Some clever people over on Reddit have figured out that the Steam Client sometimes gobbles up too much of your CPU. If you see Steam using too many resources in Task Manager, try these steps. It may lighten the load that Steam places on your gaming rig.
If you play Fortnite, you may want to keep tabs on this: Epic Game, the maker of Fortnite, has to pay over a half of a billion dollars to our federal government. This is a settlement over charging players for unwanted items, as well as locking people out of the game when they tried to dispute charges.
And a lot of that money will come back to Fortnite players! But… the FTC hasn’t figured out that part yet. I’m sure it’ll come out soon. If this affects you, keep an eye on the FTC page about this settlement, or sign up for FTC email updates.
It seems every year, Epic Games goes on a giveaway binge. Starting today, you can get a free game every day til the end of the year. The game changes each day, so check in daily to see what’s up for grabs. Go to this page and scroll down to the Claim Today section.
And put this on your calendar for next year, because Epic Games does this every holiday season, starting in December!
TYPING IN THIS MANNER OFTEN SIGNIFIES I’M SHOUTING
MOST OF YOU DO KNOW ME WELL AND THIS WILL LEAVE YOU DOUBTING
INDULGE ME JUST A TINY BIT AND PLEASE DECIDE TO STAY
LONG ENOUGH TO CELEBRATE THIS WONDROUS CAPS LOCK DAY
FEEL FREE TO TYPE ALL TEXT IN CAPS FOR THIS GRAND HOLIDAY
AND ALSO ON JUNE 28TH, TO HONOR BILLY MAYS
IF ANYONE REGARDS YOUR TYPING AS IRRATIONAL
REMIND THEM CAPS LOCK DAY IS TRULY INTERNATIONAL
IF YOU OWN A CHROMEBOOK YOU MAY FEEL A BIT LEFT OUT
YOUR KEYBOARD LACKS A CAPS LOCK KEY, BUT THERE’S NO NEED TO POUT
I HAVE A HANDY TIP FOR YOU BEFORE THIS RHYME IS DONE
PRESS ALT + SEARCH ON YOUR KEYBOARD AND YOU CAN JOIN THE FUN
Back as the pandemic began, I blogged about CheapShark, a great site for finding your best prices on video games. But since then, other similar sites have been launched. If you’re a frequent gamer, there are a lot of ways for you to save money on your hobby/habit!
GGDeals is the first I should mention, because it may match what CheapShark does. And GGDeals covers a different range of game vendors, so you may want to review both in turn to find your best deals.
PsPrices is more for console game players. Here you can find game pricing tools for Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft game systems, as well as the Epic Store and Apple App Store.
DekuDeals is for Nintendo Switch games only. But you may find it more pleasant to find your deals here than by combing through the Nintendo Store.
And there are plenty more niche sites that will help you save money on hard-to-find games or bundle purchases, as well as review pricing history for the games you want. Some runner-up mentions are:
If you’re a gamer, you surely know about and patronize Steam, the biggest platform for video game sales. A 3rd-party website, SteamDB, has a clever tool called the Steam Calculator you might use on your Steam account.
If you input your SteamID on that site, it will quickly gives you lots of statistics about your Steam gaming. You’ll see stats like
If you use this on your own account, you may be proud or dismayed to see how much time and money you’ve spent on gaming. It’s OK, no judgment here! But you might also use this on your child’s account, to monitor how they’re spending their resources.
“Used books,” as if someone else has had the best of them and you get the sere husk, or the lees, as if a book isn’t the one thing, the one product, that is forever new. There’s no such thing as a used book. Or there’s no such thing as a book if it’s not being used.”
Deborah Meyler, The Bookstore
If you’re seeking a hard-to-find or out-of-print book, you may already know the websites eager to help you:
(Got another favorite book-selling website? Leave a comment and I may add it to the list!)
And there’s many other resources for finding that dead tree edition you need, like Amazon, eBay and Barnes & Noble. But when you’re searching for that one elusive tome that no one on the internet seems to have in stock, try this site and make it a little easier on yourself:
Bookfinder will comb almost all of the book-selling websites out there for you. Search Bookfinder.com for your title and it’ll return all of your buying options and prices!
I apologize in advance if this contributes to anyone’s tsundoku.
There are always new mobile apps for you to discover, and it looks like NewProfilePic is this month’s all-star. This freebie, available through the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store, will transform a selfie photo into something stylized and eye-catching.
All you have to do is upload any photo file((of a single, close-up of a human face. Sorry, no pets!)) you have access to from your mobile device, and dodge a few pop-up ads along the way. The app does the rest, giving you a few different photo filters to try out. And they claim you can check back each week for new filters and tweaks.
As this app took off in popularity, some websites started sounding an alarm about its safety. Claims of data-sharing with Russia are being passed around, but I don’t see any truth to that. It looks to me like these rumors are not based on hard facts, and only being reported on clickbait and junk news sites (nothing mainstream).
In other words, whatever info-collection this app is doing, it’s certainly less invasive than, say, Facebook or Google. If you want to try out this app, feel free and have fun!
If you use various streaming services, JustWatch is a useful tool to consider. Search for any movie or show, and JustWatch will tell you where you might stream it. You can see all of your Rent and Buy options, as well as prices, and click through to any provider you want to patronize.
If you create a free account, then you may also create watchlists and receive recommendations, but I think it’s useful for streamers even without signing up.
If you’re looking to play a DVD movie on your Windows computer, chances are it won’t work. When you insert the DVD, your machine will spin and hum and eventually tell you, “Couldn’t open file” or some other frustratingly vague error. In any case, Windows 10 and 11 no longer have the necessary files (codecs) to make a commercial DVD run properly.
What you need for this situation is VLC Media Player. Download it for free, install it and then you’ll be able to play virtually any movie DVD, audio CD and other multimedia file that you’re having a challenge with.
You may find other DVD-viewing suggestions in the Microsoft Store, but they will either cost you money or turn out to be advertising lures. I can vouch for VLC Media Player being both free and legitimate. Oh, and it’s also available for Windows, MacOS and Linux!
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