar on the monitor. But my desktop PC already has two monitors (Not including Lilliput). So I already had Ultramon installed and it supports this little monitor and puts a taskbar on it. It shows only tasks that are on that monitor, and removes them from the other monitors taskbar. Woot!

Well, I dont know what else to say other than this product is nice. So if you were thinking TL;DR, heres a summary of what I think:

Pros:
- Portable, Light-weight – Just throw it in your laptop bag and go.
- Awesome crisp resolution.
- Nice to have a power button and brightness control.
- Really affordable.

Cons:
- Weird Driver Disk, No autorun.
- Restricted to a max resolution of 800 x 480 (But asking for more is crazy on a monitor this size)
- Touch screen model would be cool.

With a pricetag of $100, and a clean nice product. I’d have to give it a nice 9 out of 10.

—

FAQ:

Q: Curious to know how it’s portable, though. For example, I would think the LCD would get damaged very easily without any protection.
A: I have a Laptop bag that I just throw it in and so far, No damage to it (I have a elastic pouch in my bag it fits perfectly in). The casing is quite durable, It isnt flimsy or weak. With the screen, I am not sure about it getting scratched or cracked. But if you’re worried about it getting scratched, Buy a few Screen protectors and cut them down. I think I remember it coming with a screen protector on it, But I am sure its nothing to to be too worried about.

Q: Do you know ( Or could you check ) If this works as a Primary monitor?
A: Actually yes! I tried this out shortly after writing the review and it works. However, This monitor needs drivers before it works. So you’ll need to plug in a PnP (Plug and play) monitor first, install drivers, and then it works great. When booting up the computer, It wont show BIOS or anything, But as soon as Windows starts to boot up, You’ll get a picture.

I am tempted to install a computer in my Car to use as a Media player and mount the monitor to my dashboard.

Q: How many of these monitors can I put on my PC? I want to do a 3×3 grid design and mount it to a wall.
A: You can install as many of these monitors on your PC, However, A PC can only support up to about 255 USB Devices and you have to consider power that a common USB port can provide if you Dasiy chain these.

I went to Justins college on Wednesday and got really inspired. Hes building a hip computer. A small box with a wrist glove keyboard. I kinda want to build one. I already started researching my equipment.

Keyboard: I need a wrist keyboard and found the excact one that Justin owns, but its $250! (Justin, No idea where you got yours). So I need to find a cheaper one I can build. So I found this.
Cost: $25

Monitor: Travis actually found this one for me. Lilliput Mini USB Monitor. I dont think it has an arm strap, But I am sure I could make one. The big thing about this one is that it is powered off the USB, No external power. Perfect.
Cost: $100

Computer: I plan on using my Netbook, and putting it in either cargo pants pocket or a messenger bag.
Cost: None

Thats all I can think of so far. If you guys got any suggestions, comment here. :3

Ive had Windows 7 on my desktop and HP Entertainment laptop for awhile now and have been loving it. So I thought it was time to remove Windows XP off the netbook and upgrade it to Windows 7.

I installed Windows 7 Starter on it because I don’t really need much on it. I only really use my netbook for web surfing and writing. Travis was skeptical about the netbook being able to run it, but it does.

So I got about 6 GB left on the 15 SDD drive. So I installed Firefox, FileZilla (For website management) and Notepad++ (For programming the website). Im quite proud on how compact I got Firefox to look.

Windows 7 on Netbook - Firefox

So next Im going to try and compact down the desktop and such. I removed Internet Explorer 8, and all the games that Windows 7 comes preloaded with.

I’ll update with moar cool stuffs.

Well, I dont know much of your stay up to date on the Polo site but anyway I hope traffic on it will pick up after we reveal a beta for you guys, Which may remain a Revolve Exclusive on the first beta, not like we really put the word out about Polo too much.

The polo page polo.therevolve.com is updated regularly (Even if it may not seem so) with News, Screenshots and some videos at points. I may consider making some Polo shirts, because a shirt would look excellent with the Polo scheme.

I think my favorite new feature currently, however dumb it may sound, Is the pause menu. Its excellent and you can really get things done in there. Like changing graphic settings, that makes me happy.

Alright, I know most of you are going to lose respect for me, but copying Shawn’s post felt right.

So yeah…

Around 9:30, my PS3 (Tom Bergeron) died in the middle of my playthrough of Uncharted 2. WHAT A FUCKING DISAPPOINTMENT! HOLY SHIT FUCK! The game was sweet! Everything I’ve been waiting for! And the plot is thickening, and the graphics making my pants explode with love sauce… and then it happened during a cut scene.

TV loses signal…

…Tom starts blinking…

…and doesn’t come back.

But this thing was a CLASSIC model too! Launch window 60gb PS3 WITH Backward Compatibility! It’s like the mac daddy of all PS3’s! $600 fucking dollars! Now I need to figure out what I’m doing with it. I think I’m going to repair it through Sony which has some drawbacks, but I’m going to see if I can minimize those.

I’m gonna give Tom a few more tries before I send him out in his coffin. Fingers crossed!

Alright, I know most of you are going to loose respect for me, but I’ve grown up with Halo, so I can get away with it.

At 12:01 AM on Tuesday, Halo 3 ODST was going on sale for a midnight release. So 2 weeks in advanced, I picked up a preorder and had Ari join me. We showed up at the mall at about 8:15, went outside and already found a line forming. So we snagged 6th place in line along the wall. Me and ari took turns going in to get some food, which was pretty bad, I swear the chinese food was about 9 hours old.

So long story short because I really dont feel like explaining the whole night. We got some free stuff, Ari even got a free Concept art book for Soul Calibur with a soundtrack CD. I got a Gears Of War 2 armband, and a set of Halo 3 Fridge magnets. I also picked up something for Travis’ birthday. (Oct 15)

Anyway, Got my copy of Halo 3 with a Sgt. Johnson token to play in “Firefight”, dropped Ari off at home and went back to the apartment and popped ODST in. I played a quick game of Firefight and it was fun, But I was tired, so I went to bed.

The next morning I stayed home from school because I WAS SICK. No joke, I really am sick, So I stayed home. After sleeping in, I went to play Halo 3 ODST. After about maybe 2 hours into the Single player, My Xbox Froze. So I restarted my Xbox, and then it happened. THREE RED LIGHTS. After troubleshooting and calling Xbox Support, My xbox was determined dead. On top of that, My warrenty had expired and would cost me $99 for repair. But I hadn’t given up.

I grabbed my sweater, and my xbox, Wrapped it up in the sweater and turned the Xbox 360 on. I let it sit while I watched “Back To The Future” and then I tried the Xbox again. Guess what, So far, The Xbox hasn’t crashed, frozen or red ringed. Its been good since then.

Anyway, I’ll get working on a Review once I finish the single player, and play Firefight solo and Coop.