Computers were once used merely for… well, computing stuff. Needless to say, though, it didn’t take very long for them to evolve into machines that are capable of a diverse set of functions and applications, including communication, marketing and business and even entertainment. Let’s focus on the latter aspect because it’s more fun.

PCs are now being used by a huge amount of people for procrastination purposes–particularly online gaming. In fact, gamers and enthusiasts have been customizing or buying their own custom PCs for years with high-end, powerful components in order to provide the best gaming experience. Without good components and an overall gaming-bred PC, the quality of the game, including graphics display, sound system and real-time action, is diminished in terrifying and frustrating degrees.

Unfortunately, it is not too uncommon for a gamer to only be familiar with online games and not know anything about software components and computer parts that enable them to operate the machine. To guide you in building the ultimate gaming machine for 2012, here are some good components you should put on your wish list for a nice and reasonably affordable gaming PC:

For the casing, a RaidMax Smilodon Extreme is an ideal choice. Affordable steel mid-tower desktop PC casing with a foldout motherboard panel makes installation of the interior parts effortless. It also comes armed with a 500-watt rated power supply.

For the motherboard, one of the best boards for 2012 is the Z68 and Gen3. These particular motherboards not only support PCI-e 3.0 but they are also designed to be compatible with Ivy Bridge processor. Moreover, the Intel Z68 chipset also renders a good balance between performance and expansion capabilities.

For the processor, you could go for an Intel Core i3-2120. The CPU is less of a critical factor in gaming compared to the graphics card, and a dual core Core i3 is sufficient for most basic gaming setups. With this in mind, the Intel Core i3-2120 provides an exceptional choice with high performance yet with a cheap dual core attribute. The processor may be incapable of being unlocked for overclocking, yet this should not be a huge deal and is to be expected considering the price point it is included in.
 Video cards are of crucial importance when it comes to online gaming. You should consider a Sapphire Radeon HD 6770 1GB. The video card focuses on cost-efficiency yet is still able to render substantial graphics support with up to 1920 x 1080. If looking to play demanding games, such as CrossFire, you will have to consider installing a second video card in addition to an upgrade in power supply as well.

In terms of memory capacity, a G.SKILL 8GB PC3-12800 DDR3 Kit is a great buy for gaming needs. Though it might be a more economical choice to get the 4GB memory, various online games can now perform better from the additional storage capacity. Thus, it may be gaming-wise to select the 8GB instead. The memory modules render a speedy 1600 MHz rating that is impressive for gaming performance or attempting to perform slight overclocking.

For the hard drive, a Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 750GB SATA drive is a roomy choice on the cheap.

As a web developer I frequently use Firefox extensions to increase my productivity.  From getting the pixel color of an image to checking the width of an advertisement, Firefox has an extension for anything you need to accomplish.  Here’s a list of very useful Firefox extensions for web designers.

Measure it

This is a very useful plugin that’s used to measure the height and width of an object in pixels.  Just click the ruler to give you an on screen ruler.

ColorZilla

Do you ever wonder what color a certain pixel is?  Do you want to match an advertisement to your content?  ColorZilla will give the hex code for any pixel on your screen.

SEOquake

This extension is a must have for webmasters that are link building.  It analyzes the quality of a page by getting the keyword density, backlinks, Facebook likes, and PR among many other things.  You can also have custom Google and Yahoo searches to sort Google results by things like page rank.
IETab

A lot of websites look different in Firefoxcompared to IE.  With IEtab you can open a tab in Firefox that is rendered by the Internet Explorer engine.

Web Developer

This is a very useful extension for CSS editing done within Firefox.  It has many useful features and is a must have for web designers.

LifeHTTPHeaders

This extension allows you to see the data that is being requested and sent using HTTP headers.  You can also edit it on the fly without resubmitting a form.

UserAgentSwitcher

This allows you to test PHP user agent code.  You can change your user agent to that of any browser with this useful extension.

I started using WordPress software for blogging.  I soon grew to realize it was meant for so much more than that.  After developing a plugin called comment karma I grew familiar with how WordPress functioned.  I began to picture many other ways in which this powerful CMS could be utilized for websites other than blogging.

I started a WordPress theme for my car website and what I ended up with looked nothing like WordPress.  When it was finished it looked like a static website, you couldn’t even tell it used a CMS.  There were no daily posts; there was only listing of different model cars.  Not one thing resembled what a typical blog looks like.  That got me thinking, what else could WordPress be used for?

I figured you could also modify the comments system to create a forum as well.  I Googled and sure enough, there were plugins available to turn your blog into a forum.  With a little modification and the right plugins, WordPress can do just about anything.

Since then I’ve been using WordPress on literally all my websites.  It’s so flexible, it would almost be a mistake not to.  With all the plugins you can download or make for it, there’s pretty much a plugin for anything.  There’s also a large community backing for assistance if you need it.  Until a better CMS comes out, I’ll definitely be using WordPress for all of my sites in the future.