Friday, August 26, 2005

R&C: Arsenal Goes "Greatest Hits" -- 1:06 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Several PS2 games have now become "Greatest Hits" including Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal. "Greatest Hits" status means that the games will retail for $19.99. Up Your Arsenal is a big hit in the Hun household. Check it out if you haven't already. Thanks Evil Avatar.

KDE 3.4.2 Upgrade -- 12:42 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I downloaded and installed the Slackware 10.1 packages for KDE 3.4.2. The main thing that prompted this was to get a newer version of Kopete so I could try to get both ICQ and Google Talk working on it. It works like a charm now. I had tried GAIM and that worked pretty well. I just hate GTK2 for the most part. I'm sure there are some other nice features of KDE 3.4.2 that I'll enjoy.

This upgrade also reminded me of one of the great joys of Slackware. Upgrading something big like KDE in an RPM-based distro would send you spiralling into dependency hell. With Slack I just had to remove the KDE-related packages in pkgtool and then install the new packages. Within moments I'm back and running with no muss, no fuss. This is what I mean when I say that Slackware just stays out of your way.

I was also pleased to see that EZ-Net's phat new pipe and supporting hardware enabled me to download the packages from Georgia Tech's FTP site at a full 2Mbps. Before that upgrade, I got full speed occasionally. Now I'm getting it all the time. Too slick for words.

Thursday, August 25, 2005

Blue Shift on Steam -- 9:20 am CST, Update by The Master

Valve has released Blue Shift on Steam. This is available to owners of the Half-Life Premier Pack, or the Half-Life 2 Silver/Gold packages. I am looking forward to being Barney again. I really enjoyed this SP add-on to the original HL; I thought it was much better than Opposing Force.

Google Talk -- 9:14 am CST, Update by The Master

I tried out the new Google Talk client last night. While I was impressed by the 1/4 memory usage compared to ICQ, this thing has nearly NO features, and adding buddies to it sucks. The only way to add is to send them gmails, which is a pain if they're already signed up. The client can also only be used for text chat at this point. I assume file and image transfer will be available in the next revision. I also hope they eventually allow custom sounds, because the *ding* they're using now is going to drive me crazy.

I'm not going to be giving up ICQ, though. I like my early-adopter UIN :-)

J.t.Qbe comments: Google Talk also has voice chat, doesn't it? I'd use it, but it won't run on Windows 98. I've heard rumors about Google buying Skype someday. Skype doesn't officially support Windows 98, but it does work and works well. I'd hate to lose Skype's Windows 98 functionality if Google should buy it.

For what it's worth, I never use instant messaging. My coworkers are always nagging me to log into the Jabber server, but I rarely get around to it. If they want to bother me, they can call me on the phone.

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