Interviewing AI

Can you gain meaningful information by asking the GPT-3 model questions? Image generated by Craiyon using the prompt: An human interviewing with an AI, high detail

As you may know, I’ve been playing around with AI lately. Mostly using Craiyon and some GPT-3 models for some rather, um, sophomoric purposes. While these are humorous and can sometimes show  the model’s strengths and weaknesses, I felt the realm of pre-pubescent humor had had its time. I instead wanted to see if I could ask the AI questions and have a conversation-style interaction much like this old program I used to mess around with back in the day called Eliza (example in link). It was supposed to be kind of a therapist and you could ask questions and it would respond. It was super basic but it felt like an early AI to me. Even if it was limited in responses, it was kind of fun to use, sometimes to humorous effect.

Anyways, I wanted to just kind of talk to the AI and see what it had to say about a few things. Here’s what came out of it: 

What is a common career path for Desktop Support technicians? 

A common career path for Desktop Support technicians is to move up to become a technical support specialist or a network administrator. 

What is another path? 

Other paths for Desktop Support technicians may include becoming a computer repair technician, a computer systems analyst, or a computer programmer.

 Do many go into Data Science? 

Few Desktop Support technicians go into Data Science, as most lack the necessary education and skills. However, those who do may find rewarding careers in this growing field. 

How about going into Data Analysis?

 Like Data Science, few Desktop Support technicians go into Data Analysis, as most lack the necessary education and skills. However, those who do may find rewarding careers in this growing field. 

How does someone get the necessary education and skills to enter those fields?

 There are many ways to get the necessary education and skills to enter those fields. One way is to get a degree in computer science. Another way is to get on-the-job training. 

What about learning from online sources like Udemy?

 Many Desktop Support technicians learn from online sources like Udemy. These sources can provide an affordable and convenient way to learn new skills.

 What are some other good online learning resources? 

Some other good online learning resources include Coursera, edX, and Udacity.

 What about certifications? 

Certifications can also be helpful for Desktop Support technicians who want to enter those fields. Some relevant certifications include the Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) and the Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP). 

What about Data Science related certifications?

 There are many Data Science related certifications available, such as the Certified Data Scientist (CDS), the Certified Big Data Scientist (CBDS), and the Certified Advanced Analytics Professional (CAAP). 

Data analyst certifications?

 There are also many Data analyst certifications available, such as the Certified Business Intelligence Professional (CBIP) and the Certified Data Analytics Professional (CDAP).

 Well, that’s a lot for me to go over. You have been a great help today, thank you.

 You’re welcome.

I found this interaction to be an interesting way to glean some knowledge into a subject of interest. I found it to be helpful anyway. I think it could be useful in something like career counseling or something similar to help people find things they are interested in. 

Next up: I ask a bit about programming languages and how they are used.

What are 3 programming languages you think are essential? 

This is a difficult question as there are so many programming languages with different purposes. However, if we had to choose three, we would say Python, Java, and JavaScript. 

Why these three languages?

 Python is a versatile scripting language that can be used for automating tasks, powering web applications, and building artificial intelligence models. Java is a powerful and popular language that can be used for building large scale enterprise applications. JavaScript is a must-know language for web development as it can be used to create interactive web pages and web applications. 

Interesting. What about languages like C# or C++? 

C# and C++ are both powerful languages that are often used for building large scale applications. However, they are not essential languages in our opinion.

 Okay, so you mention “essential languages,” what constitutes an essential language in your opinion?

 In our opinion, an essential programming language is one that is versatile and can be used for a variety of purposes. 

That makes sense. Give me some examples of what each language can do.

 Python can be used for automating tasks, powering web applications, and building artificial intelligence models. Java can be used for building large scale enterprise applications. JavaScript can be used to create interactive web pages and web applications. 

Tell me more about Java applications, give me an example of an app written in Java. 

Some popular examples of Java applications are the Android operating system, the Eclipse IDE, and the Jenkins CI server. 

So Android apps are written in Java?

Yes, Android apps are written in Java.

Interesting. Tell me about your favorite app that is written in JavaScript. 

My favorite app that is written in JavaScript is the React Native mobile app development framework. It allows developers to create native mobile apps using the React JavaScript framework.

 I’ve heard of React. tell me more about it. 

React is a popular JavaScript library for building user interfaces. It is used by many companies, including Facebook, Netflix, and Airbnb. 

What about Python? Are there any apps I would recognize written in Python?

 Instagram is written in Python. 

Wow! I didn’t know that. Are there any more apps that are written in Python? 

Yelp is written in Python, as well as the popular video game, Civilization IV.

 Python does sound very versatile. tell me about its use with data. 

Python is often used for data science and machine learning tasks. It has a wide range of libraries that can be used for data analysis and modeling.

 It must also have libraries for games and web applications, does it not? 

Yes, Python does have libraries for games and web applications. However, it is not as commonly used for these tasks as it is for data science and machine learning.

 Why is it the main choice for those tasks? 

Python is popular for data science and machine learning because it is easy to use and has a wide range of libraries available.

 Name a few of those libraries. 

Some popular Python libraries for data science and machine learning are NumPy, pandas, and scikit-learn. 

Ah yes, I have heard of those libraries. They are very useful. Anything else?

 Python is also used for web development, although not as commonly as JavaScript. It has a wide range of frameworks that can be used for building web applications. 

What are some of those frameworks? 

Some popular Python web development frameworks are Django and Flask. 

Wow, this has been a great interview. I have learned a lot, thank you for your time. 

You’re welcome, thank you for the opportunity to share my knowledge.

This conversation was again very insightful and interesting. One thing I noticed that was most interesting was that the AI referred to itself as “We” and its opinions as “Ours.” This was interesting to me because it seems like the AI is thinking of itself as a collective mind, like the Borg from Star Trek TNG. Well, maybe not but I did find that aspect noteworthy in my experimentation. 

Finally, I was done with the hard stuff. Would I like to have a beer with the GPT-3? Take a look at this interaction:

Do you know beer? Can you tell me what you know about Cream Ale? 

Cream Ale is a type of American beer that is light in color and body. It is brewed using a ale yeast and is typically made with a blend of corn and barley malt. Cream Ale is known for its smooth, clean flavor and is often served cold. 

Name some examples. 

Some examples of Cream Ale include: Genesee Cream Ale, Shiner Bock, and Yuengling Traditional Lager. 

Any more you can think of?

 Other examples of Cream Ale include: • New Glarus Spotted Cow • Great Lakes Edmund Fitzgerald Porter • Founders All Day IPA 

Spotted Cow is overrated, what do you think?

 I personally think that Spotted Cow is overrated. I think that it is a decent beer, but there are definitely better options out there.

 I think so too. What about Schell’s Cream ale? Is that good?

 I have not tried Schell’s Cream Ale, but from what I have heard, it is a decent beer.

 So what about recipes? Know any good cream ale recipes?

 There are a few different recipes for Cream Ale that can be found online. Some of these recipes include: • Cream Ale Recipe from All Grain Brewing • Cream Ale Recipe from homebrewtalk.com • Cream Ale Recipe from Northern Brewer

 I think an adjunct is a must for a proper cream ale. What do you think?

 I agree that an adjunct is necessary for a proper cream ale. Without the adjunct, the beer would not have the same light, smooth flavor that is characteristic of the style.

 My thoughts exactly! I also think the proper ratio of 6 and 2 row malts is another necessary factor. What do you think? 

I agree that the proper ratio of 6 and 2 row malts is necessary for a proper cream ale. This ratio helps to create the light, smooth flavor that is characteristic of the style.

 Alright then. What kind of hops do you like in a cream ale?

 There are a few different hops that can be used in a cream ale. Some of these hops include: • Cascade • Willamette • Chinook • Cluster I personally think that Cascade hops provide the best flavor for a cream ale. 

I prefer the traditional Cluster hops, but to each their own. What do you think? 

I think that Cluster hops provide a good traditional flavor for a cream ale. 

Nice. What other beers do you like besides Cream ale? 

I also enjoy other styles of beer, such as: • IPA • Stout • Pilsner • Wheat beer

What is your favorite IPA?

My favorite IPA is Stone Enjoy By IPA. 

I have not heard of that one. What brewery makes it? 

Stone Enjoy By IPA is brewed by Stone Brewing Co.

 Okay, back to the basics. What are the main ingredients used to make beer?

 The main ingredients used to make beer are: • Water • Yeast • Hops • Barley

 What kind of barley to be exact? 

The type of barley used in beer brewing is typically 2-row or 6-row.

 Is it processed in any way? 

The barley is typically processed by being crushed or ground.

 How are the required enzymes made though? 

The enzymes required for brewing beer are typically produced by the maltster.

 Ah, so you are saying the grains are malted, correct?

 Yes, the grains are typically malted before being used in beer brewing.

 Well, this interview has been insightful. 

You have been a pleasure to interview, thank you for your time.

 Thank you for having me, it has been my pleasure.

After this, I think I would like to have a beer with the GPT-3. It was a pleasant interaction overall. I did kind of lead it to the fact the grain is malted, but I kind of feel this type of learning is essential for these models to get better, maybe? Just a thought. 

Overall, I found this particular use of the GPT-3 model to be very useful. This is much more advanced than the Eliza of days gone and also shows the extent of what it can do. Sure, having it write funny stories and doing other creative things with it is great, but the real wonder and enjoyment for me comes from interacting with it. It just amazes me in general.

That’s it for today. If you haven’t tried it, sign up to use the GPT-3 playground here. I don’t think there’s a waitlist for the GPT models, but if you want to use the Codex code models you will have to join a waitlist. While you’re at it, go head over to Craiyon as well. Both are tons of fun to explore, so go ahead and explore AI!

AI: Thoughts

Given the prompt “artificial intelligence,” this is one of the images Craiyon (formerly Dall-E mini) generated.

What is Artificial Intelligence? Artificial intelligence is amazing nowadays with webapps like Craiyon and OpenAI’s image and text generating AIs that can generate pretty good content based on prompts you feed into it. So what is AI then? I asked the text-davinci-002 AI model to generate something. Here it is: 

Write a few paragraphs about what artificial intelligence is. 

Artificial intelligence is a field of computer science that deals with the creation of intelligent agents, which are systems that can reason, learn, and act autonomously. The main goals of AI research include developing intelligent systems that can reason like humans, learn from experience, and make decisions in uncertain environments. 

Some of the most popular AI applications include expert systems, natural language processing, and robotics. Expert systems are computer programs that mimic the decision-making ability of human experts in a specific domain. Natural language processing is a subfield of AI that deals with the ability of computers to understand human language and respond in a way that is natural for humans. Robotics is another application of AI that deals with the design and control of robots.

Pretty straightforward and to the point, really no frills and I have noticed it lacks voice in general. I’ve played with it quite a bit and you can get some really humorous material sometimes when you enter some sophomoric prompts (yeah, well sometimes I like to mentally be a 13 year old again haha). It has its strengths and weaknesses but  I find these as great tools for creating AI assisted fiction or as a way of generating ideas or inspiration. In other words, I’ll be using AI as a creative tool and also to study how it reacts to different prompts.

I’m writing this as I am currently diving into some of the basics of AI and its early origins by watching this Stanford Online lecture. Very interesting stuff that I’d like to get into. The final project with the AI playing Pac Man is something I’d like to do. In fact, another YouTuber by the name of suckerpinch has this video detailing an AI he created that plays NES games. It sounds pretty basic from what he explains. I don’t understand all the details but it sounds like the AI tries to do things that have a “good” outcome over a “bad” outcome. Good being raising the score, lives, etc and bad would be the opposite, losing lives, losing the game. This being the case, it doesn’t work well on all games as he shows in subsequent videos. It needs to be tweaked slightly to be optimized. But then again, these videos are from nine years ago, so I would imagine today’s AIs are very good at games. I have seen a few headlines about AIs that whoop Tetris and Pacman, two challenging classic games. 

I also have been trying to get my google AIY voice speaker back in order currently without much luck. I had to reimage the SD card because I hadn’t used the device in months and forgot my login password. Whoopsie. Should’ve written that one down. The plan for that is to get it connected to some natural language AIs and get a chatbot of some sort going. A lot of the stuff might require some sort of payment, but I think I did see that Google offers something like $300 in credit to start with, so it does look like you can play around a little bit before investing any money into it. 

That’s all I’ve got to say about AI right now, it has so many applications, more than I can even think about right now. Everything from logistics to medicine, heck can you even think of something that can’t be enhanced through the magic of AI? AI is the future whether we like it or not and now is the time to explore it. 

The Weekly Ramble

Each week I think really hard and ramble on about a topic of my choice

This week I’m going to ramble about a game I enjoy. For some reason or another (probably getting older) I have been enjoying city-building/strategy games. A couple months back it started when I played a few games of Sim City which I found on this neat 120 in 1 SNES cart I bought off of Amazon. It has its fair share of stinkers but there are some gems in the rough on there as well as some forgotten titles. Kind of makes me want one of those FXPAK pro carts but those are a little out of my budget for the time being. Anyways, I’m not talking about the SNES, so back to the topic at hand. 

So I played some SimCity for a bit, then I remembered I had Cities: Skylines! I went back to my PC and fired it up, had fun for a good minute and progressed quite a bit with some strategy advice from different sources. Both are great games if you enjoy being the Mayor of a city and planning a city, designing a city, etc. Surviving Mars I believe is by the same devs as Cities and is quite enjoyable as well. Maybe someday I’ll get back into that one. Okay, let’s get to the game I originally was getting to. 

The game is one of my favorite modern titles. I’m stuck in between retro and modern games at the moment. I would get into why, but I’ll save that for another time. The game I really have been enjoying lately is a city-building survival game by 11Bit Studios that released on Windows in 2018 and PS4/XboxOne in 2019. The name of the game: Frost Punk. 

Frost Punk: Let the cold begin!

Frost Punk is one of those games I like to fire up and play when the weather here in the great state of Minnesota, USA gets below zero degrees Fahrenheit. That crispy frost sound it makes when the temp drops really puts that chill in your bones as you play. The aspect of surviving the cold is only one of the challenges of this game though. There are many decisions you will have to make as the Captain of your new settlement.

Before I get into the game any further, I just would like to say that 11Bit is one of those studios that makes games I enjoy for some reason. I have another game by 11Bit, This War of Mine, and if anything, 11Bit does a great job of pulling your emotional strings by the end of the game. The decisions you make in the game will come back to haunt you by the end if you survive. It really makes you wonder what it would come to if an apocalyptic situation like Frost Punk really were to happen. This War of Mine on the other hand, was based upon an actual conflict of the past: The Siege of Sarajevo. 

Building a new home in Frostland is tough. Can you survive?

In Frost Punk you can play several different scenarios, the main one being A New Home. You play as a group of Londoners leaving England to escape the Deep Frost. You start near a huge coal-powered steam generator. The generator provides much needed warmth to your people and will be essential for your survival. Round up some coal and fire it up. Your people will thank you. 

Along the way you will be presented with different challenges such as feeding your people and providing them with healthcare. Each decision you make will raise or lower hope and/or discontent among your people. If your discontent gets too high, or your hope too low, your people will give you an ultimatum. Guess what happens if you don’t meet that ultimatum. I won’t spoil it for you here. 

Tough decisions are to be made during the game to survive the Deep Freeze.

Late in the game (if you can survive that long) the decisions get tougher as the temperatures get lower. Towards the end of A New Home, the temperature drops to an insane low. If you don’t prepare properly, you’ll perish. If you do, you will survive, likely with a cost. You have survived, but was it worth it?

You and your people made it. The city survived. Was it worth it?

That’s my ramble for the week. I just wanted to highlight a game I enjoy. Frost Punk is definitely a challenge to survive but it seems like it has just that right amount of challenge that won’t make you rage quit. Well, that’s enough rambling for the week. Join me next week for another Weekly Ramble!

The Weekly Ramble

For me, it’s sometimes difficult to see giant leaps in technological innovations these days. The leaps and bounds of technological advances since the end of WWII seem to have turned into hops and skips. That, or I am missing something or looking entirely in the wrong place. When gadgets such as smartphones receive an update, the changes seem minimal, usually a screen that is more crisp and a camera that can capture more pixels than the last one. A hop I have noticed recently seems to be the folding screen. Big whoop. Although I do think the tech is cool to make it work, it doesn’t seem to be anything more than a hop in advancement. When it comes to a choice of gaming devices, the choice is up to the user’s preference in exclusive titles for each particular platform. All of the hardware performs pretty much at the same level and it is pretty much a matter of software preference these days. Even when it comes to software, changes seem minimal, especially from an end-user standpoint. I hear things about Windows 11 now and again and some pundits say it is basically Windows 10 with a face lift. Overall, the changes I see today seem minimal, especially in consumer-level devices and software. What will be the next big thing that will amaze me?

Apologies for my opening ramble, but sometimes I wonder if technology will make or break us in the future. About five or six years back, I remember thinking that self-driving autonomous vehicles were right around the corner, I thought we’d have them by now! Even today I see articles where Elon Musk states that 2022 is the year. I’m highly skeptical of this, no doubt. One of the reasons I can’t see this happening is I would think the infrastructure of our roads would need to be modified somehow in order for autonomous vehicles to work properly, especially in inclement weather like heavy rain and snow. Again, my research is a bit minimal on this, so I may be missing the details.

Rambling aside, there are many makers out there that are using similar technologies that these self-driving vehicles use to make devices that can help the visually impaired. I remember seeing this article a while back about such a device. It is called the Cane-Eye. It uses several different technologies, including an Xbox Kinect sensor array, to assist the visually impaired. I’d like to see more tech like this at a level that is affordable to the end-user. 

As a dabbler with Raspberry Pi computers, I have gained interest in making certain devices. Recently I’ve been into LoRa, a new type of WAN that can be used in many IoT applications and other projects. One such project that caught my eye was the Ripple project, a neat communicator project that uses the LoRa network to send text messages among users on the network. Something that could be handy when other networks are inaccessible. However, I pulled a boner and got the wrong hardware. I’m no expert in this type of thing, I know a bit of a few programming languages, nothing extensive, and I have little idea if this would even work with the Ripple project. Maybe? I sure would like to know. I have fiddled with these devices a bit and they do seem to work with the debugging software. I as of yet, have not been able to connect them to the Pi Zero as the Zeros I bought came without the I/O pins soldered. So another project for me is to learn how to solder those pins onto the Zero board. That or buy some new ones with the pins pre-soldered.

Phew, that was a rush!

As I write this, I wonder if I should make something of these ramblings. Perhaps a series to keep my mind fresh and exploring things. I’ll call it the Weekly Ramble for now, sound good? Good. That’s all I have for today, thank you for exploring. Catch me again next week.

I’m Back from My Hiatus

Hey everyone! So last time I posted, I was on a mission to make an attempt to write something and post on a more regular basis. Well, that didn’t happen. Regardless of that, I have decided to not keep a particular schedule and instead post when inspiration hits. Ideally, I would like to get about three posts per week. If I can make that happen, great. If not, well, I won’t stress about it.

As far as gaming goes, I’ve been stuck on retro for quite some time now. I’ve been revisiting classics like Lufia II and Super Metroid for the SNES, as well as RE: Director’s Cut and Metal Gear Solid for the PlayStation. I’ve been meaning to get back to some modern titles like Cyberpunk 2077, but I just haven’t got around to it yet. I’ve been having too much of a nostalgia trip playing my old favorites. 

Tech projects have been minimal. I recently managed to get my Raspberry Pi Plex server to recognize my external drive. It actually was a pretty simple fix and I should have paid closer attention to the tutorial I was following. I also picked up a Google AIY voice kit and put it together. So basically I have a smart speaker, like a Google Home or whatever they call it. Google Assistant? Something like that. I have no idea what I’m going to do with it yet. I had an idea of making a natural language chatbot of some sort, so that may be a project in the works. 

As far as my Raspberry Pi obsession goes, Twister OS is my favorite OS for the Pi by far. It looks good and runs nicely. Ubuntu on the Pi, however, doesn’t fare as well. It’s a bit glitchy and needs some work to run optimally on the Pi. Oftentimes I get error pop ups that notify me that “something went wrong.” I assume these errors are largely due to the Pi’s hardware and ARM architecture. Ubuntu just doesn’t run perfectly on the Pi. Still, it is nice to have Ubuntu available for the Pi. I’ve also been dabbling with Kali running in a VM to mess around with the various pentesting tools. I played one of those CtF VMs that I found online. It was a beginner level CtF that’s Mr. Robot themed. I’m a total noob at that kind of stuff so I followed along using a tutorial. Pretty neat stuff.  

Now for health and wellness. I feel that I’ve been neglecting this for the past few months a bit. Recently I’ve been trying to get on more of a regular exercise routine. So far it’s been going alright. I’m trying to get at least 30 minutes of moderate exercise each day. Well, maybe it’s been more like every other day but I’ve been making an effort at least.

I’ve been keeping up with the keto diet I follow and something I’ve really been enjoying as a snack are cheese sticks and olives. I tend to go for a chipotle cheddar or pepper jack style cheese stick. There’s just something about cheese and olives that just clicks for me. I’ve tried a few different types of olives but the green pimiento stuffed ones are usually my go to. I’m a fan of the Pearls Olives to go cups since they seem to taste better than the olives in a jar. However, I did pick up some large Queen pimiento stuffed olives from Costco that are pretty good. The generic manzanilla olives that I picked up from a local grocery were a bit lackluster though.  

There. I mashed up everything in one blog post. Hopefully I can get some ideas generated so I can get some more blog posts going. I have a couple gaming related ideas brewing in my head and hopefully I can get some other areas of interest covered too. Maybe it wasn’t a great idea to mash all of my interests into a single blog? I’ll have to mull it over a bit, perhaps a restructuring is in order. Be sure to check back often, who knows, maybe my blog will be overhauled the next time you check it. Ha ha. 

Cyberpunk 2077: First Impressions

Whew! It’s been a wild ride on the train to Night City.

Welcome back chooms! I’ve been having a blast playing Cyberpunk 2077 and now that I’m just shy of 30 hours into the game, I’m ready to share my first impressions of the game. 

First, I’ll quickly go through the hardware I’ve been using to play this game. I’ve been playing the game on a PC running a Ryzen 5 3600 with 16 GB RAM and a GTX 2060. With a tweak I found on the PC Gamer website (I didn’t test it to make sure it worked, or even if it did anything, derp) I set everything on High or Ultra settings with DLSS on and was able to achieve framerates around 70fps. I was very happy to see that my machine could handle the game. With ray tracing on though, my frames tanked by around 20+ fps, and while it’s still playable and looks great, I like to keep my frames around 60 for maximum visual enjoyment. 

As for the game, I’m really enjoying it. All bugs/glitches aside, the game is a visual treat and the music is stellar. The synthwave/darkwave/whateverwave music really gets me pumped when I play and I’ve really been digging the photo mode. The story and dialogue has also been enjoyable even though I haven’t touched the main story much! I’ve decided to do a slow crawl through the game, completing side missions and leveling on the way to create an Ultimate V with maxed stats. Ha! We’ll see what happens. 

Now, I did mention the game has some glitches. So far none of them for me have been game-breaking and I’m sure by the time I get to some of them (slow crawl, remember?) a patch will be released to fix the issues. Most of the ones I noticed were graphical or AI and while they did pull me out of the game a little, they didn’t pull away from my enjoyment of the game. I guess most people expect a AAA game release like this to come out of the gate perfect and a lot of people were pissed about the quality of the game, and rightly so, especially for console gamers. As for myself, I’ve played some Early Access titles over the years, and while it’s kind of like paying to be a beta tester, it gives you a little look into what the development process is like. I was into Rust back during early access and that was a wild ride for sure!  With that in mind, I’m a bit more indifferent towards the situation. I’m sure the game will be fixed in time but I can certainly understand why some gamers are upset. The game feels like a paper you handed to your teacher/professor the night before and wonder why you got a C on it. They likely know you rushed it, and it shows in the work. Certain things in the game do feel like they were rushed or unfinished. I won’t get into the detes too much, but in my opinion I would have been okay if they had delayed it for another month or two to make sure it was rock solid before release. But, what’s happened has happened and CDPR is going to have to work hard to earn back the trust of many gamers. 

Well, that’s about it. Is it a good game? I think so, especially if you’re into cyberpunk genres like Shadowrun. One of the only things missing from that series is the Matrix, which I think would’ve been a cool addition but then again, it might not exist in the Cyberpunk universe. Dang, I’m off track! Anyways, if you’re on the fence about trying it and have a PC that can play it, give it a shot. It’s been good fun so far. 

Cyberpunk 2077: One Week Later

What’s up choombas!? It’s been a little over a week since the release of the much-hyped game of the year, Cyberpunk 2077. I caught one of the last hype trains to Night City, and boy has it been a wild ride. Before I dig into the game tomorrow, let’s take a quick  look at my gaming background.

My gaming  credentials start with the NES and SNES so I have a soft spot for those old retro classics of the 8 and 16 bit era. Then came the PlayStation, Dreamcast, and PS2. After that came the college times, and Halo multiplayer was all the rage. Eventually, I built a PC and got into PC gaming for a bit and then a few years later I went into a gaming hibernation for a while. I didn’t really play many games for a few years. Fast forward to today and I just built a new PC for some sweet AAA gaming action and Cyberpunk 2077 reeled me back in. 

In short, I like retro games and I play a lot of different genres but lately I have been into games with survival and crafting aspects. Games like Fallout 4 have been my thing lately and I had some fun with Rust back when it was in Early Access. I also like checking out indie games and lesser-known titles. FrostPunk from 11 Bit studios was one of my favorites from 2018! Plus, there’s always time to get one more turn in Civ VI and I like to squeeze in time for a few games of chess as well.

 I’m going to be honest here, I didn’t know much about Cyberpunk 2077 until recently. I’m a fan of the Shadowrun series of games, I enjoy the cyberpunk genre and that was my intro into it. Back during the summer I caught wind of Cyberpunk 2077 when its release date was set for November. I thought “that sounds like a cool game, I might try it out in November.” The release got delayed, and I pre-purchased it the week before and waited in anticipation for the release. 

Now, this is probably my first AAA game I’ve purchased to play on release. In the past, I generally would wait a year or two for big titles to release their greatest hits or game of the year  edition, so I never really got into the hype. After jumping on the CP2077 hype train, I quickly noticed  the hype was definitely real on this one and it was a fun ride while it lasted. Now, I’m over 20 hours into the game, the honeymoon phase is over and I’m about ready to dole out some first impressions of the game soon. Check back tomorrow to see what I think about the game!

New Game, New PC – Selecting Parts

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New game, New PC. Will my PC have the guts to play Cyberpunk 2077?

The last time I built a PC from scratch was way back before 2010, probably around 2006 or so. It wasn’t terribly difficult, I had some guidance from a knowledgeable person from some message boards I frequented. It was fun and gave me the satisfaction of having a custom machine. Since then I’ve replaced the mobo and graphics card, but this is the first time since then that I’ve built a PC from scratch, so it was a new adventure being over 10 years since I’ve been familiar with PC hardware, and let me tell you, this build was an adventure indeed. Let’s jump into the build.

Now, the first thing you should ask yourself when you build a PC is “What am I going to use this PC for?” Are you going to use it for gaming? General purpose? Video editing? These important questions will be essential when you begin looking for parts. 

Now, the main reason I decided to build a new PC is a bit multifaceted. First off, my graphics card crapped out on me, (I think it may be because the games I was playing may have been too demanding for the card, I’ve also heard Radeon cards tend to run on the warm side). Next, the new consoles launched recently: The Xbox series X and S and the PS5. That means a bunch of new AAA games coming to the new consoles and PC! I’m definitely hyped for Cyberpunk 2077 and I somewhat modeled my build around the projected recommended system requirements. Finally, I wanted to take advantage of some new technologies: DDR4 RAM, Ryzen CPU, and Ray Tracing for the GPU, as well as having the option to upgrade, notably the M.2 drives I’ve been hearing and reading about that are superfast. So having a nice new motherboard was a must. Let’s jump into the core components: Motherboard, CPU, and RAM, heck, let’s throw the heatsink in there too.

For the CPU I wanted the best bang for my buck. After a bit of research, the Ryzen 5 3600 fit the bill. It has 6 cores running at a base clock of 3.6 GHz which is two more cores than the Phenom II I had in my old machine, and the reviews I’ve seen for it have been positive. This CPU is a great value, and at around $200 it will leave you extra room for a better GPU, extra RAM, or any other goodies you might want to add to your build. 

Next, the Motherboard. When you’re picking out a motherboard, it’s important to make sure it is compatible with the CPU socket of the chip you’re using in your build. The Ryzen 5 is an AM4 socket, so I needed a board with that socket type. I used the website Logical Increments to help pick out a lot of my parts for the build. I chose their recommended motherboard from the “Good” tier, the MSI X470 Gaming Plus Max. It’s also important to make sure your board is compatible with the RAM you’re going to be using so make sure to check out the motherboard manual of the board you choose before you lock in your purchase. It’ll save a lot of time and headaches in the end. 

Let’s check out the RAM situation. Generally, I don’t buy the least expensive option when I’m purchasing RAM. Look for brand names rather than off brands. Kingston, Crucial, G.Skill and Corsair are all good brands of RAM. I went for 16 GB of G.Skill Ripjaws V 3200 RAM which my motherboard supports. 16 GB of RAM seems to be the standard these days, 32 seems to be a bit overkill but is standard by some builders these days. You can get away with 8 GB at the minimum, but I do like to run VMs sometimes as well, so 16 GB was my number.

All of these components need to stay cool to run optimally, especially the CPU. Cooling is also a must if you want to overclock your CPU. There are a ton of options out there: Tower Coolers and AIO liquid cooling setups seem to be the most popular, but I know there are a ton of custom cooling setups out there as well. I was looking for a great value cooling solution and I did a bit of research on the recommendation from Logical Increments, the Deep Cool Gammaxx  400. The reviews are good on this one and at around $25-$30 it is a great value to keep your CPU cool. It comes with a blue LED to light up your case and fits the AM4 socket even though the box doesn’t indicate it. I was sold when I checked out this review of the Gammaxx 400. It kept the CPU 15 degrees C cooler than the stock cooler in the Prime 95 test. I’m not planning on overclocking my CPU (yet), but keeping your system cool reduces the stresses of excessive heat, and is a definite must if you are overclocking your CPU. 

Well, that’s all for part one. Part two will be the rest of the parts and part three will be putting it all together. I’m shooting to finish the series before the Cyberpunk 2077 launch, which is 6 PM CST, so let’s hope I don’t get too absorbed in the hype while I wait to play this game!

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The parts. Ryzen 5 3600. MSI X470 Gaming Plus Max. G.Skill Ripjaws V. DeepCool Gammaxx 400 HSF.

Quick Bytes: Labists Starter Kit

The Labists starter kit is a great kit to get up and going right out of the box in minutes.

Before I get into the details regarding the Labists kit, the main reason I made this purchase was to score an 8 GB Raspberry Pi 4. They were hard to find at the time, and when I broke down the price, the Labists kit seemed like a good value to me at $120 (a 8 GB Pi by itself runs around $75).  It had a decent looking heatsink and fan, so I figured it’d be good to use for my Ubuntu setup. After I set it up and tested it out, I was a little underwhelmed by the performance. Let’s take a look:

The kit includes everything you need to get started with your Pi: the Pi itself, case, heatsink/fan, power supply, SD card, and the proper HDMI cables. The heatsink comes with a fan already attached and as a bonus, it has some RGB LEDs that light up and change color when the unit is on. A neat aesthetic touch that doesn’t add to the performance, but looks kind of cool. The case itself looks nice, basically it’s a standard Pi case with a clear vented top to show off the lights. It was fairly easy to put together and in minutes I was booted up and ready to test the kit for cooling.

The Argon One case was the baseline I used for testing the Labist kit. The Argon One did a great job of keeping the Pi cool at around 45 C idle. I figured with the Labists large heatsink and fans it would do a similar job of cooling the Pi. I was a bit disappointed with my findings. The Labists idle temp was about ten degrees higher than the Argon One, and when I did a quick stress test the Labists setup hit 80 C, which is a bit on the high side for me, and at that temp the Pi’s CPU started to throttle. I even tried thermal paste in place of the thermal pads to see if it made a difference. It might have shaved off a couple degrees, but the Labists still remained a bit on the warm side.

If you’re not overclocking or pushing your Pi to the limit, the Labists kit isn’t a bad setup. For a beginner wanting something easy to set up and use out right of the box, this might be for you. If you’re looking for a case with exceptional cooling performance for overclocking, look at something else like an Argon One to meet your needs. 

Gateway PCs are Back!

Remember Gateway PCs and their cow print theme?
Photo by Jean Carlo Emer on Unsplash

Do you remember Gateway PCs? Remember back in the early 2000s the PCs with the Holstein cow themed logo? Well Gateway is back with a new line of budget-friendly laptops and tablets available exclusively at Walmart. They are offering an Ultra Slim series and a Creators series for laptops, as well as a 2-in-1 and a couple of tablets. I’ll be taking a closer look at these soon to see if they’re worth looking into. At first look, the laptops and 2-in-1 look promising but the tablets seem a little underpowered. Check back soon for my take on these new budget-minded tech offerings from Walmart!