Why Babies Cry

Not a day goes by where I don't make an excuse for why my baby is crying, often to very well meaning strangers.

I understand that there are only so many ways to make awkward conversation with the parent of a screaming baby. I know that the well-meaning strangers are just trying to be nice. I know, I know...but if you could just not ask 'why is the baby crying?' (and whilst I'm at it avoid saying 'Is he sleeping through the night yet?' because, I do not know that either).

But why am I making excuses for my baby crying? Babies cry don't they? The do don't they? Mine cry, other people's cry. I'm sure other peoples' cry. Other peoples cry, don't they?

Enough of the second guessing: Babies cry. End of. Sometimes you know why, sometimes you don't.

If you are still wondering why babies cry however, here are 64 reasons:

1. Unknown.

2. I just feel like it today.

3. I can't talk, so I cry.

4. Hungry (yes, the random old lady in the post office queue was right).

5. Tummy ache (after eating too much).

6. Wind (after eating too much and crying too much).

7. You are inadvertently squishing one of my body parts.

8. You are not looking at me.

9. You are not look at me in the right way.

10. I have seen your face too much today.

11. I want to see Daddy/Grandma/Grandad/Auntie/Random person, just not you.

12. Some stranger just pinched my cheek and tried to hold my hand.

13. Teething, please let me chew.

14. You brought the wrong teether.

15. That brand of baby food is too inexpensive. Where is the organic one from the lady and her kitchen?

16. The bouncy vibrating chair is unnerving (95% of babies hate this, 95% of parents want their baby to love it).

17. The sibling (hit/bit/poked/invaded personal space/looked at me/didn't look at me enough).

18. You went to the loo without me.

19. You went to the loo with me.

20. The buggy.

21. Is this the first time you have used a sling? You amateur.

22. You put me down.

23. You picked me up.

24. You are carrying me wrong.

25. You are carrying me right...if this were yesterday.

26. You are not swaying correctly, more lunge, less shimmy.

27. You are sitting down.

28. You are eating.

29. Your tea is hot.

30. It's too dark, I can't see you.

31. It's too light, you haven't aged well.

32. You have the iPhone brightness up too much during my night feed.

33. You are making pastry, doing that whole crumbling thing and the butter mixture is all over your fingers. I must be picked up now.

34. You don't smell right today.

35. Tired.

36. Tired but don't want to sleep.

37. Poo.

38. Wee.

39. Fart.

40. Poo or fart will not emit as planned.

41. Soggy baby grow hidden by dry outside of sleeping bag (countless mornings my parents have fallen foul of this one).

42. I scratched myself, my nails need cutting.

43. You cut my nails.

44. The hand drier.

45. Someone else is crying.

46. Someone sneezed.

47. Getting into the bath.

48. Getting out of the bath.

49. You need to go through the list again, as I may have changed my mind now as to why I'm crying.

50. I'm bored.

51. Wrong toy.

52. Still wrong toy.

53. Right toy, but now I'm really miffed at you for getting it wrong. Start at the beginning of the list again.

54. You need to sing that song.

55. Now do the actions with the song.

56. I am lonely, being with you 23.5 hours a day is not enough.

57. You put me in this barren cot.

58. You turned the mobile on to keep me company in my cot - that thing is freaking me out.

59. The video monitor is looking at me with its one big glowing eye.

60. You talked over the baby monitor (FYI, never do this, frightens the crap out of me. OK, do it once but just for a laugh).

61. You brought me into your bed but you are now too close/too far away/leaking milk all over me.

62. The car (used to be a winner, not anymore).

63. I'm developmental leaping (you will only know this in retrospect).

64. I am a baby, this is what I do.

Next time someone asks why your baby is crying or you feel you need to make an excuse about them crying - feel empowered to tell them to bog off.... Only joking, use your British reserve and just smile while seething underneath. Then come here, where you are always welcome and visit me at Doctomum.

So why do babies cry? The answer in summary is Unknown.

Another of life's great mysteries, eh?


Do you have anymore ridiculous reasons why your baby is crying? You are safe here to share them (the baby can't read yet).



This article was adapted from the original blog post on www.doctomum.co.uk which you can find here

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10 Ways To De-Stress On a Business Trip

Review: Updated: MSI Prestige PE60 2QD

Introduction and design

The MSI Prestige PE60 2QD ($1,099.00, £709.58, AU$1415.87) is a business laptop that has the build quality and firepower of a tank. Marketed as both a gaming unit and a workstation built for business, the PE60 really has no direct competition.

Best-in-class workstations, such as the supreme Lenovo ThinkPad W550s ($1,133, £765, AU$1,455) and the Dell Precision M6800 ($3,490, £2,075, AU$3,750) inspire productivity, but not necessarily the joys associated with gameplay.

On the other hand, gaming laptops, such as The MSI GT80 ($3,299, £2,573, AU$4,165), The Aorus X3 Plus V3 ($2,780, £1,800, AU$3,500), and The Origin EON15-X ($2,559, £1,698, AU$3,367) wouldn't know a spreadsheet if it had to blow one up to get to level two.

What the MSI Prestige PE60 does it provide affordability and power to users who are just as serious about the work they do from 9-5 as they are about the games they play from 5-12. The consumer based price is appealing, and it is a laptop that will perform excellent Graphics and Design processes.

Design

MSI's newest laptop is built with a minimalist, silky, metallic silver sheen that absolutely dazzles. The laptop is big, which is usually true of gaming laptops and workstations, as the Prestige weighs 5.29 lbs (2.3995 kg) with dimensions of 15.07" x 10.23" x 1.06" (38.28 cm x 25.98 cm x 2.7 cm).

Although the Prestige's bottom panel, which holds the battery, is thick, the upper panel is amazingly thin at 0.25-inches (6.35 mm). As you can see from its dimensions, this device is supposed to be portable. Unlike its gaming cousins, the MSI GT80, which weighs 8.33 pounds (3.78 kg), and The Origin EON15-X, which weighs 7.5 pounds, MSI wants you to be able to bring the Prestige to and from your office each day.

Carrying the MSI Prestige PE60 was like carrying a medium-sized textbook (not thick but big in width and length) to a college class. It doesn't feel bulky or heavy and feels like a general 15-inch notebook would feel. But, when open, the PE60 is bulky enough that it is awkward to move around, say as opposed to a MacBook Pro.

The Prestige features a power button, a turbo button and a True Color Profile button that are situated on the top right corner of the base. Below these exists a beautifully laid out full keyboard with a number pad, which business users will enjoy.

Each key is identified with a big bold, back-lit silver letter that mimics the sleek aesthetic of the body. The keys are soft, yet responsive, with a nice moderate give. Playing games and entering data on the keyboard was smooth. However, the trackpad, which has two buttons for left and right clicks, is incredibly inelegant. The trackpad itself does not have any finesse and requires a bit too much finger pressure. The trackpad's left and right click buttons are much too noisy and awkward for a laptop with such a pretty design.

The sides of the device are built with a black molding. The ports are simple, yet plentiful; on the left side: two copper cased mic and audio inputs, two USB 3.0, a Mini DisplayPort, an HDMI port, a third USB 3.0 port, and a Gigabit Ethernet port. On the right hand side: a DVD drive, a USB 2.0 port, an SD(XC/HC) card reader slot and the power input.

Specs

There are two MSI Prestige models, the PE60, which is what I tested, and the PE70 which has the same specs but has a 17.7" screen and 16GB RAM.

Here is the MSI Prestige PE60 2QD configuration sent to TechRadar for review:

• CPU: 2.6GHz Intel Core i7-4720HQ
• Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M 2GB
• RAM: 12GB DDR3L
• Screen: 15.6-inch FHD (1920 x 1080) anti-glare display
• Storage: 1TB 7200 RPM hard disk
• Optical drive: DVD Super Multi
• Ports: 3 x USB 3.0, USB 2.0, HDMI, Mini DisplayPort, Ethernet, SD Card reader
• Connectivity: 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0
• Camera: 720p webcam
• Weight: 5.29 lbs (2.3995 kg)
• Size: 5.07" x 10.23" x 1.06" (38.28 cm x 25.98 cm x 2.7 cm)

As you can see above, this beauty comes fully loaded. Installed is a top-of-the-line fourth-generation Intel Core i7 Processor that runs at 2.60GHz, 12GB Memory, a 1TB HDD, and a NVIDIA GeForce video card, all built in a beautiful 15.6" aluminum casing. Also, this laptop comes with Windows 8.1 64-Bit already installed.

The MSI Prestige laptop has a gorgeous True Color 1080p display that comes calibrated to ensure high color accuracy. The True Color Profile button enables you to switch between different preset profiles when using the laptop. The True Profile has six options, sRGB, Designer, Office, Movie, Gamer, and Anti-Blue, which each change the contrast ratio, the brightness, and hue to promote a more enjoyable experience.

The Prestige handles games and movies beautifully, with a definition that is crisp and clear. It also handles 4K output for videographers and hardcore film buffs. For those who might pursue the Prestige as an office product, to bring it in for a travelling creative team or CAD user, the Prestige PE60 will handle AutoCAD and Photoshop design. And, for the Designer who is very particular about colorization on the screen, the Prestige is perfect for you, as the LCD of the Prestige PE60 will be best suited for this specifically.

The 2.6 GHz fourth-generation quad-core processor performs really well, especially when you use the MSI Shift feature, which allows you to get the most performance out of your machine. The Shift feature allowed me to change my system's performance on-the-fly between three different modes. The three modes are Green, Blue, and Red. Green is the eco- and battery-friendly mode, with low power consumption for both CPU and GPU. Blue is the mid-range mode that allows enough GPU consumption but not too much. Red enables you to go full throttle on both GPU and CPU.

I put the MSI Prestige on all three modes, and the Green Mode, if you're looking for performance, should just be ignored because everything is throttled down. I mean, everything, the whole machine just travels at a slug's pace. Comfort Mode gets you moving a little bit faster, but it is still annoying. Sport mode, the highest mode, really gets things going and you can hear that the fan is on.

When on Green my wireless bandwidth (via speedtest.net) was 12Mbps Down to 3Mpbs Up, which was really frustrating as I have 200Mb Down with 20Mb Up in my home. My iPhone 6 was getting 184.47Mbps Down to 15.17Mbps Up. When I got the Prestige on Sport mode, I found that I could get the wireless download speeds to be at 128Mbps Down to 17.11Mbps Up. Also, when in Sport mode, the Prestige really flies. This feature can, unfortunately, only be enabled when the power adapter is plugged in..

The MSI Prestige PE60 comes with a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950M Graphics card that holds 2GB VRAM GDDR5. This is a pretty amazing card that produces really good graphics for a laptop. If you are using AutoCad or you want to play games, unless you are using VectorWorks or doing 3D imaging on a very, very high level, then the MSI Prestige PE60 will be good for you. The images on the screen are crisp and clear, but the gaming aspect and how it handles, is really good. I played Battlefield 4 and Serious Sam 3 on ultra and it was stunning. I have a GTX 770 SuperClocked in my home tower and I did not feel a difference in frame rate or quality of image swapping from my power tower to the MSI Prestige PE60.

The Prestige comes with 12 GB of DDR3L 1600 MHz RAM with one RAM being 8GB and the other 4GB. The Prestige has a max capacity of 16GB for an additional upgrade cost.

Performance, flaws and verdict

The benchmark results for the MSI Prestige PE60 were as follows:

• 3DMark: Cloud Gate: 6,282; Sky Diver: 10,577; Fire Strike: 3,294
• CineBench: CPU: 489 Points, GPU: 12.57 fps
• Battery Life: 1 hour 31 minutes

I ran all of the performance tests on the MSI SHIFT Blue setting. Once I set it to Red, the fast speed, I got a score of 3306 for 3DMark Fire Strike, so you'll get not amazing but noticeable gains when pushing this device to its optimal performance. However, because the Red mode will drain your battery quicker, I decided to run all tests using the standard mode

Now, in comparison to other workstations and gaming laptops, I have to say that they all performed a lot better.

The MSI GT80 Titan, for example, scored dramatically better on all of our 3DMark performance tests (Cloud Gate: 22,854; Sky Diver: 27,220; Fire Strike: 11,770). The same can be said for the Cinebench CPU (653 points) and Graphics test (104 fps). These poor results were consistent with the Aorus X3 Plus v3 as well as the Origin EON15-X.

When compared to enterprise workstations, the PE60 faired much better. It dramatically beat the Lenovo W550s, which received the following scores: Fire Strike: 1,426; Cloud Gate: 5,246; Sky Diver: 4,830. It also held its own against the Dell Precision M6800, which whomped it on Cloud Gate (13,879), but barely edged it out on Fire Strike (5,208).

The image quality of the LCD is really nice and the True Profile presets are really awesome. While having preset image settings for different types of use (e.g. Gaming, Working, Editing, Watching a Movie, etc.) seems to be an industry trend, the way MSI implemented it is pretty well done. The pre-calibration on the LCD of the Prestige is really stellar and it shows. This is especially nice for photo and video editors who like to punch out and immediately fire up their favorite game on the train-ride home from work.

Flaws

The battery is really a point of contention for me. When the Prestige PE60 is fully charged and you go ahead and use it, then the battery lasts about 90 mins. During my test I fully charged it, unplugged it, and watched a movie on Youtube (because Flash sucks battery life out of a system) to get an idea of how good it is. But, here is something I have noticed, if the Prestige PE60 is fully charged and you close the laptop to put it to sleep, and awake it in the morning, the battery indicator will say it has 90% but after 30 mins of use it will drop significantly. My real life experience when this happened was just internet browsing, no videos, just the Facebook look and some news articles.

I downloaded Battlefield 4 and played on Ultra. I found no real issues with playing the game outside of game load speed but I'm used to an SSD setup for my games at home. The one thing I was unable to play exclusively with the keyboard and trackpad. I really don't like the Prestige's trackpad. I think that was the worst part of my overall experience. Sometimes it wouldn't click accurately, it's loud, scrolling worked only half of the time. An additional USB mouse worked wonders and dramatically improved my gameplay.

For starters, the MSI Prestige required the use of an AC Adapter upon first boot so be prepared to remove everything to get started. Now, the MSI Prestige took forever to start up after removing it from the box. First initial boot took about 8 minutes and 45 seconds and then another 5 minutes and and 22 seconds for apps to install and for Windows to update.

The MSI software preps the use of Windows 8.1. When you start up the machine for the first time, and you wait for it to boot, an application asks if you want to set up Windows 8 non-desktop mode or desktop mode, and then it asks if you want Windows 8 Preview or Apps View, and then it asks if you want to install IE or Chrome. Then you have to sign out.

I hate preloaded laptops that come with nonsense. I want the Operating System, some useful tools and drivers, and that is it. The MSI Prestige comes with Norton Security, its own MSI tools, and some other stuff that just slow down the experience. Totally, the Prestige comes with Norton Online Backup, Norton Internet Security, along with MSI-specific software to the Prestige that allows you to utilize different features like Shift, change the LCD True Profile, and a daemonized application that will act as soft-keys to turn on/off wifi, Bluetooth, the webcam, etc.

But, what is annoying is that for starters, the Prestige PE60 will not utilize the Shift feature unless the power cord is plugged in. I get it, the lower the power consumption then the longer the battery life. But, off the power cord, this machine is slow. I don't know if it's Windows 8, I don't know if it's Norton Internet Security pop-ups that happen all the time, but it is slow. Annoying slow.

The MSI Prestige comes with a 1TB 7200 RPM drive. I have switched to full SSD on my computer at home so going to a 1TB drive is noticeably slower.

The MSI Prestige has pretty awful speakers. They are okay on a lower level but if you turn the audio up then you hear a tingy sound that is treble washed with little to absolute no bass. A MacBook Pro outperforms in audio, comparatively, by leaps and bounds.

We liked

The MSI Prestige PE60 is a decent laptop when it comes to weight, portability, and basic function. I liked using this laptop, though I did yell at it a couple of times.

The keyboard on this laptop is wonderful. I'm not a keyboard nerd, but I really hate switching from different types of keyboards (e.g. switching from a Mac to a Desktop) as I find that my typing is negatively impacted, but with the keyboard in the MSI Prestige PE60 I had no problems whatsoever. Also, the backlit LEDs are a nice touch. I love Backlit LEDs, specifically on a laptop, and it is a nice color.

Gaming on this laptop was good, not great, but good. If you are a diehard gamer who needs to be at the top of the performance, then you might want to look at something else. But, if you are looking for a decent laptop that can handle games on mid-level settings, then the Prestige is something to consider. The Prestige PE60 could also handle more than just gaming, such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Video Editing, and some of the lower-tier AutoCad applications. I can't imagine that the Prestige will be super fast rendering 3DS Max of full buildings, but it can do smaller simpler things.

I loved the LCD color as it was so vibrant and colorful. The ability to change the settings on the LCD, depending on applications and preference, on the fly are amazing. It is a nice touch, and is something that mirrors how my gaming monitors function. The sRGB True Profile setting is perfect for me but the Designer setting is perfect for applications requiring specific color palettes.

We disliked

The trackpad, touchpad and mouse that are built into the MSI Prestige is just terrible. The buttons on the touchpad are clunky, they click loud and are not elegant. The trackpad is the most frustrating thing ever. I will be typing something and all of a sudden the cursor is selected elsewhere, thus adding frustration and time to what I have to do. As a systems programmer, that is really frustrating. The MSI Prestige PE60 tries to mimic the two-finger scrolling of the MacBook Pro and horribly fails. It's spotty, at best, and does not generate a smooth scroll.

The battery life is questionable, as I have gotten good days out of it but also bad days out of it. The A/C Adapter that is packaged with the MSI Prestige is huge and annoying to carry. So, running for the power adapter is a nuisance. Now, if you are a business user and plan on this being plugged into a desktop configuration, with a monitor and external keyboard and mouse, then these things will be a minor nuisance only if/when you are traveling.

The only other thing I did not like is how bloated the install of the Operating System came, but that is pretty standard. If I were to keep this laptop, I would install Windows 7 (or Windows 10 when it comes out) as Windows 8.1 is terribly slow on this machine. I haven't fully figured out if it's a Windows 8 problem or an MSI Prestige problem. Updates take hours, and it is just unnecessarily long.

My recommendation is get a good gaming mouse (wireless or not) and wipe the machine clean as soon as you get it with a purchased version of Windows.

Final verdict

There is a lot to like about this laptop but if you are a stickler on the touchpads (I have friends who are) then you are really going to be upset about this.The keyboard though is so nice and pleasant to use. To be honest, I think the keyboard in the MSI Prestige is far better than an Apple MacBook Pro.

The MSI Prestige is no weakling as a gaming laptop or as a business workstation. It will be able to keep up with most games today, and it will let you conduct business without any issue (as long as you're connected to a power source). Now, if you are looking for extreme power, you might want to look elsewhere.

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Essentially Speaking

I've often heard people tell me to be a "good" comedian; you need to be highly intellectual. Be specially good at the English language and know a lot about the world. I think that's a load of bo*****.
I wouldn't put myself in the "intellectual" box. I know nothing about a lot of things that some comics talk about. The future of politics. The history of politics. And most of all, politics. But I have timing, awareness, delivery, common sense, and most importantly - stage presence.
When I meet someone, a comic or not, and they try to sound more intelligent than they really are, I can not only see right through it, but I also want to knock their block off for being so pretentious.
So when I worked at my latest temp position, I got sat next to a lad with the hair style of what looked like a giant whipping of chocolate ice cream scooped on to his head. After four hours of sitting too close to this guy I couldn't help but notice his use of the English language and how he was trying his best to sound way more intelligent that he actually was. It started with the words "figuratively speaking" and "fundamentally" a fair few times to the boss. Fair enough. They always like a brown nose. But then the word "essentially" started to pop up, not just to the boss, but to everyone. Way too often.
I started to feel myself getting agitated when he started using "essentially speaking" at the beginning of every single sentence. I started to grind my teeth when he slipped in "essentially speaking" when it wasn't necessary. I then wanted to punch his ice cream head when he added "essentially" when it didn't even make any sense. "You can ring back essentially any time Mrs Thomas". What a douche.
By day five of having the word essentially burned into my brain, I decided I could either be sent down for 20 years for a very messy murder, or I could try and enjoy it. So I made the decision to count how many times he said "essentially" in each hour. I'm delighted to inform you the hour that got the most hits was between 1pm - 2pm and received TWENTY TWO essentially's. The twitching of my face at that point was a mixture of bemusement and pain.
The job, like all the others, quickly came to a close and with the perfect timing came the filming for a new comedy show for E4 ( out next year ) which was brilliant fun. So now I sit and apply for more temp jobs to make some extra money, praying the people I next work with won't send me more insane and hope the lunch is free. (Am I asking too much?)
So essentially, until next month, I hope you essentially stay well and happy... essentially speaking.

Review: Aorus X5

Introduction and design

The Aorus X5 should have no business being this powerful while being so light and thin. At just 22.9mm, or under an inch thick, the X5 has a pair of Nvidia GTX 965M chips hiding within its aluminum chassis, along with a 256GB solid-state drive (SSD) and a 1TB hard disk drive (HDD).

There's no question that this is a hardcore gaming machine, either. The Aorus X5 has a ton of gaming-specific features beyond just its powerful graphics capabilities and 2,880 x 1,620 15.6-inch screen. On the far right of the full-sized keyboard are five programmable macro keys. There's even the option to add a dedicated hardware encoder, which takes the strain of livestreaming and recording gameplay off of the CPU.

As far as its contemporaries, the Aorus X5 is on par with the Razer Blade 2015 regarding the total package. It falls short of the Blade in some performance areas, but just barely, while making up for those shortcomings elsewhere. Granted, the X5 falls short of the absolutely beastly Origin EON15-X in terms of pure performance, but for its price point – and the fact that it weighs nearly 2 pounds less – makes it a serious contender for anyone looking for a hardcore gaming laptop.

Unmistakably a gamer's laptop

High-performance laptops seem to be following the design examples set forth by high-performance automobiles, and the X5 is no exception. Its smooth lines give way to sharp points and angular vents that would look like right at home on a Lamborghini.

The black aluminum body is interrupted by several exhaust ports, which helps facilitate the heavy cooling necessary to run the X5. The side vents also continue the super-car feel, and the vents in the rear leave no question that there's a lot going on under the hood.

The lid comes to a slight point at its peak, with a small raised line running about an eighth of the way down. The Aorus logo, a brutalist design that would be right at home on the war machines in a futuristic anime, lights up when the laptop is on. When not powered up, however, the laptop logo is just as visible, thanks to being silver and a polished finish that reflects light like a mirror.

The full-size keyboard has low, high and off backlighting settings. The programmable macro keys run in a vertical line to the left of the keyboard, with the top key highlighted in one of five colors, depending on which set of macros is in use.

The keys themselves have a scissor-type mechanism with a nanometer-too-little travel to feel tactile/clicky. They're also pretty close together, to save space for the extra row of macro keys. Between the lack of satisfying travel and the tightness of the keys, I found my fingers tripping up more than usual when typing.

Around the matte-finish screen is a substantial bezel. The sides and bottom of the screen are half an inch or so from the edge of the lid, while the lip up on top is a bit smaller.

Just above the keyboard's number pad is the Aorus logo that also acts as a light up power button. The touchpad also has a version of the Aorus logo in low-contrast grey against the rest of the laptop's black aluminum, though Gigabyte explained my unit came with a prototype version of the pointing device.

The black interior is fairly smudge resistant, but keep a microfiber cloth on hand to keep your laptop free from finger- and handprints. The review version I tested came with a microfiber cloth included, which is a welcome touch.

Overall, this notebook looks 100% the part of a performance gaming laptop, and Aorus wants you to let everyone around you know it. There is no mistaking this laptop for a business class or casual machine – only gamers need apply.

One of these things is not like the other

One jarring experience with the Aorus X5 is using its proprietary software. The macros, performance gauges and command and control software all have a common theme that looks absolutely out of place among the smooth, clean lines of Windows 8.

Instead of trying to match the overall feel of the OS, Aorus's software tries to match itself to the design of the laptop itself. The result is an unattractive user interface (UI) that sticks out and ends up looking cheap despite its usefulness.

Specifications and performance

It's by no means the lightest computer out there, but for what's inside, the Aorus X5 is lighter than you might think. I was surprised when I first pulled it out of the box. At 2.5kg, or 5.5 pounds, the Aorus X5 is a full pound heavier than the Razer Blade 2015, but still feels lighter than it should. It's impressive given all the hardware the X5 has tucked inside. And it's just under an inch thick when closed, coming it at 0.9 inches, or 22.9mm.

The Origin EON15-X is 45% heavier, at 7.5 pounds (3.4kg), while the Razer Blade comes in at a full pound lighter. I never feel that the weight is an issue when carrying the Aorus X5 from seat to desk, or vice versa. But the fairly bulky power brick adds significantly to the strain on my shoulder when transporting the unit via laptop bag.

At 390 x 272 x 22.9mm, or 15.35 x 10.72 x 0.9 inches, the X5 is larger and thicker than the Blade, more closely resembling the EON15-X at 15.16 x 10.67 x 0.98 inches, or 358 x 271 x 24mm.

The specs on the Aorus X5 provided for testing are as follows:

Spec sheet

• CPU: 2.7GHz Intel Core i7-5700HQ (quad-core, 6MB cache, up to 3.5GHz with Turbo Boost)
• Graphics: 2 x Nvidia GeForce GTX 965M SLI (8GB GDDR5 VRAM)
• Memory: 8GB DDR3L (1,866 MHz)
• Screen: 15.6-inch 2,880 x 1,620 WQHD+ LCD with G-Sync
• Storage: M.2 265GB x 2 SSD (RAID 0), 1TB 7,200 rpm HDD
• Connectivity: Killer LAN, Intel AC 7265 802.11ac Wireless
• HD Webcam
• Weight: 5.51 lbs, 2.5kg
• Size: 15.35 x 10.72 x 0.9 inches, 390 x 272 x 22.9 mm (W x D x H)

As tested, the X5 costs $2,299 USD (about ₤1,478, AU$2,973). That's no small sum of money, but it's $100 cheaper than the Blade and has a ton of storage included. The X5 can be configured with up to 3.5TB of disk space, and there are three slots for SSDs, meaning you have the option of anywhere from 128 to 512GB of flash storage.

All that storage is good news in the world of increasingly enormous games. Grand Theft Auto 5 clocks in at over 60GB, which would decimate the Blade's storage but barely scratches the surface of the X5's hard disk space. As modern games increase in size and complexity, even the base X5 allows for some wiggle room.

When it comes to resolution, the X5 just barely lags behind the Blade. That's not to say there's anything wrong with the G-Sync enabled display. At 2,880 x 1,620, beyond-HD video looks simply incredible. YouTube's UHD offerings are presented in phenomenal clarity, and the color reproduction on the X5 is fantastic.

I find myself watching, and then rewatching, wildlife videos on YouTube, simply because they looked so amazing. The screen is also bright enough that I was able to use it in direct sunlight, and there's a light sensor above the screen that automatically adjusts brightness based on the ambient lighting.

The Blade's 3,200 x 1,800 screen manages to cram in more pixels, but the X5 can hook up to an external monitor for full 4K output. It also supports up to three monitors at 5,750 x 1,080 resolution, a function I was sadly unable to test.

Performance

The Aorus X5 doesn't just borrow its styling cues from modern super cars. When it comes to performance, half the fun is pushing the machine to its limits. I had zero issue editing photos in Lightroom or watching UHD content on YouTube. I even played around editing some 4K video in Premiere Pro, and the X5 handled it without so much as batting an eye.

When it came to gaming, I found myself loading up some slightly older games to see how far I could push the settings. On 2013's Tomb Raider reboot, turning the graphical settings to 11 presented nothing in the way of performance loss at 1080p. I could even turn on TressFX, which rendered Lara Croft's hair in a way that I didn't even realize I'd been missing this whole time. Now I'm loathe to go back.

All that horsepower comes with more than just a monetary price, however. Fan noise is definitely a problem. The computer has to work hard to pull all that heat away from the processors, and once the graphical intensity ramps up, so does the fan noise.

There are different, pre-programmed fan modes in the Command & Control software bundled in with the computer, but turning the fans to "quiet" produces a noticeable hit to performance, thanks to thermal throttling. Metro: Last Light, for example, on high settings crawled to a paltry 17 frames per second (fps).

Here's how the Aorus X5 handled our benchmarks:

Benchmarks

• 3DMark: Cloud Gate: 22,874; Sky Diver: 21,524; Fire Strike: 7,759
• Cinebench CPU: 709 points; Graphics: 116 fps
• PCMark 8 (Home Test): 3,776 points
• PCMark 8 Battery Life: 2 hours and 16 minutes
• Middle Earth: SoM (1080p, Ultra): 58 fps; (1080p, Low): 127 fps
• Metro: Last Light (1080p, Ultra): 34 fps; (1080p, Low): 103 fps

The X5 easily beats out the Blade, but falls short of absolute dominance in our benchmarks, unlike the Origin EON15-X. The faster processor and graphical boost afforded by the two GTX 965M in SLI, coupled with the slight reduction in resolution from the Blade, lets the X5 pull ahead. At full resolution, the X5 was able to run Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor at a surprising 39 fps.

G-Sync non-buff

The display is one of the first of its kind with Nvidia's G-Sync enabled. But turning on this option produced a huge drop in performance on nearly every test. The 3DMark benchmarks saw nearly a 50% drop with G-Sync enabled, but Shadow of Mordor and Metro: Last Light still produced a silky-smooth 60 fps at their lowest settings with the option checked.

While the benchmarks certainly suffered from running G-Sync, the practical differences of the flicker and ghosting-reducing technology were negligible. I had to really try to see a difference, and only really noticed when I ran the G-Sync Pendulum demo that came with the computer.

Sure, it's "portable"

Battery life for the Aorus X5 borders on the unacceptable. The PCMark 8 battery test results came in at 2 hours and 16 minutes, and anecdotally I was only just able to break the 2 hour mark with 8 extra minutes when streaming a movie with a dozen or so tabs running in the background. Working in Adobe Premiere on battery, with the screen at half brightness, sapped the juice in 1 hr 45 minutes.

You'll get better battery life out of the Origin EON15-X (2 hours and 8 minutes) and Razer Blade (3 hours and 43 minutes), both of which outlasted the Aorus X5. This means Gigabyte's SLI-toting machine is severely limited in portability, and isn't that the entire point of having a laptop in the first place?

Verdict

I'm going to have serious problems going back to sub-UHD after experiencing the Aorus X5. It does everything a gaming laptop should do, and it does it extremely well. The laptop presents itself as a machine for gamers by virtue of its angular design and its plentiful vents. The look is more an asterisk than an exclamation point, and Gigabyte did well by wrapping the X5 in a skin in which it clearly belongs.

While the high-powered graphics capabilities, phenomenal screen, and onboard streaming card make this a fantastic fit for high-powered gamers, its incessant fan noise and utterly awful battery life keeps the Aorus X5 from truly reaching greatness. It performs better than the Blade at slightly lower resolution, and its plentiful storage options more than make up for its lower pixel count. Beyond gaming performance, anyone who works with graphics and processing heavy applications would do well to add the Aorus X5 to their fleet.

We liked

Everything looks beautiful on the Aorus X5 screen. Photos are rendered in vivid color and clarity, and Ultra HD video runs smoothly and without issue. Older games can be pushed to their highest settings, and modern games run well and look beautiful when optimized with Nvidia's GeForce software.

The optional streaming hardware allowed me to play Super Meat Boy on my Twitch channel at a solid 720p, 60 fps, and the programmable macros were perfect for quick and effortless multi-button inputs. It's also a worthy status symbol: every single one of my friends wanted to see it in action.

We disliked

If you want to push the laptop at all, you're going to end up making a whole bunch of noise. The fans run hard and they run loud. Eliminating the fan noise through software is possible, but greatly diminishes the performance that makes the X5 so appealing.

The roughly 2-hour battery life is fine when you consider everything the X5 is doing. But as anyone who's lost themselves in an open world game can tell you, two hours can come and go in what feels like the blink of an eye.

Final verdict

The Aorus X5 is an excellent machine that offers tons of gamer-specific features beyond just its pretty screen and processing power. The bright, colorful display is adequately powered, and the X5 handles productivity applications as easily as gaming. Part of the fun for me was seeing just how great my older games looked with their settings and resolution turned to the max.

Sure, this laptop falls short of the Origin EON15-X in benchmarking, and the Razer Blade 2015 in resolution and battery. But the Killer LAN, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, onboard video encoder for streaming or recording and the comfortable amount of available storage makes the X5 a serious contender for any power gamer out there looking for a beastly machine to impress their friends.

The X5 is smack-dab in the middle of the EON-15X and the Blade 2015, falling just short of the former but eking by the latter. If you don't mind being a slave to power outlets, or are looking for a laptop that could replace an aging desktop, the Aorus X5 will more than satisfy your PC gaming needs.

Predicting His Son's Profession

A Tennessee country preacher had a teenage son, and as he neared the end of high school it was getting time the boy should give some thought to choosing a profession. Like many young men, the boy didn't really know what he wanted to do, and he didn't seem too concerned about it....

National minute's silence for Tunisia

A minute's silence will be held in the UK at 12:00 BST on Friday to remember the victims of the Tunisian beach attack, David Cameron announces.

The program adds fun features and effects to your webcam.

YouCam 5 provides all tools and features to get the most out of your webcam. The program adds funny features and effects to your webcam, which you can use when chatting with friends. It also provides some utilities to make your work better by enhancing presentations, video conferences or tutorials. Use YouCam for working, playing, and everything in between. It is the only webcam program you will need.

Key Features:

• Use new Face Login to access your PC and online sites like Facebook and Amazon;
• Play with 100s of fun features including Augmented Reality, avatars, interactive effects, gadgets and more;
• Record super smooth HD videos and enhance them with TrueTheater;
• Create effective presentations and tutorials with a host of productivity tools;
• Download unlimited FREE effects from DirectorZone.

Exclusive Deal: Get PowerDVD 15 Ultra for $84.95 and PowerDirector 13 Ultra for $59.99.

Spiky little sea 'monster' thrived a half billion years ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More than half a billion years ago, a peculiar little creature with rows of spikes on its back and delicate, feather-like front limbs to strain bits of food from the water thrived in the primordial seas of what is now China.

Find LinkedIn Profiles with Google Search

LinkedIn, the largest network of professionals in the world, is also the favorite hunting ground for recruiters and staffing agencies. Whether you are looking for a list of college students who are currently interning at Facebook or a head hunter building a pool of presumptive candidates, LinkedIn will not disappoint.

LinkedIn has a useful search function to help you find potential candidates but do you know that Google search can also help to find people on LinkedIn. Google indexes every public profile of LinkedIn and if you perform people search on LinkedIn via Google, you get a few additional features:

• While LinkedIn will only show 10 results per search query in one page, Google can return up to 100 results in one search results page.
• You can perform date-limited searches in Google and this is helpful when you are only looking for profiles that have been created or updated in a particular date range.
• You can automatically easily save your LinkedIn search results in a spreadsheet using the Google search Scraper for further analysis.

LinkedIn Scraper with Google Search

OK, let’s take a look at how we can search LinkedIn profiles with the help of Google. Say you are trying to find people for senior position who are based in New York area. Here’s how we’ll construct the Google search query.

1. Show LinkedIn profiles but exclude internal LinkedIn search pages:

site:linkedin.com/in/ OR site:linkedin.com/pub/ -intitle:profiles -inurl:"/dir"

2. Find LinkedIn profiles of people who have senior positions:

"head | vp | vice-president | senior | director" site:linkedin.com/in OR site:linkedin.com/pub -intitle:profiles -inurl:"/dir"

3. Find matching LinkedIn profiles who are based in NY (wild card search)

"Location * New York" "head | vp | senior | director" site:linkedin.com/in OR site:linkedin.com/pub -intitle:profiles -inurl:"/dir

You can further refine search results by adding the domain (like Sales & Marketing) or even the company name to limit your search to executives of a particular organization.

Find LinkedIn Profiles by Post Code

Google search supports number ranges meaning you can search pages that contain numbers within a specific range. For instance, if you say “apples 1900..2000″ on Google, it will show matching pages that contain any number before 1900 and 2000.

We can extend the same trick to perform LinkedIn people search on Google. To give you an example, the pin code of Delhi is something like 110049. So if you are looking for web developers in the Delhi area on LinkedIn, you search query would be something like:

"web developer" 110001..110099 site:linkedin.com/in

One more thing. A search query like site:linkedin.com will perform a global search. However, you can use country specific sub-domains in LinkedIn to only show candidates from a particular country. For instance, site:uk.linkedin.com/in web-developer will find LinkedIn profiles from UK while site:ca.linkedin.com/in will only look for candidates that have set thir region as Canada.

Also see: Stop broadcasting your LinkedIn profile updates

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The story, Find LinkedIn Profiles with Google Search, was originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal on 29/06/2015 under Google, LinkedIn, Internet.