Agret's Blog

Hmm

2009-12-10T01:08:00.003+11:00

Haven't really updated my blog in awhile as you can see.
It looks like my post on Skype hackery has corrupted itself somehow and lost the rest of the text (bummer, I spent awhile doing the screenshots and whatnot)

I wanted to update my games list to say I want to play Darksiders which has received a 10/10 from its first review.

The other game I want to get is called Bayonetta and got a 40/40 in Famitsu

How to get better picture quality in Skype video calls

2009-02-17T16:05:00.001+11:00

Adapted from Make Use Of's article.

Goto Start - Run and type:
notepad %appdata%\Skype\yourskypeusername\config.xml

Find the video section. (Search for by pressing CTRL+F)

When you have found it, enter the following lines under :
480
640
25

Once entered, save the document and close.

Now re-start Skype and call someone with a webcam. If you’ve done everything correctly, the screen should now be bigger and the quality much better!

My Dog's Dying :(

2009-01-17T18:16:00.003+11:00

My dog Monty is dying.

He's 12 years old so i've had him for pretty much as long as I can remember (i'm 19 now).

A couple days ago he was sort of going off his food so we took him to the vets and the guy there felt his kidneys and stomach and abdomen (he said they tense it when they are in pain) and said he seemed fine. Then he did a blood test and said he found that enzemyes in the kidney had increased but that wasn't abnormal if he hadn't been eating.

Today as he was still off his food we went to some vets to see what we could try feeding him. The Diamond Creek vet said that if they don't want to eat boiled or roast chicken then there is something wrong with them, and that's what we'd been trying to feed monty.

He saw what the other vet had written regarding an enezyme incresae in his kidneys and straight away said that was very bad (without being able to see the blood test results for himself).

We went back to the vet at Bundoora where the guy originally looked at him and a woman felt his kidneys and straight away said there was something going on. Monty got given an ultrasound and it was revealed that he has bad cancer in both of his kidneys :(

Tomorrow we are going to take Monty for a walk on the beach and to my nans place (she has a dog named Missy that he gets along with)

Ripping DVDs to AVIs

2009-01-17T18:14:00.003+11:00

So I have a ton of Stargate SG-1 dvds that I want to rip to Divx to put a lot of episodes onto single dvds rather than 3 per disc, it took me awhile to refine my process but i've got it nailed down to:

* Insert disc :P

* Use DVD decrypter to rip each episode seperately to its own folder

* Encode using StaxRip

Might detail my settings more (for StaxRip) but it's an easy enough process as StaxRip will by default give you an h.264 file with aac audio, nice but won't play on my divx capable dvd player.

Plus you don't gain much as it's only dvd quality to begin with.

Bad Job Ads

2009-01-16T19:58:00.007+11:00

I was looking for jobs today on seek.com.au and came accross from very bad advertisements for jobs. Here's a few of them:

This was the first particularily bad ad I found.

It's practically saying "Do you provide good service, do you work in a safe manner? Better change that!" :P
They also fail to list where this new store is opening.

This one is very hard to take seriously, they wrote it in "chat speak" or "sms speak".
Whatever you call it, it looks bad and unprofessional.
It doesn't help that they put the title in capitals or used exclaimation marks excessively.
Also, what the hell is a 'pick packer'?

This one isn't really that bad but I was interested to know what the twist was...

I'm not sure what to say about this one.

It suffers from all caps, from exclaimation points galore and it has an awesome anecdotal pay rate.

"A new guy in his second week made $1200" - and we are supposed to believe that?

And so ends our look at glamourous adverts for today, has anyone else seen similarily poor advertising? If so, let me know in the comments.

Recovering A Scratched 360 Game

2009-01-14T16:23:00.009+11:00

While playing Lost Odyssey I got to a point in the game where it came up "Disc Read Error" ever time I tried to get past it. I took the disc out of my 360 and lo and behold:

The disc has a circular scratch going around the outside, the 360 has claimed yet another disc to an early grave :(

Although my 360 has the ability to read backup discs (Flashed firmware) and although I have the drive in my computer for reading 360 discs I hadn't backed up Lost Odyssey (It was a 4 disc game and I didn't want to spend the money on DVD-DL). I really should've though.

Since my disc is screwed I decided i'd try and make a backup (it's a bit late now :P), so I opened XBOX Backup Creator and was ripping it:

After about 40% of ripping the disc I hit the scratched part of the disc and was getting this message:

Now thats not good news, I clicked retry a few times but it was a no-go, the data is lost. So I clicked "Zero Fill Sector(s)" and I kept getting these messages so I tried to tick "Apply zero fill to all remaining sector errors." but I guess that feature is broken because it kept asking me all the time anyway. To solve this problem I went and downloaded AutoIt and made this script:

While 1 == 1

WinWait("DVD Read Error")

ControlClick("DVD Read Error", "&Zero Fill Sector(s)", "&Zero Fill Sector(s)")

Wend

This just waits for the error and makes it click Zero Fill, 1 will always equal 1 so the script loops.

Pretty basic script eh?

But this doesn't solve the problem that i'm getting a shitload of bad sectors in my dump (as a result of the scratched disc) does it now? Now this is the fun part :P Even though my disc has the lovely circular scratch on it and a lot of sectors are unreadable for the most part all the data is intact though (about 5% of the disc is lost) so my drive is making a nice clean ISO :)

It's taken me 12hours so far to make my ISO (66.09% at the moment) - will complete this post when it's finished.

Edit: ok done ripping, here is a screenshot:

Ok, as you can see it took 13hrs and 33mins for me to rip it and I have 44,574 bad sectors on my ISO. Clearly this is rather unacceptable even if its not a large amount of data (about 200mb), how am I going to fix this? The answer is what everyone is always trying to hate on, the torrents! Even though my disc is damaged and I can't get all the data off of it I can still recover it by using a torrent, all I have to do is download the torrent and get the add dialog open:

Now expand DVD1 and check the filename (you probably wont have to as most games are single disc), rename your ISO file to be the same as the torrent one:

Now i've renamed my ISO i'm going to click OK on uTorrent and it should recognise the ISO I made as being the same (ensure you get same region as your disc, mine is PAL as I live in Australia)

Unfortunately this didn't work as well as i'd planned it:

But at least having 2.85gb already completed is alright..

I really wish Microsoft had some sort of disc replacement program for discs that were damaged by your console.

Finished The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (360)

2009-01-14T05:02:00.010+11:00

Finished The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (360) today, this one i'm renting from Blockbuster and it's due back on Thursday. It's Wednesday right now. Going to finish up getting the treasure chests tomorrow. Finished this game in a day :) The bonus footage of mocap is neat although it makes me wonder why so many of the animations in-game look rigid :/

Gameplay-wise it was the average hack n slash adventure game, I skipped all the cinematics except a few while I was eating/drinking. The way they have cut together footage from the movie and new footage they made up for the game is silly and they haven't put enough bridging footage in leaving me sitting there wondering "what the hell was going on just then", ah well you never play this style of game for the storyline anyway :D

Have been playing through Call of Duty 4 on 360 as my PC is dead, I traded mice with Josh Bond as my G5 was messing up on my computer yet works fine on anyone elses. Joshs MX510 is working great for me though :)

I want to keep playing Lost Odyssey (360) but my disc is scratched =[ I will make a post about how i'm remedying this sometime soon :P Now as it's 5:06am and my head is sort of hurting a little so i'm going to bed.

Update: Got all the treasure :)

For some reason one piece of Bonus Art hasn't unlocked though, even though i've finished all the bonus levels and got all the chests, hmmm..... :/

Traded Mice Today

2009-01-12T17:00:00.004+11:00

My Logitech G5 has been screwing up on my computer. For some reason it just loses power randomly and then a few moments later it will get power again and make the re-added hardware sound (it doesnt move when it loses power obviously :P), this makes it nigh impossible to game or even use the computer effectively so i've been using a crappy (Logitech) notebook wireless usb mouse.

Anyway, Michael Smith was over my place the other day and I got him to use my mouse and I was using his G5 (he has the newer revision with the blue pattern on the back and the extra side button) and it worked perfectly on my computer, I kicked some ass on Quake Live using it too :P

Anyway, since my mouse works fine on Michaels computer and on my media center pc I decided to trade mice with Josh Bond, now I have his MX510 and he has my G5. The MX510 isn't quite as good as the G5 but it's still a pretty good mouse :P Beats the hell out of a wireless mouse. I haven't played any FPS after getting it though so i'll have to try it out on Quake Live or something.

Finished Thrillville: Off The Rails (360)

2009-01-06T04:30:00.002+11:00

Finished Thrillville: Off The Rails (360), wasn't a very difficult game but was sort of fun. It's sort of like a collection of flash games but with more professional graphics. Also makes for a pretty good party play game (4 player).

Finished The Darkness and Gears of War 2

2008-12-27T02:37:00.002+11:00

Today I finished The Darkness and Gears of War 2, both are games that i'd put on hold right at the end of the game. Gears of War 2 I only had two chapters to go, that's like an hour or so of gameplay! I dont' know why I hadn't finished this earlier. Gears of War 2 was brilliant and ten shades more epic than the original which was pretty epic in itself. Whether you were inside the belly of a giant worm, flying a reaver or riding a brumak Gears of War 2 had tons of unexpected action that I loved. Wish I had someone to play it co-op with though, i'll have to playthrough it on Insane with Jalexster if he has it. I finished Gears of War 2 on Insane, wasn't really as hard as I thought it'd be though.

I finished The Darkness on Normal difficulty and missed a ton of achievements so i'll have to play through that again at some point. It was a really creepy game with a pretty sad ending and storyline so it's definitely not a game for everybody but the darkness powers in it are cool and the confusing transportation to inside The Darkness where you are in a sort of World War 2 that nobody can die in. Anyway, the game is really cool aside from the fact you move pretty slow which can get really annoying and that when I was playing a quest bugged so that I couldn't complete it and get the achievement for being helpful :(

I liked both of these games a hell of a lot and recommend them to anyone.

Finished Prince of Persia (360)

2008-12-23T03:41:00.009+11:00

Prince of Persia has an amazing ending sequence, the last boss presentation is extremely unique and cool too (although it doesn't change game mechanics in any way).

I found Prince of Persia to be a really cool game although incredibly easy as you can't die in it. The game is mostly about puzzles and platforming although there are a few fights in it (mostly bosses) the combat system is really cool but still easy as you can't die.

I'm going to keep playing it even though I've finished it to try and collect all the light seeds (damned things :P) and get the race achievements.

Sands of Time Skins (Farah and Classic Prince) (360/PS3/PC)

At the Choose Skin Manager, Enter Passcode 525858542

Altair (PC)

At the Choose Skin Manager, Enter Passcode 13372805

Prototype Prince & Elika Skins (PC)

Collect all 1001 light seeds and defeat the final boss

Altair (360/PS3)

To gain access to the Altair skin, you'll need to register (for free) at Ubisoft.com. Once you have a copy of Prince of Persia, link your Ubi account to your Xbox 360 Gamertag or PSN screen name from the Prince of Persia main menu to access the Altair skin. Once linked you can switch skins from the main menu. This is Altair, but rendered in POP's slick art style. Via IGN.com

Combat Specialist Achievement (360)

You get an achievement for doing every combo in the game, I have made up a spreadsheet so you can check them off as you do them here:

http://www.rememberteh.name/PrinceofPersiaComboChecklist.xls

What I HATE about Steam.

2008-12-21T00:54:00.003+11:00

While I love Steam for the great service it provides to gamers there are a few things that I hate about it.

Here are some of them (Will update later as I think of them)

Games won't download/update while you are in-game - Say you just bought S.T.A.L.K.E.R. cause it was on sale for $3.74 (like I just did :P), it's 5gb so it's a fair download. You think "Hey this is gonna take 3hrs to download" (according to the steam estimated time) so you decide you'll play some Half-Life 2 (keeping in mind this game is singleplayer only!) After playing Half-Life 2 for a few hours you conclude "Surely S.T.A.L.K.E.R. must be downloaded by now!" so you quit Half-Life 2 all ready to play and what the - lo and behold Steam has decided that it would pause your download because you were in-game! A singleplayer game!!! This applies to LAN games too of course, even if I was on a net game I wouldn't mind Steam just limiting the download to 10kb/s less than max or so to stop me maxing my connection and having a smooth gameplay experience.
Games Updating in the Launch Window Restart When You Close it - If you try to launch a game, and it starts updating, if you close that window, instead of updating in the background, it starts over in the background. This means all the time and bandwidth used goes to waste. It should continue updating from what it had already downloaded. (Josh pointed this one out)
If you copy GCFs over Steam will complain you don't have enough space when that's irrelevant - If you have Steam open and you have 10gb free and you copy over someones 7gb of Team Fortress 2 gcfs then Steam will not automatically pickup that you have it, you have to go to Team Fortress 2 in the Store and click "Install". Steam will then complain you don't have 7gb free space even though that's irrelevant as you already have the files and refuse to go any further, it should check to see if you actually have the GCFs already or not before it complains at you.

Default File Formats in Office 2007

2008-12-03T09:48:00.005+11:00

Does anyone else hate that when you install Office 2007 it defaults to the new format in all the programs? This small registry fix will set the defaults to Office 2003 compatible files so users on older versions of office, office alternatives and other operating systems can view your files.

http://www.rememberteh.name/DefaultOffice2007.reg

This registry will change the defaults for the following programs:
Microsoft Access 2007
Microsoft Excel 2007
Microsoft Powerpoint 2007
Microsoft Word 2007

Be sure none of them are running when you run the registry file or the default format for the app you have running won't be changed.

Wrath of Lich King for Free

2008-10-20T23:04:00.001+11:00

Follow the old guide to install WoW Burning Crusade 2.4.3 and after you have it:

Make a copy of your WoW folder:

Rename it to "WoW Lich King" (or whatever):

Open up regedit from start - run and navigate to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Blizzard Entertainment\World of Warcraft

Change the install path to the folder you just made.

Now install Lich King from CD/DVD or from Internode:
World of Warcraft: Wrath of The Lich King Client.

You will need to patch to v3.0.2 for private servers, here is the patch process:

World of Warcraft v3.0.1 to v3.0.2 US/Aus Patch
then
World of Warcraft v3.0.2 to v3.0.3 US/Aus Patch

You will now be patched to version 3.0.3 which is what private servers for lich king currently run on.

The server I am playing Lich King on is an Australian one which was actually the very first WoW private server I played on, amazingly it's not only still around but has a domain name and a flashy website now!

Head over to WoC Server to register for it.

Now the last thing you need to do is set your realm list.
1) Go to your Lich King directory.
2) Go into the folder Data
3) Go into the folder enUS
4) Open up the file named "realmlist.wtf"
(Note: You can open it with any default text editor, I recommend Notepad)
Replace the entire data in it with the following data:

set realmlist realm.wocserver.org

3) Run World of Warcraft and start playing!

World of Warcraft for Free

2008-10-20T23:03:00.005+11:00

Since i'm in Australia the links will be best for Australians (yay internode) but overseas people may wish to visit Fileshack or something, I don't know.

Get WoW 2.0.0 here:
World of Warcraft US/AUS Trial Client 2.0.0

Then get Burning Crusade (The WoW expansion) here:
World of Warcraft US/AUS Trial Client 2.0.0 -> The Burning Crusade

Now get the following patches and install them in order:

World of Warcraft 2.3.0 US/AUS Patch

World of Warcraft 2.3.0 to 2.3.2 US/AUS Patch

World of Warcraft 2.3.2 to 2.3.3 US/AUS Patch

World of Warcraft 2.3.3 to 2.4.0 US/AUS 'Fury of the Sunwell' Patch

World of Warcraft v2.4.0 to v2.4.1 US/AUS Patch

World of Warcraft v2.4.1 to v2.4.2 US/Aus Patch

World of Warcraft v2.4.2 to v2.4.3 US/Aus Patch

You will now be at v2.4.3 which is what you need to play on WoWScape, the largest free WoW server network.

Register for an account at http://account.scapegaming.com/register.php

Now the last thing you need to do is set your realm list.

1) Go to your World of Warcraft directory.

The default directory is (C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft)
(Note : You may have installed it in another directory depending on your preferences)

2) Open up the file named "realmlist.wtf"
(Note: You can open it with any default text editor, I recommend Notepad)
Replace the entire data in it with the following data:

set realmlist logon.wowscape.net

3) Run World of Warcraft and start playing!

Update: Now I have a guide to play Wrath of Lich King for free also :)

New Games

2008-10-19T22:38:00.007+11:00

Just recently i've gotten:
The Sacred 2 Demo - A Diablo-esqe Action RPG,
World of Goo - A cool puzzle game where you have to build structures out of blobs,
Peggle Nights - The sequel to Peggle,
On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode One - The Penny Arcade action adventure game,
Trials 2: Second Edition - A fun motorbike game with over the top physics, sort of a 3D version of Elastomania without the elastic joints
and
Crazy Machines 2 - A sort of 3D version of The Incredible Machine.

An interesting collection of games to play no doubt.

Far Cry 2, Left 4 Dead, Fallout 3, Fable II, Gears of War 2 & Mirrors Edge are coming out within the next month.
Should be interesting.
Oh, and GTA IV comes out on PC next month.

Ubuntu "Fun"

2008-10-13T00:11:00.014+11:00

Ok well I have installed Ubuntu 8.04 64-bit on my desktop (disc courtesy of Bucci).
First thing I did when I installed it was install the restricted ATI driver from the restricted driver manager, easy stuff.

Then I went ahead and edited the /etc/apt/sources.list to include all the commented out sources for non-free packages and whatnot, then I did:
sudo apt-get update
To update the list of all the packages, then:
sudo apt-get install wine
To install wine
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras
To install Flash, Java, MP3 Playback and all that fun jazz.

Now that I have MP3 playback I really wanted a good audio player, so I decided to get BMP which is basically an Amarok clone for Gnome:
sudo apt-get install bmpx
Once you install bmpx you need to go into it and tell it to use PulseAudio or it'll crash every time you try and play music (not exactly what you want it to do :P) so the menu you want is:
BMP -> Preferences then from the Audio System dropdown pick PulseAudio then click apply in the bottom right, now that's all good :D

To gain access to the "Advanced Desktop Effects Settings" go:
sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager

Now that you have those, to enable Expose for the top right goto:
System->Preferences->Advanced Desktop Effects Settings->Window Management Section-> Scale->Bindings Tab
Look for a setting called "Initiate Window Picker For All Windows" and assign it to the top right :)

I wanted Task Manager to be setup like Windows, so I found this:
gconftool-2 -t str --set /apps/metacity/keybinding_commands/command_9 "gnome-system-monitor"
gconftool-2 -t str --set /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/run_command_9 "Delete"
Now when you press ALT+DEL task manager will open :D

What a Great Night

2008-10-04T04:31:00.002+10:00

I had the best night that i've had in ages, tonight I went out to Leigh's place since he's home from Canberra until Monday.

Andrew Brett, Camo, Shan, Stephen Taylor & Jessie Walton were there. I spoke to Andrew, Camo & Shan for ages and ages and we just hung out like we used to in school. It seems none of us have hung out with people from school much and we all agreed we need to hangout more. We spoke for ages and it was like 1:30 when Andrew went home, then Ash Smith rocked up cause he had just finished work. Leighs brother Glen was there too, obviously ;). He had two friends that I hadn't met before there too, Tim from Warrnambool and some other guy who I haven't heard of before. They were both pretty cool guys, all of us just sat around and talked for the night and it was damn fun. At about 3:30 we decided to call it quits and I took Shannon and Camo to Mc Donalds and then home. Shan lives right near where Lexx used to live which I found to be a pretty strange co-incidence, I wouldn't have known if I hadn't got lost trying to get out of his damn street. We went up 'Cameron Rs' (We figured it was a sign) and then I saw the milk bar near her old house and I knew how to get home, ftw!

Shan, Camo & Me sat around and watched the end of Miami Vice (looks like a bad movie :P), then the news which I learnt that the US stock market is 10 trillion in debt from. Shan kept saying "it's worth more than the US stock market" about everything. The news also had some thing about a house that was given away free on eBay, I wonder why they did that. Surely the land is worth something.

I found out that Camo is working at the place my mum told me to apply for work at (Snappers in greensy), would be awesome if I got the job and had shifts with him. Shan works at McDonalds in Diamo and said he can get me free stuff if he's on :o

It was a hell good night and Ash said he's going to get us to come out with him sometime soon so i'm looking forward to it :)

School Holidays Update

2008-09-28T20:35:00.006+10:00

Lexx is going to be with me second week after all, so the new plans for the holidays are:
* Look for a job
* Take the A+ exam (don't know about money or if i'm even ready for it)

Yesterday I was playing Halo 3 on Live! and kicking some ass, I do approve of that game when Australians are playing. Unfortunately it went back to it's old ways and connected me to a USA game so I had to put up with terrible lag for one of my matches, the rest were all good though (aside from the huge amount of time it takes Match Making to put you into a new game). I've only just discovered that Bungie are making a new campaign for Halo 3 called Mythic, I wonder what it's about. Jack speculated that it may be about the remaining spartans and judging from the trailer it seems to be set on earth so that would make sense. I was planning on playing some more Halo this week but that's alright, got plenty of other commitments.

I've watched the new episodes of Heroes, Supernatural & Smallville and I must say they're all off to good starts for the new seasons. Supernatural especially :O

I've had a good weekend- no stress, no people relying on me to do things, I could just kick back and relax and do absolutely nothing lol - no commitments ftw

The things i'm looking forward to most are: Fable 2, next weeks TV shows & surprisingly, getting a job so I can get some damned money :P

Blog Updated

2008-09-28T03:30:00.005+10:00

Ok I felt like starting up my blog again so I've given it a modern Blogger template so now posts have titles and you can make comments on them. Previously there was a service that hosted comments for the blog offsite but that has since been discontinued and all comments made on my previous posts are gone forever.

I've just gone through all my posts and given them titles so the archive menu is now able to be navigated properly.

I do plan on posting more now but things don't always goto plan :P

Consult http://agret.tumblr.com/ for random crap I find :)

Also, subscribe to the RSS for this blog.

Thanks,
Andrew

School Holidays

2008-09-28T02:56:00.009+10:00

First week of the school holidays are over, i've spent the majority of my time with Lexx. We've just been hanging out at my house being stupid and whatnot. Josh's sister got married this week :D perfect weather for it too, he said the wedding was pretty good (he was bestman, lucky guy :P). This week sometime I plan on going on a trip with Nakkari & Cabel which should be pretty exciting (yay roadtrip!). Only problem is that i've been tasked with organizing when and where we go and i'm pretty crap at organizing things, no less organizing a trip somewhere. I've never really looked into places to go or accommodation or anything so that should be an interesting thing to do, especially trying to find accommodation at short notice. A friend suggested that maybe we can go camping, although I don't have a terrible amount of space in my car lol

Things I planned for these holidays:
* Chill at Aaron/Reubens place (need to see you guys more :P)
* Learn reverse engineering (bah, i'll never get around to that one)
* Roadtrip (decisions, decisions)
* Look for a job
* Take the A+ exam (don't know about money or if i'm even ready for it)
* Catchup with some people I don't normally see (doesn't look like I have time, oh well :P)

I think I had some other stuff in mind but I can't remember any of it so, whatever.

To elaborate on some of those points, Reverse engineering has always seemed pretty interesting to me but i've never bothered to get to it as it seems time consuming and heavily math based and i'm no good at math so I always procrastinate it and say i'll do it on the holidays :P

Taking the A+ exam is somewhat vital to my future employment but I believe there are 2 exams you need to sit to get it and they each cost $300 to take so I wouldn't want to fail one and have to pay more :x

Looking for a job is something i've been meaning to do but keep putting off because I don't really know what I want to do. It's kind of got to the stage where it doesn't matter what i'm doing, as long as they pay me though so i'll just take anything I can get accepted into.

Well today was fucking shit =(

2006-11-28T16:10:00.004+11:00

This morning I had to catch the train to tafe and got there 30 minutes before I was meant to start work, not that we do work there anyway. The air conditioning in the building was screwed up so we had to sit around in the hot all day. After a hard days work (yea, right) at tafe I realized it was 3:05 and I thought I was going to miss the 3:18 train since I read my watch wrong and thought it was 3:10 so I ran most of the way up to the station. I was out of breath and dehydrated so all the blood went to my head and I couldn't see properly and almost passed out so I decided to buy a drink... $2.50 for a bottle of Solo, what a rip! The 3:18 was delayed and came 7 minutes late at 3:25 which sucks cause I normally get off at Diamond Creek around 3:30-3:35, anyway I got on the train and some guy was smoking as he got in so there was smoke in the carriage and then there was this women with her 2 toddler's and one of them had crapped their pants and there was some sort of drink spilled in the carriage too. The air in there made it hard to breathe... Of course since my train was delayed I had to put up with all the school kids who randomly take the train home and some girls had the nerve to discuss how "weird looking" I am (gee thanks biatches!) When I got out of the train at Diamond Creek my head screwed itself up and I nearly passed out yet again, I managed to down the last of my Solo and stop myself from passing out with some much needed sugar. Now that I'm home I find out my dad has hit the download limit, we used our off peak and he was the one who told me that and then he goes and hits on peak by downloading 2gb of TV episodes, thanks a lot...

What a hell of a day...

MSN 8 Pictures

2005-11-08T13:24:00.002+11:00

Quake 4 Dropship Scene Pics

2005-10-28T16:01:00.003+10:00

Later in the game you get put into a drop ship and sent to an installation. Here are some pics I took from the scene.

Is Quake 4 Good?

2005-10-27T17:50:00.003+10:00

People have been asking me, is Quake 4 good? Well yes it is good. Damn good, it does the Quake series well (on the multiplayer side anyway).

Quake 4 has a nice singleplayer mode until you turn into a strogg at which point the level designers just packed up and went home. Good luck finding ammo or health anywhere. Once you are a strogg expect to run around with 20hp and 10 bullets in each gun being the norm. There are also parts of the game where you have to use various vehicles. Not only are these boring but the stuff you have to do in them just plain sucks. Vehicles are not good in this game. Aside from having virtually no ammo when you become a strogg all e's are turned into 3's because stroggs are more leet than humans. Oh and you run a little faster & have a max of 150hp instead of 100hp. Other than that being a strogg does nothing to change the game. Except for the previously mentioned lack of level designers of course.

I've decided to stop playing the singleplayer because of the gay low ammo in all my guns and no health and move onto multiplayer. It's a lot better than the singleplayer and is like a new version of the Quake 3 multiplayer. It plays well except for the low framerates which you'll encounter at times (mostly in the larger areas of the maps). The maxplayers is set to 12 or 16 on most of the servers yet the maps that shipped with the game aren't really made for those counts. You usually spawn and instantly get killed or have another person spawn right next to you which you can try and dispatch with your crappy machine gun or just rush them with the gauntlet (if they dont rush you first).

Me, being teh pwnz0rz and all have to carry this over to Quake 4 and pwnz0rz everyone in the servers. Heh heh heh, I so owned those nubs.

If you are thinking about whether or not you should buy Quake 4 keep in mind the singleplayer is only fun for half of the game but the multiplayer is totally teh pwnz0rz. You might want to wait for a few more user maps to showup though as there are only 9 multiplayer maps that ship with the game. I haven't played any mode except Deathmatch and Tournament so far since all the CTF servers are empty. I guess CTF sucks :P

If I had to rate Quake 4 then i'd rate it as follows:

Graphics: 8 (Doesn't run too hot on older hardware)
Sound: 5 (The guns sound pretty crappy)
Gameplay (Singleplayer): 5 (So-so, not so great)
Gameplay (Multiplayer): 8 (Yay, Quake 3 is back baby!)
Value: 9 (The singleplayer isn't too hot but the multiplayer will keep you coming back for more)

JUGULAR n00b EPISODE 1 IS OUT!!!!!!!!

2005-08-20T22:23:00.001+10:00

Jugular n00b Episode 1: What if CS was real?

JUGULAR n00b EPISODE 1 IS OUT!!!!!!!!

2005-07-26T11:19:00.001+10:00

Comment, http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=156975&cid=13161252 from Slashdot

The benefits are obvious (Score:2, Funny)
by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 26, @09:46AM (#13161252)
OS X is closed source. This means that it is the work of the devil - its purpose is to make the end users eat babies.

Linux is the only free OS. Yes the BSD lincenses may appear more free, but as they have no restrictions, they are actually less free than the GPL. You see, restricting the end user more actually makes them more free than not putting restrictions on them. You must be a dumb luser for not understanding this.

And you obviously dont have a real job. A real job involves being a student or professional academic. You see, academics are the ones who know all about productivity - if you work for a commercial organisation you obviously do not know anything about computers. Usability is stupid. Whats wrong with the command line? If you cant use the command line then you shouldnt be using a computer. vi should be the standard word processor - you are such a luser if you want to use Word. Installing software should have to involve recompiling the kernel of the OS. If you dont know how to do this, you are a stupid luser who should RTFM. Or go to a Linux irc channel or newsgroup. After all, they are soooo friendly. If you dont know how the latest 2.6 kernel scheduling algorithm works then they will tell you to stop wasting their time, but they really are quite supportive.

Oh, and M$ is just as evil as Apple. Take LookOUT for instance. You could just as easily use Eudora. Who needs groupware anyway, a simple email client should be all we use (thats all we use as academics, why cant businesses be any different).

And trend setters - Linux is the trend setter. It may appear KDE is a ripoff from XP, but thats because M$ stole the KDE code. We all know they have GPL'ed code hidden in there somewhere (but not the things that dont work, only the things that work could possibly have GPL'ed code in it).

And Apple is the suxor because they charge people for their product. We all know that its a much better business model to give all your products away for free. If you charge for anything, then you are allied with M$ and will burn in hell.

Hosting a LAN + Jugular Noob

2005-07-18T15:44:00.002+10:00

Having a LAN tomorrow. Filming the first few episodes (or the first at least) of Jugular n00b our new internet TV series. Somebody turned off the computers at the wall today therefore my Linux box was hard shutdown =/ Started it up again and hope there is no repeat!

School is pretty bullshit as usual tomorrow we got a curriculum day though so will be having the LAN then even though I Should be doing math homework but fuck that. I got 4 sessions of maths I miss out on tomorrow :D

Random Links

2005-05-22T21:54:00.002+10:00

This is by far one of the best free games i've ever played.

One of the computers at E3 got spyware on it somehow.

This is a giant NES controller that was at E3

Adobe Buys Macromedia

2005-04-18T22:27:00.003+10:00

HOLY SHIT! Adobe bought Macromedia for $3.4 billion!!

http://macromedia.com/macromedia/proom/pr/2005/adobe_macromedia.html

http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/invrelations/adobeandmacromedia.html

Here is a chat log where I try and point this out to someone with not a great deal of intelligence by the looks of things:

Messenger Plus! is my friend - HOLY SHIT! Adobe bought Macromedia for $3.4 billion!! says:
^
(li)~Bart~(li) .:Ejukated:. says:
hi...
(li)~Bart~(li) .:Ejukated:. says:
sup agret
Messenger Plus! is my friend - HOLY SHIT! Adobe bought Macromedia for $3.4 billion!! says:
^^
(li)~Bart~(li) .:Ejukated:. says:
happy fellow
Messenger Plus! is my friend - HOLY SHIT! Adobe bought Macromedia for $3.4 billion!! says:
its an arrow you idiot
(li)~Bart~(li) .:Ejukated:. says:
lol
(li)~Bart~(li) .:Ejukated:. says:
this is my sisters laptop
(li)~Bart~(li) .:Ejukated:. says:
i have msn plus at home
Messenger Plus! is my friend - HOLY SHIT! Adobe bought Macromedia for $3.4 billion!! says:
its got nothing to do with plus
Messenger Plus! is my friend - HOLY SHIT! Adobe bought Macromedia for $3.4 billion!! says:
its an arrow pointing at my name
Messenger Plus! is my friend - HOLY SHIT! Adobe bought Macromedia for $3.4 billion!! says:
so read it!
(li)~Bart~(li) .:Ejukated:. says:
holy shit
(li)~Bart~(li) .:Ejukated:. says:
Adobe owns macromedia!?
Messenger Plus! is my friend - HOLY SHIT! Adobe bought Macromedia for $3.4 billion!! says:
ye
(li)~Bart~(li) .:Ejukated:. says:
whoa thats mad

Doom 3 (XBOX) Review

2005-04-16T02:29:00.003+10:00

Doom 3 is a faithful port of the PC version to the XBOX. Although they have gotten all the graphical goodness of the PC version onto the less powerful XBOX the frame rate doesn't suffer at all. The game runs with a rock steady FPS hindered with only occasional slowdowns at certain points of the game.

The PDA is accessible with the "Back" button on your Game PAD but the game has noticable lag when entering and exiting from the PDA which gets annoying considering how often you need to use it.

For those of you who never played Doom 3 on the PC the PDA holds voice logs and emails from people whose PDA's you pickup off their corpses. You need to refer to it frequently throughout the game to open storage lockers and certain doors.

Alongside all the features of the PC game Doom 3 also adds a new co-op mode which allows you to tackle the monsters of hell with a buddy over system link or with a complete stranger over XBOX Live. Sadly co-op is limited to only 2 players.

The co-op mode removes almost all story elements and the PDA and is a blast to play through. We played over XLink Kai with a ping of 35 and experienced no lag during the game. At times either Cameron or myself were left without a Flashlight though which got annoying considering how dark the game is, at points it was so dark I was just wandering blindly bumping into all the walls.

Since the co-op removes a lot of the story elements from the game we managed to clock in a 3 hour finish time. It's damn fun while it lasts and holds significant replay if you leave it for a few months in between play sessions.

One of the best additions to co-op is that near the start of the game there are 2 Super Turkey Puncher games setup so you can verse each other. The first to 3000 wins the game, I don't think I beat Cameron once.

Since we got the collectors edition of Doom 3 it came with the original Doom & Doom 2 in the Extra's section. I was terribly disappointed with it as there was no system link support and playing 2 player split screen had you both playing on screens the size of the 4 player split screen. I ended up adding 4 players to the game just so we could have the screens positioned in a normal portion of the screen. Along with this the bad lighting effects make for a totally unplayable experience. I would stick to the Doom Legacy XBOX port for playing Classic Doom. It features Internet, Network & Split Screen play.

Doom 3 contains graphics & physics that are leading games to the next generation. It makes the move to XBOX with no loss of detail and would make an excellent addition to your XBOX collection.

I rate it 4/5.

New XBOX Power Cable

2005-02-24T16:00:00.002+11:00

My new XBOX power cable arrived from the product recall today. It has a red TEST button and a Green RESET button. I am so fucking confused. It also has a sticker on it that says not to use before reading the manual, in sticker form!

The manual caters to everyone's needs whether you speak English or you don't speak properly. The language on page 79 scares me immensly.

It doesn't even slightly resemble any language that I know of (Besides Russian which is pretty fucked already)

Thats it from me i'm off to test out my new "XBOX Protection Cord"

Just fyi the Nintendo DS came out today. I'll ring Michael and ask him about it.

New XBOX Hard Drive

2005-02-12T01:44:00.002+11:00

I got my new XBOX Hard Drive earlier today. It's a 160gb IDE with 8mb Cache. It cost me $138 with $12.55 of that being GST. It was a bitch to setup and took me 6 hours. To start with I made a bootable DVD+RW which worked fine. I then took out my old hard drive and put in my new one. The XBOX would not boot any discs and couldn't boot from a blank harddrive so I kept getting Error 7 (HDD Error) and Error 13 (MSDash Problem). After a couple of hours of re-burning the DVD+RW and switching drives I decided to jump on IRC.

Feb 11 19:26:40 [Agret] Guys i'm trying to install a new hard drive and I need some help. How do you setup a new hard drive? All the tutorials on xbox-scene are stupid the just tell you to put cable select and boot disc. You can't boot without a formatted hard drive. I'm using an x2 lite flashed with X2.4983.06
Feb 11 19:27:16 [UnEZ] you'll need a dash boot disc
Feb 11 19:27:33 [Agret] I have one
Feb 11 19:27:45 [Agret] its called NewHDEvox1.4
Feb 11 19:27:49 [Agret] it's not booting though
Feb 11 19:27:51 [Agret] NOTHING will boot
Feb 11 19:28:16 [UnEZ] burn it right, to the right type of media too that your xbox dvd reader supports
Feb 11 19:28:16 [Agret] retail + backup games get the XECUTER2 logo then goto the error thing the NewHDEvox just boots straight to it with no logo
Feb 11 19:28:38 [Agret] UnEZ it's on DVD+RW it works fine on my old hard drive
Feb 11 19:28:44 [Agret] When I switch to new hard drive it wont boot
Feb 11 19:28:49 [UnEZ] same brand?
Feb 11 19:28:53 [Agret] ?
Feb 11 19:29:01 [UnEZ] the dvd readers
Feb 11 19:29:05 [Agret] its the exact same reader
Feb 11 19:29:08 [Agret] its just a new hard drive
Feb 11 19:29:11 [UnEZ] k
Feb 11 19:29:14 [Agret] nothing else changed
Feb 11 19:29:26 [Agret] I get "Error 7 Hard Drive Error"
Feb 11 19:29:40 [UnEZ] oh
Feb 11 19:29:49 [UnEZ] go over your cabling/jumper
Feb 11 19:29:51 [fierygt] are you sure your ide cable isn't faulty?
Feb 11 19:30:18 [UnEZ] or not plugged in firmly on all 3 connectors
Feb 11 19:30:36 [UnEZ] jump hd to cable-select (or master)
Feb 11 19:30:42 [Agret] it is on cable select
Feb 11 19:30:58 [Agret] fierygt afaik the xbox should be able to boot discs without a hard drive
Feb 11 19:31:15 [UnEZ] i don't think so
Feb 11 19:31:19 [Agret] and how could the IDE cable be faulty it works fine with retail hard drive
Feb 11 19:31:40 [UnEZ] sounds like the *drive* is faulty
Feb 11 19:31:46 [Agret] hmm
Feb 11 19:31:49 [Agret] idk
Feb 11 19:31:52 [Agret] its brand new
Feb 11 19:31:57 [UnEZ] so?
Feb 11 19:32:02 [Agret] i doubt it'd be faulty
Feb 11 19:32:12 [UnEZ] then go over your cabling
Feb 11 19:32:14 [fierygt] well, how many times have you pulled the drives in and out
Feb 11 19:32:22 [Agret] fierygt too many times
Feb 11 19:32:37 [fierygt] the more you do, the better chance you have of damaging cabling
Feb 11 19:32:46 [UnEZ] what kinda answers ya want? error 7 is indeed a hd error
Feb 11 19:33:57 [UnEZ] right, the dvd connector on the ide cable can seperate from the pins/cable from constant removing
Feb 11 19:34:33 [Agret] can you re-state that i dont understand
Feb 11 19:34:41 [Agret] the dvd connector?
Feb 11 19:34:53 [UnEZ] on the ide cable. the 40 pin
Feb 11 19:35:08 [fierygt] agret, don't dismiss small things such as the cabling, or you may be scratching your head for a long time
Feb 11 19:36:17 [UnEZ] watch when you pull on it to remove, you can see the cable pulling away from the pins, sooner or later, those tiny wires will fail to make contact inside the connector
Feb 11 19:36:20 [Agret] wolfman says:
Feb 11 19:36:20 [Agret] doubt it's the drive more likely the way we're trying to load it
Feb 11 19:37:03 [fierygt] well, you also said it won't even boot retail games, correct?
Feb 11 19:37:07 [UnEZ] i dunno, only 1 way to do it
Feb 11 19:37:19 [Agret] fierygt it wont boot retail games after the hd swap
Feb 11 19:37:24 [Agret] when the retail drive is put in the games boot
Feb 11 19:37:34 [UnEZ] still needs a hd for the saved game slot on every game boot
Feb 11 19:37:39 [fierygt] that's because there is no dash
Feb 11 19:37:55 [Agret] also homebrew discs and the evox hd loader thing wont boot
Feb 11 19:37:57 [UnEZ] that would be error 13
Feb 11 19:38:21 [Agret] i get that too
Feb 11 19:38:32 [UnEZ] missing msdash
Feb 11 19:38:34 [Agret] error 7 when evox or homebrew disc loaded
Feb 11 19:38:36 [Agret] error 13 when retail
Feb 11 19:38:51 [Agret] also get error 7 when no disc in drive
Feb 11 19:38:55 [UnEZ] cuz there's no retail dash
Feb 11 19:39:06 [fierygt] are you burning the XISO as an IMAGE? it is very important it be burned that way
Feb 11 19:39:08 [Agret] well yes thats makes sense UnEZ it is listed in the list
Feb 11 19:39:24 [Agret] fierygt tried MooGUI and ZXBTools and Qwix to make XISO and burn with Nero
Feb 11 19:39:30 [Agret] should i attempt a data burn with UDF
Feb 11 19:39:37 [fierygt] no
Feb 11 19:39:47 [fierygt] your probably burning wrong
Feb 11 19:39:50 [UnEZ] !help prebuiltiso
Feb 11 19:39:52 [xbinsHelp] prebuiltiso - There are pre-built EvoX dashboard isos in #xbins ftp, they are in /xbox/apps/dashboards/evolution-x/_unoffical
Feb 11 19:40:02 [UnEZ] !help formatftpevox
Feb 11 19:40:03 [xbinsHelp] formatftpevox - Format a new HD through FTP (v1.8.2594 & higher): http://www.xbox-scene.com/articles/hdd-ftp.php
Feb 11 19:40:14 [Agret] ok will get an ISO
Feb 11 19:40:14 [fierygt] close the "new" item menu your getting when you load nero
Feb 11 19:40:20 [Agret] new item?
Feb 11 19:40:25 [Agret] I just go into nero burning row
Feb 11 19:40:26 [Agret] *rom
Feb 11 19:40:30 [Agret] close hwatever pops up
Feb 11 19:40:32 [Agret] goto recorder then burn image
Feb 11 19:40:47 [Agret] choose DVD, 4x, finalize, burn
Feb 11 19:40:47 [UnEZ] yep, cancel the wizard
Feb 11 19:40:59 [UnEZ] dvd??
Feb 11 19:41:05 [UnEZ] dao
Feb 11 19:41:11 [UnEZ] disc-at-once
Feb 11 19:41:14 [Agret] Burn the EvoX dashboard to a CDRW or DVD-R (no CDRs).
Feb 11 19:41:20 [Agret] so uhh dvd+rw isnt supported?
Feb 11 19:41:31 [UnEZ] not on a samsung

Those guys nailed it down to either a dodgy cable or a faulty drive. They also blamed it on my media. I asked in #xbox and they blamed it on my BIOS so I flashed to the latest one (This is before the xbins chat log above) and still nothing. IRC is no help at all and my drive and cabling were both fine. Someone even went so far as to say my motherboard was b0rked. I took the retail drive and the 160gb and cloned the retail bit-by-bit to the 160gb drive using Norton Ghost with the command line switch "ir". After the clone I chucked it in the XBOX and my EvoX booted straight off :) I went into UnleashX and formatted the F: then I returned to EvoX and turned on support for the F Drive. After power cycling the XBOX the F: space free came up as 154gb :) My drive is installed and working. I have just chucked all my Full Metal Alchemist episodes on there (51 of them, the entire set) and GentooX. I am having problems getting GentooX to run though. I have also ripped Halo to the hard drive into my NMP folder so now I can play all the singleplayer and original maps through it :) I'm going to enjoy this 160gb drive it was worth the time (6 hours) and money ($138)

Gametec LAN Photos

2005-01-30T20:00:00.002+11:00

Here are all the Gametec-LAN 3 photo's that I took.

New Skype Feature

2005-01-29T00:30:00.002+11:00

Skype 1.1 has added a new chat feature for use with up to 48 people. It works really good as you can tell from my screenshot.

How Tournaments Worked

2005-01-25T23:47:00.002+11:00

Posting from Bondy's House. C47 Headquarters.

Re: Follow-up on the CS tournament @ GTL 3.

Bondy has said he wasn't persistant (Maybe I was wrong about him being persistant, maybe not) but anyway I'm just posting to tell you guys how the tournaments worked (In case you were wondering)

How they worked was as follows:
One of the clans picked a side and the other clan joined the opposite side (We got stuck on T both times, I'm not really good as a T player on 1.6). The match went for 12 rounds. After those 12 rounds the sides were switched (So T's-CT's and CT's-T's) then the score was reset. You had to play on the other team and win more rounds than they got while playing as that team. In our first game the CT's won 2 rounds and we won 10 so after the change we only had to win 3 rounds to win. We won hands down. There was a lot of confusion over this method.

I forgot to mention that at GTL3 the game most people were playing was a Half-Life mod called "Natural Selection" Lil'Bondy suggested I try and get people to play ETF but I didn't bother since we were only there for a couple hour's anyway.

Gametec LAN Writeup

2005-01-24T17:14:00.002+11:00

C47 won their first match again -]NS[-. During the practice we were 2 members short so I spent about 20 minutes finding Milamber to fight on our side (By joining the public server) and then one of the admins got aK.47 to fight on our side as well. I think -]NS[- were about to get one of the admins to pass them as the winner of the match beacuse of us having too few members. Thanks for putting up with us -]NS[- you put up a good fight. After beating -]NS[- we moved up and fought against U5 who owned us with their awp's. aK.47 kept insisting that they were all 'sus' I wasn't sure what he meant though. Those guys sounded angry they were yelling at each other a hell of a lot. He said they would be off their game but we only won 3 rounds against them. Lil' Bondy insists that U5 were speed hacking, he said if you held TAB before you died you could spectate despite fade-to-black. I wish he told me this while were playing so I could do it myself. I have no proof of U5 speed hacking nor do I agree with his accusation. To me they were just good players who had some AWP's and liked to grenade spam. I must admit at times their grenade throws seemed to be wallhacked. I can't say for certain though as I had no spectator. Anyway I think we all had a good time with the clan matches and I can't wait til GTL4 (Lets hope there is one). I got season 1 & 2 of Dilbert from the lan and the entire Angelic Slayer series (I believe it's the entire thing). They didn't have the last 3 episodes of Full Metal Alchemist there they only had the same ones as me sadly. The_Shadow downloaded a lot of Rurouni Kenshin off me and 10.0.0.49 kept "Search Spamming" but it was still alright. The network was lightning fast with CS pings of 0,1,4,5,9 and once I even saw a -1 (I kid you not!) as you would expect from the quality hardware used there. We were behind a 10/100 switch so we didnt benefit as much as the others from the gigabit backbone (Not that I have a 1000mbps network card but I still would've gotten a faster connection). Thor and myself were leeching that network like crazy. DC is a lot of fun on a LAN. I hope we can get into that Melbourne Wireless sooner or later. This post hasn't been formatted beacuse im posting through "Hello" with my 300bytes/second download I can't view any websites lets hope my 256kbps upload will hold up to post this though :)

WhatPulse

2005-01-20T18:09:00.002+11:00

Just a quick note (as per usual these days) about a cool program called WhatPulse which counts how many keystrokes and mouse clicks you make.

It is avaliable for free (with no spyware) from http://www.whatpulse.org/

Here is My User Page.

Edit:

I found you can also get sighosting at http://whatpulse.bounceme.net/.

Here is my sig:

I totally copied it off the sig I saw on the main page by Nick2588

I'm so un-original and evil. But his sig rocks so much :)

Garry's Mod

2005-01-19T14:19:00.002+11:00

Look at the cool balloon platform I made with garrysmod for Half-Life 2.

I want a PSP

2005-01-19T14:13:00.002+11:00

I want a playstation portable so much. When do they come out in Australia damn it!

Virus Research

2005-01-04T23:24:00.002+11:00

What is it with people and viruses? How hard is it to stay away from these things? Recently Ben, Daniel and myself have been infecting people with trojans at random to test how secure people really are. Go onto www.freechatnow.com and just set your nick to something like "HotGirlHomeAlone" or "HotChickWithCam" or "HotGuy4u" and then ask if anyone wants to see your pic. Link them to an exe file and watch the fun begin!

The Trojans we are testing with are:
*Minimo
*Sub7 2.15 Legends (Anniversery Release)
*ProRat

Andrew webcam shots his victim eating his own hand

The guy I posted a pic of above caught onto us when Ben started Steam a few times on his computer trying to keylog his password. The guy installed Mcaffe and removed Minimo but it left ProRat unharmed.

Andrew watches Justin check his iPrimus Prepaid Account Usage

We have successfuly viewed 4 people's passwords (out of the 50 or so victims we got, most of them were firewalled and only worked with minimo reverse connection mode and ProRat requires you to pay $200 before you can get reverse connections on it.)

Didn't bother actually infecting anyone with Sub7 beacuse it was so old. I tried it on myself and 3 other computers though. It wasn't as updated as the rest needless to say.

I went NetBios scanning and found my best friend's step bro Mark had his computer on the net (Out of all the odds of me finding this, I found it twice on 2 seperate days!). I also found another person on Windows 98 who had full C access shared. She had Norton on her computer though and it auto-deleted my Minimo trojan when I put it in the startup folder. I couldn't be bothered getting an undetectable server though so I just carried on scanning. Found a lot of Anime and other shares with Music and stuff - Netbios scanning is the new Kazaa ;)

Nathan and me made up some servers with ProRat and bound them to Music & Picture files. We didn't get as much success but a few people accepted (Nathan stupidly sent some of them on MSN and crashed my router several times despite the fact I mentioned several times and got in an argument with him that MSN transfers crash it...Stupidity goes a long way)

We got a lot of mixed success with Trojan's but I think exploits are still the way to go. Out of the 50 hosts we virus'd only 2 of them had anti-virus and 1 didn't have it installed to start with. The majority of them were using Firewalls which were bypassed with reverse connection (Webcam viewer coverup allows easy allowal through firewall)

Halo 2 Montage

2005-01-02T23:38:00.002+11:00

Checkout this cool Halo 2 montage, i'm loving it.
http://www.nightlivestudio.com/h2_rippon.wmv
50mb so if your on dial-up don't bother.

Music Taste

2004-12-30T10:59:00.004+11:00

Since Haze was saying how shit my taste in music is i'll just post my playlist so you can all laugh at it: http://alias.zero2097.googlepages.com/AgretList.htm That is the list i'm using on AudioScrobbler, it's set on Shuffle :)

Audio Scrobbler

2004-12-29T16:04:00.002+11:00

Hey guys checkout Audio Scrobbler it makes up a page that says what music you listen to and shit. Just head on over to http://www.audioscrobbler.com/ and signup an account then download the plugin for whatever media player you use. It's pretty cool beacuse after you get the plugin all you gotta do is chuck in your user/pass then it disappears and you'll never see it again. Here is my page for anyone that is interested in what sort of music I listen to:

http://www.audioscrobbler.com/user/Agret/

I use Winamp to play my music and i've got my playlist set on shuffle so it'll display whatever Winamp feels like making me listen to :)

Halo 2 > Half-Life 2

2004-12-24T16:11:00.002+11:00

We all know that Half-Life 2 is going to win the Game Of The Year award. Why? I don't fucking know. Halo 2 is so much better than Half-Life 2. Lets see what points people push that Half-Life 2 is good.

*Involving Story -> Nothing could be further from the truth. While the game has an interesting story that makes you feel part of it it is lacking a lot in direction. There are very few moments in the game when you aren't by yourself.
*Next Generation Graphics -> Doom 3 is prettier :)
*Amazing Physics -> Half-Life 2 uses the havok engine for it's physics. You can get some of the code from the source leak. Tribes Vengeance uses the same physics engine and a lot of other games are using it now too.

Halo 2 is great beacuse you usually have team mates and you alternatve between playing as a covenant elite and a spartan.
It takes all the good things from the first game and makes them better.
It adds dual-weilding, they have completely re-done the enemy AI, you can hijack vehicles, it has XBOX Live 3.0 (Even though Rainbow Six 3 has better game choosing. On Halo 2 you need the party system to even play in the same game as your friend beacuse it just joins you to a random game. You can't even choose which game you want to play in!), heaps more secrets than the original Halo and the graphics are pushing the XBOX to it's limit. It looks very beautiful and colorful unlike the bland textures of Half-Life 2.

Halo 2 should win game of the year not this sad excuse for a game named Half-Life 2. I sppose i'm being pretty heavy on Half-Life 2 but I would've expected more from Valve in 5 years of development. After the leak in 2001 they haven't really done much to the game. It also uses the gay content delivery system named Steam. There are so many problems with this I can't be bothered listing them. Goto http://forum.damage-web.net/ and download Half-Life 2 from there. You can get CSS & the netplay hack too :) Do not support Steam!

I wonder if I could get away linking to a piracy forum on MSN Blogs probarbly not but here on Blogger I have full freedom of speech. They aren't censoring or editing my posts in any way at all :) They are excellent and if you need a blog head to http://www.blogger.com

Having a LAN, Comics, Gaming & Microsoft

2004-12-15T23:28:00.001+11:00

Hey having a LAN this saturday with 6 people. Hope all goes well. Here is a dilbert comic I found that I thought i'd share:

(Dilbert Comic) Blinded by the ovbious:

Part 1:
http://www.comics.com/comics/dilbert/archive/images/dilbert2610230041206.gif

Part 2:
http://www.comics.com/comics/dilbert/archive/images/dilbert2030512041207.gif

Part 3:
http://www.comics.com/comics/dilbert/archive/images/dilbert2002034141208.gif

Got TPG 1.5Mbps ADSL the other day. It is very fast but only has a 20gb download limit :(
For those of you who don't know my old connection was TPG 512Kbps Unlimited (no star! it was unlimited!)

I got Prince of Persia 2 Warrior Within downloaded this morning (well finished I started 2 nights ago) I haven't got around to playing it yet since I just got my XBOX Gamepad Drivers again so I can use that to play it on my PC.

Got Underground 2, Crash Bandicoot Twinsanity, Mace Griffin Bounty Hunter & Wolfenstein Tides of War for XBOX yesterday too. Underground 2 looks way better on my PC and it's hard to play it on XBOX after playing Burnout 3 so much. Burnout 3 is such an awesome game for XBOX you have to get it. HAVE to. It got rated 10/10 on some site(or magazine, I forget) that only gave Halo 2 an 8/10. Thats how good it is.

Was playing Halo 2 online earlier today with some US with a 250 ping(average) to everyone in the Arena (XLink Kai). Did not notice any lag at all while playing. Was Coagulation CTF with 12 players. Very smooth. They totally did the netcode right :) Got bored and left after playing Coagulation for 2 hours though. The host was at a University in Miami so I suppose he had a very phat pipe.

Just before I was playing CSS with Bucci & Dark---Lord I was owning so badly. I am so dangerous with the CV-47 now. Earlier today my CSS had the same error as clit's but after trying (and failing) to get "Steam Fuckered" to work (A new online play hack) I gave up and just copied some files off my other comp then deleted my .blob files. Worked a charm and I was up and gaming with Bucci.

Haven't posted in my blog for awhile I should do it more often but I'm getting lazy. I'll probarbly do a revival and chuck it in my MSN Name again like it was at the start. Gametec Lan 3 is almost upon us. I think Rbn should get a blog to help practice his typing skills and to give us the status of whatever project he is working on, would be interesting. (YOU HEAR ME RBN!?)

Going to softmod Simo's XBOX for $20 (Bucci says that Simo won't let me but I think he will as $20 is damn cheap) sometime.

I like writing blogs beacuse I just let my mind wander and write it all out. It helps my typing skills and lets me express myself. MSN Blogs are fucking stupid they censor most of the things that they don't let you have in your name (Administrator for example, fuck also) what the fuck is the point of having a blog if you can't write your mind. I am an Administrator and I fucking hate AWP'ers there we go I said it! On MSN that would bring up some kind of evil error saying You Are Breaking The Law Please Turn Around And Jump Out The Window

Some guy on MSN asked me for a CS 1.6 non-steam crack I told him I don't know anything about them. I just realised now that "Steam Fuckered" which I used to play Team Fortress with would work fine on 1.6 i'll have to tell him next time I see him online.

--==[SD]==--| DKA| im an instigator, 380 slug penetrator says:
geting my arse kiked by gf in solitare lol
.//Alias.Zero - You call me strong, you call me weak, but still your secrets I will keep says:
how can you lose in a singleplayer game? *meh*
--==[SD]==--| DKA| im an instigator, 380 slug penetrator says:
its i dunno
--==[SD]==--| DKA| im an instigator, 380 slug penetrator says:
solitare showdown :S
.//Alias.Zero - You call me strong, you call me weak, but still your secrets I will keep says:
oh that is crazy
.//Alias.Zero - You call me strong, you call me weak, but still your secrets I will keep says:
i dont even understand that onelol
--==[SD]==--| DKA| im an instigator, 380 slug penetrator says:
i no
.//Alias.Zero - You call me strong, you call me weak, but still your secrets I will keep says:
play her in that bejeweled game
.//Alias.Zero - You call me strong, you call me weak, but still your secrets I will keep says:
in that you can just click randomly and still win :P
--==[SD]==--| DKA| im an instigator, 380 slug penetrator says:
tell me bout it, and no shes like prob at oit :'(
.//Alias.Zero - You call me strong, you call me weak, but still your secrets I will keep says:
and the chicks seem to dig it
--==[SD]==--| DKA| im an instigator, 380 slug penetrator says:
the time she plays me in cs shell get fuked lol
--==[SD]==--| DKA| im an instigator, 380 slug penetrator says:
i rekon my games r the only ones ill beet her in
--==[SD]==--| DKA| im an instigator, 380 slug penetrator says:
lol
.//Alias.Zero - You call me strong, you call me weak, but still your secrets I will keep says:
lol
--==[SD]==--| DKA| im an instigator, 380 slug penetrator says:
i hate the shitty msn and windows games, excpet for pinball :P
.//Alias.Zero - You call me strong, you call me weak, but still your secrets I will keep says:
i bet her comp cant run it
--==[SD]==--| DKA| im an instigator, 380 slug penetrator says:
so true

Haha what is it with Microsoft and redefining standards! HTML oh no it has to be HTM. MySQL oh no it has to be MsSQL omg we have been shipping solitare for 10 years and just realised it doesn't have multiplayer lets mangle it and make a multiplayer mode that slightly resembles the original game so nobody can understand it or hope to succeed at it. Speaking of which I Excel at Excel! I am so leet :)

I can't really think of what else to write except that Team America is a funny movie & I'm going to watch The Incredibles tomorrow and that i've downloaded the first 10 episodes of Full Metal Alchemist and watched the first 3 DVDs of Dragonball GT and I'm off school as of last monday :)

End Communication.

pedantic fails?

2004-11-12T22:35:00.001+11:00

Simon's Current Winamp Song >>> Weird Al Yankovich - Ebay - says:
so ummmmmmm pedantic
.//Alias.Zero says:
i am unfamilar with the word pedantic. Maybe you mean "pandemic" that games company who brang us....that...game....with the stuff
Simon's Current Winamp Song >>> Moby - Porcelain says:
lol
Simon's Current Winamp Song >>> Moby - Porcelain says:
i cant spel
.//Alias.Zero says:
pedantic
Characterized by a narrow, often ostentatious concern for book learning and formal rules

haha you love books
Simon's Current Winamp Song >>> Moby - Porcelain says:
as u can c
.//Alias.Zero says:
wait a sec wtf does ostentatious mean
.//Alias.Zero says:
ostentatious.
Characterized by or given to ostentation; pretentious.
.//Alias.Zero says:
so much clearer now
Simon's Current Winamp Song >>> Moby - Porcelain says:
roflmao
.//Alias.Zero says:
ostentation.
Pretentious display meant to impress others; boastful showiness.
.//Alias.Zero says:
oh yes im sure boasting about book loving is going to impress the ladies
Simon's Current Winamp Song >>> Moby - Porcelain says:
yeah dam right
.//Alias.Zero says:
pedantic is the worst word anyone could possibly think of

Raining..

2004-11-12T22:18:00.001+11:00

.//Alias.Zero says:
raining?
CAmo14 says:
???
.//Alias.Zero says:
is it raining outside?
.//Alias.Zero says:
y'know out the window
.//Alias.Zero says:
no dont look at your desktop! OUTSIDE!
CAmo14 says:
yea
.//Alias.Zero says:
alright
.//Alias.Zero says:
just wondering beacuse its pissing over here
.//Alias.Zero says:
then again you are only a few streets over
CAmo14 says:
same
.//Alias.Zero says:
well yes logically speaking if you are a few streets away from me then i am a few streets away from you
CAmo14 says:
agreed

Blogging from Gametec LAN

2004-10-10T09:48:00.001+10:00

Yo writing this at Gametec lan everyone here is complaining beacuse the network is down. I paid $20 for this? Haha nobody seems to know whats going on. The DHCP server got power surged :(

I've been playing some Doom 3 offline but I have no idea what I was doing at the time and where to go so I got totally fucked up.

Shouts out to CAmo and Bucci for not coming after all.

Everyone say it working now but they probarbly wrong >_<

Someone with ICS is fucking up our DHCP and stopping us from getting an address. I will find them and kill them and all will be right in the world.
except for terrorism.... and hunger in those 3rd world country places...

And dont forget Georgie... and Bush .. wait, they are all tghe same!! 666!

But then afain... killing everyone would solve world hunger and terrorism... no people left, noone to terrorize...

But then theres no H.A.c's to screw... HAC = Hot Azn Chick... Oh yeeeeeer

me fail enlish! thats unpossible

POWER SURGE IS TEH SHITE!!!!
bring forth the pr0n!!

LEECCH!!!!!!

ORPR00N/!!111222@@@#3@222666

1 IS TEH PWNED!

sOME GUY fucking caps lock just came and gave us a new uplink cable which will solve world hunger and maybe our lan problem

I ish wannet that $20! stop fucking with my keyboard josh!
Ah, BUT WHICH JOSH?!?!?!?!?!! DUN DUN DAAAAAAAAN
yOU OF COURSE Fucking caps lock!!!!
damn microsoft! how could u!

idiots....

BAKA!
Ni jiao Bendan!
Nimen shi da bian tou fa!
Ni de mama che wo de gou hen wo de mao!

Ben/Josh/Some random dude is here to solve all our problems (hopefuly!!!!)

I finished writing the above text at 4:41PM on 9/10/2004 at the Gametec-LAN
I was "helped" write the above by Josh & Some other guy
After being moved around a few times, being switched over to different switches/hubs and manually setting IPs it was evident that the network was fucked. When looking at it through Look@LAN every time you refreshed you saw different people randomly drop offline/come online. The LAN was dropping packets everywhere. I went home when my mum got there with my food at 9:30PM.
The result: After being at a LAN with no network (It was just a LA as Reuben called it) for 9 hours I ended up being able to play 1/4 of a game of Counter-Strike on the lan, 2 matches of Halo on XBOX where I owned Josh & Reuben (well me and Reuben tied but I still owned him) and 2 levels of Doom 1 offline. I feel my $20 was not spent well and will not be going to any big LANs in future. I will stick to the ones me and my friends organize. I got a phone call from Reuben at about 9:50PM saying that in about an hour they would have the LAN fixed and that people can get refunds. He rang back about 5 minutes later to say I couldn't get a refund beacuse I'd already left before he said that. Josh is so fucking stingy I just left 5 minutes ago and he won't refund me! I got a free issue of Atomic from the LAN (A month old issue which I already have since i'm subscribed) and someone's Halo CD Key.

End Transmission.

Update: According to a guy I met there 30 minutes after I left they got the network up and running by resetting all the switches and reprogramming the cisco ones.

Fable = Fucking Awesome

2004-09-24T10:51:00.001+10:00

I got Fable the other day and it's fucking awesome. I finished it in 3 days but I didn't get all the demon doors and shit. The game is pretty easy sadly. I stocked up on the resurrection things, the max you can get is 9 though (9 lives like cat eh?) but never even had to use 1 of them (aka I didn't die) just buy as many Green Apples and Red Meat as you can since they are the cheapest food and they still heal you well. Upgrade your Strength a lot too as toughness really does reduce the damage you take a lot! Buy an Obsidian Greatsword as they are the most powerful thing you can afford (only ~3500 gold at most places) and will last you the entire game. After killing the end boss you can get the master dragon slaying sword from Bowerstone North (or before killing the last boss but since it costs 80,000 gold you'd better make sure you have enough!) which I assume is the best sword in the game (excluding The Sword Of Aeons which you can get if you kill your sister at the end of the game) To keep playing the game after you finish it you must watch the credits which go for 20 minutes (!!) ah well at least they have some nice pictures so just grab a Simpsons DVD or something to do while you wait.

Overall Fable gets a 8/10 for being too short.

No Updates in Awhile

2004-09-05T21:35:00.001+10:00

Hey guys haven't updated my blog in awhile, I really should update this thing more often. I really forgot about it until recently. I've just come back from a LAN at Rbn's house from Friday til Sunday. I remembered to get some sleep at this LAN so i'm not totally fucked right now. In fact I don't feel tired at all but I have this burning stain in my mouth after drinking 1.25L of Vanilla Coke. Damn it's annoying.

Josh's XBOX was softmodded sucessfully with the UDE exploit after something like 6 weeks of Rbn been asleep or not home or not having the stuff we needed. It's a good thing we got it done beacuse his dad was getting pissed off at having to drive him over here every weekend lol

I have 4 gmail invites at the moment so if anyone wants to be invited to gmail talk to me before they are all gone :D

Right now I am trying to get this "Killer Instinct X" thing onto my XBOX, it's not really an xbox game its the arcade versions of Killer Instinct emulated on the XBOX. I am out of PC hard drive space so it's hard to get it onto my hard drive ready for transfer which is a pain in the ass.

Today I had some mod points on /. which I used to mod some people up :)

Checkout my friends web comic at http://comical.g-xero.com

Arg me mum is telling me to goto bed now. I was hoping to add more to this post. Ah well catch.

XBins Chat Convo

2004-06-10T18:33:00.001+10:00

Here's a conversation that took place in xbins chat.

[mickster] I was soldering away, and I got a shock fromit
[PreciousR] haha
[DrD] lol
[mickster] what is so funny?
[PreciousR] what? You were soldering with it plugged in?
[mickster] yes
[DrD] tell us about the fire
[mickster] the guy who sold me the chip, told me to leave it plugged with a CD running
[mickster] or it wouldn't work
* PreciousR falls out of bed onto floor laughing, yet still typing away on nifty cordless keyboard...
[DrD] cool
[DrD] nifty
[mickster] so, you no how the bottom of the iron gets hot?
[DrD] yeah
[DrD] the hot end
[PreciousR] irons have bottoms?
[mickster] I had it on the power cord
[mickster] and didn't notice
[PreciousR] OMFG
[mickster] I could smell it, but I thought it was solder :(
[DrD] I'm fucking tearing
[DrD] :S
[deano] rofl
[mickster] and zam.. I got another shock
[DrD] so what did you do next Mick?
[mickster] then, the cord lit on fire
[DrD] and did you get some water?
[mickster] NO
[DrD] awww
[Niggeresq] =(
[mickster] I unplugged it right away
[DrD] smart thinking!
[deano] ROFL

I have UT2004, I got it from Simon at a LAN over at rbn's place. It's alright, the space level sucks, Invasion rules, ONS-Pipeline rules, if you have UT2004 go download ONS-Pipeline it's a really cool fun-filled map :)

I am trying to get Rurouni Kenshin Episode 61 but it's taking so long, it's been downloading for 4 Days 10:02:40 now, nobody ever comes online with it, it's all leechers, where are the seeders :( Stupid Overnet! BitTorrent and BearShare are so much better...

Dinner just got home...

Gaming Gibberish, XBMC is born

2004-05-21T18:12:00.002+10:00

There is a condition zero mission pack out called "Operation Black Sun", you can get it at http://www.sandwiregames.com/blacksun/

I got Ninja Gaiden for XBOX 2 days before it came out :) it was released 2 days ago. Ninja Gaiden is such a kickass game, I have the American version so you can cut peoples heads off and stuff, who needs stealth when you have a pissed ninja with a sword? heh heh heh...

I got tHc Dash for my XBOX, its the hacked MS Dash so it looks and acts the same as the normal MS Dash but it lets you add/modify menu items. I also got avalaunch which is probarbly the best dashboard around, it lets you update the dashboard from a menu item, lets you FTP, lets you download save games, lets you download new skins, lots of cool features. It even features a RSS News Ticker so you can get all the news straight from the XBOX Scene (http://www.xbox-scene.com/) :)

Kai registrations are open so go register now at http://www.teamxlink.co.uk/ it lets you play your Nintendo Gamecube, PS2 and XBOX games over the internet for free!

I updated my XBOX Media Player to XBOX Media Centre, the menus aren't working correctly so I can't stream my Anime so i'm going to revert to XBOX Media Player. XBOX Media Centre is going to have Kai built-in though so when thats added I'll get it again (That is, if avalaunch doesn't get it added at the same time or earlier)

At school I am getting in trouble for not doing my essays correctly, I really don't understand these essay things. The Dungeon Siege II website is http://www.gaspowered.com/ds2/news.php so go check it out now if you haven't already, this game is going to be better than the original Dungeon Siege I should hope, speaking of which I need to get the expansion pack and the patch for Dungeon Siege.

Yesterday I was messing around with Half-Life 2 and got network play working, you have to add the line "maxplayers 32" to the bottom of your config.cfg in the hl2 folder then in the cfg folder. Now everytime you load a map anyone can connect to you (provided you have port 27015 open that is), if I can get a level editor for Half-Life 2 i'll make a deathmatch level for some old school deathmatch action.

If anyone has the torrent for Counter Strike Source, an IRC channel I can get it from or a direct link (ftp/http) please tell me asap as I really want Counter-Strike Source

My Windows Security Update CD arrived in the mail today after 10 days, it was free :) You can get your own at: https://s.microsoft.com/asia/security/ordercd_sec.asp You dont need to fill in country code, phone number or area code. Just leave those fields blank.

MGS3 Stolen at E3

2004-05-16T20:39:00.001+10:00

Don't ask me how these guys got away with this, even at Hardly Normal (Harvey Norman) the consoles are in metal cases not perspex, but read on to find out :O

[14/05/04 11:20]
E3 2004: MGS3 code stolen from Sony's E3 show floor stand

LA Convention Centre security staff were left flat-footed and red-faced yesterday as two unknown perps had it away with a copy of the MGS3: Snake Eater demo code. The one level demo, on display at Sony and Konami's stands is almost certainly being duplicated as we speak. Will you see MGS3 first at you local car boot sale?

The LAPD are investigating the incident and are looking for two 19-20 year old males. The code snatchers were able to gain access to the PS2 demoing Snake's hotly anticipated jungle rumble by cracking the perspex case on one of the pods on the Sony stand.

According to eyewitness reports they achieved this by leaning heavily on the unit before simply ejecting the disc and doing a runner from the convention centre - possibly not how Snake would have done it, but apparently effective.

Halo 2 is set for a November 9th 2004 Release

Guild Wars, PSP & DS

2004-05-15T18:22:00.001+10:00

Well I was a little late getting guild wars and only got to play it for about half a day all up, a couple of hours at night then til about 12 the next day, it looked simply amazing though and I loved it, I am going to buy it for sure when it comes out at the end of the year, I can't wait that long though! NOT FAIR! Didn't end up going War Driving today, might go tomorrow though?

Of course heres what we've all been waiting for, the shots of the PSP and the Nintendo DS, here are the finished designs both shown at E3, people could actually use the Nintendo DS there though so I expect its in a much more final state than the PSP, we might even see it before the end of the year if we're lucky. Gotta love the PSP's graphics though as shown in the Grand Turismo 4 Screenshot.

PSP Images shown at E3

Nintendo DS Images shown at E3

Specs:

Sony Playstation Portable

• Product Name: PlayStationPortable (PSP)
• Color: Black
• Dimensions: Approx. 170 mm (L) x 74 mm (W) x 23 mm (D)
• Weight: Approx. 260 g (including battery)
• CPU: PSP CPU (System clock frequency 1~333MHz)
• Main Memory: 32MB
• Embedded DRAM: 4MB
• Display: 4.3 inch, 16:9 widescreen TFT LCD
• 480 x 272 pixel (16.77 million colors)
• Max. 200 cd/m2 (with brightness control)
• Speakers: Built-in stereo speakers
• Main Input/Output: IEEE 802.11b (Wi-Fi)
• USB 2.0 (Target)
• Memory StickTM PRO Duo
• IrDA
• IR Remote (SIRCS)
• Disc Drive: UMD Drive (Playback only)
• Profile: PSP Game
• UMD Audio
• UMD Video
• Main Connectors: DC IN 5V
• Terminals for charging built-in battery
• Headphone/Microphone/Control connector
• Keys/Switches: Directional buttons (Up/Down/Right/Left)
• Analog pad
• Enter keys (Triangle, Circle, Cross, Square)
• Left, Right keys
• START, SELECT, HOME
• POWER On/Hold/Off switch
• Brightness control, Sound Mode, Volume +/-
• Wireless LAN On/Off switch
• UMD Eject
• Power: Built-in lithium-ion battery, AC adaptor
• Access Control: Region Code, Parental Control

Accessories:
• Stand
• Headphone with remote commander
• Headphone with remote commander and microphone
• External battery pack
• Case
• Strap
• E3 Prototype Exhibition: USB Camera for PSP
• USB GPS for PSP
• USB Keyboard for PSP

UMD Specifications
• Dimensions: Approx. 65 mm (W) x 64 mm (D) x 4.2 mm (H)
• Weight: Approx. 10g
• Disc Diameter: 60 mm
• Maximum Capacity: 1.8GB (Single-sided, dual layer)
• Laser wavelength: 660nm (Red laser)
• Encryption: AES 128bit
• Profile: PSP Game (full function)
• UMD Audio (codec ATRAC3plus, PCM, (MPEG4 AVC))
• UMD Video (codec MPEG4 AVC, ATRAC3plus, Caption PNG)

Nintendo DS

Unsure at this time

Wardriving, Condition Zero

2004-05-14T20:39:00.001+10:00

On Wednesday I went war driving with shrewd_user and Reubz, we found 5 access points. Only one of which we could access the internet with. Two of them were encrypted I believe. We didn't have much time though, we got some chips with vinegar and chicken salt though so it was worth going out. Planning on going War Driving tomorrow again hopefully. If you don't know what War Driving is, goto http://www.thebroken.org/ it's the first segment in the first episode.

Today Andrew played Counter-Strike online for the first time, of course he wasn't very good but we VS'd the bots. Him and his 33k Internet :P Brad/Weeman saved me a few times and then I saved him majorly when all the bots came up behind him, lol! Simo/Webzy came and went on my server a few times, he didn't stick around long for today though. Andrew stayed the longest so props to him!

Two days ago I downloaded Condition Zero through the Steam Dedicated Server update tool, I now have it running under Steam with netplay. You think I'd buy it? You must have me confused with someone else, its not piracy, they gave me this game, I didn't hack past any anti-piracy measures either, it just works as a Modification to Half-Life. I wonder if they will "fix" this in a later Steam update, chances are likely but Condition Zero is pretty much the same as normal Counter-Strike except with some re-done maps and new models (The new models are only on Single Player for some stupid reason), the offical bots kick ass but I already have those same bots on 1.6 (well the Beta ones from the Steam test, I backed them up awhile back)

Woo go rambling, yesterday I went round Leigh's place to play Condition Zero but Steam fucked up his game and he had to re-install but some bitch had scratched his disc so we ended up playing normal 1.6 there, his dad managed to fix the CD by using a CD Cleaner on it so it's all good, in the manual the replacement CD address is somewhere in Canada, he didn't like the idea of sending it all the way over to Canada to get a replacement though. Valve should get some replacement departments in the local countries. Since he didn't have Condition Zero we just watched the movies on the Half-Life 2 disc that came with it, I must say Half-Life 2 looks fucking awesome :) I am definately buying this game and Doom 3 (yes, me, buying games, heh, these games look fucking awesome though)

Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 won't have much of an impact on me if I manage to get ahold of Far Cry though, Liam has told me how awesome Far Cry is, apparently you can push a boat into the water and just keep walking into the front of it, fun with physics :) Atomic said it was a really awesome game too. Halo 2 has got a final release date set now which is good, lets hope it makes this release date (unlike Half-Life 2's forever delayed release), Halo 2 also looks fucking awesome.

Cameron/Camo told me that E3 started yesterday, so i'm going to make this post then check my link to the "E3 for everyone" for Guild Wars, woo go Guild Wars.

Agret out.

Boring.

2004-05-01T09:43:00.002+10:00

I now have a Moblog which lets me post pictures, you can view it at http://agret.textamerica.com/, I don't know when I'll post pictures in there, probarbly when I'm bored. It is confirmed, Shannon and Simo are coming to my house tomorrow to play some CS, they are going down! >=)

According to Slashdot.org which links to some other articles, they seem to have located Atlantis and Noah's Ark (two seperate articles). Most people believe they have not found Atlantis and that Atlantis is under Antartica, I read the articles and it turns out in Alexander's time there was no ice on Antartica. Apparently Antartican's were technologically advanced and had plumbing, water works, etc. like the Romans did. Near the start of civilization the Egyptions were near Antartica, apparently they got given knowledge by the civilization on Antartica which is why they were interested in Astronomy. Maybe they got the knowledge of how to build pyramids from them too, but you never know....

This is a relitively short post as I don't really have much else to say.

Replacement Shells, Guild Wars & TV Shows Cancelled

2004-04-28T20:33:00.001+10:00

Replacement Shells - I have been using AstonShell for awhile (30 days) and now it asks me to register it, luckily just recently I have come accross another Replacement Shell called "LiteStep" which you can get at http://www.litestep.net/ I have installed it on Nicole's computer and am currently rebooting it. From the screenshots it reminds me of XFCE, the Window Manager I use for Linux, nice and lite-on just like the name suggets for this Replacement Shell. Explorer is so bloated, slow and is quick to crash so I don't really see the need for it, which is what causes me to branch out and find replacement shells. Not only can a replacement shell speed up your desktop but they usually allow a lot more theming and customizality than the standard explorer.exe shell while still remaining faster. I guess its beacuse of all the DLLs that explorer uses that its slow, it probarbly comes down to that and just plain poor programming. Replacement Shells are just that, something you'd feel happy to replace your explorer.exe with. Holy shit the shell just loaded on Nicoles desktop, it displayed the Desktop folder which has silently been filling with icons while AstonShell was on there, the desktop has about 100 icons and still displayed very quickly. The "Start Bar" looks very Linux-Like and I would even go as far as to call it a docking bar. Which is what I will call it. The programs menu in the start menu loads very quickly, which is great, the programs menu usually takes a long time to open, sadly since its all in a vertical strip it with no scrolling options you cannot see all your programs (provided your list takes up the whole vertical axis of the screen, or more) but you can free float the programs menu so that you dont even need to click "Start" to see your programs, they are just there on your desktop. Very cool. This default theme is supposed to be very "Lite" and is one that your not really supposed to like. Hell, like, I love it! LiteStep is a very professional replacement shell and is also very quick and good at what it does. I recommoned this to everyone. Its also free so no annoying "Register Now" screens like AstonShell :) Yes you can change back to the normal explorer with a shell changer app, but why the hell would you? LiteStep rocks!

Guild Wars - Looked at the screenshots for Guild Wars (all of them this time, not just the one with the chick :P), the combat looks really cool, there is a screenshot of a guy fighting some warewolves and also a screenshot of a team of two people fighting what appears to be some kind of beast with a guy on top of it, the game is looking great and I can't wait til the E3 for everyone to test it out!

Andromeda and Mutant X have been cancelled as Fireworks Entertainment, is shutting its doors for good and owner CanWest Global Communications (which also owns canada.com, the National Post, Global Television, and a bunch of other media assets) announced it will take a $159 million writedown on Fireworks. Sad really, Andromeda was a great show. Mutant X was pretty lame though, I was wondering when they were gonig to cancel it as the special effects were really lacking in realism.

Games I look Forward to

2004-04-26T21:01:00.001+10:00

Here are the games I am looking forward to in the near (hopefully) future: Fable [XBOX], Sudeki [XBOX] (Said in a stupid voice by Cameron), Half-Life 2 [PC/XBOX], Doom III [PC/XBOX], Starcraft 2 [PC], Guild Wars [PC]

When is E3 ever going to get here, hang on i'll check the date now....

Hopefully E3 will answer a lot of my questions as to the fate of the games I want, Guild Wars is doing a program that is unheard of until now, called "E3 is for everyone" in which you can download and play Guild Wars with the people who are at E3 from your house, the downloaded game will stop working after E3 however but it should give us a good idea of what the game is like! Read more here

At the moment I am downloading the Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow Multiplayer Demo for PC, you can get it for yourself by clicking here the .se stands for Special Entertaining FTP Server (NOT! its slow....whatever the hell SE actually stands for, its strange and I get a very bad ping)

Earlier today I was playing Counter-Strike with Brad, Simo and Bucci. As usual me and Bucci were kicking ass, we played de_aztec, de_dust2, as_oilrig, cs_747 and then de_dust2, a good time was had by all as only one loser joined our game and we managed to vote kick him off (Yay Brad worked out how to do it now!) Bucci had some problems with his CD Key half-way through and he was out of action for awhile while he got that sorted out. This Sunday Shannon and Simo are going to come to my house to play Counter-Strike, I hope that they weren't screwing around beacuse I want to kick their asses, can't complain about lag on a LAN >=)

I have discovered that Serious Sam does not run on a Celeron 533 + TNT2 combo and complains about no video mode found. Quake 3 runs nice and smooth though :) Counter-Strike can be played in Software mode in 800x600 resoltuion with "minimum render lag", I suggest lowering it a bit though. The monitor is screwed so your going to have set the brightness above the normal one to see in the dark areas, either that or use your flashlight. When you up the game brightness the colors ("What the fuck is wrong with the colours?" -Justin) are a little strange though.

Today I got a program for MSN which lets you use any size display picture you want, its pretty cool but I don't look at my own display picture that often so it doesn't really do much for me :P

I also met some chick who lives in the "Dominican Republic" wherever that is i'm not sure, but she spoke both Spanish and English and had a really long name. I met her on Overnet while attempting to download some Rurouni Kenshin OVA episodes, I helped her setup an FTP Server but she doesn't know her router password so she can't do the port redirection herself. I found out it was 2am for her when it was 5pm for me so I worked out I need to get online in the morning to talk to her at a reasonable time for her, I want to get this FTP up and running so I can get the Rurouni Kenshin OVA episode's though. If anyone else has them, please contact me.

I got a "hack" for Blogger which lets you post comments so now you strange people who view my blog can post strange comments (Yay!)

End Transmission.

My Collection & Advent Children

2004-04-25T21:03:00.001+10:00

At the moment I am adding the games I own to "My Collection" on IGN, this will keep me busy for a few days. You can see the collection here. I just set the region to PAL on all of them as I cbf checking if they are NTSC or not. Not all of them will be rated, I'm wondering when E3 is going to be, its in May, I'll have to see what the exact date is, apparently more Final Fantasy Advent Children news will be released (Hopefully a new clip to go with it!)

I am waiting for Advent Children to come out in Japan, then I'll try and get myself a copy of it with English subtitles, of course I'll buy it when it comes out here so I get my DVD Quality :) :)

Also at E3, more Sony Pocket Station news should be released, dammit I can't wait for this Advent Children and Pocket Station crap, I hope there'll be some other cool games on show there too (Fable? Doom III? Half-Life 2?), we need Half-Life 2 to be released before it becomes outdated, Far Cry is the best FPS on the market (Coming after Halo, which is coming after Doom II)

Been playing more Counter-Strike, I want to be able to own those level 4 bots, they think they are so good with their headshots and instant turning, well I'll show them! *turns knife only mode on* >=) KNIFE WARS!!!

Graal Online forums got hacked by Luke, thats pretty cool, I don't know why he hasn't banned the guy insulting him. Trust Angel to have corridor as her password roflmao. I find it pretty stupid beacuse unixmad was on the forums at the time of the defacement and he didn't do anything, then he went away for very important buisiness I presume, whatever their company does thats important i'll never know since the site hasn't been updated since SCARS was released on the N64, sad really.....

Head on over to http://www.flyordie.com/ to checkout a really cool Tank Wars game made in Java, also the Runescape address is http://www.runescape.com/ in case you were wondering. The graphics in it are nice now but it still lags like a bitch which renders it nearly unplayable.

On Slashdot today they posted about Credit Cards with Voice Authentication in them, sounds cool to me, they should develop software that uses a facial map (via webcam) and voice authentication (via microphone) for desktop computers, that way no unauthorized access on my computer and I won't have to remember my password (oh yea mines set to auto-login with a blank password to an Administrator account, nice and secure, just the way Windows is supposed to be!)

ZBot Leak, Americas Army

2004-04-25T17:01:00.001+10:00

The hacked offical bots for Counter-Strike 1.6 (zbot) are very good. When playing on Level 4 they are very hard to kill, they keep in contact with you over the radio and give you status reports ("3 guys left", "Only 2 to go", "One guy left") which does get annoying when you are trying to listen for footsteps and you hear them instead. The voices are just the same sound files with masks applied to them so they sound odd, I wonder what they'd sound like if I recorded my voice into those files lol i'll have to find out sometime.

As for 1.5 you can use ivpbot which is Improved Version Podbot I believe, its like the PodBot except it is updated more, they are smarter and they have personalities and stuff such as Agressive personality :)

I finished the America's Army training missions last night so now I can actually play the game! I find it very stupid that the missions you can play are calculated from your training scores, but hey I suppose it makes it more realistic, but maybe I don't want it that realistic? Maybe I just want to get straight into the action? They don't account for that ovbiously, but I shouldn't complain, its a free game, but I still like complaining, got nothing else to do.

New Blog :)

2004-04-25T11:05:00.001+10:00

Hello I have just gotten my new blog, this is my first post.