Tuesday, December 18, 2001

NFL Week #14 Final -- 8:54 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Well, ol' A.T. did pretty well this week. I ended up 10-5 (including picking my Lions' first win) and Eeyore was 9-6. Year-to-date I am 125-78 (.616) and Eeyore is 116-87 (.571). The sad thing is that my non-playoff-making fantasy team would have scored 123 points this weekend, enough to beat any team in my league. Aarrgghh!

Firing Squad RtCW Review -- 8:28 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The Firing Squad has produced the most in depth review of Return to Castle Wolfenstein that I have read so far. Once I get a system upgrade, I'm going to need to pick this one up. The multiplayer test was almost too much fun.

WP8 Filtrix Fix -- 4:50 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The Filtrix file convertors for WordPerfect 8 for Linux had a bug that caused them to stop working due to the Unix One Billion Second bug. Unfortunately Corel has abandoned the product (which is sad on many levels). Some fine folks in the Netherlands came up with a fix so the convertors can be used again. I've tried the fix and they work like a charm. Thanks Linux Today.

<soapbox>COREL! Since you've abandoned Linux, release WP8/Linux as open source! It is still one of the best (if not THE best) Linux word processor out there. Keep that work alive. Open it up!</soapbox>

Possible New Email Worm -- 1:22 pm CST, Update by J.t.Qbe

Symantec is warning about a potential new mass-mailing worm. If you receive an email of the following form, Symantec recommends against visiting the site:

Subject line: HI !!
Body: http:// celebxx.cjb.net Hi. I found cool site. It's really cool.

With the recently discovered hole in most IE browsers, you should beware--currently the linked site is being examined to see if it takes advantage of any IE holes, besides the usual virus behavior of mailing itself to everyone in your address book. Oh, of course this is a Microsoft/Outlook-only worm. That's pretty much assumed these days, isn't it?

Adventures with MPlayer -- 9:30 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

MPlayer is an open-source movie player that can handle just about any file format known. It is also one of the most popular projects out there for that very reason. But have you ever tried to compile and install it? I did and it struck me like it was designed at the Institute for Punitive Computing. Read about Joe Barr's efforts to get it running in his LinuxWorld article entitled MPlayer: The project from hell. Because it does work so well, I feel the effort is worth it. But with a minimum amount of effort and about 50% less attitude from the developers, it could be much easier to use. Thanks Slashdot.

Monday, December 17, 2001

StylusPlus for Christmas -- 6:27 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Back in June of 2000 (story), I purchased a Stylus+ pen for my Visor. It's a stylus, pen, and mechanical pencil all in one. My graffiti recognition increases dramatically when I use it, especially since my writing hand isn't what it used to be (story). I like it so much, I bought one for my brother-in-law last Christmas.

At any rate, Stylus plus.com has them on sale for $8.50 which is less than I paid for mine at Office Max a year and a half ago. It's a steal. to top it all off, they have free shipping through the end of the month. While you are at it, pick up some ink refills. I find that I use mine all the time and I burn through them like nobody's business.

I recently ordered some black ink refills, pencil lead, and replacement erasers. They arrived today. I was a little concerned because the stuff I ordered was in a little envelope placed inside a regular, non-padded, envelope. Everything made it here fine and they even threw in an extra ink refill for free. No affiliation, just a very satisfied customer.

RtCW Follow-Up -- 9:07 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I fiddled with a few of my settings in the Return to Castle Wolfenstein demo last night. I noticed that by default the geometry was set to "high". I moved it to "medium" and turned on lightmaps instead of the default vertex lighting. That made all the difference in the world. It still taxes my system something fierce, but it looks a lot better and it is playable.

The catacombs level is pretty freaky, although on my monitor it is almost impossibly dark. I realize it is supposed to be dark and foreboding, but it is almost impossible to see anything. I cranked up the video card's gamma to compensate. That washed things out a bit, but at least I could tell where I was going and what I was supposed to be doing.

The AI is certainly a lot better than most games I've played. The fact that you can use stealth to your advantage is a nice touch. Unfortunately, I think many reviewers are going through the game with guns a-blazin'. That's fine, but from what I've seen from the demo, you'd miss an awful lot. My $.02. $18.24 Canadian.

J.t.Qbe comments: I tried the demo again yesterday and the video annoyances (I have an ATI Xpert 128) seemed less annoying than before. It certainly is a nice looking game and the demo was pretty enjoyable. I noticed that Circuit City has it on sale for $35 or so this week. I don't think I'm going to buy it myself, though.

Past Two Days' News

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