Jason Lu

On Wednesday, December 21, Mommy, Daddy, Kalen, my grandma, my grandpa, and my aunt went out for dinner. The place we went for our dinner was Emperor. Emperor was a regular Dim Sum restaurant I’m very familiar with because we usually go there every other week.

It was around 6 pm, but by then it was already very dark because it was the winter solstice. Everybody arrived at different times. This time, everyone except my grandpa and aunt arrived first. The next to show up was my aunt, and my grandpa didn’t arrive until midway through the dinner. The meal was delicious. The first thing to arrive was some vegetables. I didn’t like that kind of vegetable, so I didn’t eat it. However, as the dinner went on, I needed to eat some sort of vegetable. Soon I reluctantly ate some broccoli. Along with the broccoli, I ate some pork, chicken, a half bowl of rice, some sauce, and scrambled egg. By that time my grandpa arrived. After the arrival, I had another half bowl of rice, some fish, and some tofu. At the end of dinner, we had some jello, cookies, red bean soup, and a special rice dumpling in the soup. Apparently, the dumpling represents the coming together of family. For that reason, I thought that the dumplings were neat. After the meal, everybody went home.

Overall, the meal was great. I got to hang out with family and eat some amazing food. My favorite food was the spicy tofu, which was delicious. In the end, the meal was great and I’ll get to see more family at the Chrismas party.

 

Today, I will talk about my experience so far with my new PC. I’ve only used the PC for two days, so my experience is low. However, I noticed right away one of the major advantages of owning a PC, is the ability to play new games. There is a lot of games that I never could play on the Mac. For example, games I couldn’t play were GTA, Skyrim, Watch_Dogs 2, The Witcher 3, DOOM, Fallout 4, Call of Duty: World at War, Left 4 Dead 2, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Assasins Creed IV Black Flag, Dark Soul III, Far Cry 4, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege, Star Wars Battlefront II, Batman: Arkham Knight, and many more.

To test out the capabilities of my PC, I download three free PC exclusive games off Steam. The three games are Warframe, Maplestory, and TERA. All three of these game are very popular, have a huge community, and two of the games Maplestory and TERA just had major updates. TERA was alright, there wasn’t any lag and the game ran smoothly. One thing that did annoy me though was the graphics weren’t that great, but I did expect this since my PC was still missing a graphics card. Hopefully, the problem will stop once I get a graphics card. Warframe had the same problem as TERA and I still haven’t try Maplestory.

Overall, the experience of playing new games was fun. In the future, I hope to gain more experience with my new PC.

Today on Dec 11, daddy and I built a computer. I was really excited because I would have a good experience building my own computer. I would also be able to play games I never could on the mac.

We started by setting up a table. We then gathered the computer parts and tools. After that we got my motherboard and started the first steps of putting on the CPU fan on the motherboard, but before we finish adding the CPU fan we installed the CPU and RAM. After we installed the CPU and RAM, we finished installing the CPU fan. The CPU fan was larger than I expected. Once we did all that, we set aside the motherboard and started on the power supply. We started to install the power supply into the newly bought case. After that, we also installed the motherboard into the case as well. Once we knew how much space the CPU fan would take up, we installed the 3rd 120mm case fan at the top of the case. Now we entered the final few steps of building, we installed the SSD and the hard drive. Now that everything was in place we started cable management. The cable management actually took longer than expected. After cable management, we practically finish building the only things left to do is to move the PC upstairs and install windows 10.

Overall, building the PC was a fun experience. I learned about cable management, where to plug in certain things, and how the whole computer works. Hopefully, I have a chance to continue upgrading and improving my computer.

Last week I talked about why I chose my 600W Bronze power supply instead of Kalen’s 500W power supply, and this week I will be talking about hard drives.

A hard drive is a computer part that stores information. For example, my hard drive can store 1TB of information. A TB or terabyte is a number to measure how many bytes can be stored. The number of bytes that can be store is 1000,000,000,000. Think about it like this, one byte is one letter, 1,000 bytes or kilobytes is a word, 1,000,000 bytes or megabytes is a paragraph, 1,000,000,000 bytes or gigabyte is a book, and 1,000,000,000,000 or terabyte is a whole shelf of books. Now think about how many letters there are, that is how many bytes can be stored on my hard drive.

I’ve talked about the amazing storage of the hard drive but there are also downsides. One of the downsides of having just a hard drive is it takes a while for the computer to retrieve the information. One way many people fix this problem is to also get an SSD, also known as a Solid State Drive (I will talk about SSD in another blog).

The hard drive I got, is a mechanical Western Digital 1 TB 3.5-Inch 7200 RPM SATA III, while Kalen is inheriting daddy’s old 500GB hard drive. I don’t know the specs of Kalen’s hard drive, but I can tell you that my hard drive has double the storage. After I watched a few videos on YouTube, I discovered a few new things about my hard drive. For example, my hard drive might be a mechanical and SSD hybrid drive. I also learned the higher RPM the faster your computer will run (but this won’t really matter if you get an SSD), and depending on how much cache you have the more information you can have on standby making your computer run faster.

Overall I’m pretty happy with my buy because it was on sale. With 7200 RPM I won’t need an SSD right away and 64MB of cache seems alright. Hopefully, in the future I can get an SSD as well.

This Xmas I will be building a budget gaming computer for under $1,000. Over the next couple of weeks, I will be covering each part in its own blog. The first item I will be covering is the power supply. I chose the EVGA 600 B1, 80+ Bronze 600W, 3 year warranty. The power supply also includes a free Power on Self Tester tool. A Power On Self Tester Tool is used to see if there is an electric current running through the Power supply. I chose this power supply instead of the one Kalen got the EVGA 500 w1 80+ white 500W, 3 year warranty because of multiple reasons. One stand out feature for me is that mine is an 80+bronze while Kalen’s is 80+white. This means mine is more energy efficient while Kalen’s is not. For example, if a computer was running at 50%, mines would be 5% more efficient. The Bronze also has 2 more AC (alternate current), 100 more W, again 5% more efficient most of the time, and a 3 year warranty. The cost of these new features is a $40 difference. Some the higher price of the Bronzes might turn people away but I got mines on sale so it was only a few more $. Overall I’m happy with my purchase and I look forward to using it.

Yesterday, Mommy, Daddy, Kalen, Doris, and I went to go celebrate Doris’ birthday. We celebrated at the Archery Circuit, a place where there are fun activities to do in the Quad. In the Quad, you and your friends are split into 4 teams. You are then given bows and arrows, and the last team standing wins. Doris also invited other people like Jake, Ian, Abby, Cinthia, and Cloey. We played  games with bows and arrows until we had lunch. For lunch, we had apple juice, pepperoni pizza, Hawaiian pizza, cheese pizza, and an ice cream cake. After lunch, we had a short game of Nerf. Unfortunately after the game, the party came to an end. Once we said goodbye to everyone there, we went home.

In Skyrim, there are 10 races, the Altmer(High Elf), the Argonians, the Breton, the Bosmer(Wood Elf), the Dunmer(Dark Elf), the Imperial, the Khajiit, the Nord, the Redgaurd, and the Orsimer(Ork). Each race is special and I will cover each of them.

First the Altmer, They come from Summerset Isle and in the game, this is one of the best options for a mage. I believe this because of their Highborn ability. Highborn allows them to regenerate magica quicker. The Altmer also start with 50 more points of magica.

Next is the Argonians from black marsh. Argonians are one of the better designed races in most peoples opinion. This is because they’re humanoid lizards. However, their abilities aren’t that useful. Their first ability is Resist Disease which is not really good because there aren’t many diseases in the game. Second is Water Breathing which is not that useful because there are barely any major water areas, and their final ability is Claws giving 12 points of unarm damge but the Khajiit has a better Claws ability.

After, the Argonians are the Bretons. Bretons are a hybrid of elf and humans giving them a human appearance. Their first ability is Magic Resistance giving them 25% resistance to all magic, and their other ability is Dragonskin giving them a 50% resistance to a magic for 60 seconds.

After, the Bretons are the Bosmer one of worst races. I say this because the Bosmers two abilities are 50% resistance to disease and their Command Animal ability are practically useless. Command Animal lets you command animals for 60 seconds but you can only use it once a day. Command Animal is good but it becomes worthless once you obtain the Animal Allegiance shout. The Animal Allegiance shout does the exact same thing but you can use it every minute but every race can use it.

Next is the Dunmer from Morrowind. Their abilities are Resist Fire giving you 50% resistance to fire and their second ability is Ancestor’s Wrath. Ancestor’s Wrath allows you to set fire to everyone around you. I think the Dunmer is pretty good if you are playing a vampire or a tank.

Next is the Imperial one of the major races in the Skyrim game. One of their abilities is Voice of the Emperor which calms people for 60 seconds. Their second ability is Imperial Luck allowing you to find more gold in urns, pots, and chests. Overall one of the simpler races.

After the Imperials is the other major race in Skyrim, the Nords. Nords are the inhabitance of Skyrim. Their abilities are Resist Frost giving you 50% frost resistance and their Battle Cry scaring enemies for 60 seconds that can only be used once a day.

Next is the Khajiit one of the best races for a thief or assassin. They come from Elsweyr and they also look like cats. One of their abilities are Night-Eye giving you night vision for 60 seconds. You can use it multiple times a day. Their second ability is Claws. Unlike the Argonians, whos Claws adds 12 points to unarmed damage, the Kajiit Claws gives 15 points (Kajiits claws are the most powerful weapon in the game excluding smithing). Overall the Kajiit is my favorite race in the game.

Next is the Redguard and like the Bosmer it’s one the worst race. It is one of the worst race because of it’s ability Resist Poison allowing 50% resistance to poison. Resist Poison is kinda useless because just like the Disease ability it’s rarely encountered. The second ability is Adrenaline Rush which is also useless. Adrenaline Rush regenerates stamina ten times faster. It’s useless because once you get enough stamina through other means, and it is just not worth it.

Finally, the last race is the Orsimer. Their ability is Berserker’s Rage. You take half damage while dealing double damage. Berserker’s Rage is kind of broken but extremely useful if you are a tank, archer, or warrior.

That’s all the playable races in Skyrim. Remember, you can play with any races. I’m just telling you that some are better than others. For example, if you really wanted to, you could have a Bosmer warrior. Just remember to have fun.

In the world of Nerf, there’s plenty of guns, but most of them don’t get good ranges out of the box so people mod them. Modding is short for modifying in this case. We are improving the guns accuracy, performance, range, efficiency, and power. All guns are different so first let’s divide the guns into three classes stringer, springer, and flywheels. If your gun is a stringer (guns that use a string to propel the dart) then you probably would want to take out all the locks and probably replace the string. A good example of a stringer is a Crossbolt. If your gun is a springer you want to take out all the locks, replace the spring, catch, and plunger. A good example of a springer is an Alpha Trooper or Longshot. Finally, if your gun is a flywheel take out the locks, replace the batteries, flywheels, flywheel cage, and motors. A good example of a flywheel is the Stryfe and Rapidstrike. Remeber modding a gun is expensive. The cheapest item for modding is the spring and those cost around $7, so just remember to have fun and play safe especially if you modded your gun.

For the past few days, I have been building a villager breeder. I’ve built the breeder in an attempt to obtain rare enchantments (Mending and Frost Walker). The two enchantments I just listed are very powerful and valued. I started the process of creating my breeder near my village on the lake. I then looked at multiple versions of breeders I could possibly create. I decided to create a compact villager breeder by Unarybit. As stated in his video, the breeder works by the gaps where the breeding happens. The kids drop down to an area where they can grow while the adults stay in the breeder where they can produce more children. The most difficult part of the build was the placement of the villagers which took me ages. If you don’t get it right the first time you will need to start all over. Eventually I manage to finish the breeder, and I then decorated the breeder and its surrounding area. I’ve even been able to complete my goal of getting the two enchantments and I have created a shop for them which I might cover in another article. Overall building this breeder was fun and I hope everyone in the server can enjoy the breeder and rare enchantments.

In Minecraft, my brother, Kalen and I own a server and in this server I decided to build myself a village. A normal village would look simple and would have oak wood, oak wood planks, cobble stone, and a few other blocks. I wanted my village to be special, so when I built the houses I added stone slabs around the edge of the houses. The only houses I didn’t add slabs around are the church and the light house. Most of the houses used dark oak, dark oak wood planks, spruce oak doors, cobble stone slabs, and glass planes. For some of the buildings, I took more care in building, like the church, lighthouse, and blacksmith. The church has a small grave yard. The lighthouse has a larger light so every one can see, and the blacksmith has a cauldron and other blacksmithing equipment. Overall I enjoyed the village currently and I hope to expand the village.