AHhhh. I love Albino Black Sheep... They've got many classics, including the great "She kicked my dog! I kill you!" And some stuff that's just odd.

Anyone else remember Future Crew? The best PC demo group to evar exist? Thanks to Dman, I've now got a link to Skaven's home page. Download download the music! It's interesting.. He didn't want to be the music guy, he wanted to be the graphics guy. :) Now he works for Remedy, the Max Payne guys....

Couple of Winerboy Dave links today. First off, this has got to be the coolest freakin' desktop I've ever seen. Gotta get me some of this! And it seems another guy has done a flash video for that old classic Bob Rivers tune "Cat in the Kettle."

Dat's ir for today. More later :)

As promised, we've gotten an interview with the PR guy over at ALTAR Interactive, makers of the upcoming turn based stratgey game UFO:Aftermath. Looks and sounds like it's going to be a pretty good game, check out the interview here.

Still playing GTA3... I keep telling myself I'm going to work on a review of it... But I just keep playing, and sending screenshots over to Praet0rian to torment the little fellow. He torments me in return with the fact that Neverwinter Nights has gone gold, and rumors are flying that Warcraft 3 has as well. Normally the summer sucks ass for game releases, but perhaps this year will be deliciously different!

Speaking of Jedi, as of course we just were, don't you wish you could be as cool as these guys? Wonder if Lucasarts gave them permission to use that intro tune? Gotta love the intro movie.

I mispelled google.com in an attempt to do a search the other day, and got this. WTF am I looking at, and why doesn't this site also come with a shotgun so I can put Fido out of his (and my) misery? One of my pet peves about the 'net is people who register common mispellings. At least this one didn't open 50,000 advert windows.

Heh. Rune and I are both graduates of Crazygonuts University! Why ain't you?

Want your very own Jesus clone? Rune shows you how!

And in news about other things that seem to be taking Forever to put in another appearance, here's a little opinion piece on Duke Nukem Forever. I agree with him 100% and hope to god that he's right.

Anyhows, more on Friday with the aformentioned Rune. I'm going back to playing GTA3.

Figures, all I want to do yesterday is go home and post some news, maybe play a little GTA 3 and instead I end up at work for 15 hours, doing a software audit for a client. Anyhows, GTA is a very, VERY good game. :) I've got a carjacked convertible, a pump action 12 guage and a hooker in the seat beside me. Yessiree! It's a game that's fun for the whole family!

Everyone can stop sending me emails and ICQs telling me that the UT2003 playable demo got leaked. I know. Thanks, I'll wait untill it comes out to play it, just like the Warcraft 3 beta that I seem to be the only person in the gaming world who hasn't played.

Had a few people sending me Neverwinter Nights screenies. It's in closed beta apparently, but wow. It looks great! And no, don't ask,, I won't post or send you the screenshots.

One of the definate classics of the 8 bit era, and probably my favorite c64 game of all time was The Last Ninja from 1983. Good story, absolutely amazing music (Still being remixed today.), amazing graphics and gameplay... The game had everything... The studio who made the original is working on a sequel entitled Last Ninja: The Return. Looks like it might be a console only release, god I hope not. I don't want to have to buy a stupid console. but I will if I have to!

Skeezix has been playing Undying lately, after listening to me babble on about it for months.. If you haven't played it yet... Go buy it. You can find it in bargin bins for $5-$10 these days, and for a game that's in Marauder's top 5 shooters of all time (In at #1 or #2 actually.) it's worth the money... Well worth it. Hell, even their web site rocks. I'm hoping that Clive does some more video game stuff really soon, or expands on Undying. (They just did a Mac release of it a short time ago.)

Dunno if I mentioned this or not, but the US Army has hit new lows in recuiting. They're making video games. :) Mind you, the game looks great, sorta like Ghost Recon, and it should be pretty realistic, considering who's making it. Oh, it's also free. Free is a very good price. If you're a yank and meet the requirements they'll send it to you. Or you'll be able to download it. :) heh. Our buddies over at 3FS even made fun of them in a cartoon. :) Better watch out Prae, the FBI's probably following you around now. You know how much of a sense of humor they have. Speaking of 3FS, here's a stolen link from them that shows why you never microwave grapes. I mean, WTF? (You need Apple Quicktime installed to see this.)

LOL. Thanks Nolman, it's always nice to have a guilty little laugh when someone decides to mess up someone else's fun. :)

iLL sent me this. I have no idea what it is, but I had wierd dreams after watching it a few times trying to figure out WTF I was looking at. You bastard.

I played Panzer Dragoon many, many years ago on my PC and thought it was pretty freakin' amazing. Rune mentioned that the new one is coming out for the Xbox. Here's more screenshots. Wow. :) Make a PC version! Please make a PC version! *sob*

It seems that some people are getting a little anxious for for the forthcoming UT 2003 demo. In fact so many llamas are whining about it being a little later than expected that Mark Rein, head honcho over at Epic Games commented on it over on the official forums:

We understand you are anxious for the demo but posting "where is the demo" threads here won't make it appear any sooner. When we think we're close to the demo (i.e. within 5-7 days) we'll let everyone know officially through this forum. We're not there yet, we're still more than a week away. We could be more than two weeks or even more than three weeks away. We're not holding out on people, we're just not done with the game yet and although a lot of the game is coming together very quickly we still have no 100% (or even 80%) accurate way to predict exactly when that will be. I promise the development team is working very, very hard to get an awesome, polished UT2003 in your hands. The demo will be released when we think we've got all the major functionality of the game complete so that the feedback from the demo can be focused 100% on things we weren't already aware needed to be addressed.

Many of us are eagerly awaiting the demo and it's a shame that a few whiners have been bugging the dev team and ruining the good relationship that the devs have with the community. It's good to hear that they're focusing on just making a great game and are taking the time to make it right.

I noticed over on Voodoo Extreme points out that USA Today has an article up about Nintendo trying to focus more on game making than console hardware. It would seem to be a good move as while the big N is still one of the most consistently profitable console makers I imagine that it's getting to be tough to compete with the Microsoft and Sony behemoths and all the money that they can throw into new console development cycles every few years. After what happened with Sega I think that it's conceivable that they could eventually get out of the console hardware business and become a pure gaming software and entertainment company like Sega did.

In a subject that has in the past proved to be dear to Marauder's heart, ZDnet has taken a look at the subject of cheating in online gaming. I've never understood why people feel the need to cheat. Even if no one else realizes it they'll still know that they're cheating. It's kind of a hollow victory if you can't win with your own skills and have to resort to depriving others of a fun experience. It's especially bad when people are paying for that experience.

Hey look! The nice people at nexland.com (thanks Mike!) sent us over one of these sweet, sweet looking wireless gateways to play around with and review. The only problem we have now is deciding who gets to be the lucky bastard who gets to do the review. Tune in more for on this baby later!

Those wacky loveable Germans over at Techchannel.de have scored some early benchmarks on AMD's Hammer prototype (gotta love AMD's cool-sounding code names). How did it fare? Well it basically wipes the floor with the competition but you can check that out for yourself right over here. It's even mostly in english.

NvNews posted linkage on some hot modded case action over on the Directron.com forums. Some of the designs are a little unconventional (ever hear of a custom-decorated power supply?) but they look really cool. That lit-up water cooling system had me drooling...

I noticed over at Tribalwar that a new beta patch for Tribes 2 has been released! (direct link) The former Dynamix studs and Tribes brethren at Garage Games (whom you might also know from their work with the Torque engine; originally used for Tribes 2) have been working on this patch for quite a while now and trying to eliminate a few remaining issues with the game. I've been a fanatic of the Tribes series ever since the original was released almost 4 years ago so as you might imagine I'm ecstatic about the patch. Tribes 2 is still one of the best online first person shooter games around IMHO. So what does this new release address? Well for one I noticed that they've nurfed the elf gun quite a bit and the framerates have drastically improved. Here's a full list of the changes. So if you've played Tribes 2 in the past and been frustrated with it's bugs you might want to try popping that Tribes 2 CD back in and giving it another chance now that most of the kinks have been worked out.

In a quick news note over on Digitimes Huang Jen-hsun, Nvidia's CEO, has mentioned that Nvidia's new chips will be using 0.13 micron technology. What's the big deal about this you may ask? Well this should shrink the size of the chip die, reduce heat and the power consumption needed and allow them to squeeze in a few million more transistors so that we can blow each other up online with even prettier graphics. ;-) So with ATI and Matrox's new chips pushing the limits of 0.15 micron technology this will probably be a good move for Nvidia.

Speaking of next-gen graphics chips Beyond 3D has technology preview up on 3D Labs' (now part of Creative Labs) upcoming P10 chip. What promises to be one of the first fully programmable GPUs has turned a lot of heads in the industry and has graphics junkies salivating over the possibilities. With their past work on the Permedia, Wildcat, and Oxygen chipsets not to mention their ongoing participation in developing the new Open GL 2.0 standard these guys clearly have the talent necessary to compete in today's tough consumer market. It should be interesting to see what happens with Creative's branding, marketing, and distribution power behind them.

I'm more than a little pissed off that I can't get GTA3 to work. And it's a legal copy! All my buddies who have pirated copies don't seem to have my problems. Basically all text (menus, popups in game) are just grey boxes. No lettering. Tried everything I can think of, does anyone else have any suggestions?

Was doing some maintainence work on the site, and I stumbled across the old frames site. Including this pic of Red Leader from January 2000. My, how the little fella has grown!

Speaking of GTA 3 (as we were!) I found an interesting letter to the editor regarding it on Gamasutra. This lady has some excellent points and makes a reasoned argument. Oh no, wait.. It's just a game. She doesn't, and should shut the hell up and go back to picketing Harry Potter book signings.

More later. :)

While it may come as no suprise to those of you who deal with Rogers... They're Stupid. Was listening to an advert this morning for their "high speed" service. And I quote (Grandad talking about his kids on the internet) "... I destroyed the rascles this afternoon in a wicked game of Doom." Doom eh? Obviously they've been watching too much school shooting spree coverage. Idiots.

I never realised how many demos nVidia had done for showing off their GeForce cards. Holy crap, there's a few.

It's always nice to see that MadCow Disease continues to rampage across Europe. Stupid cows. Thanks Mr. E.

We've had an offer of help! You may soon be hearing from a lad named TwinkE. :) Ahhh help, blessed blessed help!

Anyone out there a fantasy/sci-fi film fan? Check out Reign of Fire. Man, the dragons look amazing! Dunno if the film will turn out to be any good or not, but you never know. I'll be going to see it. :) Thanks for the link ]V[agic!

From iLL comes word that the web just got smaller. Welcome to the world's smallest web site. Yes, even smaller than Planet Romero without John's ego.

It's always nice to know that the SS is still out there, but rather than terrorising Polland they're posting tips on optimizing your Windows XP. A change for the better I say! Thanks Dman.

John Carmack has posted some interesting comments over on the Slashdot forums. Initially there were a few misunderstandings over his comments on the ATI hardware which id used to run the Doom 3 demo at E3 so he commented again on it a few days later:

It [The ATI card used] was compared against a very high speed GF4. It shouldn't be surprising that a next-generation card is faster than a current generation card. What will be very interesting is comparing the next gen cards (and the supporting drivers) from both vendors head to head when they are both in production. Everyone working on DOOM still uses GF4-Ti cards at the moment, and if someone needs to buy a new video card today, that is what I tell them to get.

Apparently even after saying that a few people were still misinterpreting his comments so he posted this on Slashdot:

This batch of comments from me have let people draw conclusions that leave me scratching me head wondering how they managed to get from what I said to what they heard.

Other people have outlined the issues in detail in comments already, but the crux is that, even with driver quality removed from the discussion (not counting conformance issues, running at fill limited resolutions), GF4 hardware is still faster than 8500 hardware on basically everything I tested. The 8500 SHOULD have been faster on paper, but isn't in real life.

The hardware we used at E3 was not an 8500, and while the drivers were still a bit raw, the performance was very good indeed.

Take with a grain of salt any comment from me that has been paraphrased, but if it is an actual in-context quote from email, I try very hard to be precise in my statements. Read carefully.

He then followed up that post with a far more interesting (and lengthy) post on the video hardware needed to play the game:

We know for sure that we will be excluding some of the game buying public with fairly stiff hardware requirements, but we still think it is the right thing to do.

The requirement for GF1/Radeon 7500 as an absolute minimum is fundamental to the way the technology works, and was non-negotiable for the advances that I wanted to make. At the very beginning of development, I worked a bit on elaborate schemes to try and get some level of compatibility with Voodoo / TNT / Rage128 class hardware, but it would have looked like crap, and I decided it wasn't worth it.

The comfortable minimum performance level on this class of hardware is determined by what the artists and level designers produce. It would be possible to carefully craft a DOOM engine game that ran at good speed on an original SDR GF1, but it would cramp the artistic freedom of the designers a lot as they worried more about performance than aesthetics and gameplay.

Our "full impact" platform from the beginning has been targeted at GF3/Xbox level hardware. Slower hardware can disable features, and faster hardware gets higher frame rates and rendering quality. Even at this target, designers need to be more cognizant of performance than they were with Q3, and we expect some licensee to take an even more aggressive performance stance for games shipping in following years.

Games using the new engine will be on shelves FIVEYEARS (or more) after the initial design decisions were made. We had a couple licensees make two generations of products with the Q3 engine, and we expect that to hold true for DOOM as well. The hardware-only decision for Q3 was controversial at the time, but I feel it clearly turned out to be correct. I am confident the target for DOOM will also be seen as correct once there is a little perspective on it.

Unrelated linux note: yes, there will almost certainly be a linux binary for the game. It will probably only work on the nvidia drivers initially, but I will assist any project attempting to get the necessary driver support on on other cards.

He also has mentioned that the E3 demo was actually running at medium quality due to some problems they had running it at the high quality settings on the first day.

And in yet more Doom 3 related news, Wired has a nifty streaming audio E3 interview with John Carmack and Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails fame. It's 20 minutes long but offers a bit of new insight into the sound and design process of the game. Plus it's cool to hear how excited John and Trent are about the game as they're talking about it.... it sounds like it's going to be a great game...I can't wait until it's released! With Trent Reznor doing the sounds they should be really cool and creepy. The original Quake's sounds (which Trent also did) were amazing and really added a lot of ambiance to the game.

A new Winamp 3 beta has been released!!! Grab it here and read up on the details of the new release over here!

As Praetorian and Marauder have mentioned Kazaa Lite indeed kicks some serious bootay and look: a new version just came out. Grab Kazaa Lite 1.71 from here. All of the filesharing lovin' and none of the spyware and ad spam.

My bro just got himself an xbox with the recent price drop so he's been hogging the TV for the last few days. Imagine his surprise when I find a way to get Linux on it. Muwahaha! Of course Xbox Hacker is another excellent xbox hax0ring resource that you should have a look at. One guy's even working on a divx player for the xbox. Check out this little forum thread for more info.

Bunnie (the MIT guy famous for his website where he pulls apart an xbox and discusses the hardware) has stirred up a little more controversy on Slashdot by pointing out an MIT whitepaper he wrote discussing security holes in the Xbox. The main link to the pdf file has been Slashdotted but he was nice enough to mirror the file at another alternate link that still works.

Well, the guys working on Postal 2 seem to have decided upon a rather unconventional silencer for the game. Apparently they're trying to offend as many people as possible this time around..... 25 percent more offensive humour for your buck! Oh and the fact that they're using Gary Coleman in the game doesn't hurt either. What you talkin' about Willis?! (sorry, I couldn't resist)

It's driver day! Yay!

Warp2Search has word up of new ATI drivers that fixes a few OpenGL issues with Soldier of Fortune 2 and increases performance a bit. Check out their download and Performance Evaluation page for the full scoop!

They've also yoinked some new leaked Detonator drivers for Nvidia cards from HP that despite having an older driver version number have newer file dates.

There's even new Hax0r3d 3dfx 1.09 Beta4 Drivers out for all of you ol' school Voodoo homies.

Team nVDemo (a Senior Design team from the Milwaukee School of Engineering) has finally released their NVshadowmap OpenGL demo for nvidia cards.

So wtf is the NVshadowmap demo you may ask? Well here's the answer in a bit shamelessly ripped from their site:

Currently, the objective of the demo application is to demonstrate the support for hardware-accelerated shadow-mapping included in the GeForce3 GPU. In most of today's applications, shadows are the result of illumination tricks and light mapping, if they they are even done at all. Using shadow mapping, shadows are dynamic, true to form, support self-shadowing, and are relatively inexpensive to apply to a scene.

We are currently working on a few test applications to demonstrate the difference created by shadow mapping.

It sounds really cool so I'll be trying it out on my Geforce 3 and I recommend that anyone with capable hardware try the same.

Heh, and you thought that SuperMonkeyBall and Typing of the Dead were weird Sega games? Take a look at Sega's new Virtua thumb Wresting for java-compatible cell phones. Thanks Xengamers. They even have a few screenshots of it up. Begun this thumb war has!

LOL. Now this guy, he's got what I'd call a very very cool, very very old sk00l site! I love it. Brings back memories. :)

Hey, I've recently gotten worried about security on my visa card. Luckily Microsoft is now offering their own visa card! Get one, and with MS's track record, never worry about security again!

Remember the great old Space Quest games? Many hours did I waste playing these ones... Spacequest.net has a little news release... Is there going to be a new Space Quake game? Hmmmm......

Just checking out our old friends from Outworld... They've moved onto a new project: Alien ME. It's starting to look pretty damned good actually. Some nice info on the new races, as well as a downloadable demo of the conversation engine. Hopeing they finish this one. :)

Heh. Thanks Umopapisdn. ORK!

The Sum of All Fears, the Tom Clancy novel/movie has been made into a new game as well. I dunno, looks a hell of a lot like Ghost Recon to me. Rune of course will hate it. Thanks Skeez.

Xbox...Hacky hacky! Warez are apparently being released.

Dat's it for today.

Got some sweet stuff for you all today. First off, working on a review for Duke Nukem: Manhatten Project. It's quite a fun little time waster. Regretably, my damned screenshot util doesn't want to work with the game, so I'm having a hell of a time getting screenies. :( I'll find a way tho!

A few things in today thanks to [U|C]Figured, who is a little news whore. First one is an interesting story from Yahoo. You've heard how new Sony audio-cds destroy Macs, and can't be read on a PC right? (Not of course that I have any issue with a technology that destroys Macs. Basically it's just the hand of god smighting the unclean.) Seems that a $2 marker defeats it. HAH! I love it. :)

Celine Deon CD - $25. New iMac - $1200. Copy protection development by sony - $1,000,000. Using a $2 marker to make all that money and work useless - Priceless.

Also in from Figured is some very interesting news. Ever heard of Project Entropia? No? Me neither. It's an interesting sounding game. As you all know, normally MMPORG developers frown on people selling items and characters on sites such as Ebay. Naturally everyone ignores them and does it anyway. (Duh.) Well! The developers of Entropia are actually encouraging this practise. In fact, it's escential to the game's economy. Skotos doesn't like it, I figure... WTF? It's what's happening anyway. It'll be interesting to see how it works out for them.

Whahahaha. I love these stickers. Especially the "Enslave Tibet" and "What would Jesus do" ones. :)

Heh. Want to quit a job with style? Here's how you do it. Thanks Dopp. :)

Vaytan sent in a link to a shooting flash game that's all in German. It's kind of fun, but I have no idea what this German guy is yelling at me. I think I;m doing well, but he keeps screaming.... Oh wait, that's just the language. He's probably asking if I want cream in my coffee.

Speaking of Macs, Wienerboy Dave sent in the news that Apple has gotten into the biogenetics field. Interesting if true!

Thanks to Yrunsob we now know why women don't tend to hang around LAN parties. It's because of these two losers. *sigh*

More on wednesday. :)

Star Wars fan? Not a Star Wars fan? Dopper has submitted perhaps the funniest video I've ever seen in my entire life. Star Wars: Attack of the Dorks. Oh. My. God.

Playing a little of Duke Nukem: Manhatten Project.... It's actually a pretty freakin' good game! It's an interesting little sidescroller/third person game that's worth a go, especially considering that it's priced around the $45 CDN mark. A steal, and hey, you get a sweet Duke keychain fob.

In other interesting news from 3Drealms, they've announced... Max Payne 2! One of my fav games of last year is going to be making a come back :)

I'm not sure what's funnier. The fact that the Pakistani navy stole the fight music from Final Fantasy for their flash intro, or the fact that Pakistan HAS a navy... The Pakistani navy. Defending 7-11's and taxi cabs everywhere. Thanks Nol. :)

Hah. iLL sent in an old Nintendo advert that's funny as hell. Some wicked tunes going down y'all!

That's it for today's news, have to get back to work :) More tomorrow or Sunday. I swear.

Ouchies! I've had a few buddies bitching and complaining that they got shafted when their recently purchased Xbox and PS2's dropped by $100 or so the day after they bought them. (Hah! Welcome to the computer world, bastards!) and now it seems that Nerdtendo is up to the same tricks, dropping the price on their Gamesquare thingy down to $150 USD. As well, they've announced a swarm of the oldies are back in their next incarnations. Zelda, Mario, Starfox and Metroid are back. I've never really been a Nintendo fan, as it's seemed to me that since the N64 they've had the same game with different characters in a hundred different boxes. I've never owned a console, but if I was buying one it would have been a PS, now probably a seXbox. I find it rather amusing that their HQ they're releasing their press from seems to be in Redmond Washington. I'm suprised that the MS competition supressing snipers haven't gotten everyone there yet. Perhaps they live in concrete bunkers.

Just in from Daemeon, the interactive Kung-Fu mixer. LOL. Again the internet just proves that humans need to be kept busier. I know where Bruce Lee lives. Quick! Let him out! He's suffocating!

In a page that's sure to enrage and anger Yankees everywhere, but that I found quite amusing, it's the new commemorative Trade Centre attack $20 bill. Thanks Doug. :) They've had over 1.1 millions hits since May 10.2002. Wow.

I imagine quite a number of you have visited the Wayback Machine. It's basically an archive of internet sites, so you can look back on them in the future and see what they looked like. Wow. Planet Quake was one ugly mofo of a site back in the day. Thanks Gen :)

Everyone seems to be going on about the new Matrox chip. I dunno, I got screwed by Matrox years ago as far as I'm concerned. How? Well, after paying $250 for a card that didn't seem to have any better real world performance than my $100 ATi I'd had about enough. The new card does look pretty sweet, as most of their new products do... If anyone ever supports them... Which never seems to happen. And if the prices are reasonable. (Ex. considerably cheaper than anyone else, to convince people to give up on their nVidia and ATi cards.) Which they never seem to be.... I dunno. I can't figure out how Matrox stays in business myself. High end market perhaps?

Out!

I forgot to mention we officially passed a quarter million hits on Thursday afternoon around 2:30. Thanks to everyone who's been reading the site, I'm really excited about that number. :) That's 15x the population of my home town here. :)

Forgot to post this. Finally someone found a good use for that little Pikachu bastard. Load quicktime from the link at the bottom of the page if the movie doesn't load. Thanks Vay :)

Hey all. Happy Victoria day to all you Canuks out there. Went and saw the Star Wars movie and hey! It wasn't crappy like the first one. It was actually really good. Yoda completely kicks ass, which was the sweetest part of all.

Just a few little pieces of news for today. First off, someone's actually making a C64 compatible to fit into an ATX case. Not bad for $200, and wow. This bad boy would have some wicked power, compared to the old machine. Hmmmm... In other c64 news, the all new C64hq has A) A pretty cool site, and B) some great info, files and interviews. Check 'em out.

Everyone is of course looking forward to Doom3. (duh) Skeezix submits that iD is allowing Activision to distribute the game. Wow. Huge suprise there.

Thanks to Red Leader I now know where to get the latest CS hacks and cheats. These guys have everything for the discriminating cheater.

Our buddies over at Lanmash have a few things going on. First off, they've found a location and set a date for their party. It's going to be August 23-25th at the Regal Constellation! Woot!Secondly, they're running a sweet online radio station. Like Trance? Check out Blackskies.ca! Some sweet action going on there, thanks Prodigy!

Mike's sent us some great links in the past, and he's back with some linkage to a freakin' sweet little game that's kept me annoyed and occupied for a few hours. Check out the... Worms!

From !FT!Reverand comes the Rampage Technology home page. Nice looking page, a very cool intro. :)

More news in from England! (Thanks Generator) I have to get myself a garden, 'cause then I can build myself a freakin' monorail! Sweeeet!

Marauder out!

Anybody see the new Star Wars flick yet? I figure that I'll manage to grit and bare it for another few days while everyone else half kills each other with plastic lightsabers to get in to see it. There's a theatre over in Oakville that's playing the movie in digital format (<homer> mmm... digital! </homer>) that I'm thinking about checking out next week when the fanatics die down a bit (hmm... although I'm somewhat fanatical about it myself at times). It's getting split reviews for the most part. Some critics don't like the wooden dialogue or the cheesy love scenes while others rave about the computer effects and the immersive experience. Roger Ebert sure didn't seem to like it much but it'll probably make a bajillion dollars anyways as people don't tend to listen to the critcs much when it comes to these kind of films.

Speaking of movies the Matrix: Reloaded teaser trailer was just released at midnight last night. It's fairly short but man do I need to change my pants after seeing it!

In keeping with my proud nvidia-whoring trandition I noticed that there's a spicy interview with David Kirk (Chief Scientist Dude over at Nvidia) over on Hardware Zone. The site's in Italian but they've done the interview in english. Be sure to check it out!

Someone posted the link to this on the #3fs channel in irc last night and I just about fell off my chair laughing. Highly recommended if you're a Monty Python fan!

Ahhh! Gary Coleman in Postal 2?! Please tell me that they're kidding! Wha'chu talkin about Willis?

Warp2search has new Nvidia Detonator Drivers (29.40 & 29.41) over here! I haven't installed 'em yet myself so I can't tell you how they perform but I noticed that Nvnews has a forum thread on the topic (yes, yes I'm a forum troll!). It's amusing to note that the ad on the right side of the Warp2search page has a picture of Marauder's case with some girl in front of it... I wonder what kind of message they're trying to send? I'm sure that Marauder would be really racking up the babes with the hot paintjob on his case... if not for his lovely wife that is. (hint: if the ad doesn't come up trying hitting the review button a few times to cycle the ad).

As that nvrefresh fix thingie doesn't seem to be working as of the last few driver releases so I'd recommend that you check out RefreshLock for all of your refresh rate needs. I pointed this little utility out to Skeezix a while ago and he's been raving about it ever since (he's a diehard Quake guy). Say goodbye to 60hz gaming!

With features like 10 bit color, hardware Displacement Mapping, Pixel & vertex shading, four 128 bit pipelines (each capable of doing 4 textures at once), and 16X antialiasing the brand spanking new Matrox Parhelia sounds like it's going to be kicking ass and taking names when comes out. Of course the 3 monitor surround gaming thing is pretty cool all by itself. The flight sim guys ought to be going nuts over that feature!

Anand, Tom, and Kyle of course all have terrific previews of the new Matrox ubercard that you can check out now that the NDA's history. Wanna see some actual pics of what this 80 million transistor beast looks like? Look no further!

And if that wasn't enough then check out the comments that Tim Sweeney, Epic's chief 3D guru (working on next-generation Unreal engine technology w00t! ) made about it: "We've had our hands on a Parhelia for the past few days, and have Unreal Tournament 2003 up and running in triple-monitor mode -- it's very immersive, and surprisingly fast (rendering at 1280*3 x 1024)." (blatantly ripped from ExtremeTech's excellent preview).

hmmm...I have an Elsa Gladic Geforce 3 and with Elsa Germany's current financial situation I thought that my six year warrenty had pretty much gone up in smoke. But it looks like Elsa Asia is totally unaffected by the Elsa Germany situation and is still supporting and pumping out the high quality cards. Here reviewmakers has a writeup on the latest bad ass card from Elsa (ooooh! Black PCB and gold cooling unit! Sweet!) the Elsa Gladiac 925 VIVO GF4 Ti4600.

See, told you we'd do the regular posts now. :) Was going to post a little earlier today, but I'm doing renovations at work and I've been swamped.

I notice that Dopper posted news below. My god, the last time he posted was... shesh... I don't even remember. One hell of a long time ago. Guess I'll have to call the search party and let them know he's still alive. :)

Anyhows, just a few things today.

From Red Leader comes the true enlightment of Zen. Ahh... I am one with the fan belt.... Nanahnahnah......

And one quick piece of news from Rune.... LLAMA! It was never mentioned which games this llama was playing that got his assailent mad at him... CS probably, that's a llamaish game. :)

I just love when people ask silly questions. :)

On an interesting note, it's been 2 years and a week since the first FRAGtopia big LAN party. God, it seems like just yesterday..... And we're 70 hits away from 250,000, as of right now :)

Dat's it for tonight. I'm going the hell home now.