15February2008
Posted by Robert under: all posts; cool; software.
As a PortableApps Firefox user, I downloaded Beta 3 of Firefox 3. It’s pretty slick looking, and there’s a whole host of new features. I don’t like the lack of ‘go’ or ‘->’ at the end of the address bar which was useful for refreshing a page without re-POSTing, and the new location of thehome button will take some getting used to, but it looks pretty good so far!
Check it out and report back any issues to the developers.
7February2008
Posted by Robert under: all posts; linux; ubuntu.
So I’m suppose to be revising for the Big Test™ that I’ve got tomorrow, but instead I decided to reboot in Ubuntu. And by gosh, I’d forgotten how nice it looks. And this is still the 7.04 version! Sounds are nice too - it’s probably just subjective perception, but playing music sounds nicer too, although I’d still like to get my hands on an equaliser and turn the bass down a bit. Yes, I could see myself using this for a while, especially as there aren’t as many game distractions on here…
Why did I ever leave?
28January2008
Posted by Robert under: all posts; rants.
(follow-up to my previous post)
And in other news, I jump to conclusions too quickly. Wordpress does not generate thumbnails for lage images - I’ve heard both 1M and 3M quoted. There is a disussion on the support forums here. For large files I’ll have to run ImageMagick manually.
What would be nice is for WP integrate with ImageMagick or another image processing library so that thumbnail generation can be done for bigger files. Of course, the library would have to be present, but a plugin would be nice…
28January2008
Posted by Robert under: all posts; rants.
While uploading photos, I noticed that the “thumbnail” option seems to have been removed from the latest version (2.3.2 at time of writing) of Wordpress. Uploading images no longer generates thumbnails either. A few quick Google searches were not much help, except that a few people with blogs on wordpress.com saw it had been removed too. I’m going to have a look at the changelogs in case there is a reason it was removed (like the preview pane for writing posts), and see if I can get it back. I will post an update if I have any success.
16January2008
Posted by Robert under: all posts; rants.
So I was being plagued by ZoneAlarm alerts for outbound DNS requests by an unknown process on a laptop. The offending process was procsystem.exe. A quick Google search didn’t reveal much, other than a few malware-related results. Some of them looked pretty nasty, but since there was only once process running in this case, it was easy enough to kill off. There was also a related ini file and a temp file.
As I say, this one didn’t require any external tools to pick up and clean, which is just as well as AVG, Adaware and Spyware Search & Destroy all missed it.
5December2007
Posted by Robert under: all posts; arabic; cool.
I’ve been doing a few Arabic classes recently, and last night we finally had enough knowledge to put together a close approximation of our names. Read the rest of this entry »
27November2007
Posted by Kenny under: all posts; battlefield 2; games; pc games.
After what seems like forever being down, the premium Battlefield 2 stats site is back up! I am quite excited, as it now means i can track every bullet fired and make sure I put all my effort into getting a little digital badge to say I have spent a long time playing a game!
See the HoG Leaderboard here, or go to the main bf2s page.
26November2007
Posted by Kenny under: all posts; crysis; games; pc games.
It has always been hinted that Crysis is the first in a three part story, and after finsihing it I can say this seems very likely. Plus, Cevat Yerli hinted at this a few days ago in an IRC chat with the Incrysis community (the full chat can be seen here). Now it seems there is another hint of a little bit of news on the whole thing. Steven Bender who is head of the Animation team at Crytek, said at a recent event in Berlin that the second part will not only continue the story of the aliens and Koreans, but also improve on the graphics (somehow…). He specifically mentioned improvements to animations and facial textures. Their goal is to get the game feeling so realistic it’s like you are in a film. He also hinted that Crytek were working on another project, a rumour also fueled when they opened up another Studio a few months ago (source: google it you lazy people).
Well, You can’t fault them, it’s not two weeks out the door and they are already seeing ways to improve the graphics. Here’s hoping we get some more information soon and that we don’t have to wait 3 years for this second part to be released!
Original German Source
Shocking English translation
25November2007
Posted by Kenny under: all posts; crysis; games; pc games; reviews.
After years of waiting and anticipating Crysis has finally arrived! The big question is - was it worth the wait? The short answer is “Hell Yes!”, while the long answer is more complicated…
First off is the system requirements - this game is mean on your PC. It will stretch any system to its limits. I am running on a Q6600, 8800GTX, 4GB system, and there were some noticeable slow downs at first. However, by using the first 20 minute section to tweak my settings, managed to get it running at 30 fps with all the settings on High and AA on 4x. Now I do have Vista and can use Very High legitimately (There is a hack to get it working on XP), however I found the trade-off between increased image quality and frame rate drop really didn’t make it worth it. Also, AA seems to kill any frame rate you had - 4x was the maximum I could put it on without watching a slideshow.
Having got the settings just right - the game ran very smoothly and it looks jolly good! In fact, it is by far the best looking game I think I have ever played. This is in part to the excellent technologies running behind the scenes, but also in part by some excellent art direction and all rounded off with some clever level design to show all this off. But everyone knew this game was going to look good. It was the one thing that was certain before its release. But how does the rest of the game hold up?
Read the rest of this entry »
25November2007
Posted by Robert under: games; rants.
Everyone’s heard a great many things about Kane and Lynch, and it sounds great on paper: by the makers of Hitman; squad-based action shooter; co-op mode; innovative multiplayer mode. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work quite like that.
First of all is the annoying Live! screens:
If I wanted an Xbox experience, I’d play it on the Xbox. Points off for making me feel like I’m not playing a PC game.
Second is the fact that, contrary to expectations, the PC mode doesn’t have a co-op mode. Well it might, if you can hook up two 360 controllers to your PC. If this is possible, you might be able to play co-op mode.
Third is that you need a Live! account to play all the game modes - 2 are for gold members only. I don’t like the Live! integration in this game; it’s cumbersome and unclear.
Fourth is the crashes, reported by a number of people. To date I have had 5 crashes, which is better than some other people, but still pretty bad.
Fifth, though it doesn’t really affect me, is 64 bit compatibility. Apparently the launcher for the game is 16 bit, which means Kenny can’t play the game. If turns out to be a widespread issue, it’s going to look bad for everyone involved (IO, Eidos and Microsoft). The “Games for Windows” certification is meant to ensure the game runs on 32 and 64 bit versions of XP and Vista.
Update: Turns out it wasn’t a widespread issue. See Kenny’s comment below. Of course it still crashes like feck, so my “Games for Windows” comments still counts.
Of course, if the game hadn’t been just a rushed Xbox 360 port (or indeed recompile), these problems may not have happened.