Just got back from another wonderful day at Wasaga Paintball. I love that place, I really really do. :)

IGN posted a little preview of the upcoming Battlefield 2 expansion, Special Ops. Can't wait. :)

Paintball is good. Wasaga Beach Paintball Adventure is the best. In about three weeks Kingpin and I will be the Generals for Canada's biggest paintball event, Operation Halo. Basically the entire 70 acres at WBPA will be open as one big field and our two armies will be going at it for the whole day. It's going to be awesome. Last year we had something like 600 people out for the game and it was a total riot. Interested? It's Saturday August the 20th. Check out all the details here.

It's always funny when Microsoft screws something up. Duh. That didn't take long. Thanks Dman and Madhatress.

I know it's cruel, not nice and inhumane, but I really can't feel too badly when something really nasty happens to spammers. It's sort of like seeing justice take place really.

If you like Techno go get everything you can find by Scooter, especially We Bring the Noise and The Stadium Techno Experiance. Ahhhh.... Wonderfull Scooter music. I still think it's funny to hear a "new tune by Scooter" on the radio and realise... Yeah.. I had this many many years ago.

My good friend Magic has a solution for those unsightly smudges on your screen.

Kyle had a Jack Handey quote as his MSN today and I've got to admit, those quotes are probably the only thing I can remember about Saturday Night Live from back when they didn't suck. Well, that and the Church Lady of course.

Huh. Pretty stupid move on not cutting adult code from your game Rockstar. Someone always finds stuff like that eventually. ALWAYS. I can't believe this was actually IN the game. They're predicting massive revenue drops over this whole thing. Dummies.

Rune sent in a rather entertaining little read. If World War 2 was an RTS. (Real Time Strategy) Hah. I like the "Bye bye Frenchy." line. Speaking of the French, I found this Tshirt to be fairly entertaining, and I really liked their Gun Safety Tshirt. #10 is especially amusing.

In other Rune news, EA Games and DICE have released a little bit of news on the upcoming 1.03 patch, including a "We're screw ups" line that I thought took some guts to write. Thanks for admiting you goofed up guys. My opinion of them has gone up a few notches after reading that.

In yet more Rune news (Yes, it's ALL Rune news today) my beloved Comodore Amigas were released 20 years ago. Wow. Goshwin was in Chicago at the time, and remembers the first time they were showing them off. I still remember the first time I ever saw an Amiga. One of my schoolmates in.. Hmmm.. 1989 I think it was had an Amiga 2000. He was running the DOC Demons demo on it, and that forever changed the way I looked at computers. Up untill that point the best graphics I'd ever seen were on the Comodore 64 and I was running an IBM XT with no soundcard at home. The Amiga just blew away anything I'd ever imagined you could do with a computer. It had a hard drive, 3.5" floppy, a true multitasking operating system, 256 color screen AND stereo four channel sound. Sadly I was unable to get myself an Amiga untill 1993 just as they were dying out... But man did I ever spent alot of time on the school's and friend's Amiga systems. It's a shame that Comodore mismanaged themselves into the ground. As far as I'm concerned it took the IBM 10 years to catch up to what an Amiga could do in 1995 and the Amiga still does some things better to this day. Ahhh... Back in time we go. Those were heady days where the new computers were revolutionary instead of evolutionary, and everything was shiney and new. It was the true beginging of the desktop computer and of multimedia PCs. I don't think we'll ever see the like again. (I miss my Guru Meditation errors. :( )

Longhorn will apparently be called "Windows Vista." How very inspiring. If you're bored and want to watch a really dull, stupid name announcement click here. I can't figure out where they get all these people for their audiences. I really can't. And just who are the guys all in yellow? They look like hazard beacons.

In news totally unrelated to anything much, I love Wierd Al. I've been a huge fan of his since I was a little tyke and I got to listen to Dr Demento Show reruns at my friend Chris' place. Check out a complete Bio here. Truly, truly a talented guy. Rune tells me that one of his roommates used to talk with Al's Drummer John "Bermuda" Schwartz all the time on ICQ. Now how's that for a sweet ass job? Touring with Wierd Al. As a side note, if anyone happens to have an MP3 of "Peter and the Wolf" by Wierd Al, I lost my tape in a move and haven't been able to find it. I'd love to get it again.

Rune's been hearing voices again, ever since he took his little tin hat off. He's finally managed to locate where those transmissions are coming from, and suprisingly enough it's not from the local 711.

Quite a few people sent me this link to VG Cats. This is actually pretty much my command style in Battlefield 2, I'm shocked they've portrayed it with such accuracy.

Our good friend and frequent link sender in !FT!VA_Killer's cat Frank isn't doing to well. Please send all well wishes to: frankthecat@charter.net. (And no, it's not a joke, do it.) You can see Frank in this photo, Lording his position over Killer. Sadly for the last three days he's just been laying behind a chair unmoving. :( Poor little fella.

R.I.P. James Doohan AKA Scotty from Star Trek. Thanks Skittles. Bit of a shock when someone like this dies isn't it? You don't know them personally, but you feel a little bit like you do just from their character.

Stealing a car? Better hope it's not a bait car. Hah. Idjits. No GTA for you.

I've always loved tank simulators, but since M1 Tank Platoon from Microprose I've never found another one that even mildly compares. (Yes, I used to play it on my XT 8080 system) I'm hoping that maybe T72: Balkans on Fire isn't going to suck, but I guess we'll find out.

I don't know about you guys, but there's no way I could be doing something like this without cackling like a total idiot the entire time.

Rune sent in the world's coolest custom case. Wow. This guy is my new hero. He's also working on this. Wow.

And Operation Ubermousen continues it's march! Check out the latest addition to Marauder's Mousehouse of Doom in the Razer Diamondback Review!

Sometimes the Google searches we get linking to our site just slay me. Check this one out. "How to put a handle on a knife." Hah.

In Protocal related news, I just hate when I misplace a body. Especially on the freeway. There's always those awkward questions from the police and onlookers.

Picked up a new mouse today as well, one of the Razer Diamondbacks. Wow. What a great mouse. It's so, so smooth. I mean VERY VERY smooth. Smoother than a barrel full of smooth things. Thanks to Protocal for getting one and taunting me with it's mesmerizing beauty untill I too was forced to purchase one. Nice to see they're being made again. Razer (Karna) was nice enough to send a few mice to us for the first FRAGtopia big LAN waaaay back in 2000 (Wow. 5 years and 2 months ago.) for prizes. You can see one in the hands of Dy-Syng here.

Man, I can't believe it's actually been over 5 years from the first FRAGtopia. It was alot of work, and pretty scary, but it was very cool to see everything up and running and everyone having a good time. I've learned a great deal from organizing and helping run those parties, and made some great friends. Don't know that I ever would have met Pappy-R from Planetquake without that first party, and he's one of the nicest guys I know. It's funny how gaming and writing on a stupid little site like this can make you friends that you're still talking to years later. :) I'd like again to thank everyone who helped out on the FRAGtopia LANs and made them happen. Rune, Kingpin, Dopper, Gezerman, Goshwin, Red Leader, Mr. E Mahn, Praetorian, and of course Pappy, who ended up running all of our Quake stuff for us. You guys are the bomb, and I can't say thank you enough. :)

And hey, without the FRAGtopia LANs I might never have done a news and review site and thousands and thousands of words of my wisdom would have been lost forever.

A small recap of FRAGtopia. Decided to make it a news/review site on May 2/2000. The first news was posted July 31/2000. The site takes up almost 1 gig of space on the webserver these days. The archives contain almost 5 megs of text. We've done 71 reviews on hardware and software. Some of those reviews have had over 10,000 people read them. As of today the site has had 712,637 visitors and over 1.2 million page views. I remember when I was impressed that we got 10 visitors in one day. I'm always impressed when I check the number of hits on the site, and look at the people reading what I'm writing. It's neat to have an audience and to know that people are actually paying attention.

I'm not even sure how many tens of thousands of words I've writen, but it's quite a few. It always makes me feel really good to get the occasional email or ICQ comment from people who read the site and enjoy it. And of course it always makes my day to get hatemail as well, which happens from time to time. I've learned a great deal about how people react to things by reading my mail, and talking to people who read the site. It's interesting how sometimes you mean one thing and people read something else into it. I really do enjoy writing, and I know I'm an incurable smartass so I've now got a place to mock and make fun of things and just generally be irreverant.

FRAGtopia is also the largest site I've ever had anything to do with, and it's taught me quite a bit about site management, organization and maintainence which has been important in part of my regular job, which is website design and maintainence. I've also learned alot about site design from the various incarnations of the site I've gone through.

It's been a great five years, and I hope I'm still writing here in another five. Sometimes I'm tempted to give up, but somehow I always end up writing again a few days later.

Oh! And thanks to Donut911 and Dillinger. Keir is the guy who drew the little 'nade in the logo, and Dillinger for putting up with my occasional requests for artwork. And a big thanks to Dopper, Rune, Kingpin and everyone else who's sent in articles and posted news. Without people sending me nifty links, this site would be just me talking endlessly to myself.... and Lord knows no one wants that.

A patch for the patch! Seems there's a nasty memory leak in the 1.01 patch.. So here's 1.02. Goooooo DICE! :) It's a patch for the patch! Coming soon: A patch to patch the patch patch.

Want to run OSX on your Linux install? Dopper's got the answer. Mac-on-Linux! I just love their logo.

I just love Japanese game shows. I'm not sure WHAT this guy is trying to win, but I hope he gets something out it. Wow. (Thanks Rune)

My friend Killer sent me a link to the new NVIDA Nforce drivers... Revision 6.66. Yes that's right! 666. Last patch I saw with that reference number was a patch for Doom2. So they were asking for this.

People seem to be having problems getting the Battlefield 2 weapon unlocks to work. They DO work. You will be able to unlock one weapon after your second promotion. (ex. Lance Corporal.) In order to unlock the weapon, once you are promoted, wait a minute or so, then quit the game completely. Re-run the game and log in, you will recieve the promotion and be able to select a weapon/kit to unlock. That's all there is to it. Personally I really wish they would have just poped up a little menu in game that would allow it, or at least a little screen that tells you you have to log out and back in to get the promotion/weapon unlock. Would have prevented much confusion.

I guess from the looks of the We Are Gamers homepage Smackdown London isn't going to be happening this year. I had this feeling from talking to Cableguy, when a few weeks before the party he had no network equipment they were toast. Too bad. :( (Thanks Pappy)

I'm so, so excited about the next Will Wright game, Spore. The concept is just fascinating. He's been one of my favorite game developers ever since Raid on Bungeling Bay back in the C64 days. Prae sent in an interesting link all about the game, and user built content.

I think that Rune should never be allowed to own a chainsaw. Not even this one.

In other Rune linkage, I'm not getting my hopes up yet, but I do find my ears perking at the mention of the Transformers movie. I've yet to see a beloved cartoon turned into a game that doesn't suck... Hopefully this will be the first.

3dGameman has done an interesting little video review of the Kingwin AS-3000 liquid cooling system. Different way to do a review. I like it. :) They liked it too!

"The Kingwin AquaStar AS-3000 Liquid Cooling System is an all-in-one unit. The pump, radiator, reservoir, and fans are enclosed, making setup a snap. It also can be installed in two 5.25" drive bays or externally. Not only does it come with a CPU water block, but a GPU water block is also included. This is an excellent cooling solution for today's fast PCs. Watch the Video to find out more..." ~3dGameMan.com

I'm working on a few little articles, and if anyone happens to want to help out that would be great.

Article #1: What's your favorite game of all time, on any platform (Console, PC, Amiga, 64, whatever) and why?

Article #2: What's your online alias/nickname, and where did you get it? This is something that's always fascinated me. People usually have an interesting story about where they got their name from. :)

If enough people write in, I'll be doing these two articles over the next month or so. I'd really appreciate it if you'd click right here and take a minute to write to me.

Rune sent in a few screenshots from the Longhorn Beta? Looks... Alot like Windows XP actually.

A few people have been asking me lately just what this -> is. It's the llama from one of the finest cartoons of all time, The Emperor's New Groove. Haven't seen it? You suck, go rent it. Actually buy it, it's damned good.

The patch for Battlefield 2 helped ALOT. The game browser now doesn't suck, and I haven't had any crashes since I've patched. Would have been nice if it came with the damned game, but to give DICE some credit at least they were on it fast. Wouldn't be suprised if they were already working on it when the game shipped.

Speaking of Battlefield 2, if you're of the tweaking sort, check out this article my buddy Killer sent me.

Take a quick look around Deathfall if you get bored. Some really cool articles, movie shorts, demos and renders.

I've mentioned it before. I love paintball. And if you happen to be in Southern Ontario, the only place to really play is Wasaga Beach Paintball Adventures. I've been playing up here for twelve years so far, and I've never found a better place. They've got great people, and one heck of a nice new facility, with both indoor and a amazing outdoor fields, there's no place better. I'm up there whenever I can be, come... Join me. :)

My precious All Seeing Eye now supports Battlefield 2. Could the world be any finer a place? My precious... We can't trust the nasty Gamespy Arcades... they wants to take the place of the precious they does....

Poor little hamster. Never saw it coming from the children. When will the horror stop? Thanks Skittles.

Shiloh's sent in an interesting little link.. I can like smell the music man.

Mortal Combat: Intel vs. AMD. FIGHT!

The first patch for BF2 is out. I haven't tried it yet, but I've been told it now lists the server info in game, and the browser is apparently a hell of a lot better. Grab it here.

After a few weeks of playing intermittently and writing, the Battlefield 2 review is up. There was much debate and soul searching it got 4 out of 5, even with the bugs. It was a close toss up between 3.5 and 4 though, and if the browser wasn't so screwed up it would have gotten a 4.5-5. Sorry if things in the review aren't perfect, I've been writing little bits and pieces of it for weeks now, whenever I had a few minutes of spare time.

This Google search amuses me greatly. I'm surprised that over 2,500 people have read this little write up I did. :)

I keep forgetting to mention.. The Battlefield 2 demo is out! I've only had a few hours here and there to play it, and initially I hated it. This is because I've been playing 1942 and Desert Combat for so long I've gotten myself into a rut. ;) After messing about with it for a while I've decided that I actually like it quite a bit. It's very different, but I can't wait for the full version to come out. BF2 really seems to be pushing you into using good teamwork, more so than 1942 and DC. You really need a medic and an engineer on your team, as there are no medical or ammo boxes around the maps. It's sort of a combination of Wolfenstein, Desert Combat and America's Army. Alot of my gaming buddies are going to have to do some major upgrading on their aging systems to be able to play it smoothly though, with everything cranked on my box it chokes (lighting and sound I have to leave on medium.) and I'm running an Athlon 64 3500+, 1 gig DDR 3200, Creative Audigy 2 and an ATI X800 pro video card. Gamespy's got a little preview here for your reading pleasure.

Speaking of Battlefield and Desert Combat, hot on the heels of BF2 going gold, comes the news that DICE is closing Trauma Studios, the guys who made the amazing Desert Combat mod for Battlefield 1942. :( RIP Trauma. Hopefully they just all move on and do something else cool. Rune sent over another link with a little more information on the closing.

Rune also sent over what's gotta be the coolest case mod of all time, hands down. Well, it's not really a case "mod" so much as a complete new case. Forget your fancy window kit and lighting. Bow before the might that is... THE IMPERATOR! Make sure you also look at his "comics" Best quote evar: "If only the enemies of the Empire wore spacesuits instead of Armani."

Thanks to our good Pappy, Pappy-R from the Planet of the Quake we know that Battlefield 2 has gone gold! I can't wait. I'm so, so excited.

It's !FT! link day! I love Blutsager. He sends me some good links. This little video is quite well done, even with an annoying frog in it.

My good buddy Killer found an excellent little rant with some amazingly good points about the gaming industry and it's situation (and lack of imagination.)

Dustbunny and I went to see Madagascar last night and wow. What an awesome cartoon. Everything was so well done, especially the music. Interestingly enough, the music was done by the guy who did the soundtrack from "The Rock" and the rendering was done on AMD Opteron Processors, accoring to the credits. Gooo AMD!

Speaking of movies, my assistant/minion of doom Protocal sent me a link to The Chronicals of Narnia. I'm so excited! And that's not sarcasm.. I really am. I've always loved these books ever since I read them when I was a little tyke.

Rune sent over this link. It's quite a good comment on the media in the US and their elitist attitudes, and the morales of the modern western world. Runez0r points out that the author is quite a good sci-fi writer as well, and I tend to agree. Ender's Game was excellent. :)

Been too busy to play games lately, but I have gotten a little bit of Guild Wars in and it's not too bad... I think World of Warcraft feels more polished, but for $0.00 per month it seems like it would be fun.

Found a nice little guide on unlocking the power of your AGP Geforce 6800!

Want to meet Bill Gates and punch him in the face on public TV? Rune's all about winning this contest.

Dunno if this is actually legit or not, but looks like someone got their asses busted. Homeland Security though? I thought they just hastled arabic people on the weekends.

One of my buddies from Team Forever Twisted has started up a computer consulting, repair and sales business. Check em out.

Posting this at work while a computer finishes up some scans. Possibly the worse day evar. Just a few quick pieces of news.

I'm still totally pumped up for Battlefield 2.. Ohhhhh. So so very tasty. I can't wait. Just over a month to go baby!

I can't believe it! We're big in Italy! Woohoo! ;) The Italians like the Tsunami Mod we did!

Hey! Microsoft is going to be doing something that sounds good. This is a few times in a few months. They're on a roll. Sadly we're not going to be having anything to do with Windows64 soon, as apparently thus far it totally sucks. Well, or it could be that all other software sucks.

A new guys just joined Northern Dragons, the demo group I'm a member of. He's got some neat stuff on his site, including some little games he's made, and some demos he worked on.

Was looking at the staff photo from the FRAGtopia 2001 big lan party. It's hard to believe that was almost 4 years ago. Such good memories, so much work, but so much fun too. Man.

From Rune: You think YOU pirate? You've got nothing on this guy!

Richard Evans from Alpha72 games has sent over news that they've released The Magic Blackboard. It's actually sort of neat, I downloaded it and I've been messing with it a bit, and it's a different take on Arkanoid. The graphics are... interesting. Thanks for the heads up Richard!

And yet another independent game gets a 5/5 on FRAGtopia! Check out Jets'n'Guns!

A few little things today. First off, from Lenny... The coolest driving simulator I've ever seen. Gotta get one of these bad boys. Want a chance to win an Xbox2? Click here. (Thanks Zim)

And a little NeXtBox info from Guybrush.

Rune sent me over a rather entertaining Christian version of Sir Mixalot's Baby Got Back. Quite well done actually.

Some new ICQ madnesses have finally been posted. I just realised that I've got some from a year ago still piling up.

Happy 60th VE Day to everyone, and I'd like to say "Thank you!" to all of the veterans who served in the World Wars and fought so bravely for our liberty. Thank you as well to the brave men and women who do the same today. We here at FRAGtopia salute you!

Yep, I'm alive. Still very, very sore but alive.

Warner Bros. can't understand why people would be annoyed about this. I'm fairly certain that people have been tortured to death for less serious crimes than messing with Looney Toons.

When playing WOW, I really, really need to get this spell for my warlock. Thanks Protocal. :)

You know, I can't remember who sent this.... But it's quite possibly the funniest thing I've seen in ages. Everybody disco! That's my kind of practical joke.

Hal9000 sent over a link to Google Maps. Go to it, then click on Satelite and type in your street address. Damn. For some real fun, put in things like Niagra Falls, or another famous landmark. I was suprised to note that I can actually see cars in the parking lot at my work. The photos aren't that old either, the Future Shop next door hasn't even been there a year yet I don't think.

According to Rune, the world is ending... And I tend to agree. What the hell? Cookie monster eating healthy? That's like Martha Stewart making a fair stock trade, or Paul Martin (Prime Minister of Canada) knowing nothing about the federal sponsorship scandle. Speaking of which, how can a guy who was the finance minister at the time claim he didn't know anything about hundreds of millions of public dollars being stolen? If he's not a liar, he's incompetent. But he's still the Prime Minister. Oh. And Player Vs. Player has a good point about the Cookie Monster thing. Boy he's going to get hate mail over this one.

I'm going in for surgery in a few days, so I likely won't be writing for a bit. Wish me luck!

Three pieces of Rune related news today. First off, the top 100 things to do when you're an Evil Overlord. Some good tips in there, notes have been taken.

Looking for a free Zip/Unzip utility? Check out 7zip. Seems to do everything and more.

Apparently NASA was looking for a barren, Godforsaken, moonlike wasteland... And found Labrador, Canada.

I'm still eagerly looking forward to Battlefield 2, especially after seeing some new screenshots. They look better than the pre-rendered movies from BF1942. Wow.

I'm not sure about this hot new gaming device that Protocal sent me a link to. I mean, it's nice looking, but it's not even optical, it's got a ball.

Rune's sent in one more reason to hate Sierra with all my heart and soul.

I don't know about you guys, but I want a space elevator of my own.

I like Wikipedia, it's an awesome free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Very neat.

And the review for Flatspace is up! I love indepent game developers, sometimes they come up with some really good stuff. :)

There's a soft spot in my cruel blackened heart for old sk00l games. I'm working on a review right now for Flatspace, and the Mark Sheeky (the developer) was nice enough to give us an interview as well. Nice lad. When I was looking around I happened to come across "Rake In Grass", a small company making a few nifty little games, including Jets N' Guns. Woot! An excellent old time shoot em up, highly reminesent of R-Type. I'm going to buy it I think.

Started playing Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory.... Wow. HELL of a good game. The co-op mode is very neat as well, worth the purchase.

Rune sent over Brain Boost. It's a neat little search engine.

A little while ago I started seeing Joss Whedon's Firefly on DVD. Kept looking at it, and a few weeks ago I ended up buying it. It's a corny sort of sci-fi show, but I'm finding that I'm really enjoying it, and for a complete 4 DVD series it's pretty darned good.

Thanks to Madhatress for making me laugh..... Sometimes I just don't trust cops with guns :)

For those of you who play WoW, this is probably the funniest forum post evar.

Bit of a mistake on the link to the Tsunami case mod, here's the proper link. (The one in yesterdays news went to the case review.)

Microsoft slays me sometimes. If you REALLY can't figure out l33t sp3ak, you need to loosen up a little and get an imagination. This was my favorite definition:

"pwn": A typo-deliberate version of own, a slang term often used to express superiority over others that can be used maliciously, depending on the situation. This could also be spelled "0\/\/n3d" or "pwn3d," among other variations.

Wow.

In much more exciting news, Apple is again set to revolutionize the computer world as we know it. "According to sources who have so far filed accurate reports on Apple's future hardware plans, the company is feverishly working on a two-button wireless optical mouse that it intends to release."

My God. A mouse with TWO buttons.... I mean.... That's just crazy talk now. Wherever will they find their inspiration for such an undertaking? Maybe they should take a look at this: It's an Amiga mouse from 1985. I have two of them sitting at home. Heck, I'd even be willing to loan one to the Apple RnD department so they can study it and develop their own in a variety of fruit flavours. That's right people. Every other computer in the world has HAD TWO BLOODY MOUSE BUTTONS FOR OVER 20 YEARS. IT'S NOT NEW OR INOVATIVE JUST BECAUSE IT'S ON A MAC. *gasp* /rant.

My buddy Killer sent over this little news article. Apparently there's a security flaw in Trillian. :( They claim it's not really a problem, but, in the word of Mr Garison.... "Exploits are baahhhdddd children!"

I decided to do a little mod on my much beloved Thermal Take Tsunami case. Check out the lighty goodness.

Protocal told me about Save Toby. I read it, I laughed. He got some great hate mail. It's certainly a novel way to get money from people. Assuming he actually has the $20,000 USD he claims, I'm amazed that people would waste their money saving a rabbit. Sure he's cute.. But come on... It's a rabbit. I'm now planning on my own website, where I will go join the Canadian Seal Hunt and club a baby seal if not given $500,000 in USD by this time next year.

Wow. An even month since my last news post. It's amazing how fast time passes, and how little of it I seem to have these days.

First off, on the advice of our local babe magnet Protocal, I installed America's Army again and... my... It really is a damned good game, especially considering it's total ownership cost of... NOTHING!

I'm still waiting for the next generation of my beloved Battlefield 1942 to come out, and unfortunately it seems that I'm going to have another few months wait. *sigh* End of June release now. :(

Finally hit level 60 in World of Warcraft. I haven't been playing much lately (again, time constraints) and I was getting kind of bored, but a new zone got opened up, and I had some missions to do.. So I went in and did the missions and found again I was adicted... For about 2 hours untill I hit 60. Now there's nothing to do except start a new character. It honestly puzzles me deeply as to why Blizzard wouldn't let you at least keep getting skill points for your character so there's a reason to play and advance. We'll see what they come up with next I guess.

Aren't you glad you don't have Satan for your next door neighbor? Or your address?

I picked up a few new games to try out. I was a big fan of Sid Meir's Pirates! back in the day on my Commodore 64, and the new one is almost as good. (Face it, no game is as good as the original really.) It's a damned good game, simple to get the hang of, hard to truly master and well worth the purchase. Protocal pointed out to me that there's an MMORPG pirate game in the works. Sounds sort of interesting, I'll have to keep an eye on it and see where it goes.

Orville and I also picked up Nexus, which is a DAMNED good game. It's sort of like Homeworld, but much more tactical and involved. The graphics and music are great, and the story reads like a really good classic space opera.

Nvidia is having a little contest and I'm so SO tempted to submit a video going on about how I used to have money and a girlfriend and stuff, but then I bought SLI Nvidia 6800s, and am now broke and alone with my gaming rig. I wish I had more time.

Hey! I got hate mail. You know.... I love hate mail. It's just so delicious to reply to it. I enjoy it I think sometimes more than I probably should.

----- Original Message -----
From: David Ball
To: themarauder@fragtopia.com
Sent: Sunday, March 20, 2005 9:12 PM
Subject: You're rants

Yes, well, I was reading one of you rants and the persistent use of 'allot' struck me as odd. You mention wives, ergo I assume you have graduated from high school. I request that, if you insist on using such a primitive word, that you at leas spell it right. The correct spelling is 'a lot'. This is coming from someone probably half you age. You should feel ashamed.

----- Carefully Crafted Reply -----

Dear David,

Thank you for your valuable feedback on our FRAGtopia.com site. We value letters from all of our readers, and try to respond to as many as we possibly can.

I know that it is "a lot" rather than allot, and that one should actually avoid using it at all. I've been correcting it in many of my most recent articles and reviews before posting them, and trying to avoid using it whenever I think about it. It's one of the things I persistantly misspell, along with a few other ones I just can't seem to get the hang of. :) I am aware that I do use it... Allot. The english language is just so darned confusing, isn't it? Sometimes I even make words up, like "smee" and "goen".

Anyhows, back to the topic at hand: Thus far I'm still unclear as to why I should be ashamed. I don't cause world hunger, I didn't invent Spam(tm) or light beer and I DO avoid crushing lesser beings beneath my iron shod heels. I am presently working on the crushing thing, but so far my evil plans haven't come to fruition. Just wait though, it'll come. Along with leading a third world country (such as England) into a genocidal war against innocent midgets and/or the French, those would all be things to be deeply ashamed of. Well, maybe not the French thing. I'd probably get an award of some sort for that one. No one likes those guys.

Abusing the english language slightly isn't high on my list of things I worry about, especially on a non-professional site that I just do for fun. Noteably, I'm not an English major by any means. If you get tense about someone using bad grammar or spelling, you might want to unplug your computer from the internet and never, ever go back... You're in for a short, high stress life. I hope you never start playing Counter Strike or reading forums anywhere, you'll probably blow a gasket. Personally I refuse to accept responsibility for your heart attack from such horiffic conditions.

I won't point out that you spelled "least" wrong and said "you" rather than "your" twice. (That'd just be sort of petty really.) Also, your email address is "theballhouse". Come on. The jokes almost write themselves.

Thanks again for writing, and you might want to lighten up a little sport, life is far too short to take yourself that seriously!

Dave "!FT!Marauder" Kratky
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VAM Computers head tech (vamcomputers.com)
Side Effects Design developer (sideeffectsdesign.com)
FRAGtopia.com news/reviews guy (fragtopia.com)
Team Forever Twisted