Apparently I posted the wrong name of "Angel" the wrestling manager from Orangeville. (If that bothers you, please read the disclaimer below) Her name is in fact "Lauren Williams" and Not "Melissa Williams". Melissa was another girl who was in the same age group as myself and Carmen Williams and was no relation to the two sisters (Carmen & Lauren) and I goofed on the first name...after all it's been a hell of a long time since I was in school and I have a hard enough time remember my postal code let alone remember names :) Also I've been advised to, quote "maybe do a little research on the ever so hard things like VAL Venis' real name" (Shawn Morley) and maybe mention the unknowns like Damian and Brandon...whoever they happen to be. Well now they've been mentioned and the name has been corrected. As I said before I'm not a wrestling fan but perhaps Ontario readers will find that info about Orangeville locals & wrestling amusing and maybe want to do a search about them if they are interested in researching them further.

Gotta love sweet tweak guides, this great site called speedguide.net is all about tweaking win2k as well as other versions of windows. Check it out!

More on tweaking, check out these explorer tweaks!

The Xbox preview has been done, check out all the details on xbox.com which has streaming video clips etc. Including a marketing gimic with Bill Gates & "The Rock" from the WWF. Apparently the Xbox (due out this fall) will come with some very impressive features for a console including a 733mhz CPU, 64MB Ram, 1920x1024 resolution /w 250mhz custom nvidia chipset, DVD movie playback (2-5x DVD) but Remote control accessory required, 3D Audio, 8GB HDD, Broadband Enabled, 4USB game ports. More than 150 companies have announced their intent to publish Xbox games, including Sierra, Capcom, Midway, Konami, Activision, Eidos, Red Storm, etc.

Are you a linux user who still needs windows in order to run certain applications? Win4Lin may be your answer! It allows you to run windows in a linux environment. Unfortunately directX doesn't work properly in it and neither does Netbios (windows file/printer sharing) however it is said to often run without performance problems.

For those of you who don't know about this yet, you may make use of the Symantec AntiVirus Research Center's Online Encyclopedia which contains information on all the known viruses included with Symantecs Norton Antivirus Utility.

I have more stuff to post but I'll save it for a time when my connection is a little more stable and not slow as shit. If my @home account drops offline one more time today...I'm gonna lose it! I need to go out any buy me an AWP to teach some people a lesson or two.

While the above header might sound like a lead in for some of that wierd Japanese anime porn, it's not. It's actually what I'm up to these days. A few new items to tell you all about.

First off: I did up an interview with Randomlight & Darklight, the makers of Outworld. This game is starting to look pretty decent, and the dev team seem like really nice guys. (Hell, they even deigned to email me back. Hehh....) Check it out, and then go download their new Alpha Build. It even supports Windows 2000 apparently. (Woot!)

Second off: Got a review posted of the new Logitech iFeel optical mouse. When I first saw this thing I wasn't quite sure what I was looking at, but it's actually a damned nice mouse. Kudos to the engineers over at Logitech.

Third off: (Third off?) I'm working on a review for a few new items. The first is Sheep, (See, I told you sheep would be in here somwhere!) the second is the new Quake III: Team Arena addon.

Everyone has to stop picking on me on the Counter-Strike server. :) It looks bad when the admin who's pinging 30 gets completely owned by HPBs. GAH! Even Yrunsob is laying the beats on me. *sob*

Well, we're committed now. No, I don't mean that the Asylum finally caught up with us. (You won't tell them where we are, will you? Ok. Good.) I mean that FRAGtopia 2(001) is underway again after the New Year break. Letters around going out to potential sponsors, the Arena (Same venue as last year) has been rented, and we're plotting away. This year's party is going to be a lot of fun.

Speaking of the party, the nice peeps over at Sierra shipped us a pile of Empire Earth calendars to give away. Pretty cool of them, and wow. I was only talking to the guy a few days before they arrived. Thanks Adam, you speedy little devil you.

Now, here's some stuff I've been hoarding for weeks now.

Thanks to Dragon for sending me "Kill me Camper, one more time." a little Counter-Strike tune that was a hit at the New Year's Eve LAN. Hah.

J_Marrie just sent me a little cartoon regarding a short password that just about killed me. One for your cubical wall @ work! :)

Thanks to Wienerboy Dave for sending me a few pics. First off, you just KNOW your day is off to a truly rotten start when this happens. Also, he apparently finds my webcam amusing.

Rune asked last night what he could do to help me out. I asked him to bring me the head of John Romero. On a silver platter. Not just any cheap old metal platter, a silver one. Thanks man, you made my day. I was feeling a little bummed out untill I got that. :))

Just taking a look at the news archives. OMFG. In the last 14 months we're written damned near 800,000 characters of text just in the news alone, never mind anything else. Wow. That's more typing than I ever signed up for. :)

Hast thou viewed the 'Mechcommander 2 trailer yet? NO? Whats the matter wi' you boy? Get it here. Get it now. Yes. Right now. It's worth it. I really enjoyed the original 'Mech Commander, and this one is looking both hot and tasty.

Anyhows, I really have to get off my ass and get to work. More news later.

Marauder out.

I had a lot of people questioning me about my earlier post today with the S3 sticker. It appears that the paintball team on the cover are very well known by hardcore paintball players. Here's a clip of the chat conversation I had when I was gathering more info on the sticker:

[22:40] <Dopper> Mbush_S3_Magazine_Cover.jpg <----who is that?
[22:41] <Rasta> thats marty bush
[22:41] <Rasta> u should recognize
[22:42] <ANIMOSITIE> who is marty bush
[22:42] <smoke> top player on the #1 ranked team in the world
[22:43] <Golb|Work> what's his tribes nick?
[22:43] <Rasta> bunger
[22:43] <smoke> bunger
[22:43] <smoke> haha
[22:43] <ANIMOSITIE> cool, well whoever gave him that sticker, nice job
[22:43] <Golb|Work> hehe, it's a cool sticker
[22:43] <Rasta> yes it is
[22:43] <Rasta> fucking dope ass mag cover 2
[22:44] <Rasta> hes from reno dopp
[22:44] <Dopper> nice
[22:44] <Golb|Work> It's S3s paintball division =)
[22:44] <ANIMOSITIE> thats so cool though
[22:44] <Rasta> yes it is
[22:44] <Dopper> yah it owns

So there you have it!

Just found out the other names of the Orangeville wrestlers in the WWF. The first wrestler is "Edge" (real name Adam Copeland), which I already mentioned. The 2nd wrestlers name is "Christian" (real name Jason Reso). The third WWF wrestler is actually from Markham, ON and not Orangeville and he goes by the name "Valvenis" (real name unknown).

You may not realize it but Orangeville has a history of wrestlers. The WWF has a number of wrestlers from Orangeville including: "Edge" as well as two other guys that I don't know thier names because I don't watch wrestling. I'll find out thier names from my brother and post them later. The newest person introduced into the wrestling world from Orangeville who is both a manager of HWF (Hardcore Wrestling Federation) and the IWF (International Wrestling Federation) is Angel! I remember her being a shy, quiet, cute little "goody, goody" catholic girl I went to school with. It appears she's grown up into a busty badass ballbreaking wrestling manager. Some of you Orangevillians may better know her as "Melissa Williams"(<----error, it's really Lauren Williams...corrected 01/12/01), sister to one of my old school chums, "Carman Williams". I guess it really is a small world after all :)

The "legendary" =S3= tribe had some stickers made up with thier clan tag and even made it onto the front cover of a paintball magazine. Tribes fans may want to checkout some of the pics from the supposed "tribes2 release party" where many members from =S3=, insane style, & friends attended since T2 was originally scheduled to be released for Christmas.

I've had a number of people send me a link to this flash clip displaying the effects of drinking and driving. Check it out.

I almost forgot to congradulate Red Leader and his clan Zug for thier Counter-Strike win at the Quebec CPL qualifiers. Good job guys! :)

Good morning everyone. Got a wack of news to pass on today.

First off, like everyone else I like to make predictions and resolutions for New Years. My resolution this year is to improve my gaming and to stop getting the crap kicked out of me on every server I visit. To this end I have vowed to spend less time doing usless things like eating, sleeping, conversing with people or spending time with my family. Instead I will attempt to spend every waking moment on my computer gaming. A nobel and worthy goal I think.

Predicions: Unlike some people, who predict good fortune and luck I prefer to cast a pale gloomy, Tbuffer/gigapixel type of shadow over the whole seeing into the future thing. After all: bad things make good press, right? Therefore, here are my predictions: 3Dfx will not recover from their finanical crisis. nVidia graphics will start to use their new 3Dfx technology and become blurry (On the positive side, if you are REALLY drunk at a LAN, everything will look normal. It's the brand new "beerclarity" technology. (tm). A asteroid will hit the earth and we'll all die. John Romero sadly will survive the ecological disaster and make more games.

There. If that don't getcha down (And make you so sad you can't hit Marauder in games!) I don't know what will. On wi' th' news.

I've been playing Sheep. Yes. Sheep. I don't know whether I like it or not. Praetorian and Kingpin both gave it about 30 seconds and gave up. It's kinda cute but it's certainly not as cool as Lemmings was, which was the developers stated goal. So far the coolest thing about the entire game is killing the fluffy little bastards in horrible, horrible acts of violence. Oh, and the web site just plain rocks. The intro movie features an anime (kinda) lookin' chick in a miniskirt dancing at a club with a bunch of sheep....... Now, I'm a 90's kinda guy, and people's sexual preferances are their own business... But this disturbs me in ways I just can't describe. More on this bizzare little game later.

Got a Counter-Strike server up and running. FRAGtopia Just 4 Fun. 209.135.104.57. Check it out. Guys from our local area were pinging 30-35 on it. Woot. Interestingly enough, Rune was around 130. Rogers cable just took over in our area, and they've been playing with their routing. It used to be that local guys pinged around 70-80 to the server, and guys in Rune's area (Toronto area) would ping 20-30, despite the fact that they are 60 miles away. I'm glad it works this way, as it's very frustrating being 1 km from your own server and having pings like that.... Anyhows, server is up, enjoy.

A big welcome to a new hosted site, the Space Banditos. (Over 1 million Mexicans served.) heh. :) Nice looking site guys.

I've been meaning to post about this one for quite some time. One of my favorite games of all time was Star Control 2. The original Star Control was decent, and alot of fun... But the second one (Released in.. Yesh... 1992 I guess was when I played it.) was just about perfect. Strategy, adventure, action and combat. The graphics and music were just pheominal. It was just a truly excellent game, especially for it's time. The third game in the series totally sucked. Horrendous waste of time and money. Anyhow, the reason I'm mentioning this is two fold.

First off, the Time Warp Project is attempting to bring Star Control 2 back with modern graphics and technology. Looking damned good. Check out thier site, and download the game. It's free. (Note that I was never able to get it working on my W2K box, but apparently it runs great on Win9x machines.)

Secondly, take a look at Outworld. It's a game in development by a couple guys from South Africa that's starting to look pretty spiffy. The designer lists SC2 as one of his main influances. We'll have an interview up with these guys soon as well. They're also hosting with us. I like what they're doing, and damn it, they're old site was just LOADED with popups from their free host. Gah. Now there is only one popup from their forwarding service. :)

Allrighty, ever wondered just what those guys who work in the gaming industry look like? Wonder no longer. Just look here. I'm trying to get my cam up here. After all, I'm an r33td00d, right? :)

I think I've mentioned Electric Playground before, but I'm mentioning them again. News, reviews and a show that's just funny as hell. With on-line viewable episodes. Woot! These guys just kill me. Thanks Darksiege. :)

Well, seems that Everquest has caused it's first death that I've heard of. Read about it here. I'll have to start looking around and see how many people are going to start crying out for the banning of Evercrack and the violence it causes.

And it seems that the Lord of Darkness is up to his usual Shenanigans! (Darn that wacky infernal ruler of hell!) Check it out over at Daily Radar.

Speaking of Daily Gadar, does it seem to anyone else that they've gotten a lot less lame since some of the PCXL staffers joined their dark side? Or is it just me?

Rune's been too busy to post his own news lately, so he's just been forwarding it all to me for posting. The links are his, the texts is mine. So here it is, don't blame Rune for the misuse of his linkage.

Seemingly just to prove that there truly is no God, Cyrix is back. Gah. I thought they'd locked them up somewhere small and hot (You know, like HELL... Or maybe Hamilton.) and thrown away the key. Despite several technological advances in their chip manufacturing proccess, they still suck ass. Sur-freakin-prize.

Hehe. The irrepressably insane Jeff-K has posted an interview with the much maligned and picked upon Levelord of Ritual Entertainment.

If only I hadn't smashed the hell out of my Palm Pilot one horrifying morning. (Well, ok, so I just laughed... But it was horrifying deep inside my mind somewhere. You know, in the place where you keep memories of your 3rd grade teacher and such.) I could spend $300 US MORE on the damned thing and make it into a stupid looking little robot with three rubber wheels, and not a single hard point for missile or chaingun mounting to be found. Now, I may just be a little odd... But what good exactly is a robot you can't mount any firearms or explosives onto? Shesh. People don't think when they design these things.

Evilnet has joined in on the joy of destuction! They rang in the New Yera in style. With a bunch of old computers and a Sledge Hammer. Woot to them.

Good news from BBnet. nVidia is actually going to be doing something usefull with the 3Dfx technology. (Damn it! There goes predicition #2 right down the toilet.) Read about it here. In other BBnet news, this guy is getting an invite to our next LAN party. Might be handy to have around on an allnighter.

Everyone I assume knows about Fatal7ty? He's the #1 Quake III player in the world today. He also went to play Paintball. Heh. I wouldn't stand a chance against him on Q3TOURNEY4, but I bet I could make him suck it down out in the woods.... Somehow I just imagine this guy running around a speedball field trying frantically to find the Red Armor and Mega Health. :)

Everyone and his brotha are trying to download these new nVidia reference drivers, so good luck getting on the site.. But if you wanna try, here it is. Rune noticed a real improvement in his frame rates, I did not.

Maxtor has put out a Firewire harddrive that apparently dramatically increases transfer rates. Taconuts did a little poking into the guts of the thing and had some very interesting findings.

More news in a bit.

Marauder out. (*gasp*)

I was just recruited into a counter-strike clan last night called shiningforce (http://shiningforce.clanhappy.com/) It consists of a bunch of the guys I used to play quake1 with in 1997. We had a big "reunion" on IRC last night with a bunch of guys I haven't seen or heard from in years. I thought it was just really strange how all of a sudden I got in contact with all these guys I haven't heard from in ages, all in one night...yes I got word from my buddy TankAbbot who is back from the army! W00T!

For those of you who are ICQ fans, I found this neat little mp3 about ICQ. It's a techno type tune with all the icq sounds and some brief lyrics.

Linux gurus out there, Torvalds has released the long-awaited Linux 2.4.0 kernel.

Apparently Microsoft released a new whistler build that will help Redmond crack the whip on software pirates by creating a personal product identification code that is attached to the machine on which the OS is installed.

Microsoft gives first demonstration of the "X-box", said to be the most powerful console on the market, with an Intel Corp processor, a hard drive and a built-in modem for high-speed Internet access. The X-box is due out next fall. Apparently they're recruiting beta-testers for the X-box but unfortunately testers must be 13 or older and live in the Seattle area. They don't get paid $$$ but they do get "free stuff".

Intel has released an 800MHz Celeron processor with a faster bus that should give up to a 20% performance boost for low-cost PCs. It's the first Celeron chip with a 100MHz front side bus.

Found a site that displays Quake3 Arena Test with Motion Blur Technology by an old video card company once known as 3dfx Interactive.

Well. Seems that the guys at Red Storm Entertainment are keeping something from us. In order to reach their tech support page, you have to enter either your birthdate or the secret password. What the heck is up with this? Just to fool them, and because I had left my Batman decoder ring in my other cape, I entered a random birthdate and..... <looks both ways> Guess what? It let me in anyhows. Hah. They think they're so darned smart. :)

Kingpin sent me over a screenshot from Crimson Skies a while ago... Obviously gone horribly wrong. Take a boo. :) I think KP needs to knock off the crack while flying. People get hurt that way!

Good news everyone! I finally found a guy even more sarcastic and bitter than myself. Seanbaby. I was reading through his site the other day and man.... I could love this guy. Just as funny as Old Man Murray.

Have you ever wondered why you just can't get ahead in life? Never have any luck picking up game girls? Why you get owned constantly and get called a l00zer? Perhaps the problem lies in the fact that you are not l33t enough? Thanks to Yrunsob for sending in The Guide To Being l33t! I notice that he was doing much better than usual at the LAN this weekend, so perhaps he has taken the guide to heart and learned the ways of l33tness. :)

Today for your reading pleasure we have a virtual smorgasboard (Yeah, I know it's speeled wrong. :) of news and just some generally amuzing stuff.

First off, thanks to everyone who attended the New Year's Eve FRAGtopia lite. The party started at noon on Dec 31/2000 and ran untill 3:00pm Jan 1/2001. Most of us old guys took off about 3:00am however, and came back around 11:00am after a few hours of sleep. Just can't take that much radiation without some nap time. Red Leader, Protacal-X & Dragon were up to their regular Counter-Strike ownage, and Dopper was the Quake III mofo, as per usual. Regretably he got one too many kills and Rune was forced to strangle him. Always a tragedy when that sort of thing happens. :) Nolman just couldn't take the pace, and was sleeping by the time we arrived back in the morning. Sorry for the crappy quality on the pics, I forgot to get the real camera, so I was forced to rely on my web cam. A good time was had by all, and hey, what a way to ring in the new year!

I've been playing Mechwarrior 4 multiplayer quite a bit lately, and Microsoft has FINALLY released a new map called Lake Front. Download it here. I'm really hoping that they'll be releasing a map editor. The maps really aren't all that huge, and it's starting to get damned boring playing the same maps over and over. It'd be really nice to get a pile of user created maps going on. Naturally, I have my doubts about the Evil Empire ever releasing editing tools for their games to the unwashed masses, but you never know.

J_Marrie, my lovely wife sent me this image. Hah! She remembered my news post from so many months ago where I made fun of mastercard. :)

From Dopper comes news of a VERY cool emulator.... A Dreamcast Emulator... Hmmmmmmmm... Tasty, and it's looking really sweet. Just amazing what you can do with your PC these days eh?

I've been wondering lately what AMD had done with their warehouses full of old K6-2 proccessors that were left over from the great Duron takeover of 2000. Thanks to d0zer I wonder no longer.

For those of you who live under really heavy rocks the world's coolest comic, Penny-Arcade has a new site. Personally I liked the old site better. New site just looks like another new site. It's pretty damned slick, but.. Eh... Perhaps it will grow on me, like ummm. something or other fungus related.

3D Action Planet has done a little article on the 10 worse moments in gaming. I'm sure you personally have experianced at LEAST a few of these yourself. If not.. Well... You don't play games obviously. :)

Praetorian, the mystery man from 3FS has promised his girlfriend that after his new hard drive, that'll be "it" with computer stuff. Needless to say, it sounds like something you repeat over and over to youself, trying to be convincing... But you know it's just all a lie. "I'll only by this one last hard drive".... "One more smoke and that's it....." etc etc. Next news post to his GF will be "After this next stick of RAM, that'll be it!", then "After this new NV 20, that'll definately be it! Honest!" Give it up man. :)

More news in a bit.

Marauder out.

It's 1:45 and just like the energizer bunny, we're stiiiiiilll LANing! Getting damned tired, and tired of getting massacured in every game known to man. I even lost a round of solitaire! Argh!

Been playing alot of CS, UT and a little Quake III as well. LANs good. Interweb bad.

Marauder out.. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Speedy3D has decided to bitch and rant about stability issues with the Althon processors. Marauder swears by his and he's actually managed to finally get Windows 2000 running on it somehow. In other AMD related news, Extreme Overclocking has done a nice writeup comparing the Duron (the Athlon's little brother) with the Celeron (the Pentium III's little brother). Click here to check it out and see just whose daddy can beat up whos. Thanks go out to hardocp for this one.

Some guys over at the 3DGPU forum have hopped on the bandwagon with those rumours about the next GeForce drivers having HSR in them (or Hidden Surface Removal for those not in the know). Nvidia has already denied this of course but it doesn't seem to stop people from talking about it. I wouldn't think that it would make a whole lot of sense for Nvidia to enable this in their drivers seeing as how this is supposed to be a major hardware feature of their next upcoming card (a.k.a. the NV20). Those wacky folks over at Hypothermia have figured out a way to water-cool a Geforce card! Definately not for the faint of heart.

A little bit of good news for 3dfx owners! Voodoo Extreme fired off an e-mail regarding future tech support and driver support for 3dfx cards now that 3dfx is going out of business. It seems that 3dfx will stilling be offering tech support for their products up until at least Febuary 12 2001. Hopefully they will come up with a way to continue to offer support after that.

Marauder and Kingpin have been checking out the latest cheating mods in an attempt to see exactly how people are trying to ruin the Counter-Strike experience and as a follow-up to Marauder's article on cheating in multiplayer games (which you can read here). (hmm... at least they say it's for experimental purposes......heyyyy....) Remarkably, Kingpin actually sucks worse when he's cheating. It's good to see that people are coming out with anti-cheat mods... It's really funny to see someone who thinks he's invisible get ow3d by someone who's using an anti-cheat mod. See Marauder's post of the other day on Nextwish for more info on Counter Strike anti-cheats.

By the way, mad props to Praetorian for his 3 finger salute web comic... some seriously funny shiznet... check it out here

And yes, we are still LANing... :-) We're gonna be here until we drop (hopefully by sometime today) Stay tuned for pictures of a drunken Marauder... In case you missed the earlier webcam linkage you can check it out here.