World of warcraft at times really can perform very badly, its an old game engine and it doest seem to work very well at times. Ive huge problems getting it run smoothly despite having a dam good PC. In raids at times my fps rate just drops to 10 fps or less same in wintergrasp.  The game becomes unplayable and very frustating so i started searching for solutions to try and fix the problem. The main problem seems to be the game cant cope with many players on the screen at the same time and it doesnt seem to handle CPU Cores very well.

First ill list my PC’s Specs;

• AMD Phenom Black Edition Quad Core 9850
• ATI Radeon 4870
• 4 gigs Ram
• Windows 7 64 bit

I started by turning most of the graphics settings down, some them make a huge difference such as “draw distance”. But nothing thats really going do the job, in fact nothing i tried really helped.

Deleting and reseting all your addons:

After setting the video dettings in wow to low and deleting all my addons and addon settings, my fps in stormwind went up to 100 fps.  I also set the ATI control panel image quality to “High Perfomance”.

Before i did this the fps rate was about 30-40 fps. I did this at a bad time too when there was nobody in any of the major cities so that is probably a huge factor in the fps increase.

Adding back your addons:

I then started to add to my addons back and with the following addons enabled my framerate dropped a little to about 40 – 60 fps average.

• Xperl Unit Frames
• Bagnon
• Titan Panel
• Outfitter

When i added back Bartender4 i lost about 20 fps, so this addon is causing a huge drop in performance for some reason.

Fixed:

After reading the Wow forums i found this link;

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=10971909544&sid=1

Which is all about trying to improve wow’s performance and its the only thing thats worked for me.  The problem i had seemed to be to do with AMD’s “Cool and Quiet” feature, as when i disabled it wow framerates went up and my PC was way more responsive.  Im able to be dalaran now with out framerates dropping to 4 or 5 fps and wintergrasp is playable. Um getting about 100 fps where before i was getting 30-50, so its a huge improvement.

In case youve been living in a cave for the last few days, Eircom irelands largest ISP is now looking for people to disconnect from its service. According to the details a third part compnay called “dTechnet” will be watching downloads of music on popular Peer to Peer Networks like Limewire and Torrents. They will then give those IP addresses to Eircom who will then give you 3 warnings to stop and then they will cut you off. AT which point Eircom will have lost a customer. If Ever a plan to stop Piracy seemed a bit mad then this is surely one of them.

How many people are going to stay with Eircom with kinda crap going on? Any compnay that restricts your internet access is just the same as the chinese government in my book.

You can read more about on the boards.ie forum;

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055919718

Ive always loved music and Trance/Dance music is my favorite genre of music because it can just make you feel great sometimes. Ever since i first heard songs like;

• Moby – Go
• Paul van Dyk – for an Angel
• Des Mitchel – Welcome to the dance

Ive always wanted to make my own songs, these days its possable thanks to the huge range of software out there such as Ableton Live,Pro Tools,FL Loops,Reason and more. So ive started looking into how you make and arrange a Trance song. Its not as easy as it sounds as theres quite a bit of work and effort involved its true that with the powerful range of DAW’s (Digital Audio Work Stations) out there its a task made slighly easier.

How to make a Trance Tune: A Collection of links ive found to help;

1. Understanding Basic Trance Structure
2. How to Make Trance Music
3. Trance Song Structure: How Is A Typical Trance Song Built ? How Does It Progress ?

There are some really awesome Iphone apps out there, while i only have the iTouch i still love some the great apps you can get out there. I mostly only get FREE apps as paid apps dont appeal to me unless there really special. So here ive listed some of the apps ive found that are well worth having.

1. Air-Video: Free/Paid:
   Probably the best app ive found so far apart from Documents 2, it lets you stream videos from yourPC to your IPhone/Itouch. It even has the option of streaming them over the internet. Another App thats well worth buying.
2. Documents 2 FREE/Paid:
   This app is awesome, you can upload any document to your iphone and read it in this app from PDF’s to anything. Best of all you can upload them from your PC Via FTP. There is a paid version of this app which really is worth getting.
3. TouchCalc FREE:
   Its a FREE superb calculator,  its has every feature and function you need. Its your pocket scientific calculator.
4. eBuddy FREE:
   Allows you to use MSN,Google,Facebook,Yahoo and more to chat.
5. Facebook FREE:
   Great app for using Facebook on your Iphone.
6. WattPad FREE:
   Free Online books
7. Translator FREE:
   A Simple app that does what it says, translate from ahuge list of languages easily.
8. Twitterfific FREE:
   Use twitter on your IPhone.
9. Google Free:
   Use all the features of Google on your iPhone
10. Solitaire Free:
    Yes its a game but its Free and a dam good way to kill time.

It seems the whole Adobe vs Apple saga is still on-going. Ive been reading about it and its fascinating to read. Each side has there own point of view and its hard to understand why Apple are being so restrictive.

Having heard a few months ago that Adobe Flash CS5 would allow you to export your flash application as an IPhone App and then having apple give a big two-finger salute to Adobe which is devasting for anyone on windows hoping to make an iphone app or even learn. This was the only way for a windows user to make an IPhone app and since then apple and steve jobs have been trying to steady the flow of angry developers and users.

Adobes Letter to Apple;

Steve Jobs ,Apple CEO’s Letter:

Anyway heres some interesting Apple links;

Why you should Jailbreak your apple:

How to Jailbreak your iphone:

Steve Jobs Offers World ‘Freedom From Porn’

Using Google Mail has a tonne of advantages one being that it filters all the spam you get sent. Now i just looked in my spam folder and found this email claiming to be from Blizzard. But Gmail is so smart it detected it as spam and binned it. But the email is kinda funny as its the worst attempt at phising ive seen in a while;

Dear World of Warcraft fans, because your server is there a large number of illegal transactions, and other server players were a large number complaints to your account. The
To World of Warcraft, we conducted a detailed analysis and review. After this analysis, we draw preliminary conclusions: Your account has been participating

too many the illegal transactions, we will permanently ban your account. At this moment we are to understand your feelings, if you have any questions please visit
[fake site removed]
Blizzard of fraud and abuse department

Theres load of these phishing emails flying around so be carefull what you do when you see one.

I love Firefox heck who doest with the fantastic features it has but Firefox 3 is so slow it seems to take ages compared to FireFox 2 and really its just not good enough. Ive tried everything to get it work a bit better, made a new profile etc and did some searching for a solution.

It also seems that Firefox uses a huge amount of ram up to 400mb of ram on my PC and thats not unique according to the searches ive done. Ive found an addon that seems to reduce the crazy amount of ram that Firefox Uses;

AFOM – Memory Recovery & Retention For Firefox
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/11922

Im using this addon at the moment and it does seem to work even for the latest FireFox version. There are other Tweeks and solutions on the problem and ive listed some of them below.

1. Firefox Running Slow? Make It Fast Again Without Re-Installation
2. Is Firefox slow for you? Here’s some tips to try which might speed it up
3. Firefox slow? Limit history size for speed improvement
4. This May Help Your Firefox Memory Leak
   

This page comes up with a FireFox tweek that ive not yet tested but it might just do the trick;

This little fix will move Firefox to your hard drive when you minimize it, and as a result it will take up less than 10MB of memory while minimized. So far, from my experiences with using this today, when you maximize Firefox it will obviously increase the memory usage. However, it does not seem to go back up to the insane amount that it was at before minimizing it. For example, Firefox was at 180MB of memory usage and then I minimized it and after a few seconds I maximized it. After maximizing it and continuing on my routine business it appeared to only have gone up to 60MB. This seems to be a good solution for me right now since I frequently maximize and minimize Firefox anyways.

Open Firefox and go to the Address Bar. Type in about:config and then press Enter.

Right Click in the page and select New -> Boolean.

In the box that pops up enter config.trim_on_minimize. Press Enter.

Now select True and then press Enter.

Restart Firefox.

Ableton Live 8 is such a great software program for making music, ive been messing around with it over the easter holidays and a made a few new songs. Nne of them are any good and were all made from scratch i thought id upload them for anyone to listen to.

Ive been following tutorials from SonicAcademy.com and have been trying to make a Trance /Dance tune and of course its not easy. But its fun and something i can improve on i guess.

None of these songs contain any copyrighted samples as they were all made by me. None of the tunes have been named so the names are bit random.

1. DJ Gerry - First Track
2. DJ Gerry - fifth song
3. DJ Gerry - Second Song
4. DJ Gerry - 27 March
5. DJ Gerry - New Track March 2010
6. DJ Gerry - 1april
7. DJ Gerry - i lost you

Ive been using Avast 4.8 as my Anti-Virus program for about 4-5 years now and its been quite good however it does seem to have the strange habbit of reporting false postives once in a while which can be very annoying which left me wondering is there a better Anti-Virus out there thats Free.

Ive been using Comodo Firewall for about the same time too and its very good but it can be annoying to set up which again leads to the question is there a good All in One solution thats not “Norton” which i detest and slows your PC Down way too much.

Free Anti-Virus:

Avast:
After Avast failed me and let in a nasty virus on a USB Stick i use at college and let some bastard hack my world of warcraft account it was time to change Anti-Virus and Firewall Software. So i changed from Windows Vista 64 bit to Windows 7 64 Bit and started using ESET Smart Security and as soon as i plugged in my USB stick ESET Smart Security detected and deleted the Virus. It gave great detail on the virus on what accounts it does etc and it soom became clear that this was the bugger that let my World of Warcraft (inactive) Account get hacked.

Avast 5:
Avast have updated there anti-virus and now you can both a firewall and anti-virus. The Anti-Virus solution is free while you will need to pay for the AV and Firewall. It seems a lot better than it use to be the user-interface is a lot clearer and you can find all the settings you need to change.

AVG:
Ive never tried AVG but its the one people always reccommend when i ask whats the best free Anti-Virus software out there.

Microsoft Security Essentials:
As recommended by a commentor is also Free, ive never heard of it but it seems to be excellent.

Microsoft Security Essentials provides real-time protection for your home PC that guards against viruses, spyware, and other malicious software.

Microsoft Security Essentials is a free* download from Microsoft that is simple to install, easy to use, and always kept up to date so you can be assured your PC is protected by the latest technology. It’s easy to tell if your PC is secure — when you’re green, you’re good. It’s that simple.

Microsoft Security Essentials runs quietly and efficiently in the background so that you are free to use your Windows-based PC the way you want—without interruptions or long computer wait times.

Paid Anti-Virus:

ESET Smart Security:
This is one of those All-in-one prodcuts that has a firewall and Anti-Virus it Seems a very good product but its not free buy you can get a 30 day trial and if your a student you can get at a student rate.

Id recommend it as you hardly know its there and it deletes any viruses it finds and the firewall is very non-intrusive . Ive bought this software at the student rate and its well worth the money. You can get it cheap if your a student which is great.