A Solution

DRM strikes again...

Windows Media Player

Windows Media Player is pissing me off... I seems to randomly decide to not allow me to seek through random video files (its works perfectly at other times), and doesn't seem to want to share my media with my XBOX 360. The latter function used to work, but now other devices don't even see this machine (though it sees them). Apparently it's related to Windows XP SP3, but nobody seems to be offering a proper solution.

Ingenuity

I tried to fix my store-bought Virtual Boy, but one of the screws may be stripped... It's one of the more recessed screws, and i can't seem to get the bit to grab hold of it :( I'm gonna see if I can't find a really thin pen to melt over it.

I played through the demo for The Maw on XBOX Live Arcade, and it's pretty fun as well as very pretty. The visual style of the game reminds me of Kameo, if a bit narrower in scale. Seems like a pretty good deal at 800 Microsoft points, so I may unlock the full game eventually.

I ended up picking up those four Jaguar games I mentioned earlier. Attack Of The Mutant Penguins is surprisingly addictive. It's reminiscent of Lemmings, except that the goal is to kill all of the lemmings ;) As far as gripes go, some in-game music would've been nice, and the early levels can drag on at times. Then again, I suspect things will get much more hectic later on, so those slow parts may be welcome then. Bubsy In Fractured Furry Tails feels a lot like Zool 2, but the hit detection is questionable; coupled with one-hit deaths, things get awfully frustrating very quickly. I've read that the game can be a lot of fun with practice (Bubsy apparently has a few important techniques to master), so I'll give it another chance. The 2Mb version of Cybermorph is a little more polished than the 1Mb version, so that helps out an already solid game. Wolfenstein 3D is a unique port; probably the best-looking version since it has the most high-res sprites, new visual effects, runs smoothly at fullscreen, and incorporates more of a narrative to the experience. It's also visually darker than the 3D0 port (mostly on account of the brown floors), and it has longer levels. My only real complaint is that the controls are a little too floaty for my tastes. The 3D0's shoulder buttons are a godsend for strafing, and the CD soundtrack really makes a huge difference, but both ports of the game are solid. I feel kinda bad for opening factory-sealed Jaguar games, but really, I'd much rather play my games than just collect them.

200°F

I disassembled one of my Virtual Boys, baked the displays, reinforced the bond between the displays and their respective ribbon cables, and reassembled the system... After playing the system (in between leaving it running on various games) over a few hours, things seem to be working properly!

I should be picking up sealed copies of Attack Of The Mutant Penguins, Bubsy In Fractured Furry Tails, and Wolfenstein 3D for Jaguar after work today, as well as a boxed copy of the 2Mb version of Cybermorph (gonna trade-in my 1Mb cartridge). I'm also considering picking up Stretch Panic for PS2.

Also, check out the Puzzle Quest Galatrix demo! Despite having played Puzzle Quest to death on PSP, it took me a few playthroughs to get back into things with Galactrix; it's still a particularly fun and engaging game though.

Solder!

Loving Rock Band 2... That is all.

Okay, no, that isn't all, but it's definitely dominating my time spent gaming! I also downloaded The Colour And The Shape.

I did pick up the Limited Edition of Gears Of War 2 (open box, decent price, had some store credit to burn), but I won't be getting into that until I'm done with Metroid Prime 2.

I got a Game Gear with some games (Sonic 2, Jurassic Park, World Series Bsaseball, and Goerge Foreman's KO Boxing) and an official SEGA carrying case from a friend, but the capacitors are blown (so the screen is dark, audio is faint). It's sad because the system has been kept in pristine condition otherwise, but it's an opportunity for me to brush up on my soldering skills.

A local game shop recently ordered a Virtual Boy-compatible game bit screwdriver bit and hopes to recruit me into repairing their faulty Virtual Boys. I have the bit at the moment and I'm gonna work on my second system first and see how that goes... If I get both of mine functioning reliably, then I may trade one to a friend for a TurboExpress.

In computer news, I defragmented our e-mail store at work, and I cleaned out a spyware infection for the first time in a long time last night. It was a friend's Vista machine, and I found the offending DLLs in the startup list (which led me back to a specific user temp folder). I still couldn't run certain updates (Windows, Defender, antivirus) or visit certain web pages though, so I went digging through the registry and hosts files and the like... But I was overcomplicating things. It didn't occur to me until later to check the DNS settings for his network adapter, and sure enough, they'd been changed by the infection. All is well now.

I think that about covers things for now.

I'm so weak...

I just picked up a used copy of Rock Band for 360 on my lunch break... It was a good price!

Oh, and is it just me, or does this bundle look like a pretty sweet deal (as long as you don't mind playing by yourself and not being able to download new songs)?

People diet sometimes...

So I broke down and bought Rock Band 2 for XBOX 360 last night. I also grabbed some of the free downloadable tracks ("Charlene (I'm Right Behind You)" by Stephen And The Colberts, "Still Alive" by Jonathan Coulton, "Promised Land" by Vesuvius), the Queens Of The Stone Age track pack, "This Is A Call" by Foo Fighters (had some left-over Live points), and the 20 bonus songs that came with the game. I'm still somewhere between "medium" and "hard" with my drumming, and "hard" and "expert" with everything else.

I need to find a higher seat for drumming, but otherwise all is good and fun... Except for the fact that I can't change my character's physiology (height, weight, facial structure), and that clothes that I've purchased for one character can't be transferred to another :\

Hrm...

Phenom II is out, and it looks to be a solid competitor for the price, especially at stock speeds. While it has room for overclocking, it doesn't seem to be much of a real enthusiast part; comparably-clocked Core 2 Quads and Core i7s still win, so the real market seems to be people who want a solid value out of the box (or to drop a new CPU into their AM2+ motherboards). It's a tempting prospect, supporting AMD/ATi, but I think I'd go for a Core i7 920 over a Phenom II 940 Black Edition at this point. The parts are within $5 of each other at the moment, and the i7 looks to offer a better upgrade path. Perhaps AMD's AM3 CPUs will really shake up the current landscape, but we'll hafta wait 'n see on that one.

Hilarious!

I saw the following post in a discussion over at ars techinca:

Microsoft's hot new operating system runs on netbooks with as little as 1GB RAM and a 1GHz processor. Compare that to their last fiasco of an operating system, which could only run on super-powerful notebooks with no less than 1GB RAM and a 1GHz processor! See the difference? There's an "O" in "notebook"!

Not only that, but this sweet hot newness uses an old reliable printer driver model (Type 3 driver) that was introduced back with Windows 2000, assuring compatibility with everything except the crappiest low-end cheap consumer gear with shitty drivers. Compare that with the old and busted nasty previous operating system that used a wacky new printer driver model (Type 3 driver) that took printer manufacturers completely by surprise, especially when they were too busy introducing a new model of $30 inkjet every 3 weeks to read up on arcane Windows 2000 driver models. Microsoft really dropped the ball on that one, let me tell you.

And to top it off, this veritable gift from the gods of programming finally has a sane security model, where applications launched by the user cannot write to system locations without, at least by default, notifying the user that something fishy may be going on. Compare this with the diseased rat kidney of a product that bugged the user EVERY SINGLE TIME the free registry cleaner they downloaded from that Chinese website tried to overwrite ntoskrnl.exe.

THANK YOU MICROSOFT FOR NOT JUST RE-RELEASING VISTA AND CALLING IT "MOJAVE"! We consumers are just a little more discerning than that, now they we have the Internet to inform our purchasing decisions!

EDIT: Full disclosure--I'm a Linux user since 1997 and wouldn't use Windows unless I had to, but the cognitive dissonance around Windows 7 is just deafening.

It's nice to see something not just clever, but so well written!

Better!

Scored a 2.53GHz Pentium 4 (533MHz FSB) for free! No more weak Celeron performance for this guy :)

Yeesh!

Wow, I just got a whole faceload of passive-aggressive admonishment from an executive assistant at work. I'd been asked to format their problematic computer, so I told them what to back-up, to let me know if there was anything they couldn't back-up, and gave them a time frame for the whole process. Unfortunately, the employee in need left early yesterday evening, and I wanted to get the imaging process going before I left for the night. While I didn't leave a note, I did leave further details with a colleague. Anyway, I was confronted today because Office wasn't there (actually, they just didn't recognise the icons on the desktop), Hotmail wasn't there (actually, they just didn't realise that one must actually type the URL of their non-work-related e-mail provider into the address bar of their web browser if it's not in the history), and they had to type entire e-mail addresses in Outlook (their AutoComplete data wasn't transferred over). I apologised for not leaving a note, but kept myself from suggesting that someone whose job involves working on a computer might want to familiarise themselves with working on a computer...

On a happier note, I played a Rock Band game for the first time last night. It was the PS3 version of Rock Band 2, and I sucked. Hammer-ons and pull-offs, regular guitar playing at any difficulty level, singing; it was all kicking my ass. The strange thing is that I sing as well as play guitar, bass, sax, and piano in various bands in real life, so this apparent failure was kinda disconcerting. It wasn't until I picked up the drums that I really noticed how off everything felt (though my friend was getting by well enough). She assured me she had set the delay for her TV, but said she'd try it again. I watched her strum along with the game, and she was anticipating every beat... By about 40ms, according to the game. Once I set the delay with the drum kit, we were both suddenly getting well over 90% on every song. We ended our impromptu marathon session by unlocking Everlong by Foo Fighters. I'm not much of a drummer in real life, but I wanted to see how that last song played on the "expert" difficulty settings... I didn't get very far ;) I did try the song on guitar on expert though, and got 91% my first time through :) So now I'm trying to decide what to do with these gift certificates I got over the holidays. I was leaning toward picking up the Limited Edition of Gears Of War 2 (to go with the Limited Edition of Gears Of War that was bought for me a few years ago), but now I'm thinking that money may be better spent on Rock Band 2...

Software

'cause I feel like sharing, here's my current software setup:

• 7-Zip
  
• AnyDVD
  
• Avira AntiVir
  
• CDBurnerXP
• CloneDVD
  
• ConvertXtoDVD
  
• foobar2000
  
• Ghostscript + GSview
  
• GIMP
  
• ImgBurn
  
• OpenOffice.org
  
• Pro Tools M-Powered
  
• Thunderbird
  
• Windows Defender
  
• Windows Live Messenger

...All on Windows XP Professional SP3 or Vista Business SP1. The really nice part is that it's all free software, aside from Pro Tools (M-Audio hardware discount) and Windows (educational discount).

I'm still undecided between Chrome (fast and lightweight; combined address/search box is great) and FireFox (better compatibility and bookmark management), so I'm still using both.

Roots

I've become engrossed in Wolfenstein 3D on 3D0. It's unfortunate that the new enemy sprites are only two-dimensional and no loner patrol like the PC original (effectively eliminating any kind of stealth gameplay), but it does keep things running at a faster pace. Despite those changes, the gameplay is classic, the CD soundtrack is epic, and the updated graphics and weapons are a nice bonus; it all comes together to create a wonderfully intense first-person shooter that stands the test of time.

Anyway, I found a used 3.06GHz/533MHz FSB Pentium 4 on craigslist, but the guy wanted $100 for it... I offered $30 and to pick it up myself at his convenience, but no dice.

Aw nuts...

So that 2.4GHz Pentium 4 I was talking about last time turned out to be a 2.4GHz Celeron, and the motherboard only supports up to AGP4X so I went with the GeForce3 instaed of the 7800. The thing's functional, but man, does it suck at multitasking! Certain revisions of the motherboard support Prescott CPUs (5.A, 5.B, 7.5), but not mine (7.1). I haven't heard anything back on that craigslist posting about the motherboard, so it looks like I'm stuck with:

• 2.4GHz Celeron
• Biostar U8668-D (PCB 7.1)
  
• 1GB DDR400 (Dual Channel)
• 64MB GeForce3 Ti 200
• 80GB + 160GB IDE
  
• Sound Blaster Audigy