Firewatch Wallpapers

Firewatch recently released and it is turning out to be a pretty sweet game. They released a couple of wallpapers along with the game, and they are beautiful. Check them out:

Logitech K830 Review

The Logitech K830 is one of the best "Living Room" keyboards on the market. A "Living Room" keyboard is a keyboard that is similar to a remote. It can't control TVs or anything aside from a computer, but it can do everything you need to do on a computer from the comfort of your couch. The K830 is unique for it's illumination feature.

Functionality: 10/10
The K830 is a really nice device. The wireless works up to a more than reasonable distance and the rechargeable batteries last for a really long time. I had been running mine for months before I needed to recharge it and that wasn't because the battery was dead; it was because it couldn't keep connected over the distance I was using it at. A quick recharge and all was well again.

User-Friendliness: 10/10
It is a keyboard, everything just makes sense. Function keys and media keys are all labeled in such a way that there is no question as to what their function is. Charging port is easily accessible. It doesn't need any software on the computer. Pretty darn easy.

Quality: 10/10
Logitech has always made nice products and the K830 is no exception. It is hefty but not too heavy and it is elegant but not intricate. I even took mine apart and the guts are pretty good quality as well. Certainly nothing to complain about.

Aesthetics: 9/10
The K830 looks pretty sexy. It is wireless, illuminated, and has the touchpad built in. I had to deduct a point for one reason though: the keyboard illumination doesn't stay on. This makes sense, after all, they don't want the battery constantly draining. But the lights will turn out after about 3 seconds when you're done using it. As soon as you touch it again, they come back. For most, this shouldn't be a huge deal but it may bother some.

Price Value: 5/10
The kicker: the K830 retails for about $120. While it is an extremely nice product, that is a lot of money for a keyboard. Especially when the next price in Logitech's lineup is $50 and the only loss of functionality is the illumination. If you can find a good sale, it would surely be worth it, but I feel that $120 is much too steep for most people.

Overall: 44/50
The Logitech K830 is one of the best Living Room Keyboards on the market. It boasts an incredibly long battery life and beautiful illumination, but it also boasts a ridiculous price. Like I said, if you can find it on sale, even for $80, I would say that the K830 is well worth it. If you're looking for an illuminated Living Room Keyboard, then nothing comes close.

Anime Inspectors - Anime Reviews

I've recently started another blog that is focused on anime - one of my newfound hobbies in the past few years. Anime is a lot of fun and totally different than the way that most people think it is. There is a pretty bad stigma against anime, which is sort of a bummer since it is such a cool medium.

Anyway, be sure to check out my new site: Anime Inspectors

Thanks!

Techsknowledgy Taking Off

Hi all, in the past few months, I've been taking quite a bit of time to start my own business: Techsknowledgy LLC. After quite a lot of changes, we've finally come to create a defining business that looks like it will do well.

What we do

Techsknowledgy offers services in three areas:

1. Web Design
2. Marketing
3. IT Support

We have a pretty simple pricing plan for each, as well as some packages that we offer at low monthly rates. 

You can check out our almost complete site at: www.techsknowledgy.com!

Anyway, The Ace's Place will continue to be my personal blog, and we will start a company blog very soon.

Thank you all!

Ace's Group

The Big Idea

Well, it has begun. I am starting a company for website design and hosting that will focus on customer support. All customers will go through a single agent and we will offer monthly packages for web design, development, and deployment. This doesn't mean that we will not offer support for people that only want design or hosting, but that we will stand out by offering more cost efficient packages for people that want dynamic sites that will grow and change.

Also, the web design and hosting will act as separate entities under the name Ace's Group, and will be called Ace's Web Design/Development and Ace's Hosting respectively (work in progress). Under the hosting side of things, we will offer support for virtually any type of hosting imaginable. From gaming servers to cloud computing and permanent web hosting, we will cover it all. Support will start out in Northern Michigan (Charlevoix area), and we plan to grow and open up several other data-centers around the globe.

What Makes Us Different?

For starters, each customer will have as much control over their needs as they want to, but without doing any work. Each customer will be assigned a single agent that will handle all of their requests and ideas without sending them to talk to an unfamiliar person in a different department. The customer has one person that they communicate with for all projects. Also, featuring design and hosting in the same place will make it much less complicated than most other web developers.

What Will Become of the Ace's Place Blog?

Good question. At this point, I'm not too sure. I'm sure that I will start a blog for the Ace's Group once it is underway and it will most likely be called The Ace's Group Blog. The Ace's Place may become a sort of social network combined with another project of mine called Sleeved Aces. It's hard to say what the future holds, but I most definitely look forward to it. Thanks for reading and I will keep you posted!

Backblaze Online Backup

Online backups are all the rage these days, and for good reason too. Having all of your files securely stored far, far away from your own damaging hands will give you a certain peace of mind. After all, no one really likes to lose all of their pictures, music, and documents. There are a few different services for backing up to the cloud. Carbonite and Microsoft's own SkyDrive are good examples of this. There is a lesser known program that I have found to be extremely lightweight, fast, reliable, and best of all: cheap. Backblaze is an online backup program that offers unlimited data backup for as low as about 4 bucks per year. So, you want in, or just to know more? Here you go!

Unite 2012 Keynote

As I have just begun using and getting used to Unity 3D, I have been rather impressed with the usability and compatibility with other programs. Unity 3D is a game engine that is one of the industry's finest. It has grown a lot since its release and this year, they had a lot of announcements in their keynote presentation at Unite 2012. Some highlights include support for Windows Phone 8, deep integration into flash, and a lot of other previous announcements have been showcased, like the animation integration, scripting and GUI ease of use, and many others. But really, just watch it yourself!

How to Remove a Virus

A Few Quick Steps to Remove a Virus

Aw crap, you have a virus. That can be some nasty stuff sometimes. More often than not, actually. So, you want to get rid of it, but you don't want to pay. (Who does?) Well, I've got good news and I've got bad news... but first, lets figure out if you actually have a virus.

Diagnosis

1. Your computer is off, you press the power button, NOTHING HAPPENS. Probably not a virus.

2. Your computer is off, you press the power button, it turns on and shuts off soon thereafter. Probably not a virus.

3. Your computer is off, you press the power button, and you see a black screen with a flashing cursor. Most likely, and hopefully, a virus.

4. Your computer is off, you press the power button, and you see a black screen with some writing about a boot disk, a PXE Rom, or something that tells you that you aren't gonna move forward. That's probably not a virus, but it CAN be, it'll be easier to test this first.

5. Your computer is on or off, you turn it on or you're just using it, you a blue screen with a lot of writing. It will either stick around till you shut if off, or it will automatically shut you down. This might be a virus, but it could be worse.

So, these four symptoms will make it a lot harder to remove, but you might still be able to do it. The next four will be much easier.

5. Your computer is on, but you can't log in for some ungodly reason. Either you forgot your password, or your User Account is screwed up. If its messed up, every once in a while it can be a virus.

6. Your computer is on, but you cannot access the internet (and you know darn well how to). Could be a virus, could be a bad anti-virus that's mad because you won't renew it.

7. Your computer is on, and - "OH NO! Some program I've never seen is telling me I have 4,000 viruses or they found child porn or the FBI is blocking this due to terrorist activity or I have to re-register all of my programs!" Ya, that is a virus, nothing there is true (or at least highly unlikely).
Note: Anything that won't let you into Windows and is asking you to buy something... is a virus, it's certainly not limited to any of those listed claims.

8. Your computer is on, and all of your stuff if gone. Black screen, no icons, can't see your programs in the start menu, no documents and whatnot. Don't worry, it is all still there. It's a virus that has hidden everything.

The Good News!

If your symptoms are something from number five through eight, this is gonna be easy. With a few simple, free tools you will be back up and running in no time. Hopefully. These are called winvarient viruses. They run once Windows boots up. 

The Bad News...

If you have one of the first five symptoms, you might not even have a virus, hopefully you do though. If you don't, it will be much harder to fix, and might require a professional. Even if it is a virus, most of these five will require you to take apart the computer and grab the drive out if it to run an external scan. These are known as rootkit viruses. They are pretty bad, and start to run as soon as the computer is turned on. 

Lets Get Rid of These!

Step 1 -  5 are a must for rootkit viruses (or symptom numbers 1 - 5), but will help with winvarients (the rest of the symtoms):

1. Open up your laptop or desktop and locate the hard drive (HDD). The HDD will be a rectangular metal box about the size of your hand, there will be a data cable and a power cable running to it. Unplug and remove the HDD.

2. Plug the HDD into another computer as a secondary drive.

3. On that computer, install Microsoft Security Essentials. MSE is a free anti-virus straight from Microsoft. Its free, lightweight, and extremely powerful. 

4. Navigate through "My Computer" and locate the HDD you have plugged in. It might be listed as "D", "E:", or "F:". Right-click on the HDD and then click "Scan with Microsoft Security Essentials...". 

5. Once the scan is completed, remove whatever it finds. If it doesn't find anything, chances are you won't be any farther ahead and you have other problems. Either way, return the HDD back to the computer it came from.

The rest of these steps will apply to ALL symptoms:

6. Boot up the computer and press F8 to boot into "Safe Mode With Networking". If it doesn't boot up, then something is screwed up and reloading Windows will most likely fix that. 

7. Once you can see your desktop, you need to download Malwarebytes, update it, and run a full scan. Once that is done, remove everything it finds. 

Note: If you have no internet connection, download the installer to a flash drive from a different computer and install it on your computer.

8. Restart the computer and load CCleaner, run through the removal, then switch to the "Registry" tab on the side and run a scan. Once the scan is done, hit fix. (You don't have to backup the data)

9. Now, download and run Combofix. This is an extremely powerful tool so don't interrupt it. It will restart your computer, which is good. Wait until there is a full screen notepad window with a bunch of computer mumbo jumbo. This is the log report, that means it is done. Now, restart your computer.

10. On your keyboard, press the Windows Button and "R" at the same time. Type "msconfig" and press enter. A little dialog box will come up. Make sure the spot that says "Normal" is marked. Not "Selective". Selective is bad in the long run.

11. Now, just make sure that you have a good anti-virus set up. I personally recommend the aforementioned Microsoft Security Essentials. It runs smoothly and doesn't use very much of your system resources just to run. Better yet, it's free.

These are optional steps, if stuff still isn't quite right, do these!

11. No internet? We've gotta reset that. This step is going to restart your computer, so be ready. You can download our IP and DNS flushing tool: here.

12. Is your stuff all gone still? Most of it should come back after Combofix runs, but if not, try using the Unhide tool. Works like a charm every time.

If you continue to have problems, there is most likely something else wrong. Take it to a pro, or use my upcoming list! Thank you all and good luck! I really hope I helped someone out.

Flush DNS and IP Addresses

This is a little tool we made at work to flush all of your computer's DNS and IP settings, so they will automatically renew and hopefully make your internet work!

Note: This will restart your computer, so save your stuff if you don't want to use it.

Download link in 3...2...1... Blastoff!

New Horizons

Hello folks! I know it has been an extremely long time since I last posted. A lot has happened since then too! First off, I have a full time job, and I attend college full time. Clearly, that is where most of my time has gone. I would really like to keep updating The Ace's Place maybe... bi-weekly. My plans to become a video game designer are taking off steadily, and I have been teaching myself a lot about the industry. Enough about me though!

I would like to take The Ace's Place in a new direction. I will continue doing reviews of products and games, as well as my opinions of upcoming products and games. I will most likely drop what I had originally planned for the Minecraft video blogs, but I will still do something similar (hopefully). The new stuff that I would like to do will include making tutorials for building computers, cable management, and so forth. Also, every week I would like to have a website spotlight, where I will review interesting websites (large and small).

I would like to thank you, my readers, for keeping with me. Expect to hear from me soon!