Marking Period 3 Checkup

This marking period I was finally able to start streaming, and I've been able to put out a fair number of stream highlights as well. I've been taking a bit of a break from streaming due to some stress, but I'll be starting it back up again come this weekend. I also decided to get back into some music production, starting with a few experimental remixes before moving on to more original pieces.

While most of them have at least a bit of non-school appropriate language, I feel as though this highlight is still fine to use. I was also previously using a facecam, but due to my inability to find a good angle I decided against using it. I still have some framerate issues and some resolution problems, but those are related to physical equipment that I am still investing in.

I've also been getting back into using FL Studio, and even though I'm a little rusty, I still feel as though this one turned out pretty good. I still need to figure out what particular sample sets I used in some of my older pieces. I still need to render out 2 more of my remixes, and then I may move on to some more orchestral pieces. I also need to invest in a new MIDI keyboard, due to my last one breaking, as it makes creating pieces much easier since I can just play the music and the notes are added to the program, whereas as it is now I need to identify which notes are being played and manually put them in, which runs the risk of incorrect timing and missed inputs. I still need to put together the cover art for this remix above as well as my other two pieces. Seeing as this is my first new piece in six months, I will likely also make a video with an audio spectrum and post it to my music YouTube (which hasn't seen an upload in about 2 years).

Investigation Post - How I Built My PC

While my new PC isn't quite finished yet, it's so near to completion that I figured that there would be no issue talking about my building process. While many think that building a PC is a highly complicated and involved process, I feels as though it is more comparable to an expensive set of LEGOs.

I first started out by purchasing my case. In this instance I selected the NZXT Phantom 630 Windowed Edition, as it's large size provided me with plenty of room to work in. The chassis also came with a large array of fans, ensuring that my PC would stay properly cooled without having to purchase additional fans.

Next, I acquired my motherboard, the central hub of any PC. In this case I chose the AsRock Z97 Extreme4, a highly-efficient multi-purpose motherboard. If I was just gaming, I would have selected a more gaming-oriented board, but due to my usage of Photoshop and After Effects I opted for the more versatile option.

After that I selected the CPU. In order to have a compatible chipset with my motherboard, I bought an Intel i7 4790k, the best processor for the Z97 chipset. The fairly high quality of the onboard graphics made it a very good choice as I save up for the more expensive graphic card.

While I have not yet purchased the graphics card, it will most definitely be the most defining feature of this PC as far as completion goes. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 is the newest graphics card on the market, and its $700 price tag is well deserved for the stunning visuals it outputs.

I then purchased some of the smaller but more vital portions of my PC, including a SteelSeries Apex M800 keyboard, 4 sticks of 8 GB HyperX RAM, 2 Hard Drives, totaling 3 TB of storage space, and a 750W power supply. Even without the graphics card, this PC is a beautiful machine, able to run many programs quickly, smoothly, and efficiently. However, the acquisition of a GTX 1080 graphics card will make it so that there will be no program whose visuals are too much for my PC.