Well I decided to take this weekend off from work, I really needed it since I usually always work the weekends anyways. My friends and I had been planning a trip up to Penn State for a while now. A few of our friends go there and we really wanted to go to a football game. So this past weekend we decided to take the 2 hour drive up to state and enjoy the weekend up there. I debated on whether or not to take my laptop, I decided not to because I know if I would have brought it I would have been on it way too much.
We made it up to state late on Friday night because of a crazy snow storm in Pittsburgh. We had a good time that night and got up early the next day for the game. Penn State is a very large school, especially to me since I went to Robert Morris. I also like how everything is centered around the school, you have bars, restaurants, etc all within walking distance of the campus. That would have been nice at Robert Morris. We got to the tailgate around 10:30 and it was crazy, I had never been to a tailgate for a big school before, there were people everywhere!
We headed into the game a little before it started and we all sat in the student section, which was crazy. During the entire game no one sat down once, even though it was completely freezing and snowing! Penn State won the game 49-18, here is a short video I made to give you an idea of what the atmosphere was like inside the stadium.
One thing that is so great about blogging is that you can do it from pretty much anywhere as long as you have an internet connection. WordPress makes things even easier, and the WordPress App for the iPhone means you don’t even need a computer to publish blog posts on your website. Although something like that app is not really that realistic for someone who wants to add images and other media in their posts. A blogging laptop does not need to be that powerful, just needs to have a capability to do some word processing and be able to surf the web and possibly resize images. The most important thing is that you want it to be portable.
I recently had the chance to check out the Lenovo Ideapad S10 10.2-inch laptop. You can check out the full review over at ThinkComputers. It is a perfect little laptop for blogging. First let’s talk about the size, it is only 9.8″ x 7.2″ x 1.2″ and only weighs 2.64lbs. This means you can easily carry it around with you it and it could fit in a backpack or medium to large size purse without a problem. During my testing I took the S10 everywhere I went and it was not like carrying a regular laptop around at all.
So it’s small, but what about performance? The S10 has a 1.6Ghz N270 Intel Atom processor and has 1GB of memory. So of course you will be able to do word processing and web surfing but also you will be able to use programs like Paint.net to resize and edit images. Also unlike most small laptops like this the S10 has a regular hard drive not an SSD. This means you actually have a lot of space, not 4-8GB that you get with an SSD, the S10 has a 120GB hard drive. Lenovo tries really hard to give you as much screen size as possible with a 1024 x 600 resolution LCD.
The thing that really sets the S10 apart from other small laptops that are around the same price is the ExpressCard slot. Having an ExpressCard slot gives you a lot of expansion options. One of the most important things would be an EVDO card so you can have internet anywhere. My Sprint EVDO card is an ExpressCard and its awesome that I can use it with the S10. If you want more information on the S10 check out my review over at ThinkComputers.
ThinkComputers has teamed with Thermaltake to bring you a great Holiday Giveaway! It is that time of the year, snow is on the ground and Christmas is right around the corner. We have decided to give the ThinkComputers readers a surprise. Thermaltake will be providing 3 different cases for us to give away. First is the Speedo ($199.99), then the V9 Gaming Case ($139.99) and finally the Armor+ MX ($139.99). There are quite a few ways to enter this contest…
Forums: Reply to this post and have a minimum of 35 posts – 1 entry
ThinkComputers Blog: Be one of the top 5 commentators on the ThinkComputers blog – 2 entries (1 for November, 1 for December)
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So there are quite a few ways you can qualify, you can get up to 4 entries total. The contest will run from today, November 12th to December 25th. Winners must be located in the US and Canada to receive prizes. Head on over to ThinkComputers to check out the contest!
I have seen quite a few people using this plugin on their blog so I decided to check it out for myself. If you notice at the bottom of every post is a little Tell a Friend button. If you hover over it, it will bring up a box where users can tell a friend about that post via IM, E-Mail, or a Social network. What’s great about this plugin is that it allows users to do this without leaving your site to do it.
Tell a Friend was launched by Social Twist and is free to download and install. Now you don’t need to sign up to Social Twist to download the widget but if you do signup to Social Twist you are able to customize the widget and have access to usage statistics. I went ahead and signed up for an account. Once you download the plugin, just upload it to your wordpress plugins folder and active it and you a good to go. It can’t get much easier than that. The plugin can also be used on other platforms like TypePad, Blogger and Textpattern. It will be interesting to see if anyone uses the widget on the page, check it out for yourself.
Here is a video that shows how Tell a Friend can be useful to the visitors to your site.
It’s not often I play a lot of games, mostly because I’m busy working hard on my sites. And the free time I have I usually just like to relax, we all know that some games can take up a lot of time (World of Warcraft etc.) so I normally don’t really get into games that much anymore. If I do feel like playing a game it will load up hockey or Counter-Strike: Source (Gungame Deathmatch is awesome). That pretty much feeds my need for gaming. I do own an Xbox 360, but like I said I don’t have that many games for it, the last game I bought was NHL 09.
One of my favorite games for my 360 is Gears of War. When it first came out the graphics and gameplay were amazing, it was one of the most anticipated games for the 360. I’m sure a lot of your remember the Mad World trailer that was played on TV for a straight month before the game came out. Watching that trailer really got you excited for the game. Well just like the original Gears of War there is another trailer just like that for Gears of War 2.
These trailers are great, they really portray Gears of War as not just a game, but a great story, and playing through the original Gears of War felt like I was living the story. Not many games can do that, and not many games look amazing like Gears of War. Gears of War 2 not only has new weapons, but new game modes and much more!
The Gears of War figurehead is Cliff Bleszinski who is the design director for game development at Epic Games. I’ve been playing his games for the longest time, even since Unreal Tournament, which was one of my favorite games of all time and I still own all Unreal games all the way up to Unreal Tournament 3. I know a game is going to be good if Cliff is involved.
So I’m all set for tonight, I have my Gears of War 2 LE preorder all paid off, have a 6 pack of Vault, and 3 frozen pizzas! I will be waiting in line to get it at midnight! If you follow me on twitter I will be posting photos from the GameStop at my mall. If you are getting the game add me to your friends on Xbox Live, my gamertag is Enigma5.
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