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.

You start the game off with your axe and pick, and you’ll need to chop away at the trees or the earth to create your first little home.  As you explore, you will find more items you can craft with – mix together and make new objects with.  You can then keep digging deep under ground and find elaborate dungeons, and enormous bosses.

Check out the Terraira trailer here:

To wrap things up, I think Terraria does a great job at doing some of the same things Minecraft does – but in it’s own unique way. Calling it a Minecraft clone or a 2D Minecraft does not do it justice as the game has much more going on for it past the mining and digging.  I am excited to see how the game will develop more in the future, and wish the creators the best of luck with it.

Want to give it a shot? Head over to Terraria.org!

Coe’s Quest is the YouTube web series I ran across when I was looking for a way to do more inside of the game of Minecraft. He has a very pleasant tone about him and his videos are not filled with cuss filled rants just for the sake of cussing.  Not that I have anything against adult language – but I have been even able to show my two nephews an niece the videos without worry of having to cover their ears every two seconds.

Here is the first video – just to give you a sample of how neat this series of videos is:

You can learn more about Coe’s Quest from coesquest.com. I hope you find it as useful as I have when it comes to navigating around the world of Minecraft.

Here recently I have been playing games like it the mid-90s all over again. How? Well, I thought it was about time I bought myself a replacement Super Nintendo.  My old SNES bit the dust the last time I tried plugging it in (it served me well) so this time I picked up one of the newer models – well as new as a system built in 1997 can be.

This new system I have now was released by Nintendo at around the end of the SNES’s lifespan. It is slimmer and lighter than the original SNES I own.  However, it might even feel too light.  When I first took it out of the box, I was a ‘bit concerned about the weight.  It really feels like it weighs nothing at all.  After doing some research though I found out that this was done on purpose.

I still love the old SNES design, mainly due to childhood nostalgia – however this new system will  hopefully be up to my wear and tear when I get in the mood to play one of my classic SNES games.

Ever wake up with the urge to freeze somebody and then upcut them over and over again?  I did.  Rather than trying to do the act I previously mentioned, I decided to feed my urges with some Mortal Kombat wallpaper.  This fantastic wallpaper I found takes the old Mortal Kombat dragon logo and gives it a modern and polished update. 

Like it? You can grab it from here. You also have the option to download it in the following sizes: 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, or 1920×1200. 

Chances are there are a lot of people out there using Steam right now.  For the rest of you though, you might not know that Steam is a place where you can purchase games on the Web, and then download them via their special desktop client.  The idea here is to eliminate the need of keeping up with game disks and clutter – and it works, as long as you have an internet connection that is fast enough. 

After taking a look at the EA Store Digital Downloads, I was asked by several people to give Steam a shot too – because some say it might even deliver a better experience.  There is a wider selection of games on Steam, but I can’t recommend one over the other.  I think both services are worth checking out.

The process of buying a game through Steam is pretty easy.  You find a game you like, you then purchase the game, you download their client to download the game, and then you can download and install the game.  The Steam desktop application serves as a way to manage the games you have downloaded as well as another gateway into the store interface.

The big thing to love about Steam is they are always putting out great deals or discounts on games or game bundles.  A few week back, I bought both Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 for around $10.

Now, I might still rather have the game disk, but as services like Steam get more popular I have faith that I am not tossing money out the window, and if anything bad happens – I can still re-download the games I have paid for.  You too can give Steam a shot (they now support both Mac and Windows) at SteamPowered.com.

I have found some more great classic video game wallpaper I am sure you will all get a kick out of.  Frogger 3D takes the traditional look and feel of the classic Frogger arcade classic and tilts it up a little ‘bit.

By doing so, we are given a new 3D aspect of the world we have never seen before.  This fantastic wallpaper by Justin Buonvino can be found at, admired and downloaded from DeviantArt.

Over the past couple of years, I have created a lot of free custom video game inspired desktop icons for you all to download.  While keeping a running list of these on one page worked for a while, I figured it was about time I cleaned up and organized my free icon collections I have created for you to enjoy.

So with that said, I invite one and all to go check out the new Custom Icons page over at Mitchelaneous.com.  There you will see I have organized all the free icons I have created over the years into five smaller icon pages.

You can download free desktop icons about/on:

• Mega Man 9
• Mega Man 10
• Nintendo Icons
• More Nintendo Icons
• Misc Free Icons

This has been a highly suggested task from the many Mitchelaneous reader for some time now, so I am happy to finally getting around to getting this done for all of you.  As always, hope you enjoy them all – and thanks for bookmarking, visiting and subscribing to Mitchelaneous.com!

At nearly $30, it is rather expensive compared to the other PS3 controller chargers out there today.  But then again, each controller costs $50 a piece, so I wanted to make sure I had a charger that would not ruin them and that would work.  Energizer is a name I know, so there you go.

Overall, I’ve been pretty happy with it.  It looks nice, so it could be displayed on the shelf next to your PS3.  I don’t have the room for it, so it is tucked away in a drawer right now.  You can also charge up to 4 controllers if you use two USB cables – which can be plugged into the side.  Just make sure they are pretty short, or your going to have a mess of a cord collection, taking away from the stylish look and feel of the charger.

Once you slip a controller in, the plastic over the controller’s middle section glows red to show you it is charging.  When it is done, it glows green.  If you have a PS3 Bluetooth headset, it comes with a little charger adapter for that too, which plugs into the side USB ports. 

So when push comes to shove, other than the price, I can’t find anything wrong with the Playstation 3 Energizer Power & Play Charging System, and would highly recommend it.