As was formerly mentioned, I hooked up with some Battlefield:Vietnam action on the weekend over at Pappy's. Been playing around with it here and there a wee bit since. I've not had the time to sit down and do hours of online gaming with it, but thus far it seems pretty good. It's a little choppy even on my machine with everything cranked (but only when I zoom my gun in?) and it's a little hard to get used to. The main thing I've noticed is that the maps are REALLY wide open, and there don't seem to be too many real choke points, so confining the enemy to one area can be a real issue. I have to say that the ambiance of the game is excellent. It does actually feel like you're crawling through the undergrowth with bullets whiping by just over your head. Nothing like being on your belly in a firefight with other guys laying down on oposite ridgelines. And of course, the thing that everyone seems to get a huge kick out of, and I must admit is very cool. The music. There's a large selection of 60's and 70's tunes avaliable on the boombox in every vehicle. Very cool to get into an F4 Phantom and do some napalm runs to "Flight of the Valkaries". Hah! I'm not sure if I actually prefer this one to my much beloved Desert Combat, but we'll have to see.

My little buddy Sinister Sniper sent me a link for Xfire. Basically it's ICQ for gamers, and actually looks pretty darned cool. I've downloaded it and I'll be giving it a go in a while. There was a similar product that our local group of guys tried out years ago, but nothing ever came of that one, and eventually everyone went back to ICQ...

I downloaded the "latest in the long running Battlecruiser series" of games, Universal Combat. I laughed when I read the "long running" bit. The battlecruiser series, since the day it was first release, approximately 400 years ago, has never run period. Not right anyhows. It's been a series that's incredibly long on hype and vision.. and yet... has never actually produced a game (as far as I know) that's actually playable by anyone other than Derek Smart. (No one else is... "Smart" enough. Sorry. Had to be said.) I've always thought of Derek Smart as sort of being the John Romero of the simulator world, just without the univeral knowledge of his failings or media attention. Apparently the new game will allow you to fight in the air, on the ground, on the water, and in space. That's quite the promise. We'll see how it shapes up. If anyone else has tried this one, I'd be interested in talking to you about it. Send me an email. Interestingly, if you do a search for Univeral Combat on Fileplanet you get things like the Tribes 1 demo and Bikini Karate Babes. Wierd eh?

Just a few little things to post today. First off, I stumbled across the site for Red Dead Revolver from Rockstar Games (yes, of GTA fame.) Nice looking game, and I'm just a sucker for ol' western shooters. Unfortunately it's not avaliable on PC. Sigh. Stupid consoles.

Heh. Skeezix sent a rather amusing Harley Davidson advert. Heh. How many of you bought the dinette set? Or perhaps it was a Captain Pickard as a Borg poseable collectors doll?

For those among you who used to be addicted to Pirates! On the C64... Good news! It's being redone by Sid Meir and I couldn't be more excited. Pirates! was one of my favorite games of all time, and the hours I spent adventuring and pilaging along the coastlines were most numerous indeed. (And yes, I still remember the Eaglesoft loader from my pirated version, but after I played it for a few hours I went out and bought it. Ironic to pirate Pirates!, no?)

Misson successful, bunker = Ready for herds of nerds ;) Made it back home in good time last night from Pappys, and heck.... I didn't even end up lost in downtown Toronto this time. Gooo me!

My buddy Alcazar send me this link to the Silver Triggers. They've got some really neat arial acrobatics movies they've made. Sure they're not doing it in real life, but it's still cool... and practise is safe and cheap ;)

Rune sends "an amazing movie". I have no idea what this is. But it is amazing looking.

Goshwin, who as everyone knows, is a complete techno weenie, is all excited about the new Toshiba harddrive that is roughly the size of something really small. It's neat I guess, but BRING ON THE HOLOGRAPHIC STORAGE! I've had enough of this magnetic storage crap.

VA_Killer, another technomonkey wants me to know all about the new AMD proccessor. Since I can't afford an FX-51, I know there's no way in hell I'll be buying an FX-53. Not for a very long time anyway. But it does sound fast.

And yet another news post, from deep within the depths of the newly cool(er) Pappy's Bunker. The Lavalamps are bubbling away and it's allll very pretty and ready for gaming. You can almost see the shadows of future gamers sitting there playing away on the phat pipe. It's like the Garden of Eden, but instead of vines, it's cables.. and instead of the tree of good and evil you've got Lavalamps and indirect lighting. (No glare kids!). :) Pappy took a quick photo of yours truly wiring up his network, check 'er out here. ;)

In other news, we just played UT2004 for a few hours, and my oh my.... It's very very good. In fact, it's probably what the very expensive UT2003 should have been... and it was half the price. I find that rather irritating, since I really considered 2003 to be basically a little map pack and graphics update to the original UT. We played a heck of a lot of the 2004 assault map where you're after the alien mothership, and it's a total blast, especially when you're defending it. I can't wait to see what the community is going to make for maps. :)

Wow. Go down to Pappy's for the weekend, get two news posts in two days. Nice. ;) Just sitting here in the soon to be renovated bunker. Gotta tell you guys, Pappy's going to have a sweet little basement setup by the time we're done.

Got a few things to relate to y'all. First off, Nolman wants us to know that Epic is apparently going to Permaban cheaters. Good on them. Hopefully they actually follow through with it and stick to it. Also, for the stealing of the CD keys: Hopefully they keep on top of the legal action, not sure how much luck they'll have with that, but hey, it's worth a shot.

Rune brings forth news of Undead lobsters, and appologies that his life is so busy right now that he hasn't had time to update news... But he keeps on sending it to me, and giving me moments of hilarity for the ICQ/IRC Madness thing. So it's all good. Hmmmm... Undead lobsters... Do you need undead butter for them? How about the garlic? Or will that just kill them again? The humor practically write itself, doesn't it?

In other Rune news, George Brussard from 3D Realms throws a few pathetic tidbits out to the sad little Duke Nukem fanboys, who seem to grovel over every little piece of non-information like fleas on a redneck. Now, don't get me wrong. I love Duke. Duke Nukem 3D is still on my list of favorite games of all time. But it's just getting a litte hard waiting for the big fella to reapear. It's like Sam said: "Man, we've been waiting for that guy forever." It's increasingly hard to believe that the game will ever come out, and it's going to be hard to live up to the hype. Come on George, lets see a GAME, damn it!

Writing to you now from "The Bunker", Pappy-R's basement. It's chock full o' bunkery goodness, and is a tasty, LANey (is that a word?) place. Here for the weekend, and it looks to be full of fun, beer, beef and bandwidth. Suck it down Runez0r. ;) At the behest of the Pappy, I picked up UT2004, and against his best advice, I also picked up Battlefield Vietnam, just to horrify him. :) More later.

*sigh* Sorry for the lack of postage and updates lately. I'm the only one doing anything around here on a regular basis, and regretably I'm going through some rather time consuming and tough times right now, so I'm not likely to have time to do much right now.

I do have one piece of good news. We've been thinking about having another FRAGtopia big LAN... and... I just found out that there is a small LAN centre going in in the basement of the building that VAM Computers (where I work) is located. Mint or what?

Little note just got sent in by William from Lancasters."We are hosting Cold Snap (96 seat capacity) a week from Saturday with Counterstrike and Ghost Recon Tournaments in addition to many "for-fun" games being hosted." Toronto and surrounding area folks might want to check out their website here.

I have a wack of news to post, and no time to do it. So I'm just going to do a few quick ones. First off, check out this little review we posted of the Startech rounded IDE cable with integrated power. It's just one of those little things that makes the world a better place really.

Secondly, check out this little website. Regretably it seems that Lindows.com isn't allowed to sell their product in a few countries, so they're fighting back against Microsoft and the courts. These guys slay me, really they do. Thanks Dop. ;)

Ohhhhh.... Rune send me this. Me want. Marauder must have Total Annihilation sequel. Chris make now. No wait.

*Ahem* Sorry about that, but the posibility of a follow up to the greatest RTS of all time (If you just said "No way man! Starcraft is the best!", just die.) makes me get all primative and drooly and stuff. Man, when I think back to the hours I spent playing that game just a few years back... Wow. Madcat will be all hot for this one too, if I know him.

Killers sends in a rather interesting little article about the posibilities that lie deep within the untapped depths of high speed internet, and the differences between Canada, the US and South Korea. (Other than Rednecks I mean.) It's a good read, if a little long.

From Dopper comes... Which OS are you? HAH! Dopper was Windows 95. I love the "If I'm Windows ME, someone's going to get hurt" question right at the end. :)

Ever wonder if your antivirus has been compromised and might not be working anymore? Dman sends a handy little page for testing.

Our deepest condolences to Pappy-R, who lost his father monday evening. Skeezix and I met him for a few minutes a while back when we were helping The Pappy with some moving and had a coffee with him, he seemed like a cool guy, with an odd sense of humor. (Which is a very good thing.)

Rune and Dopper both sent me... The Worse Case Mod Ever. I just about fell right out of my chair when I read this one, I was laughing so hard. It is good, vera vera good. Rune also sent in what I think is probably the funniest photoshop on FARK I've seen in a very long time. I thought the one with the Roadrunner was particularily good.

I mentioned a while back that I bought an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro video card and sold the ol' ti4200. Radeon=good. In games there's not an enormous difference, but things are a little smoother, and when an Apache or Hind is bombarding my sorry ass in Desert Combat, I don't lag solid from the explosions anymore. Very nice. :) Also my 3DMark 2001 marks went from 11,000 to 15,000. A nice round number, that. Was it worth $400? Meh. Not really, the ti4200 was already a really, really fast card. I'd recommend that people wait a little longer for the price to come down, unless you really don't care about the money... If that's the case: Go for it!

Thinking of having a little contest... Here's the gist of it. I'm looking for reviews of bargin bin software. Basically you have to submit a review of a low priced game. Max value you can spend on it is $25.00 CDN. I'll give the contest a month to run. For first prize, I'm thinking of giving away something like a Thermal Take Skull or Lanfire case. It all depends on interest, so if you're interested in this little contest, let me know by emailing here.

Dopper posted the news a few days ago that our friends from S2 games have completed the 2.0 patch for the ever so excellent game Savage. And man, does it look so very, very sweet. Just downloaded it I can hardly wait to start in with the healing characters and check out the pretty new maps. RIght after he posted the news, I overwrote it. (woops.) Sorry Joe! :)

Microsoft is apparently making some suggestions for increasing security on Internet Explorer that are... Uhhh... What's the word I'm looking for here. Oh yes.. "Stupid". Such as... warning! Don't click on links! Wonder how that works when you're on a site that opens a secure session, or is driven by java menus?

Sometimes you'll notice it's the International year of the idiot, or National kick a midget day or something like that.. Well, looks like 2004 might just be declared the Year of the worm! Can you just hardly wait? And no, we're not talking about the game Worms. I'm juuuust waiting for one to come along that takes the internet down.

I keep forgetting to post this link that Nolman sent me a while back. Read it, and end each sentance with "...then kill all the Haitians." Some people really need to relax a little. Personally I'm hoping that someone doesn't start sueing every game or more or TV show that happens to portray Italians as mobsters, or Canadians as drunken hicks.

Runez0r sent in a few really cool things. First off, check out this picture of a "Punch Cloud". Wierd eh? He also submitted a soldier's photo album from the assult on Iraq, which has some downright amazing photos in it.

Blue sent in possibly the finest adventure game ever invented by a series of people with far too much.. or too little.. time on their hands. Use your arrow keys young man, and Quest for that Crown!

Dustbunny sent in something that's close to my heart and quite amusing..... Get a Mac that's been turned into what it should be... An aquarium. Hah!

Ouch. My personal most anticipated game of all time, Duke Nukem Forever has been awared the Vapourware Lifetime Achievement Award. I have faith though, Duke will rise to smite those who oppose him. Yes. Yes he will. Stupid Rune gave me this news and ruined my day.

Skeezix was surfing around looking for Harley stuff and came across a little something I'd like to offically label the world's worse website of all time. Check this out, but you might want to put on welding goggles first.

Pappy-R is sort of an odd fellow, in a good way. I'm thinking he'd just love to cuddle up to one of these little guys at night when it's cold. That's just about the creepiest thing I've ever seen in my life. I think it's the beady little eyes.

Amazing how expensive a war can be eh? Used to be you just marched your little soldiers out and shot at the other guys, and came home. Now you drop 97 BILLION dollars and stay there for ages. *sigh* Ahh well. It's nice to know that someone has that kind of coin.

Old school link of the day! I was looking for some info on Cosmi, because I saw a shareware CD at work today with that name on, and I stumbled across this, a web version of the intro to one of the first video games I ever played and really got hooked on on my C64, Forbidden Forest!

Microsoft = llamas. Just read this article and this fact is yet again comfirmed. I read the whole thing, and did some other reading up on it as well, and I'm thinking that some lawyer at Microsoft decided he needed a little more work to pay off the latest BMW. Give it a rest, morons. No one's ever going to mistake MikeRoweSoft for Microsoft. Thanks Dman.

In other Dman related news, check out this tiny, tiny demo tune. Nothing graphical, just a moderately kick ass little song. I'm amazed by how small it is and how good it sounds.

One of my little buddies from Northern Dragons came in third in a little Dark Basic game creation competition. Soooo close to possessing his very own Alienware system. The game is actually a hell of a lot of fun.. 'cause hey! Everyone loves to abduct cows!

Hitman sends over word that apparently the lads at IBM are playing around with a technology that should allow proccessors to run at 110 GHZ+. Yes. 110. Since we're currently playing around with run at 3-3.4, that's pretty damned impressive if it actually comes to fruition. :) I wonder how Quake 1 would run on one of these bad boys? Since the article is an older one, where are these uber fast proccessors? :D

Penny Arcade has been making a comic strip for Rainbow 6 3, and it's actually not bad. Speaking of Rainbow 6 3, there's just something wrong with having two numbers in a game's name, isn't there? It just doesn't sound right to me, I dunno what it is.

I tried to come up with a better title for this little link sent in by Rune, but "Foiled Again!" was just so easy that I had to go with it. I'm not sure if it would be the right thing to do, but I think I'd either kill my prankster friend, or fill his entire apartment with packing foam peanuts.

In other Rune related news, we've got more free gaming goodness from the good folks over at Rockstar. (Even if the Hatians hate them, we don't!)

VIA IS RELEASING A GAME CONSOLE? Whoa. Ummmmmm..... I'm not even sure what to say other than whoa.

!FT!VA_Viller wants us all to know what Americans spend their spare time doing. Frankly this looks like one hell of a lot of fun to me! Booyah baby!

Tumult gives me some links that can best be described as... Odd.... At first I thought that Prae had put up an auction, but he wasn't quite as bohemian as this fellow last I saw him.

Good news from our friends at nVidia! Spend a huge amount of money on a video card, get Call of Duty. Ummmmm... I have to admit I was tempted, but then I realised that the FX cards aren't very impresive, so I went out and bought a copy of Call of Duty and a shiney new ATI Radeon 9800 PRO to go with it. Yes. I admit it, I've given into the dark side. Or rather, I'm tettering on the brink of the dark side. I haven't owned an ATI card in years. The last one I had was an 8 meg rage pro turbo if that tell you anything. It was in my system with dual Diamond Monster 2 Voodoo cards, until it was replaced for 2D by a 16 meg Nvidia TNT. So now I've purchase a new ATI card, and I'd BETTER be impressed. If it can suplant my 15 month of MSI Geforce 4ti4200, and play my Desert Combat without lagging me out when there's tons of explosions around me, and I don't get stupid white dots, or wierd graphics driver issues, I'll be singing ATI's praises, and saying fare-thee-well to nVidia, at least for the moment. The true test awaits on Monday, when perhaps I will fall into the darkness and embrace ATI forever... Or maybe there's still some good left, deep inside and I will turn back to the light....

Thanks to everyone who attended the New Year's Day LAN party, and thanks to Dopper (who didn't make it) and his dad for their donation of tables (which did make it.) Everyone OTHER than than myself, Hitman, Cable, Kingpin and two others can thank Dopper as well, if he hadn't have donated the tables for us to use you would have been sitting on the floor, since you didn't tell me you were coming. (Llamas!) Much Battlefield and CS ensued and a good time was had by all!

Speaking of Battlefield, I really wish that I could get a bunch of guys down to Texas. Sounds like the CPL is going to have one hell of a good party, with some good prizes going on. Thanks to !FT!Cobra for the heads up.

Dman send in an interesting demo this morning... Download the .avi here... It's meant to run on... phones..... Yes that's right... cell phones and that wierd little Nokia Ngage thing. Amazing what you can do with a cell phone these days, isn't it?

Hah! Rune notes that you really have to watch what you put in a game or movie. Seems that Tom Clancy's new Rainbow 6 game contains a URL on an avertisment you see in the game..... An idiot saw it, registered it, and filled it with porn links. *sigh* Now's he's trying to sell the domain, and hopefully he fails miserably. Read all the sorid details here. If it's the same domain Rune's thinking of (this one) then what the hell? The guy want's $10,000 USD for a URL that people are going to see in a video game. Hopefully no one's that dumb. Current bid, $0.00

FRAGtopia lite LAN party, New Year's day! We'll be starting at 8:00am and running to 8:00pm. Admision is $10 per person, and includes lunch. Seats are limited, please email Marauder if you are planning on attending, as I'll need to know how many people are coming.

The long awaited Savage interview is at last up! Sorry for the delay guys, I've been totally swamped at work.

My good friend !FT!Magic has sent me a special little site, just for the holidays. Now this, this is just really damned cool!

I mentioned a little while ago that I had joined the Northern Dragons demo group. One of my little 3d model actually appeared in a little christmas demo that was done, check it out here. Phear my l33t log cabin ;)

Interested in playing your favorite games in tournaments for money and fun? Check out these guys!

I've mentioned this to about 200 people so far, but just in case I didn't catch up with you yet: Savage kicks ass. It's a hard game to describe. It's a first person shooter crossed with a real time strategy, with a twist of role playing in there as well. Download it and give it a go, it's well worth it. I've requested a little email interview with the dev team, but I have no idea when they might get back to me, they're apparently very busy improving the game.

There's a new ICQ/IRC madness up that seems to cause much hilarity. Fire+computer=bad!

Huh. I wonder about people who do things like this to poor animals... I wonder how PETA would feel? (Bwhwhahah!) Thanks to Gosh the mad scientist. I wonder if I could use poodles to power my computer or something like that.

Wow. It's been over two weeks since I posted news. I'm a naughty little monkey. I have however found the time to post a few new ICQ/IRC madness thingies for your amusement. The reason I decided to post news today was to bemoan the loss of MP3.COM. Seems the llamas at Cnet bought it. There's an interesting little editorial by Machael Robertson about it that you can read here. I'm not sure what new artists are going to do now. I used to frequent MP3.com to get my little paws on all the new music from tiny little artists around, and some of the big ones as well. Now it's going to be a pain, with a pile of smaller sites out there. *sigh*

I hope everyone spent a moment of silence just now to thank our veterans.

Now this, this is interesting. Wanna win yourself a phat notebook?

Calling all Gamers: Toshiba Game-off

Top prize of a Satellite P20 17-inch widescreen notebook computer

Toshiba is hosting a Game-Off at Best Buy at Eglinton and Laird on November 18, 2003. Hosted by GameNation TV host Kris Abel, the Toshiba Game-Off gives gaming enthusiasts the opportunity to win a Toshiba Satellite P20 17-inch widescreen notebook computer valued at $3,299.

Registration begins at 11:00 a.m. and is open to the public, ages 17 and up, the Toshiba Game-Off will provide an ultimate gaming experience for Toronto gamers. Groups of contestants will simultaneously compete for the highest score on the video game Halo for the title of “Master Gamer”. The Master Gamer and champion of the competition will be awarded a Toshiba Satellite P20 widescreen notebook computer.

Register in advance by e-mailing your name, age and e-mail address to Jennifer@mediaprofile.com with “Toshiba game-off” in the subject line.

WHEN
Tuesday, November 18, 2003
11:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Registration: 11:00 a.m.

VENUE
Best Buy
Leaside - 147 Laird Drive, south of Eglinton
EAST YORK

CONTACT
Bettina Allsworth/Jennifer Alsop
Media Profile
416.504.8464
bettina@mediaprofile.com/ jennifer@mediaprofile.com

BWhahahaha. Praetorian kills me. The guy's got a wit like a razor. He summed up the whole thing with the Athlon 64's today:

Praetorian: lol, yeah, there's two different athlon 64's, with different socket setups... and one of them is extremely expensive, and the other one costs about 500 dollars more

Okay. Everytime I get another email from Bitboys I just shake my head and wonder what the hell they're doing still around. I mean, has ANYONE heard anything from these guys in ages, since they announced about 200 years ago that they'd come up with the world's fastest... nay... the universe's fastest video card and toilet combined into one device? Anyhows, here's what I got from them this morning.

28.10.2003

Bitboys Joins Symbian Platinum Program

Espoo, Finland - October 28th, 2003 - Bitboys Oy today announces its
membership of the Symbian Platinum Program. As a Platinum Partner,
Bitboys is extending the AcceleonT mobile graphics solutions to the
Symbian ecosystem. Symbian develops and licenses Symbian OST, the
global industry standard operating system for advanced mobile phones, to
the world's leading handset manufacturers, which account for over 80 per
cent of annual worldwide mobile phone sales.

AcceleonT is a family of graphics processors for embedded and mobile
devices. Acceleon G10T, G20T, and G30T each provide a full host of
features, enabling and accelerating graphical content on mobile phones
and other handheld devices. Such content includes the entire visual user
interface, next-generation mobile games and interactive applications.

Application compatibility is available through support for industry standards
such as SVG and OpenGL® ES 1.0. By providing a complete, optimized
hardware/software combination, AcceleonT is a total solution for all
visualization needs for all embedded devices.

Bitboys' membership within the Symbian Platinum Program will allow for a
close co-operation with Symbian, to ensure compatibility for AcceleonT
hardware within mobile devices using Symbian OS.

"By becoming a Symbian Platinum Partner, we can demonstrate our
dedicated effort to bring true 3D acceleration to Symbian OS smartphones
in a cost effective manner. By becoming a Symbian Platinum Partner, we
are able to work with Symbian to ensure full support for AcceleonT on
Symbian OS, providing advanced rendering on smartphones. We are
excited to be part of a fast-moving industry that is generating increasing
support for Symbian OS and driving demand for advanced mobile phone
features." said Petri Nordlund, CTO of Bitboys.

"Support for 3D Graphics is becoming more and more important on
smartphones," said Bill Pinnell, Product Strategist, Symbian
Ltd. "AcceleonT provides a very optimized solution for smartphones and
we are pleased to have Bitboys join the Symbian Platinum Program and
bring their AcceleonT technology to the Symbian ecosystem."

The Symbian Platinum Program includes companies that have a technology
or strategic position that is key to the success of mobile computing
technology surrounding Symbian OS. As part of the program, Platinum
Partners benefit from a range of commercial services, including technical
support and joint marketing opportunities as well as privileged access to
Symbian OS source code and a dedicated Partner Support team. For more
information see http://www.symbian.com/partners/platinum.html.

- Ends -

Notes to editors

1. About Symbian

Symbian is a software licensing company which develops and licenses
Symbian OS, the global open industry standard operating system for
advanced, data-enabled mobile phones.

Symbian has licensed Symbian OS to the world's leading mobile phone
manufacturers including Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Siemens and Sony
Ericsson. Publicly announced products based on Symbian OS include the
BenQ P30, Motorola A920, Samsung SGH-D700, Siemens SX-1, NTT DoCoMo
FOMA F2051 built by Fujitsu, Sendo X, Sony Ericsson P800 Smartphone,
Nokia 9200 Communicator range as well as the 7650, 6600, 3650/3600,
3660/3620 and N-Gage.

Symbian has its global headquarters in London, United Kingdom with
development sites in Europe and Asia.

For further information about Symbian, please see www.symbian.com or
email press@symbian.com

2. About Bitboys
Bitboys Oy is a graphics hardware company, focused on the optimization of
graphics performance within tight space, power and size constraints.
Founded in 1991, with offices in Noormarkku and Espoo in Finland, Bitboys
Oy is a boutique design laboratory with a decade of experience in graphics
research and hardware development. For more information, please visit
http://www.bitboys.com or email info@bitboys.com.

I guess I should be excited about the posibility of 3d graphics on my cell phone...or something like that. Frankly I've never understood the magic of playing games on your cell, or doing anything other than making the occasional phone call. There's a reason I have a hunky $2,000 gaming system sitting on my desk, and it's not so I can play crappy little games on a puny little screen. It's so I can play Desert Combat at 100fps on a 21" monitor with huge speakers. Maybe I'm just not a visionary. Then again, I said that WebTV was a stupid idea, and that there was no way every house would get rid of their computers and TVs for some sort of wierd hybrid device that everyone could fight over.

Still seriously thinking about a big LAN in Toronto next June. I'm just trying to figure out the finances and how it would work out. Again, we're looking at breaking even, don't care if we make money on it. One thing I am going to really try to promote is that this is going to be a fun event. We're going to do tournaments of course, but the prizes will be swag. Not cash. Anyone wanting to come specifically to win money, go elsewhere. I know some people are interested in that sort of thing, I'm not. It annoys me when teams show up at a LAN party, play their tournament and then take off. I don't consider that to be what a LAN party is all about. I'd like to hear what y'all think. Comments? marauder@fragtopia.com

Going to be up at Wasaga Beach Paintball Adventures tomorrow for their Player Appreciation day. If you're in Southern Ontario and don't have anything else to do, come on up! It's going to be a blast. Cheap paint, 1/2 price for renters, free admission for gun owners.

Speaking of paintball (as I so frequently do!) y'all should check out Weak-End Warriors, a rather humorous cartoon about said excellent sport. Thanks to Goshwin for the l33t linkage. Gosh also sent in a link to VG Cats, which is quite possibly one of the funniest gaming related cartoons to hit the web since 8Bit and of course Penny-Arcade.

Still looking at doing a big LAN and I think it's a go. Still have to get down to the Canadalan facility and take a look, but I talked to a bunch of our staffers and some other people, and everyone seems pumped for it. Tenative date: June 5th and 6th/2004. Tenative pricing: $35 for the weekend.

Dopper is insane. Everyone knows it. When I saw this case, with it's ability to boot from 3 hard drives, I thought to myself.. this... this is a Dopper thing. Actually, it's pretty neat, even to perfectly sane people such as myself.

Thanks to everyone who arranged and attended the suprise birthday LAN that was held at my place on the weekend. ;) I wub j00 all. At said party, there was much Battlefield Desert Combat and Halo played. Halo is suprisingly good online, and the CTF just totally kicks ass. It's no 1942, but still. Very good.

I'm seriously thinking about setting up another FRAGtopia big LAN party, this time in Toronto, perhaps using the Canadalan facility... Anyone else interested? Have to drive down and a take a look at the place sometime and make up my mind. It's much more expensive than the curling club we use, but of course it's set up specifically for our purpose, which would save a heck of a lot of time, and I wouldn't have to hunt up the networking equipment, do the setup, worry about power issues etc.

Just one post for today, possibly the funniest advert for a video game I've ever seen in my life. (Stolen from the Planet Quake polls)

I hate Microsoft. I hate them so, so very much. Yet another horrible bug, just after we seem to have mostly recovered from the Welchia/Blaster infestation. Good thing that when an XP box comes through our store we automatically disable messenger. Shesh. I hop everyone checked their critical updates today.

From Rune, who got it from Slashdot: Seems that Apple aren't the brightest people in the world, and don't check their absurd claims before they make them. I'm not certain, but it seems to me that... Uhhhh.... They got caught. ;)

From Dopper, quite possibly the coolest flash demo site I've seen in ages. Also the slowest... And considering that most people have a) dialup and b) no patience, you see the reason I've never really bothered learning much in the way of fancy flash. :) It takes forever to download even on high speed.

Interesting. Not good, but interesting. My gaming machine currently boasts an MSI Geforce 4 ti4200 128 meg video card. The only reason I traded in the 'ol Geforce 3 64 meg was that after the trade in I paid roughly $50 for the new card, exactly 1 year ago today. I'm sitting at work doing a little work on my machine and I'm thinking "Well, I guess I should get a Geforce FX....." So in goes an MSI 256 Meg Geforce FX5600......... Do a few benchmarks, she seems pretty fast... Untill I put it up against my 12 month old GF4 and discover... I get something like 3,000 3dMarks more in 3Dmark 2000, and a few hundred higher in 3DMark 2001. My FPS in various games was roughly the same as well.... Can anyone tell me why a brand new video card isn't just kicking the crap out of my old, tired, long in the tooth GF4? Can it be that my next video card just might be an ATI? I'm starting to lean that way, as much as it hurts my little brain to do it. I just can't trust ATI after getting screwed over by them for so many years. (See Canadian link in yesterday's news. Yes, ATI is based just an hour or so south of where I live.)

I just got pricing in from my suppliers on the new AMD 64 bit proccessors and boards.

AMD ATHLON 64 FX-51 (For High Performance Gaming Systems) $1,099.99 CDN
MSI K8T Master2-FAR (Single Processor Configuration ONLY) $349.99 CDN

AMD ATHLON 64 3200+ $619.99 CDN
MSI K8T Neo-FIS2R $219.99 CDN

Ouch. I think I'll wait till the price comes down. A LOT.

In the words of the great and missing from FRAGtopia since April 5th Rune: Free games are good. Indeed they are. Download Hidden and Dangerous for free!

As you may know, we here at FRAGtopia are all about the old sk00l goodness. In that vein, check out this magic from Skeezix. Ahhh, Yar's Revenge kicked so much ass. :)

I just got a little invite from a Canadian demo group, the Northern Dragons. I've signed up with them to do graphics, apparently they like what I do.

Just in from Blue, the truth about canadians. Yes, yes we are an evil bunch up here, aren't we?

Just days ago slashdot posted about the halflife 2 source code being stolen. Here is one of the developers posting an official response to valve being hacked and having their halflife 2 game stolen. A few days later, slashdot reports that halflife2 will be delayed by four months due to the source code being leaked. CNN Money is reporting that possibly more than just the source code was leaked as beta builds have been released with models, sounds, textures and all game features.

In other news, here's another interesting article on the state of violent gaming. It seems to mainly focus on postal 2, a game which I have yet to play so I can't really comment on it but the article is still an interesting read.

Linux seems to be developing quickly and the interest in hollywood can only mean good things for the open source community and advocates of free software.

Also if you're running windows XP you may want to check out some of these security tweaks.

Dr Love sent in this, quite possibly the coolest optical illusion site I've ever seen. I'm feeling a little wiered out by a few of them, especially the first one. Gah. These sorts of things just kind of freak me out, they're so wierd.

*gasp* Finally it's done! Yes, the much awaited Starscape review and developer interview is posted. Check it out here.

Want to have fun at the shooting gallery? Checkout this cool shockwave creation and shoot the skeleton!

Apparently 3dmark isn't as accurate as we had all thought. Well we already knew those types of benchmarks are just synthetic but these results were just humorous.

A new game called Savage: The Battle for Neweth is supposed to ship with full linux support. This is good news for those of us who would like linux to become a more supported gaming platform.

Free 7 day trials of planetside have been available for download for quite some time and are still available to those who would like to give it a try...

Now this is pretty sweet, an online NES emulator.

Purchase mp3's legally for as under 6 cents each without supporting them RIAA!

Your personal and business financial information may be getting leaked out into the hands of criminals due to the errors of those banks that charge us rediculous amounts of money. I think we should put pressure on the government to force the corporations to notify us if there has been a security breach or error on the part of a company where our personal and financial information could have leaked into the public. Especially with identity theft becoming such a rising crime and easier with everything going digital these days....

I found an interesting article about how modern day society with our24 hr lighting could affect the balance of nature.

New btx motherboards coming soon to a computer store near you!

Ever wonder if you are you on the RIAA hit list? Well now you can find out.

Here it is, the leaked Quake4 screenshots you've all been waiting for!

Those quake4 screenshots just make me want to have a heineken beer!

If you're bored I found this interesting swimming guy. Wow the exciting news I have to share just never ends!!!

Want to secure your network using free software? Check out http://www.localareasecurity.com/ and download and install the L.A.S. Linux Live-CD Distribution. It allows you to boot from a cd and access all your favourite security tools without changing the partitions or installing to the hard drive.

HTML email is evil. Why? This is why HTML email is evil!

Michael Robertson, founder of mp3.com & lindows OS is starting another venture using voice over ip technology called the SIPphone.

Holy crap this guy sure puts this Sim in Flight Sim! Checkout the new screenshots of a flight sim fan's home made cockpit.

This is an old article about how apparently the RIAA subpeona's can be ignored for now in the US.

This is a remarkable technological breakthrough for the ladies! Announcing the all new 'bone clone'. Yes ladies, now you can have your man anytime you want...even when he's not there! Now ladies can do the virtual bang, bang, bang too. Wow, the things that people invent... At first I thought this website was a joke and then I found out it's a real product! I was thinking I should market the dopper bone clone for all the ladies who want me but can't have me. CHA CHING $$$$$$$$!!! With this new technology there will be enough dopper to go around for everybody! And I can preserve my virginity and good reputation at the same time! Cool beans!

Calling all l337 h4x0rZ! Test your h4x0rinG $k1llz in the hacking game! While this is just a fun game to play, unfortunately website defacements are a real problem these days. Why someone would want to waste someone else's time and money is beyond me but the hacking game allows you to have fun and learn without causing any problems for people.

Who needs microsoft anyways? Earnie Ball sure doesn't! The worlds leading maker of premium guitar strings settled for $65,000 in fines plus an additional $35,000 in legal fees by microsoft and a bad name. After which the organization switched to a 100% microsoft free open source structure. This goes hand in hand with the city of Munich deal that microsoft lost out to linux where the government actually ended up paying more for linux licenses to avoid microsofts proprietary software.

There's tons of free goodies available on the net for download and use and http://www.desktoppublishing.com/ is a perfect example of this. If you're creating your own documents, this is a great resource to find free stuff to use.

Are you a programmer or webdesigner? Start practicing secure programming and learn how to secure your web based scripts and applications by reading up on how to do it at http://www.secureprogramming.com/.

This nt password recovery tool could save Marauder hours of reinstalls when kids change the admin password to a system and lockout their grandparents. Just be careful about using this if you have files encrypted with microsofts EFS built into winxp because you won't be able to get them once you reset the password.

Ever wanted to learn to play the guitar? Now you can learn to play the guitar for free with this trial version.

Something we should think about using here on our fragtopia mail accounts is the use of RBL, realtime black listing of know spammers! I've been getting rediculous ammounts of spam lately. While most of it I filter out client side in mozilla mail, the spammers continue harvesting e-mails and doing whatever they can to avoid being blocked.

This service has been around for a while but for hotmail users who like webmail services, you should checkout a more secure service called hushmail. It uses secure sockets layer and encrypts all your emails giving you a much more secure way of sending e-mail than hotmail. They also offer other security related products and services.

Something we could possibly get use of here on fragtopia is the use of premium weblog services that are now offered for free since google.com's purchase of blogger pro.