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[TRG Review] : Nexus 7 (2013)

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My history with tablets has been rather short. Unfortunately, I jumped on the ill-fated netbook train and wasted my time there when the first practical and affordable commercial tablets began to appear on the market. Contrary to popular belief, the iPad was not the first tablet… The first iPad was released in 2010, a full seventeen years after Apple’s initial PDA project “Newton” was attempted, and twenty-two years after the actual first commercial tablet, the GRiDPad, was released. For graduate school and programming interest, I attained an iPad 2 in the fall of 2011. While I never really programmed for the device, it was quite useful during school. I used a Logitech keyboard case that allowed me to forgo notebooks/pens/pencils in favor of Evernote!

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[TRG Review] : Roku 3

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When I was younger and still living with my parents, and even after I moved out and joined the Military, I typically used a computer to play all of my media. In the early days it was DVD media, then SD MPEG/AVIs, then BluRay, and now HD MKVs/etc. Until I moved into an apartment with friends during college I had never required a way to present media to a common area. Through some clever redirects of PlayOn and DLNA magic I was able to use my PS3 to act as a media center, but while this was satisfactory it was in no way ideal. The consideration to build a standalone Media PC was always there, but money was tight, so we made do!

Fast-forward a few years; I’ve purchased a house and now more than ever need to solve the same problem! I’ve owned several media set-top boxes. In order, the Apple TV 2 (Jailbroken), an Apple TV 3 (couldn’t Jailbreak), a Netgear NeoTV 550 (got it on a sale), a Raspberry Pi (running RasPlex), and an OUYA (video streaming is not its strong suit). Most recently, I’ve purchased a Roku 3. Here is the review!

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[TRG Rant] : Quick Save / Quick Load

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I play a lot of video games; not as many as some, and certainly not every genre (typically I exclude sports and MOBA games), but a significant amount. I consider myself well versed and experienced, having backtracked through the arcade stage of the early 90s, and the non-mainstream consoles of the mid-90s. I approach video games in a holistic fashion, looking at all aspects of a game. The real quality of the game is not derived from a single piece, nor is it measured from equally weighted parts. Some things seem to matter more than others.

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