by Bret

Our Daily Beard

Woops!

Missed a post!

Sorry- had something of a day off!

And I’m doing the same today, so no news I’m afraid!

 

I’ll just share with you another cool Kickstarter, seeing as Son of Nor got funded! This one is by Chaosium, makers of damn fine RPG books. It looks like a great project so best of luck to them!

CALL OF CTHULHU 7th Edition

Horror Roleplaying in the Worlds of H. P. Lovecraft
By Sandy Petersen
with Mike Mason, Paul Fricker, and Lynn Willis

The Great Old Ones ruled the earth aeons before the rise of humankind. Originally they came from the gulfs of space and were cast down by even greater beings. Remains of their cyclopean cities and forbidden knowledge can still be found on remote islands in the Pacific, buried amid the shifting sands of vast deserts, and in the frigid recesses of the polar extremes. Now they sleep — some deep within the enveloping earth and others beneath the eternal sea, in the drowned city of R’lyeh, preserved in the waters by the spells of mighty Cthulhu. When the stars are right they will rise, and once again walk this Earth.

CALL OF CTHULHU is Chaosium’s classic roleplaying game of Lovecraftian horror, in which ordinary people are confronted by the terrifying and alien forces of the Cthulhu Mythos. CALL OF CTHULHU uses Chaosium’s Basic Roleplaying System, easy to learn and quick to play. This bestseller has won dozens of game-industry awards, is a member of the Academy of Adventure Game Design Hall of Fame, and was voted the #1 Gothic/Horror RPG of all time by the Gaming Report.com community. CALL OF CTHULHU is supported by a growing line of high quality supplements.

This Kickstarter project aims to build a new edition of this classic horror game and expand its award-winning tradition. We encourage you to click HERE to view this Kickstarter page.

 

 
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Our Daily Beard

Ooooh.

Some of you may have seen Razer’s recent teaser trailers for something ‘thinner than a dime’.

While I was a bit sceptical- not only is that mad thin, but it’s also, I think, detrimentally thin. Sleek and portable tech is great, but not easily-snapped tech, surely? We’re talking just thick enough to fit in USB ports!

Well, I don’t care anymore because the final reveal was too awesome to not be impressed by. This is great engineering. Here’s the regurgitatum for the standard edition- the ‘Pro’ is even more… pro:

 

Razer Introduces the Blade – The World´s Thinnest Gaming Notebook

The Razer Blade: Thinner than a dime with a 14-inch HD+ Screen, Intel Quad Core i7, NVIDIA GTX 765M!

SAN FRANCISCO – May 30, 2013 – Razer™, the world leader in high-performance gaming hardware, software and systems, today unveiled Razer Blade, the world´s thinnest gaming laptop. The Razer Blade, measuring in at just 0.66-inches thin, packs more power-per-cubic-inch than any other laptop in the world. The Razer Blade is powered with a future 4th gen Intel® Core™ processor, the latest NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 765M GPU and utilizes solid-state storage technology with boot speeds of up to four-times faster than a traditional 5400-RPM notebook hard drive. The Razer Blade has a rigid all-aluminium chassis, with a stunning 14-inch LED-backlit HD+ display and features a custom-designed trackpad and backlit gaming grade keyboard.

“We´ve designed and built the thinnest, most powerful 14-inch laptop in the world,” says Min-Liang Tan, Razer co-founder, CEO and creative director. “Thinner than a dime and more powerful than other traditional desktop replacements today, we´ve created an entirely new category of thin and powerful laptops that is generations ahead of other PCs.”

Designed entirely in-house by the multi-award winning Razer design team, the Razer Blade has an incredible 14-inch LED-backlit HD+ display with a native resolution of 1600 x 900and its custom-made gaming grade trackpad offers multi-touch gesture support. The Razer Blade also features a full-size backlit gaming keyboard that has full anti-ghosting capabilities and programmable keys powered by the revolutionary Synapse 2.0.

“Incredible innovation is happening across the computing landscape, and the new mobile gaming experience Razer is delivering with the Edge, and now its Blade, is remarkable,” says Navin Shenoy, vice president and general manager of Intel’s Mobile Client Platforms. “Powered by a future 4th gen Intel Core processor, people can expect the highest level performance from the Blade for the most discerning gamer.”

The ultra-portable laptop features 8 GB of fast 1600 MHz DDR3L memory and comes standard with 128 GB of total solid-state storage with options for a 256 GB or 512 GB SSD. The Razer Blade also comes with Dolby® Home Theatre® v4, featuring immersive audio-quality output that is custom-tuned to deliver a cinematic sound experience.

The Razer Blade delivers up to six hours of battery life and includes a Killer™ Wireless-N high-performance wireless networking adapter, combining intelligence and control along with up to five-times the wireless networking speed of competitive wireless adapters.

“The 14-inch Razer Blade packs a ton of horsepower into a very small chassis,” says Rene Haas, vice president and general manager of notebook GPUs at NVIDIA. “The new NVIDIA GeForce GTX 765M GPU delivers blazing performance with incredibly efficient power usage to this ultra-portable gaming machine.”

The new 14-inch Razer Blade embodies Razer´s continuing goal to design the world’s best gaming laptops for those that need insanely powerful performance in the thinnest form factors to game anywhere, anytime. Razer sets out to do the impossible without compromising performance and, with the new Blade 14-inch laptop, users are able to game more and do more than ever before on an ultra-portable system.

The Razer Blade will be available for pre-order June 3. For more information, go to www.razerzone.com/blade.

Price:
Starts at $1,799

Availability:
Razerzone.com – Pre-Order June 3
United States and Canada only

Product features:

Future 4th gen Intel® Core&tradel processor (formerly codename ´Haswell´)

8 GB Onboard Memory (DDR3L – 1600 MHz)

NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 765M (2 GB GDDR5) & Intel HD4600

Windows® 8 64 Bit

128 GB SSD, with optional 256/512 GB SSD (mSATA)

Qualcomm® Killer™ NIC N1202 (802.11a/b/g/n + Bluetooth® 4.0)

14.0 in. HD+ 16:9 Ratio, 1600 x 900, with LED backlight

Built-in stereo speakers

3.5 mm audio microphone/headphone combo jack

Array microphone

(3x) USB 3.0 port (SuperSpeed)

HDMI 1.4a audio and video output

Dolby® Home Theater® v4

7.1 Codec support (via HDMI)

Built-in full HD webcam (1.3 MP)

Compact 150 W Power Adapter

Built-in 70 Wh Rechargeable lithium ion polymer battery

Razer™ Anti-Ghosting Keyboard (with adjustable backlight)

Razer™ Synapse 2.0 Enabled

Kensington Lock

13.6 in. / 345 mm (Width) x 0.66 in. / 16.8 mm (Height) x 9.3 in. / 235 mm (Depth)

4.135 lbs. / 1.876 kg ‘

 

rzr1

rzr2

rzr3

 

Anyway!

That’s pretty amazing, right? This machine is as powerful as my PC, or near enough. While the slim thing makes me worry about fragility and I don’t really see the need for a portable gaming device that’s so expensive and powerful (I realise many gamers do!).

What impressed me more is the tech and engineering. This may be a landmark laptop, but being so thin and versatile, I think it says a lot more about the future of gaming tablets!

Okay- have a good weekend!

[sociable]

Our Daily Beard

Yeah, yeah, late post!

And as such, just a quickie. I been workin’.

So, it’s Haiku time, inspired by the word of the day, as it happen, which is ‘wuther’. Wuther is a Scottish word meaning to blow fiercely (the wind, not you). It can be traced back to the Old Norse ‘hvitha’.

Anyway:

My cliff has a heath,

And my heights are wuthering,

But my bush won’t Kate.

 

Tara!

 
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