Mutts Nutts

It’s time for my venerable Dell 6400 to retire.  It’s Xeon 3 cpu’s,  7 18Gb disks, 3 PSUs and 300 fans have been operating 24/7 for 6 years, running RedHat 8, and possibly the only unmolested Q2 and Q3 servers left in existence.  It’s replacement is a much smaller, cheaper and (thankfully) quieter Fujitsu Econel 100 S2 with 2 1TB Seagate disks in a RAID 1 (mirror) array.  The new server runs OpenSUSE 11
I’ll be taking the opportunity to update the logging and the URLs will remain the same for the stats pages:-

http://quake2.muttsnutts.com

http://quake3.muttsnutts.com

The existing logs will be archived and the stats will start afresh.

One of the presents our one (and a bit) year old daughter got for Christmas was a Veterinary Surgery for “Happy Land” (which is somebody’s idea of what “normal” British life should look like, and it’s a bit scary I can tell you). Amongst the bits and pieces that came with the shop were: the vet himself, a nurse, a land rover and an assortment of patients: 2 dogs, a cat and this bloke on the left. A man with a (presumably) sick parrot.
Hang on a minute - maybe that’s why Happy Land does look slightly grotesque!

Drifting: you deliberately cripple a car and then drive it with very little forward motion whilst doing a burnout, and then there are some rules about the entry speed, exit speed, inside kiss, outside kiss blah blah - feck me this is more boring than golf! And we haven’t even started taking the piss out of the film itself yet!

Read the rest of this entry »

Thought I’d better check out what was currently available as the source for the engine was made public ages ago. Sure enough, people with lots of time on their hands have read id’s source code and found all the vulnerabilities - some of which were quite shocking.

The server still runs the Battground mod, and you don’t need to run the R1Q2 client to connect - the change is for the game engine only.

“there’s only one choice: dump it or pimp it”

Quite. Not only can Mr Tim “Nice but just too cun’-ree” Westwood not count, but I heavily suspect that the synopsis of “Pimp My Ride” was described to the UK production team over the phone.

Fans of the original US show will know that it is largely held together by the talents of one Alvin Nathaniel Joiner, otherwise known as “Xzbit”. This guy is young, black, witty and he apparentley has a promising carreer as a er.. musician. Mr Westwood is, on the other hand, a middle aged white geezer from a farm somewhere in the west country, who just thinks he’s young, gifted and black.

I feel sorry for the guys who work on the cars, as they don’t actually do a bad job. Not that I would ever let them near a car of mine you understand, as I can’t really ever see myself wanting my car painted in any colour that has “candy” in the title, but the point here is to pimp, not tune. Kitch not style is the order of the day and they deliver it. Shame then that they have to put up with DJ Westwood (weddings, birthdays, full collection of “party classics” call…) , his Green Cross Code accent, his woeful attempts at immitating someone with some style, and the strange “pointing” he keeps doing for no adequately explored reason (He nearly had that guy’s eye out in the 2nd episode).

Han reckoned he’d “..made a lot of special modifications myself”

Liar - this is what really happened:-

Xzbit “So this is your ride? What a piece of Junk!”
Han “Yeah - she may not look like much..”
Xzbit “Damm man, you got that right. So.. what IS it?”
Han “It’s a Corellian YT-1300 light freighter”
Xzbit “You mean it USED to be! Look at this paint job - is that paint or dandruff ?”

Off to ‘Western Spiral Arm Customs!’

….Later, down at the dockyard..

Read the rest of this entry »

Is this a cunning ploy to appear stupid by motor dealers? To lull you into a false sense of superiority so you’ll never realise you’ve just been played until you’re down the road in your new ride? The best ones I’ve seen lately have been:-

“Manuel gearbox” (strangely they have no problem spelling “automatic” which is much more difficult don’t you think?)

Even better - “six speed manuel” 

“Cars Brought for Cash” Brought where? To my house?

“None Turbo” - well it’s sort of accurate god love ‘em

“18 wheels” - wow - that’s some fecking chassis!

“Karmon Hardon stereo” - (snigger)

“Triptronic gearbox” - it’s “Tiptronic” you illiterate morons, which is a Porsche trademark. Highly unlikely then, that the Jap import you’re advertising has a fecking German gearbox in it… FTO owners take note - surprise surprise, your car has a Mitsubishi Invecs II gearbox in it, not a Porsche Tiptronic - who’d have thought?!?

“Coilover suspension” - what? Like just about every production car to be made in the last 20 years (including the one your granny drives)?

Honourable mention to Aria in Nottingham for inventing the word “certificated” :-/

Bored of overcomplicated FPS games with “plots” and “realistic” weapons? Can’t find a server that doesn’t have half the items turned off, or some ridiculous DMflags set? Then come and relive the 90’s at quake2.muttsnutts.com Use your favourite game browser, or just “connect quake2.muttsnutts.com” in the console. You’ll need version 3.20. The server runs the excellent competition grade Battleground game server, which allows multiple teams or just regular free-for-all. Stats are available at http://quake2.muttsnutts.com too - so you can ridicule your friends after you kicked their butts. It’s on my ADSL so can only cater for 8 players - but hey - when was the last time you saw more than 8 people playing Q2 Half Speed/Unreal players beware - this is an old skool high speed game. The skills aren’t built in - you need to supply them!

If you’ve forgotten how to play - try Radiac’s excellent Q2 site: http://quake2.radiac.net/

There’s also a similarly unadulterated Q3 server at quake3.muttsmutts.com, for those who like a slightly slower pace and shinier worlds. You can guess where the stats are for that. Each stats page also has a live monitor so you can check if anyone is playing.

Frag a friend Today! Q2 server now updated to BG 1.38!

Docs

This is one of those “smartypants” letters that does the rounds of PC mags like PCW and Computer Shopper very few months: “why upgrade, my (insert spec of last years PC here) still works just fine for me!”. It would, no doubt come as a surprise to the authors of these letters to discover, that not everybody uses their PC to play Solitaire, do a bit “word processing” (whatever that may be) and browse the Gardener’s World web site.

I do a bit of video processing on mine, and it cannot be fast enough thank you very much. I also like to serve out media including audio and video, play games, games that require a lot of CPU, GPU and data throughput. Lastly, I also quite like to fire up World Wind from time to time - which really cooks the processor.

No, if it was left up to the consumer we would *not* still be using Wordstar and DOS - get a grip on reality. The other mystery about these letters, is that if the authors are really not that bothered about the advances in the technology, and are quite happy with their 3 year old PC, why the hell are they reading the mag in the first place?

DAB Radio

Can anyone tell me why, with the advent of digital radio, and more specifically, Digital Audio Broadcasts or “DAB” do manufacturers all of a sudden think we want to buy crappy looking radios with one speaker that have officially “sucked ass” since the invention of radio receivers small enough to be invisible, about 15 years ago? These things look like 60’s throwbacks and are only “portable” in the sense that they have a handle attached. DAB isn’t exactly great quality either, but even if it were, any enhancements to the sound are lost on the naff single cone speaker producing wonderful mono.

And with the plethora of digital transports available, from http over the wire, to DVB and Sky etc, why on earth do we need another one just for radio? I can get digital radio over the Internet, from Sky or DVB on UHF - and it all sounds much better than DAB too! And another thing! Why are the damm things so expensive? What a package eh? A shite, ancient looking, bulky, mono receiver that produces sound unacceptable since the invention of the Walkman and costs the earth. Well done.

Do any of the manufacturers of these radios seriously think anyone with any sense is going to have a thought similar this one: “hmm, I have my portable mp3 player with built in FM receiver, and wireless lan to stream Internet radio, my in-car system with multiple FM tuners, and disk based mp3 store, and my kick-ass home system with 7.1 speakers, quality amp, and a whole load of digital receivers plumbed in, but what I really need is one of those crappy old portable radios with a fold down handle, and (for no plausible reason) some “wood grain” pattern plastic on the ends, and one tinny speaker!” and go and buy one?