This program, suggested by a few YouTube let’s play series I watch, has thus far been the best of the bunch.  It does both real-time video capture and benchmarking.  If needed, you can set it up to show information like frames per second (FPS) if needed. You can also save the statistics out to use them for your own reviews.

Here is a little more about the screen capturing and video capturing from the creators:

Screen Capture Software – Take a screenshot with the press of a key!  There’s no need to paste into a paint program every time you want a new shot.  Your screen captures are automatically named and time stamped.

Realtime Video Capture Software – Have you ever wanted to record video while playing your favorite game?  Come join the Machinima revolution!  Throw away the VCR, forget about using a DV cam, game recording has never been this easy!  Fraps can capture audio and video up to 2560×1600 with custom frame rates from 1 to 120 frames per second!

Fraps only cost $37.00 and by purchasing it, you get all future updates for free, can record longer videos and more. To learn more about Fraps be sure to check out their official website.

Mhykol Mines – This series gives you the basic walkthrough of somebody playing through Minecraft and covering all the basics. Mhykol does a great job at putting together videos that follow him through building up various traps, bases and other things through the game of Minecraft and keeps things interesting enough that you want to see what might come up next in his mining adventures.

Etho’s Lab – If you are more of an inventor, rather than an explorer – you might like the videos Etho has put together.  From building simple dark room traps to loot the booty from the various mobs in the game to creating complicated devices to make you time in Minecraft easier – Etho does a fantastic job at creating elaborate devices in Minecraft.  After watching a few videos you literally can’t wait to see what kind of wacky devices he will come up with next.

Coe’s Quest – Now I have touched upon Coe’s Quest before in an earlier post and everything I said back then still applies. Like Mhykol’s videos, Coe does a great job at taking you through an interesting task or adventure in every video.  If anybody was going to ask me for a basic tutorial or guide to getting started in Minecraft, I would definitely send them to Coe’s Quest.

The Yogscast – The Yogscast is far different from other Minecraft videos out there.  Taking a more entertaining route, Simon and Lewis go through various "adventure" maps that people have created and also take a look at a lot of the various mods out there for Minecraft.  The videos are always have the right balance of comedy mixed with adventure.

So there you have it. These are the four best Minecraft series I have found on YouTube as of late.  Let me know what you think or if you have found any other Minecraft series worth checking out yourself.

Minecraft, simply put, is a game where you go around building things for fun. If you want to go out and build a 400 foot monument to yourself, go for it.  If you want to go dig a house out of a mountain, you can do that too.  From what I have seen there really is no right or wrong way to play the game. You pretty much sit down, figure out your goal and do it.

At the core of the game, you gather resources to make things.  For example, when you start out – you can go punch a tree down.  Yes, this is as awesome as it sounds. You can then gather the pieces of wood to craft something else. You might make a crafting table, so then you can create a pick axe.  With the pick axe, you can start mining for coal to make your torches.  Then you can build a shovel to dig faster in the dirt.  Before you know it, you will have an entire fort built for yourself with animals randomly spawning in your second floor (as you can see from the picture above). 

You can download this amazing little game and play it again and again for only about $20 or so (technically, If you pre-purchase now during beta, you pay  €14.95!)  My entire Sunday was lost in Minecraft and I am sure more productivity will go down the drain soon.  How else will I finish my 200 foot tall stone badger monument?

Spent the better part of yesterday afternoon moving out my old desk and getting a brand new one set up.  Now, my old desk and I had some fun times – must have had it at least five or six years.  However, the fact that any time you slightly bumped it made everything on, in and under the desk rumble finally made me decide it was time to upgrade.

The desk I decided to go with is the Walker Edison 3 Piece Home Office Computer Desk.  From now on, I will just reefer to it as the PlayStation 3 desk – because the glass top is so shinny and black.

Now it will take me a little while to get used to typing with the slide out keyboard, and not sure yet where I will keep my mouse.  Other than that though, I love this new desk.  It feels reliable, tough and with the steel frame – I don’t have to worry about it going though the wear and tear like my old compressed wood desk did.

So there you have it.  This is where I will be bringing you the latest Mitchelaneous posts, Firefox Facts and Web Hosting Show podcasts.

The “I Want Brains” Zombie Super Nintendo Mod

The Super Nintendo Goes Wii Mod

The Super Nintoaster Mod

The Portable Super Nintendo Mod

The My SNES is Now My PC Mod

Which one is your favorite?  Being a big horror movie fan, the zombie SNES I think would be the winner for me.  Then again, the toaster SNES might be the most enjoyable one to use, because of its extreme oddness.

So after reading the instructions (funny how many answers are in there) I figured out I needed to hook up the USB cord to my PS3 and then plug the controller in the other side.  It could charge up from there, and all should be well.  Charging took around/about 3 hours or so.  Then I ran into problem number two.

How do I charge the second PS3 controller, when Sony only gave me one USB cord? 

After doing some internet research – I found out you can charge the PS3 controllers via your PC.  This way might also be better, cause then you don’t have to have the PS3 on to get the charging done.  That is right, the PS3 won’t charge the controllers unless it is on the entire time.  That is a ‘bit of a design flaw.  I am happy to say though, my PC was a good charger, and now I have two fully charged PS3 controllers.

Since I spend some hours finding the answers to all of this, I figured I would summarize and share with you all here, just in case you find yourself in the same shoes. 

Since production of the podcast has been delayed again this week due to my recent PC problems I have decided to turn a negative into a positive (but I need your thoughts).  Go check out the technical difficulties post over at WebHostingShow.com.

+ Give Me Your Feedback, Suggestions, Compliments and Complaints!

I need all of you to let me know what you love, what you hate, what you want more of and what you could do without this week.  Give me your feedback so I can produce a better podcast just for you.

Hewlett-Packard Receipt of Defective

Receipt Date of Defective Product:             05/27/2008

Expected Delivery Date:                        06/05/2008

Now I know from the FedEx tracking code I have that the 27th is when they got my PC to their HQ.  So does that mean I should be getting it back on the 5th of next month and it is going to take over a week to fix?  Maybe I’ll still get lucky and they’ll ship it back by the end of the week.

I love my laptop, but really missing having my PC here too.

• HP has yet to update the “status” page where I can check into the progress of all of this. With the FedEx tracking number though I do know my box should be here sometime before 4pm on Wednesday.

• I was impressed with HP’s online support. I explained my issue, showed them the pictures and they told me they’d setup a pickup for it, fix it or replace it and then send it back. They have also promised it would all take 7 to 9 days too.

• I am pretty sure I grabbed all my important documents. I copied them over to an external hard drive and then copied from there to my laptop – so all my bases should be covered there. Will probably try to do the reformat and re-install of Windows Vista tonight so it will be ready to box up and go.

Should be getting Wii Fit tomorrow too, so it should be fun to see if the UPS guy has a run in with the FedEx guy. As long as they keep their brawl out in the street, I don’t mind.

You can check out more photos from my Flickr account.

I contacted HP support, and they will be sending me a box to ship her back in – so I can get it fixed or replaced, and sent back here. I figured, if this disaster gives me anything it has given me something to write about so expect me to chronicle the entire experience with working with HP’s support team right here over the upcoming days.