The next bable?

New Wiretap data

Before you complain that the TOE sheets only go up to the cycle in production, I’m playing it safe here. It means that this doesn’t currently contain any data you can’t get by logging in or looking at the Gazette.

http://web3.wwiionline.com/xml/vehicles.xml
http://web3.wwiionline.com/xml/toes.list.xml
http://web3.wwiionline.com/xml/toes.sheet.xml
http://web3.wwiionline.com/xml/vehcat.xml
http://web3.wwiionline.com/xml/vehclass.xml

More details here.

Because Ajax doesn’t let you pull data from another website, there are also JavaScript versions that you can include like this:

Nero Scout: Do not want.

So I made the stupid mistake of letting Nero install Scout. Now instead of taking 30 seconds to start up, it takes nearly 3 minutes. Yeah, thanks Ahead. And I loved the way your config app asked me if I wanted to enable auto-updates, to which I clicked no, and then when I asked it to manually check for updates, it turned on auto-updates too but didn’t update the checkbox until the next time I switched to that tab.

To disable Nero Scout:

Open a command prompt (Start -> Run -> Cmd; if you don’t have a ‘Run’ option under your start menu, sucks to be you), and enter (or right-click on the little ‘C:\’ icon top left of the window, Edit -> Paste) the following commands (the first or second may fail depending if you have Nero 7 or Nero 8, but it’s safe to do both):

regsvr /u “%commonprogramfiles%\Ahead\Lib\MediaLibraryNSE.dll”
regsvr /u “%commonprogramfiles%\Nero\Lib\MediaLibraryNSE.dll”
net stop NMIndexingService
sc config NMIndexingService start= disabled

Don’t worry about “NMIndexStoreSrv” - that will go away once you reboot.

But you’ll now have “NMBgMonitor” running, use “msconfig” (Start -> Run -> msconfig) to remove this from the startup list.

Alternatively, you can reinstall Nero and this time don’t say “yes” when it asks if you want to install Nero Scout :)

Bourne Conspiracy

Tried the 360 Demo last night and boy did that get the adrenaline up. It’s an FPS game in the same sort of interactive-fiction vein as “Dragon’s Lair” - i.e a mixture of live FPS action and coin-toss scripted action sequences. In some games, I find this equates to fail, but in this game - as far as the demo goes - it really helps to maintain the flowing action and adrenaline and pace of the movies.

SELinux sux

At least, when you forget it’s there. The way Fedora delivers SELinux is a total pain in the derrier. Killer and I are trying to finish off a netboot install for OS upgrades, and all kinds of stuff breaks in weird ways. MySQL, for instance, won’t start up with our stock my.cnf. So I try manually starting mysqld_safe: it works fine. /var/log/mysqld.log complains that there appears to be another instance of mysqld running and it can’t access /tmp/mysql.socket: permission denied.

GTA-IV: Step away from the monitor

Let me start by saying - it’s worth getting, and that I don’t think most people will experience my issues; be aware that I am talking about the game in that context.

LCD

Got my adapter cable today to plug the 360 into a monitor, took it up-stairs and hooked it into my 24in LCD Widescreen.

Started out trying 1920×1080 (16:9), tried a handful of games/demos I already had installed, things looked great.

So, time to try GTA-IV. This configuration didn’t seem like it was going to do GTA-IV any favors.

First, there was a shed-load of artifacting going on, flickering, aliasing, etc; it could really use anti-aliasing at this resolution. Second, during the “dusk” phase of the day they use this “soft lighting” stipling/dithering effect that is glaringly visible at this resolution and this distance. In the short to middle distance it looks somewhere between frosted glass, “pastel” filters and that “hand-drawn” PhotoShop effect they put on some adverts.

My eyes seemed to adapt after a few minutes - when I sat back a little further from the screen and it switched from evening to night. It looks really freaking awesome at night after a while.

If I switch to the PC for a while and then switch back to the 360’s input again, it goes back to the blury effects. Large surfaces/objects seem to look a bit “mosaicish”, you would think it was bad upsampling, except the fine details are there in the hud/text/map and objects with fine model detail and moving the camera around the details are there in the blockiness. It’s very weird, but after a while the eye adapts and it’s not so bad. Really can’t figure out what the heck that’s about.

Going to give Mass Effect a try and see if it’s just GTA-IV or if it’s something about my configuration.

Gonna drop by Best Buy with Killer tomorrow and look for an LCD TV - somewhere in the 37 to 47in range I reckon.

 

Wait a minute…

I just got done spending another 3 hours playing GTA IV, switched over to TV and there was an advert for GTA IV. I hit rewind on the TiVo and watched it a couple of times.

The game footage in the commercial looks way better than the actual gameplay.

Grand Theft IV/Mass Effect

My reviews of 360 games are tainted by the fact I’m playing on a 27in standard def TV that ain’t so hot to start with. I’ve decided to try buying an adapter so I can plug my 360 into my 24in LCD. But in the meantime…

The last GTA game I really got into was Vice City, back on the PS2 (Tim’s Play Station 2, back when I was sharing a house with two colleagues from Demon in 2000-2002). San Andreas felt claustrophobic to me, not because it wasn’t huge but because the camera angles just didn’t give me the same sense of situational awareness.

I had fairly high hopes for GTA IV, and graphically its quite pretty. As yet, though, it just hasn’t caught me.

Lost Empire - Immortals

This is a game I want to like. It has all the classic features of a space-based “settlers” game: tech-trees, exploration, expansion, alien races, resource management, etc, etc.

So why am I still wanting to like it?