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September 2001

Sunday, September 30, 2001

HomeLAN Top Link Cage @ 6:39 Comments

Are you looking around for a replacement for Voodoo Extreme now that Billy "Wicked" Wilson is gone? You might want to take a look at HomeLan Fed. HomeLAN Fed is the home of John [JCal] Callaham. I enjoyed reading his stuff during his brief stint at VE, and he is quite the news posting monkey.

The only bad thing about HomeLAN Fed is the microscopic type font they use on their site. What the heck is up with that?

HomeLAN also runs a bunch of servers for different online multi-player games like UT, Tribes 2, Counter Strike, etc.

Bottom Line: Even though the HomeLAN fonts looks like the fine print at the end of used car contract, it's still worth a visit. I'll give it a peek over the next few days before deciding where it should end up in the links.

Super Duper Athlons Oct. 9 Cage @ 6:21 Comments

The Register is reporting that the new AMD Palamino or Athlon XP processors will be launched on October 9. Here's the relevant snip:

"The clock speeds of the chips (and the OEM pricing - Cage) are:

XP 1500 - 1.33GHz ($115)

XP 1600 - 1.4GHz ($124)

XP 1700 - 1.47GHz ($152)

XP 1800 - 1.53GHz ($210) " - The Register.

Well Double Frag to You! Cage @ 5:06 Comments

Being the controller freak that I am, I found this interesting.

It seems that Logitech is offering a new DUAL optical mouse called amazingly enough the Logitech MouseMan® Dual Optical. The way it works is that it uses two optical sensors each angled at 45 degrees. Each sensor has a resolution of 800 dots per inch, for a combined 1600 dpi resolution.

The Logitech MouseMan® Dual Optical will be available "this month" and retail for $49.95. Here's a pic from the Logitech product page.

Saturday, September 29, 2001

Click, Click, Click... Diablo II Expansion 'n Stuff Nine11 @ 11:47 Comments

I recently swapped out my mouse and figured the left button needed to have it's cherry popped, so I picked up the Diablo II expansion, Lord of Destruction. The 800*600 resolution is welcome but not as revolutionary as Blizzard would have you believe... the graphics are still quite dated. Good thing it's still addictive as ever! I managed to pimp out my Assassin with a mess of goodies, level up to 14, and finish the First Act.

Cage had some problems with the Nvidia Detonator XP drivers and 2D games, and I seemed to have the same problem running Diablo II in Direct Draw 2D. The game had glitches and locked up, so I kicked it into Direct3D, which seemed to solve the problem. I just hope Nvidia smoothes things out or a new driver version comes out soon.

On a side note, I picked up NHL 2002 as well but haven't had much time to fiddle with it.

Wednesday, September 26, 2001

Forum Upgrade Cage @ 3:41 Comments

As part of the process for updating and upgrading CW, I've set up the latest version of the Ultimate Bulletin Board by Infopop.

If you hurry, you could be the first one on your block to make a post...err..or... something like that.

Here's the link: CW Forum.

I Love the Way You Spank My Spam! Cage @ 0:27 Comments

SpamKiller does just that, it helps you kill obnoxious emails from spam email marketers.

I tried a few others, but I've started to fall in love with SpamKiller. It's very polished, stable, and it works.

I'm not the only one. PC Magazine gave it an Editors Choice.

Not only does SpamKiller allow you to filter spam, but it also lets you bounce back an error message to the sender. For even more fun you can auto email complaints back to their Internet Service Provider. Nice.

21.81 Detonators Breaks Some Games? Cage @ 0:15 Comments

The latest official NVIDIA 21.81 Detonator video card drivers may not actually bring world peace.

After installing the 21.81 drivers on my second system some games started crashing randomly to the Windows desktop. Which games? Ironically enough the Sierra Hoyle series started acting up. I would have expected it would be some leading edge tech demo like Return to Castle Wolfenstein that would have had problems with the new drivers - not Sierra's Hoyle Series.

I re-installed the Detonator 12.9 drivers, and all seems to be well - so far. Even the output from my Hauppauge TV card looks better. I may have to give up a few frames per second in RTCW, but stability beats speed most of the time.

Tuesday, September 25, 2001

More Virus I Told You So Stuff Nine11 @ 10:33 Comments

I got a new virus by Email this AM. Damn, I don't know why I'm such a magnet for these little buggers! It's not like I'm a pr0n hound. I just appreciate the fine curve of a woman's... er... nevermind. Back in the real world, I got it over my Cage's World Email account, which I just started using again. Good old AVG identified it as I-Worm/Hybris, but my little friend looks like a different variant which was devoid of any text in the subject and body of the Email.

Speaking of virus, there's one called War Vote floating around which does a long list of nasty things including deleting the contents of your hard drive and sending copies of itself to all your buddies. It also defaces any web pages hosted by infected systems with "America ... few days will show you what we can do!!! It's our turn ))) ZaCker is so sorry for you." I'd imagine the feds are gonna schedule a field trip to honor the author of this one.

When Nerds Go Wild! Nine11 @ 10:12 Comments

I noticed this PSp (AKA handheld PSOne) linked from Quarter to Three. It's interesting to see what people come up with when they have $400 to burn and some idle time. Sarcasm aside, I was impressed and thinks it's worth a looksie.

nForce Takes On The World & Wins... Sort of... Nine11 @ 9:43 Comments

Anandtech finally got past their NDA with Nvidia and has posted benchmarks for their nForce based Socket-A motherboards. The nForce was supposed to be revolutionary as single solution for the motherboard core-logic chipset, graphics output, and Dolby Digital 5.1 sound. For the most part, Nvidia backs their claims but I feel lukewarm about the virgin product. The brute-force bandwidth of the nForce chipset isn't utilized, the graphics are on par with a GeForce2 MX 200, and the Dolby Digital sound requires an add-in card which wasn't provided for Anand's review; however, the on-board sound processor is pretty beefy and can free up quite a few CPU cycles when processing +16 sounds. Benchmarks had the nForce playing grab-ass with the VIA KT266A (both pimped out with a GF3), with VIA's solution coming out on top more often than not. Overall, it's a good part and will have a second opportunity to shine as it's Dolby Digital capability gets probed, but it's crippled by crappy graphics and isn't a single PCB gaming system. Get a real video card, fella!

Monday, September 24, 2001

Ellison = Antichrist? Cage @ 21:11 Comments

Larry Ellison, the CEO of Oracle is proposing a national ID card in the wake of recent events in the US, according to a story in Wired. Oracle is a leading maker of database software that might be used in such a system.

"We're quite willing to provide the software for this absolutely free.."- Wired.

What a guy.

Let's Talk About SimsVille, Baby Nine11 @ 6:19 Comments

G-Spot had a chat with Maxis' director of marketing, Patrick Buechner, about the cancellation of SimsVille. While Pat has the gift of gab and is pretty agile at avoiding direct questions, it seemed as though SimsVille got the axe because it filled sat in an odd spot between The Sims: Hot Date and The Sims Online, and it just wasn't fun.

Pre-Order Medal Of Honor & Save $10 Nine11 @ 6:00 Comments

The EA.com store is taking pre-orders for Medal of Honor: Allied Assault and knocking $10 off the price. The game should be available sometime around February.

ISPs Cut Users Infected With Worm Virus Nine11 @ 5:51 Comments

According to Wired, there are some ISPs which are cutting DSL Internet service to users who are infected with the Code Red and Nimda virus. Since those buggers effect unpatched Win2K and WinNT based systems running the MS IIS server software, it doesn't mean much to the average user; however, things could change whenever a Code Red for the masses hits the scene. Here's some cut 'n pasties:

"My network has been hit thousands of times a day with Code Red and now Nimda scans," said Tony Monty, a systems administrator in London. "The patches that close the security holes these worms exploit were released months ago. If people haven't applied the patches, they are obviously clueless. Denying them access until they fix their system is the only thing that will get their attention. I hope U.K. providers follow suit soon."

And...

"I'm all for cutting service to idiots," said Keith Little, a Road Runner customer. "Road Runner has sent out e-mails advising customers to patch their machines. Overall, the service has been great, but when Code Red hit there was a definite degradation of the e-mail service. In some cases over the summer, my e-mail took more than an hour to reach its destination."

As I mentioned before, there's no excuse for not having at least some form of protection with free programs like AVG Anti-Virus and Zone Alarm Personal Firewall.

Sunday, September 23, 2001

Stronghold Demo Nine11 @ 15:56 Comments

I had a chance to take the demo for Firefly's Stronghold castle sim out for a spin. The demo includes a tutorial and two missions from the full game. I was disappointed with the tutorial which covers a few aspects of management (mostly taxes) and some basics on resource gathering. Unfortunately, the it doesn't include any info on combat, so I had to guess my way through a siege mission. Overall, I had a lukewarm experience with Stronghold. If you care to check it out, the 57MB demo can be downloaded though Gigex.

UPDATE: I've played with Stronghold a little more and found the graphics are dated even at 1024*768, and I've had a few crash-to-desktops. It happened before, but I figured I was running my system hard and should've re-booted before playin'. Unfortunately, the game's just buggy and will CTD on a fresh boot.

Beat The Heat! Nine11 @ 13:59 Comments

It's always nice to know who has a good heatsink/fan for when ya gotta throw a puter together. Gideon Tech reviewed the budget-minded Cyber Cooler P-8000 for Socket-A processors, which performed fair on a stock speed 800MHz Athlon but kept things nice and chilly when OC'd at 1GHz. With some fan/heatsink combo's puttin' ya back by nearly a full C-note, it's nice to find one which does the job for less than twenty bones.

Saturday, September 22, 2001

Trial By Fire - AVG Anti-Virus Is A Winner! Nine11 @ 17:40 Comments

All this virus stuff has got me a little paranoid, so I installed the free AVG Anti-Virus program the other night. I let it do it's thang and dig through both my hard discs, which were clean. Everything's cool, right? Not exactly. A pal of mine came over for a little net access and a fresh driver download for his HP scanner. I went to save the file to an old floppy I had layin' around, stuck it in the A: drive, let Windows seek it, and AVG discovered the NYB virus sittin' on the boot sector of the damn thing! NYB is rather harmless, but it was still a shock that little sucker. On second thought, NYB steals 1MB of system RAM which may be the same thing I got when hitched to that infectious puter at that LAN a while back (I had been saving .doc files to the floppy). Anyway, if yer sportin a nekkid puter, check the free AVG Anti-Virus program... can't beat the price!

Friday, September 21, 2001

Yep, We're Baaaaack! Cage @ 21:13 Comments

Yep, we are "Gettin' on back, back on track, so get off of my back!" - err...or something like that.

Nine11 is smacking up news and views, and I'll starting updating the site a little more as well.

The first thing you might notice is that once again I'm revisiting the links section to the right. As old sites die, or new ones appear I like to freshen things up a bit.

One of the first orders of business for me will be to update some of the stuff behind the scenes. I'll also drag over some of the content that we did on AlienSpider as we shut it down.

It's all good. In fact it just "feels right" to be back doing more here at CW.

Bin Laden Must Die! Nine11 @ 20:58 Comments

A picture is worth a thousand words...

Adios Sean "Redwood" Martin Nine11 @ 20:22 Comments

Sean "Redwood" Martin will be leaving Stomped.com. Internet business has been limp, and finances have forced his departure. We wish him luck, and thanks for all the great news!

Put A Hood On That Soldier! Nine11 @ 18:16 Comments

Until recently, I've had a pretty casual attitude toward the computer virus. I've left my puter nekkid for years and had very few incidents. At one time, a pal of mine infected me with the Happy99 Email virus, and have since deleted all suspicious files from friend or foe. I was safe till I got another virus by LANing with an infected system which wormed it's way through an open port and setup a resource hog like SETI@home or something equally annoying, so I squashed that bugger and installed Zone Alarm.

Within the past month, I've watched the data light on my cable modem light up like a Christmas tree as the Code Red virus knocks on my back door, and the TW Road Runner Email servers got hosed by Nimda. Damn, maybe I should install some Anti Virus software or something?

Being an El Cheapo bastard, I found a free version of AVG Anti-Virus 6 which seems pretty robust. As mentioned before, I also have Zone Alarm running, which is free as well, to plug any holes a worm could wiggle through. A note about Zone Alarm, set the security settings to Medium if you do any online gaming.

Better safe than sorry, so get some protection!

Burn Baby, Burn Nine11 @ 8:16 Comments

Since I got back on my Big Head Todd & The Monsters kick, I decided to burn a best of CD. I didn't feel like swapping CDs back and forth nor did I have any MP3 encoding software installed, but I've been curious about the "Copy Music" features in Windows Media Player. I popped in a CD and copied it to my hard drive in WMA format at 160kbps, which is where WMP maxes out. I repeated this process three more times for the remaining BHTM CDs I own, saved a playlist of 16 favorites, then copied them to CD... all from within WMP. The program was smart enough to automatically decompress the WMA files and burn 'em. Damn, I've been doing it the hard way for years with separate programs to encode, decode, burn, and I'm feeling a little stupid. Still, the old fashioned way is best for a jumbled mess of MP3 and/or WMA files from different sources which require tweaking the volume levels, but WMP is killer for burning music from a single album and/or artist.

Serious Sam: The Second Encounter Screenshots Nine11 @ 8:00 Comments

Stomped posted 10 screenies for Croteam's next Serious Sam game, The Second Coming. They look about the same as the original game, which is good, but throw in some new environments and Mr. Pumpkin Head. It's purely a run 'n gun affair.

My Blinking Buddy Nine11 @ 7:46 Comments

Cage, once again being smarter than the average bear, dug around and discovered some threads over the Internet which discuss the blinking data light on TW Road Runner cable modems. People are pointing fingers at the Code Red virus, which coincides with what the rep at TW had told me. What the rep couldn't explain is the blinking data light represents ARP requests from infected machines trying to give me a digital reach-around. Guess I'll have to learn to love my blinking buddy...

Wednesday, September 19, 2001

Virus Attacks Time Warner Road Runner Service Nine11 @ 16:03 Comments

I've been staring at the blinking data light on my cable modem for about a month. The damn thing blinks no matter what. Computer on, computer off, whatever. Everything else has been working fine, so I ignored my little blinking buddy... till last night.

Feeling the itch to reach out and ping someone, I fired up Urban Terror and couldn't connect any faster than 180ms and gameplay was riddled with redjacks. If that wasn't annoying enough, I booted up this morning and my Email server was down.

I just got off the horn with Time Warner and their customer service rep told me a few interesting things. It seems the blinking light on my cable modem is due to the Code Red virus which hit the Net about a month ago. The timing seems to make sense but I can't figure out why it blinks when my system is off. Perhaps it's sensing data on the network beyond my computer. Dunno, and neither did the rep.

Another thing the rep said was no one on Road Runner can receive Email at this time. Apparently, the new Nimda virus has knocked out all Road Runner Email servers nation wide. The good thing is I won't be spammed today, but that doesn't seem to make me feel much better.

Damn, someone over at Time Warner should hire some network security, register a copy of Norton AV, get protection from the mob, anything! This is ridiculous, and I can't believe they've let Code Red jam the network with data for over a month. Still, it's better than 56K. Guess I'm spoiled.

Tuesday, September 18, 2001

Athlon XP Nine11 @ 12:20 Comments

The Register got some poop on AMD's next processor, the Athlon XP. Yep, the brainiacs at AMD hopped on the coat tails of Microsoft and renamed their product (and distanced themselves from Intel by dumping the "Athlon 4"). Things are still sketchy at this point, but the new processor may debut at 1.33GHz since AMD is kickin' it old school with the Intel-equivalent clock speed model numbers which complicated/plagued their K6 line of processors, and the new part is a +1500. Seems AMD just can't rely on the consumer's common sense and general knowledge that MHz for MHz, AMD processors are brawnier than the equivalent Intel parts.

Monday, September 17, 2001

Big Head Todd & The Monsters Nine11 @ 23:00 Comments

For some strange reason, I decided to pop in a Big Head Todd & The Monsters CD while doing a little housework. A pal of mine had turned me onto BHTM back in '94, and I've been listening to their jams ever since. They have a blues-rock style similar to George Thorogood but are much smoother. Anyway, I swung by their web site and found out they've got a new CD in the works, which is really cool because they haven't released any new material since '97. They've also set a few tour dates, and I thought I'd give 'em a plug.

Serious Sam Does It Again Nine11 @ 17:12 Comments

Croteam posted a little ditty on the next game in the Serious Sam saga. The new game has entered Alpha and is slated to hit the shelves with the rest of the Christmas rush. The publisher, Rock Star Games, was supposed to have a press release today but the tragedy in New York has cut them off from their offices... they're only 2 blocks away.

The Adventures Of "Slow Cookin' The Beans" & "Doin' The Robot" Nine11 @ 8:12 Comments

Cage and I had a chance to take the Return To Castle Wolfenstein Multiplayer Test out for a spin over his LAN. Being smarter than the average bear, Cage figured out the tag +set net_port 27660 needed to be added to each of the game's executables and set each net_port as a unique value on each puter to get things working over the shared Internet connection (27660,27661,27662, ect). We banged our heads together for a few hours before Cage struck gold.

RTCW is pretty cool despite it's rough edges, and team play has a dramatic effect on the outcome of each map. Extra ammo and health packs are non-existent unless dropped by a lieutenant or medic, so engineers and soldiers need proper support. Of course, most players are running around willy-nilly trying to fatten their frag counts and we weren't gettin' much help.

Being Del Taco junkies, I jumped in as a rocket launcher totin' solder named "Slow Cookin' The Beans" and Cage was a lieutenant named "Doin' The Robot". We were pinned down on the beach by Nazi machine guns and snipers, so we picked a nice chunk of cement to hide behind and I started popping off rockets. The launcher only holds 3 rounds, so Cage started layin' down ammo packs while I dished out as much pain as possible.

Damn, those rockets have HUGE areas of effect and (unlike most other Q3A type games) are one shot/one kill. It was particularly satisfying searching out the muzzle blasts from snipers and sending 'em a little love. For some reason, most of 'em were named "Bob". After thinning out the heard, it was pretty easy to storm the Nazi bunkers and complete the map objective.

In the end, we had a blast and think you should check out RTCW. As I mentioned before, it's got some rough edges but will get better with time. Just think of it as a Pinto with a super charger... you know it's cool but don't wanna brag about it too much.

UPDATE: The guys over at Auchtung Wolfenstein! tapped out a quick guide for the RTCW Multiplayer Test. It's a good read if you wanna check the game or just can't seem to get in the groove.

I'm Baaaaaaack! Nine11 @ 7:45 Comments

Cage and I have laid Alien Spider to rest for various reasons, so I'll be setting up shop here at Cage's World. After all, this is where we got started and we decided to stay true to our roots. My take on postings will be a little different, and I'll probably get away from trying to do the "news" thang since most of that stuff gets repeated by so many other sites. Sure, I'll still hit a few of the major topics, but we're all gamers here and I should probably stick to stuff which revolves around that and our experiences. Hope you enjoy the ride!