I've got a few buddies who are testing out the Warhammer massively multiplayer game, and while it does seem interesting I just can't get too excited about yet another swords and sorcery MMO.... Thanks to Oder I found out that THQ is working on a game based on the Warhammer 40k universe. Now there's something I can get excited about! Be very interesting to see how they pull it off, as the 40k universe is so huge and far reaching.

Wondered when this was going to happen (again). Looks like AMD is cutting pricing on it's processors, in some cases by almost 50% to compete with Intel.(Thanks Dman.)

Seems a guy in Britian has invented himself a flying saucer that actually works. The US military is all over it of course, check out the comments from brits at the bottom of the page, thanks to Rune for the link.

Heading up to Wasaga Beach Paintball Adventures in two days for their season opener and annual charity day. Hoping the weather is a little better than it is today.

Actually it's been out for a while, and I've had it for a while, I just haven't had a chance to play it or post anything about it because I've been too darned busy. Blah. Stupid 12-14 hour work days!

Every so often something comes along that seems so incredibly useless, but is just so darned cool I have to mention it, and the Optimus keyboard is just such a thing. I'd really like to know what it's going to be worth when it comes out in late 2007, gotta be expensive considering that the three key version of it they have out already is listed at $160 USD on the manufacturer's website. Can you say "Ouch!"? I mean, it's neat. It's not THAT neat. Thanks for the link Lute.

Very much looking forward to getting my hot little hands on the Battlestations Midway demo... Which is apparently out on the Xbox 360 already. *le sigh* Looks like an exceptionally tasty game, and a look at things to come in the RTS/FPS shooter genre crossovers that are going to be the next big thing, I hope.

Got Supreme Commander and it's quite good so far. I've just been messing around in skirmish mode with a pile of AIs and big maps and I'll tell you.. I've found a game that can humble an 8800gtx. Humble it I tell you. About 30 minutes into the game when I've got thousands of units operating and I'm running dual monitors the thing is running at about 1-3 frames per second. Even the music is choppy. It's also using 900 megs of ram. I think i'll try a second video card and see what happens.

One thing that is pissing me off is the Cybran naval destroyers. It's sort of neat they they sprout legs and go marching across the land... Except when I've got a naval engagement on the other side of an island and I need my ships to scoot around it quickly and they... walk... very... slowly... across the damned island. Argh.

Well, as of yesterday I'm no longer carrying Linksys products, nor recomending them to anyone? Why? It seems that Linksys' technical support has gone quite downhill lately. I have a router a customer purchased. It's used. We offer a 30 day warranty on used items, but I know that Linksys has a longer warranty, so I called them to see if this particular router was under warranty. I ended up on hold waiting to talk to a tech for 1 hour and 35 minutes. When I finally talked to a tech (a nice fellow from India) and told him what the problem was, and what I had done to resolve it he agreed that it sounded like the router was dead, but couldn't tell me if it was out of warranty or not so he transfered me to customer service. I sat on hold some more. When I finally got someone in service, they informed me that they couldn't help me because the technician apparently hadn't logged what we'd talked about. They also couldn't tell me if it was under warranty or not, but they graciously offered to replace the router if I talked to a tech again. After another half hour on hold I was informed that the techs were too busy to talk to me and so they would call me back the next business day. A week passed. I called them back and again ended up on hold for a long time and went through basicallly the same thing. Again, they would call me back... And suprise! No call back. So I called them back and informed them what had happened again AGAIN they said they'd call me back the next day. What time would be best? 10am -> 6pm EST, but please don't call between 1 and 2 pm as I won't be in. No problem. Three days later they finally call... At 1:10. We talk everything over again, and after 45 minutes I'm informed that yes, it looks like I have a dead router (Duh!) but technical support can't do a return, I have to talk to customer service. So I sit on hold for another 30 minutes and get someone from service.. who then inform me that because I'm a reseller they can't do anything, I'll have to hang up and call back and talk to.. sales? Yes.... sales.. No problem. Call back, sit on hold for about 10 minutes and get someone in sales... Who informs me that... No, they don't do returns, who told you that? Oh. You have to talk to customer service. SO! Back to customer service and sitting on hold. Finally get someone who does the return and promises to email me the directions for the return. Double checked and yes, they have the right email address. It's been three days and no email.

Linksys, (Or technically I guess Cisco) you can just go die in a fire. I will never sell your products again if this is the sort of thing myself and my customers have to go through, and considering how much of your stuff we sell for you, you just lost a fair bit of business.

This sort of service seems to be the norm for most companies since they've started transfering their technical support to India and other countries in that area of the world rather than keeping them here in North America, or in Europe. I'm sick of it, but it seems to be accelerating.

Well, been playing the Supreme Commander single player demo a little bit and it's quite good. The whole dual monitor thing adds a new dimension to the game, as you have a satelite view (zoomable) on your second monitor that lets you keep an eye on the whole world at once, rather than just having a minimap or a toggleable larger map. The only problem with it is that I have to keep reminding myself it's there and I should be just looking at my second monitor. I have to figure out how to move my left view from the right view as well. Just over a week and the full version shall be mine!

I think that time lapse film is pretty neat, and here's one of the coolest videos I've ever seen using it. Hmmm. Clouds...

The Supreme Commander demo is out. *happy dance*. Downloading now, must install. This one's been a loooong time coming. The full retail product should be out in stores on the 21st of this month. Can't wait!

And I just can't WAIT to have to support all the new and glorious bugs that we find. And of course all the people trying to run it on ancient machines with system specs that you'd have problems running DOS 6.22 on. As I look around on this day as well, I see Vista advertisements litterally everywhere. Proto reports that some of the subway terminals in Toronto are pretty much wall to wall Windows Vista advertisments promising that the world will be a better place, and that the war in Iraq will be over by weeks end... you know, now that Vista is here. Ahhh well.

If you happen to be interested in doing a full install rather than an upgrade from a Windows Vista Upgrade version, check out this little article that our buddy VA_Killer sent in.

Grrrrrr. The World of Warcraft logon servers are down right now. I finally get home from work and all I want to do is sit down and play WoW for a bit. Oh well. At least it gave me a chance to finally get the review for Rainbow 6 Vegas done up. Hell of a good game.

Spent a few hours last night sitting in Winterspring on my Warrior killing monsters listening to my guildmates bitch and complain about over camped mobs and lag in outlands. I'll have to get out there in a few days and check it out once things calm down a little bit. Right now I'm sitting in a queue trying to get into the game. *sigh*

Just installing The Burning Crusade expansion pack now. Got myself the collectors edition and man.. there's a pile of cool stuff in there. Probably the best collector's edition pack I've ever seen. More later.

At long last it's almost time to play TBC... It seems like forever we've been waiting and saying.. "When the expansion comes out.." etc etc... and in a few short hours it'll be out. Dunno that I'll be playing it for a few days just because I hate trying to kill quest mobs when there's a few dozen other people trying for the same thing. Maybe I'll just level my warrior a little bit more then decide which toon I'm going to get to 70 so I can start end game raiding again with my good old Ravenous Guild. Still trying to talk Rune into coming and playing with us, but he doesn't understand the most excellent gamingness that is World of Warcraft.

Happy New Years everyone! :)

Just got a motherboard box in from ASUS. The slogan on the box? "Asus: Rock Solid, Heart Touching." Much laughter ensued.

Ever since we reviewed and loved the first game from Moonpod (Starscape) I've been looking eagerly forward to their next game, and it's finally out. I've only had time to clear a few rooms on the demo version of Mr. Robot (Domo Arigoto?) but it's a fun little puzzle game thus far. when I'm done my review on Vegas I plan on buying and finishing the whole thing. Check out the demo here. I hope Moonpod gets Warangels done soon, that's the game from them that I've really been looking forward to.

Watching Protocal play a little Company of Heros today and wow. There's another one I really have to get and play. Incredible detail for an RTS.

Beat the single play portion of Rainbow 6 Vegas today. What an excellent game.

And a very Merry Christmas to all of our readers from everyone here at FRAGtopia.

Merry Christmas Eve everyone! :)

A number of our rural folks in our area (Dufferin County, Ontario) have been getting calls from someone who claims they're calling from Bell Sympatico, and that high speed service is now avaliable in their area. After "checking" their phone number to confirm that the service is avaliable the caller gets all your information, including your credit card number and promises to send you out your equipment. They're not from Bell Canada, they're scammers and now they have your credit card number. If you get a similar call, please don't give out your information. Call Sympatico at 310-SURF to confirm that the offer is real. High speed is generally not avaliable in rural areas.

Bought Rainbow 6 Vegas the other day and man... That is a hell of a good game. Check out the little video clip I made this afternoon of a room entry. Be warned, the game has certainly earned it's M rating, lots of swearing and violence. Not for the kids.

Finished my article on my latest little upgrade, to the Geforce 8800GTX video card and Intel e6600 processor. Check out the benchmarks and other goodness here.

May the gaming gods have mercy upon us all should Rune ever get his hands on a Nintendo Wii system. The carnage would be the stuff of legend. For those of you who have seen Rune's strange gyrations and flailing about while he's gaming, you will understand. It's sort of like watching someone have a siezure, but funny.

A while back we did a review on Jet's n Guns, one of the funnest little side scrolling platform shooters I've ever played. I've been playing it a little bit again and I'm going to beat it, yet again. This time I think I'll beat it a few times, it's just that much fun. It's nice to take a break from complicated games that require thinking and just blow lots and lots of stuff up.

My name is now Mohmar Achmed Allim and I've decided to move to Iraq and go into the illegal arms business. Is sounds like way more fun than what I do right now, and with the US military apparently being stupid and not keeping track of the guns they hand out over there, I could set myself up quite nicely. GG guys. Shesh.

I've always been fascinated by history, and it always amazes me when I read about the pyramids just how they've lasted. Amazing what people could build over 4,000 years ago isn't it? And with precision we have problems matching even now.

Seems that people are wondering if EA Games may be having problems maintaining their good name. With what's been happening with the patches for Battlefield 2 and 2142 I can't say I'm suprised. Learn to not break your games. There seems to be a huge number of gamers giving up on Battlefield 2 and going back to playing Battlefield 1942/Desert Combat. I was playing Desert Combat on a customer's computer for a few minutes while testing a new video card the other day and it was fun. Really fun. I'd forgotten how much I enjoy that game. I'm reinstalling it over the holidays I think, getting a little bored with World of Warcraft all the time, at least until the expansion comes out. There's also the fact that they release their sports games on an annual basis, and frankly unless you skip a few years I can't really see any difference between them, so why bother buying the new version every year?

Yes, yes they have. If you have a business in Orangeville, and you wish to rent a portable sign, there's a tax (they don't call it a tax of course, but if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and has feathers, chances are pretty good it's a duck.) of $25 per month to have your sign out by the road. I don't really see the town's justification for the sign tax. It's my sign. I paid for it. But whatever. I'll pay the damned $25 per month ($300 per year!) to have my sign out by the road. This year I got my little renewal notice and I am to say the least..... annoyed. I gave the town by-law officer a call. (Nice guy by the way, I'm sure he's catching flak for this one.) It seems that the town council raised the fee from $300 per year to $900 per year. A 300% increase. THREE HUNDRED percent. I thought the $300 was too much, I'm certainly not going to pay $900 a year just to have a sign. They can kiss my shiny metal ass for this one. The fee isn't a huge deal if one has a sign that you're putting up for a few weeks for a sale or something but it really hurts when you're a small business and you have a sign out year round.

So I'm debating. I've written a letter to the editor of the local newspaper and I may just get around to going to a council meeting and complaining. Problem is that I don't live in town here, so I doubt they'd give a damn. They might just wind up with a big computers for sale sign on their front walkway come January 1st. It really depends on how mad I am by that time. So it looks like it's time to cross Richard Nixon off my list, and add Orangeville Town Council.

Been having a few people lately calling with lost data. Back your data up. Go get a flash drive or an external hard drive and back things up. Syncback is an awesome utility I've been using lately to back all my data up automatically every morning. Best of all, it's free. I'm using the commercial version and it was a wopping $40. There's no excuse to loose data.

Was nice to hear from my buddy !FT!Reverand the other day. He's been in China for quite some time and is apparently doing well and now married. Congrats man.

Thinking about buying that $2 extended warranty on your $10 watch battery from Radio Shed? I've been saying for many many years now that extended warranties are a scam for the most part. In fact, a company that was trying to get me into selling extended warranties at my store told me pretty much exactly that. It's pretty much free cash for the company selling them, especially since many customers seem to have problems getting the warranties honored if they are needed. Here's an article on extended warranties from folks over at the CBC, who are far smarter than I. (Or at least that's what the CRTC tells me.)

Dman from Synaptic Distortion (He helped out at the FRAGtopia parties... Well... He was drunk and on a bike at the first one, but dropped by to say hi. He did the webpage and camera work at the second party) has a new preview track up on his My Space page, check it out. He's got some great tunes

Yay! It sucks having trees come down on your power lines in a bad wind/ice storm, as happened all over the place here a few days ago. I was a little annoyed as I'd planned on spending my day off at home getting some work around here done, as well as some webdesign work I've been slogging away at. As it was I ended up just going to work for the day. On a positive note I've got the ASUS P5N32-Sli Premium mobo installed, with the very tasty e6600 Intel Core 2 Duo processor and I've got to admit, it's pretty damned impressive. I picked that particular Intel for a few different reasons: A) They're cheap. $360 compared to almost double that for the e6700, and four times that for the e6800. B) It's the same clock speed as my AMD Athlon 64 3800+, so it's easy to compare the same processors running a the same clock speeds. I'll be doing an article up on the whole thing soon. Thus far I'm liking the e6600. My machine is noticeably faster running Windows and my apps, and the benchmarks are up, even with the old 7800gt video card. The mysterious performance issues with the new test 8800gtx video card also seem to have gone the way of the dodo. That'll all be discussed in the article when I get it done.

Christmas time is almost here, and amid all the advertisments, greed and money grubbing there's always a few stories that really touch my heart. Larry Stewart is a fellow who really embodies the spirit of love and generosity that is what Christmas is about. Read this and make sure you watch the video that's embeded as well.

I've always found Jib Jab to be highly entertaining, and their animated works quite often hit close to home. One of my major complaints about our so called wonderfull "global economy" is that companies keep outsourcing to other countries. And realistically, why not? If your competition movies their operations to India, and they can pay people 1/10th what they're paying here, you really don't have much of a choice. The problem is of course that eventually we're going to loose so many jobs over here that no one here will be able to afford to buy the companies stuff. Everyone likes cheap Wal-Mart crap but I don't when it costs jobs here or in other developed countries. Also I end up talking to Sinjab from Pakistan every time I need tech support at almost any large company. HP, Dell, Sympatico, Microsoft... It's always the same. I called.... Hmmm. I think it was Dell... and complained a while back because I got hung up on by one of their techs when I told him that I was really having problems with his accent, and I needed to talk to someone who spoke english a little more clearly. Apparently that makes me a racist of some sort the fellow was quite upset and told me just that. I wasn't rude or anything, I just couldn't understand him. The lady from Dell was quite understanding and said that they've had many complaints, but usually from Americans, she was suprised a Canadian called to complain, we usually just put up with that sort of thing. *sigh* I think I'm going to just go buy a self sufficient island somewhere, where I don't have to deal with these sorts of things. The rest of the world can go to hell, and I'll be sitting on a beach drinking coconut rum and getting a tan.

Ohhhh. You can get a headcrab hat! All of the other Half Life playing nerds will bow before you, you will be their king. Small children and women on the hand will run screaming before you. Huh. It's good to the king. Thanks Goshwin. :)

Well, I've got a Core 2 Duo e6600 chip and board sitting on my desk. I'll get around to installing it and reporting back on it soon.... It feels odd, this is the first time in a loooong time I'll have an Intel chip in my rig. The last Intel I had was a Celeron 366 overclocked to 550 if that gives you any idea. After that I got me an original AMD Athlon 550 and overclocked it to over 750mhz and I've been an AMD man ever since. Sadly all things must fall by the wayside, and in this case it was AMD. Hopefully they get their act back together soon and get a chip out to compete with the Core 2's and I can get another AMD. I'm hoping that this mobo swap out might help out with the slow performance on the 8800GTX as well.

I always wondered how the l2extreme guys got away with running Lineage 2 MMPORG servers. Looks like they finally got their asses nailed.... Just a matter of time I guess. I figured that sooner or later NCsoft would get around to shutting them down. My friends who play on their servers will be upset. Thanks for the news Proto.

Yes, and it's not just the Chinese. It's oriental people in general, and their advertisements in specific. Highlights today from the ASUS website, with the launch of their new motherboard:

"Asus: Revolution of Motherboard!"

"Because the Crosshair supports all the latest CPUS, GPUS and came heavy-loaded with awesome gaming-centric features out of the box. You will sure be armed and ready for any gaming challenges."

"Remove the barrier, burst with performance!"

I won't be laughing when they finally get around to attacking Russia, or foreclosing on the USA, so I might as well get my chuckles in now I figure. One question though.. Why don't these huge tech companies have at least one white guy on staff, who just sits in a room and corrects the grammar on their press releases, websites and boxes?

Got myself a Geforce 8800GTX today and I'm thus far pretty disapointed. I managed to shoehorn this monster into my little case, and my performance in 3Dmark and Aquamark increased a tiny tiny bit over my venerable 7800GT. Seems other people are having the same problem, I'm out of ideas. I've emailed MSI to see what the problem might be. The card also seems to run quite hot.

Well, after my little rant yesterday Hitman sent me a message to inform me that the majority of the people standing in line for a week to get Playstation 3s are probably just going to sell them on Ebay. Most of the articles I've been reading seem to hold to that, with some estimates running as high as 90% of pre orders are people just buying it as an investment to sell it to fools at an insanely high mark up. I guess I can't blame the people standing in line. I mean, $2,000+ USD profit isn't bad money to make in less than a week. Heck I don't make that in a month of honest work. Rune informs me that Ebay is limiting PS3 sales on their online auction to try and put a ding in the privateering.

Thus far I don't know anyone personally who's gone out to buy a Playstation 3 on Ebay or another auction site, but if you did I'd love to talk to you and see just what the hell motivates that sort of insanity. Seriously. If you, or someone you know did this, send me an email or ICQ. I want to understand.

*Sigh* I realise that DICE and EA GAMES are evil, evil corporate monsters who haven't come up with anything really good since the original Battlefield 1942, but I'm tempted to purchase BF2142? Why? There's a few reasons. I've held off because I couldn't get the demo to run on my computer, but I've done a Windows reinstall since then so it'll probably work. I've heard nightmare stories about the various issues people have run into with the game. But quite a few of my buddies have it now. I might have to cave in tomorrow and purchase it, thereby giving my soul yet again to DICE and EA.

Might and Magic: Dark Messiah by the way is an excellent if somewhat short game if you're looking for a good first person shooter/RPG to play. The plot is great. They could have done quite a bit more with the ending and the story felt like it could have been expanded on more I was a little disapointed in that regard. Overall though not a bad game. I have to try the multiplayer and see how it is, so far Protocal isn't impressed with it.

I've always held out that video games don't cause violence, and that those who argue it does are clearly idiots and incapable of rational thinking. However, after reading about the Playstation 3 I realise they're right. Video game consoles at least, do lead to violence and camping in parking lots for long periods of time. (These people are also idiots.) I was tempted to wander over to my local EB Games and pitch my tent then spend the rest of the night singing Koom Ba Yah and loudly asking if this is the line up for the Xbox 360 release. Unlike the twits who camped out for days however, even I have too much of a life to do that sort of thing. Also consoles suck. I'm sorry, but it's a scientifically proven fact. Write me hate mail if you have to but my PC eats the Xbox 360 and PS3 for lunch. Sure the stats are impressive on it, but it's hard to spend $600 on something that just plays games and plays DVDs. To me it's money better spent to drop that money on a new video card.

Pappy sent me a link to the machine that beats up on the speedy little system I built him a few months back. This is just disturbing. I mean, wow. I'm seriously considering getting rid of my SLI 7800GTs (I think I have them sold) and getting a single X8800 GTX.

Looks like HP is buying boutique PC maker Voodoo PC. With Dell buying Alienware one has to wonder if it's going to be all big box for the boutique PC manufacturers from now on. Sort of wierd having those massive corporate sorts buying up gaming companies.

In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

To all the veterans out there, thank you. Thank you for all your sacrifices.

Illustration by Brian Fray, for the Guelph Tribune. Thanks to Dustbunny and Ddaywear.com for the image.

The Dominion Institute hass over 36,000 signatures on their petition to have a state funeral offered to the family of the last WWI veteran to pass away in Canada. If you're Canadian, and you haven't yet signed the petition, please do.

The Dominion Institute has a heck of a good idea, that the last World War I veteran to die in Canada should recieve a full state funeral of the sort that's usually reserved only for Prime Ministers and Governer Generals. There's three of them left allive, two who are 106 and one who's 105. They've collected almost 6,000 signatures in the last few days. If you're from Canada, sign it please. They also run the Memory Project, which keeps the memory of our veterans from all wars alive and teaches children about what they've done. Amazing website.

Yup, looks like someone at Microsoft was listening and they've clarified the licensing on Vista. "You may uninstall the software and install it on another device for your use. You may not do so to share this license between devices." Good. Now I may just buy it. That'll just be for the retail versions, I imagine the OEMs (which I always buy) will still have the same licensing as XP, where it can't be transfered to a new computer. Hopefully Microsoft still just gives you an unlock key when you call, as they do now with XP. Thanks for the link VA Killer!

Happy All Hallows' Eve (ex. Halloween) chilun!

In the spirit of Halloween we've got the following spooky link from Praetorian. It's a satelite photo the reveals ancient mysteries... Says Prae: "A strange image, previously undecipherable, locked in the hard bedrock of the earth: BEHOLD! AN INDIAN... LISTENING TO AN IPOD! A MESSAGE FOR THE FUTURE, BURIED MILLIONS OF YEARS IN THE PAST"

I'm a little concerned about Microsoft's licencing and how it's going to work for Windows Vista. I've no objections to purchasing an operating system. In fact, if you're pirating Windows you're a bad person. There's nothing wrong with spending a few hundred dollars on something you're going to be using for years to come. I bought XP Home almost five years ago and I've put new parts into my computer constantly. In fact I've put a new motherboard into my system close to a dozen times since then and had to reactive my Windows every time. I've been reading up a little bit and from the sounds of it, Microsoft will only allow me to reactive Vista once? Needless to say I'm not going to be repurchasing an operating system every few months. No way in hell. Hopefully they're not going to be jerks about this whole thing. There's an article here that Proto sent over that answers a few questions, but Microsoft's answers seem a little lacking in specifics. This line especially concerns me:

"Validation will fail if the software detects a substantially different hardware configuration.

At that point, the customer is able to use the one reassignment for the new device. If, after using its one reassignment right, a customer again exceeds the tolerance for updated components, the customer can purchase an additional license or seek remediation through Microsoft's support services."

Remediation through Microsoft's support services? Errrrrr......... I'm not shelling out a pile of cash on the off chance I might be able to argue with some guy in India and ask him to pretty please give me a new key.

Microsoft's licencing practices really do piss me off. I bought the software, it's mine. I should be able to load it on any one computer I choose. Technically I should have purchased a new XP everytime I totally rebuilt my computer I supose, but I should be able to transfer my licence. It's just not right.

Dman speculates that maybe this new Microsoft licencing will push PC enthusiests towards Linux and other operating systems. I guess we'll just have to see what happens and how they handle it.

Wierd to see AMD and ATI on the same page, and it's going to be really wierd to see an AMD branded video card. Thanks for the linkage Proto. :)

Got into The Burning Crusade and Supreme Commander betas last night. More excited about SC honestly, really really looking forward to that one.

Been talking to lots of people about the Battlefield 2142 demo. Every person I've talked to so far has had issues getting the damned thing working, including myself. I couldn't get the beta to work, and I can't get the demo to work either. I've had a huge number of solutions suggested to me, but here's one for DICE and EA Games: Stop releasing buggy games you jackasses. I'm not going to even bother buying a game if I can't get the demo to run. Betas I expect to have problems with, demos are supposed to inspire me and make me want to purchase a product. When there's this many problems with the demo I'm sure not going to spend my hard earned money.. Sorry.. WASTE my hard earned money on something that I have to screw around with to get it working. I'm waiting for Quake Wars. Unfortunately it's been pushed back, which makes baby Marauder cry.

Happy Anniversary to Planet Quake. Hard to believe it's been around for 10 years. That's a hell of a long time in the madness that's the internet, much less the gaming related section of said 'net.

You'd really think the Moslems in the world would find something good to get offended over rather than just an Apple store. Personally I find Mac owners offensive, but I'm not going to blow anyone up over it. Look over there guys! A woman with her face exposed! Thanks for the chuckles Runez0r.

Speaking of those wacky Moslems, I guess this fella was upset that the Pope implied in a speach that someone once said that the Moslems were violent and conquored various places... And so to show him differently he highjacked a plane. Should probably shoot a few nuns as well, just to drive the point home. Some people really are jackasses.

Dman sends in the coolest school presentation ever. This kid's got himself some mad techno skills. Wish we had stuff like this when I was in school, it's much cooler than vinegar volcanos.

Generally I think that it's pretty stupid to have your troops babysitting reporters when you're engaged in a war, but the United States seems to think it's a good idea. There's an interesting article here from a Time corespondent who lost has hand while reporting from Iraq and his struggle to recover from his injury.

My good buddy Killer sent in a link a few days ago about a prototype printer that has the potential to print 1,000 pages a minute. Now that's a fast inkjet.

I loved Oblivion. It's a darned good game. I especially enjoyed the missions from the Dark Brotherhood. Well! Looks like theres a huge third party expansion on the way. Can't wait. Thanks for the news Rune.

I've never liked the NDP. I don't like Jack Leighton. I think the man has good intentions, which would perhaps work out in a magic land run by pixies and powered by farie dust and candy canes. In the real world his sort of politics and ideals just lead to trouble all around and don't help anything. On that note I made a little "We support our troops" button and I'm putting it up here and on my business site as well. Screw you Jack.

Strangely I've been working on an article on classic gaming and Rune sends me a link to Midway Arcade Treasures. Nice. :)

Pappy's new system that it. Here's the tasty benchmarks, which are just stupidly fast... Basically double what our test rig gets.
3DMark 2003 - 40,111
3DMark 2005 - 15,259
3DMark 2006 - 10,019
Aquamark - 136,523

Hey, who the heck let a Canadian into space? These are the sorts of disasters that happen.

Protocal's been playing around with CT Profiles. Pretty neat little website if you're a World of Warcraft junkie and want to show off your paper doll. Here's my warlock. Ohhhh... Ahhhh.....

Audigy 4's don't have a digital out, except for use with their little proprietary breakout box. Swapped the Audigy 4 for original Audigy 1, problem solved. All hail the Audigy 1!

Sitting here in Pappy's basement. I was supposed to be here earlier yesterday but I ended up spending a good chunk of the day on the phone with Sympatico trying to get a customer's email issues worked out. After their dialup stoped working when Bell changed some settings and were unable to resolve the issue with the email I finally just gave up and headed south for two hours and ended up here with his new comp. Once we can get the darned digital output on the Soundblaster Audigy 4 working we should be good to go. Right now there's just headphones hooked up to it. Darned fancy speaker system.

I got myself a G15 keyboard from Logitech. I like the feel of it so far and the little LCD screen is very snazzy. Now to download some mods to make it do pretty things. By default it cycles through serveral different displays: Clock/Calendar, Performance monitor, and media display. I found that rather annoying so I disabled the cycling and put it to manual. We'll see what it can do a little later.

Death to Bell!

Happy seven years at Planet Quake to the one, the only, Pappy-R. :)

I'm installing Microsoft Windows Media Center edition on a PC here at work today for a customer. I've never been really impressed with this version of Windows, as I have yet to see anything you can't do with the normal Windows XP, but I have had reports of various peripherals and devices not working properly with it. I was entertained when it asked for "The disc labeled Windows XP Professional CD 2." XP Pro? Thought this was Media Centre. Stupid Microsoft.

Also on my list of people I'm unimpressed with today: The Ontario Government. Seems that the Ontario Gaming and Lottery Corporation is changing their name to Ontario Gaming and Lottery...... And it's going to cost between four and six MILLION dollars to "rebrand" themselves.... For what? Oh, and to top it all off the advertising company seems to be all buddy buddy with the Liberals. Suprise. *sigh* It's nice to know that the government are good and trustworthy caretakers of our money.

Waiting on some Corsair RAM from a supplier and I can finish assembling Pappy's new gaming box, which will basically be the computer version of a threesome with asian twins. Argh.

I can't believe this. This is possibly the stupiest thing I've ever seen... A gaming network card..... for $235 USD? Thanks for the link VA_Killer. I tried to contact these guys to inquire about purchasing one of these cards for testing, they never got back to me. Meh. No loss.

It's the long weekend and it's gloomy as hell outside. I was planning on going and playing paintball today but I rather suspect it's going to be a sit inside, play games and watch cartoons sort of day. Maybe I'll also get some writing done, as even the great Pappy-R has noted that I haven't been updating FRAGtopia lately.

Speaking of The Pappy, we were having a discussion about which games we're pumped about and both of us could agree on ET: Quake Wars and the oft mentioned lately Team Fortress 2, with QW coming in first. There's a new screenshot of the GDF "Badger" up on Planet Quake and it's looking hawt.. and alot like a humvee. Thus far I'm looking forward to trying both sides, but the human tanks very much appeal to me. Pappy seems to be rather big on the "kill all humans and assimilate them" idea. We'll see how it goes when the game actually comes out which I'm guessing will be in time for Christmas. (It's the most wonderfull time of the (gaming) year!)

Tried out EVE the other day and... Hmmmm... I dunno. It's interesting, but I can't see paying a monthly fee to play it, especially since as near as I can tell you can grief/steal loot/kill anyone you want. Me no likely. It is a very pretty game and I've had a desire to play good space shooters ever since the original Wing Commander graced my XT many many many moons ago. It really was an incredibly good looking game with amazing game play for back in the day. A few games have joined it's ranks of space shootery goodness in my heart, such as Freelancer and of course Freespace, once of the greatest games of the genre to ever come along. I picked up a copy of X3: Reunion last night on my way home so we'll have to see how it is.

I'm really begining to dislike Yahoo as they can't seem to do anything right. First their stupid toolbar kills hundreds of computers. (Admitedly this may have actually been caused by a Microsoft patch, but everyone else's crappy tool bars seemed to keep working.) Lately I've been noticing that my comp is slowing down for no apparent reason..... Other than Yahoo Messenger is using 80-90% of my CPU all the time. GG Yahoo. Time to see if I can get Trillian's Yahoo plug in working again. Oh. And the Yahoo search engine completely sucks. Three strikes and you're out.

Creative Labs isn't high on my list of favorite people either. I'm still getting crackling, static and poping on my X-Fi Platinum although it's gotten much better since they finally patched their drivers. I might just send the damned thing back in case it's a defect with the card itself. I dunno. I am greatly annoyed.

Blizzard has posted the new spells and talents for the Burning Crusade expansion pack and I'm quite intrigued. Some good looking stuff in there, especially for my Warlock. The Soulwell spell would save me one hell of a lot of time in raids handing out Healstones.

Have I mentioned before how hot and bothered I am about Team Fortress 2? I'm really liking the new cartoon look, it's very NOLF meets The Incredibles. Can't wait to see how it plays and what the HUD looks like.

A little while ago I downloaded the Call of Juarez single player demo and it was pretty darned good. I've got a thing for westerns and that whole era, and when you're playing you can practically feel the prarie wind on your face. Dimox informed me today that the multiplayer demo is out. I've downloaded it and can't wait to try it out!