Semi-realism mod for Unreal Tournament OS 9 and OS X.

(disabled for now)

(June 2007): Moved this page: This blog has now been moved to actual blog software, and is available at the old URL: www.santaduck.com . If you are reading this now, you are in the archived subdomain www2.santaduck.com, which contains some old download files and past entries.

(June 12): Windows Safari Bugs: Well I downloaded Apple's new Safari beta for Windows on my XP box, and first of all I'm happy it's there. Second, note the "Bug" button on the navigation bar, it's there for a reason. Safari for Windows is still Chock Full O' Bugs. I've submitted 5 or 6 already, and I found them in my first 10 MINUTES of browing:

1) The videos at NHL.com (e.g. here) and wmv samples at Amazon.com (e.g. here) don't play, and almost always crashed Safari into quitting on both of these. Admittedly, I haven't done a clean OS install of XP, so there may be something corrupted running around, but I found some more things:

2) The keyboard shortcuts for Cutting (CTRL-C), Pasting (CTRL-V), and Select All (CTRL-A) very frequently don't function at all in the URL portion of the nav bar, although the menu bar pulldown equivalents (e.g. Edit->Paste) work fine.

3) Another nav bar bug: Go to any page, then navigate to a second page, and you'll see an orange circular "Back" button to the right of the URL. If you highlight the URL from just next to that button, then nothing works: You highlight, but can't delete or edit by starting to type. To reproduce this bug try:
a) Launch Safari beta for Windows. Then pull the bottom right corner of the window to the top left to make the browser window as SMALL as it will let you.
b) Go to http://www.apple.com/
c) Click on STORE, which will be barely visible. Now that you've navigated a link, you'll see the circular orange "Back" button by the URL. The URL itself will be cut off because it's too long.
d) Carefully position your pointer to the left of the Orange Back button, but to the right of the rightmost portion of the visible URL. The click, and drag upward one line, thereby highlighting the text.
e) Press Backspace, or type any letters. Nothing happens, whereas the highlighted text should be replaced by what you type.

4) Download menu: There is a bug related to the download window being the last one open; it won't let you. To reproduce:
a) Launch Safari beta for Windows.
b) In the only open window, begin downloading some big file, for example the Unreal Tournament 2004 3369.2 update at Macupdate. <-- click on this link, then cilck "Download Now". This opens a "Downloads" window.
c) Now close the main window. The result is that Safari up and quits completely. It should continue downloading as it does in OS X, but at the very least if it must quit, it should give you a dialog warning you that you have active downloads in progress.

Note that this last bug is related to why I wouldn't use Firefox for OS X (although I love it for Windows XP). There was a similar download bug where if the download window was your last remaining open window, FF disabled the opening of new windows. In short, if you were downloading, then closed your browser windows (except your download window) you were stuck downloading, but not being able to browse. It's finally been fixed in FF 2.0 for OS X, which was a long wait indeed. Jaded now, I'm not waiting around to see what bugs are left on FF for OS X, and am sticking to Safari. Hopefully the same tardiness to bug fixing won't happen on Safari for Windows.

(Jan 15): iPhone interface prediction: Seeing the MWSF keynote and iPhone demo, I was immediately reminded of a video I'd seen about almost a year ago. It was billed as a demonstration of an interface inspired by The Minority Report (Tom Cruise scifi film), and was a demo of a prototype by Jeff Han at the Technology Entertainment Design (TED) Talks in Monterey. The part that resonates is the pinch or expand sequence to reduce or exapnd the size of images... but the entire demo is a dorky but admittedly the whole show is unabashedly great fun and the excitement in the audience is palpable:

(from YouTube)

(Dec 7): Photoshop drag-and-drop broken?: I recently had to reinstall OS X Tiger over my old damaged installation, and suddenly Photoshop would no longer open files that I double-clicked, or drag-and-dropped onto the Photoshop Dock icon. This had happened before, and I'd forgotten the fix. I found the fix eventually, and here it is: You need the file Adobe Unit Types in Library/ScriptingAdditions/. You'll find your old one archived in /Macintosh HD/Previous Systems/Previous System 1/Library/ScriptingAdditions.

Oh and I recently wanted to make a QTVR object movie for free, and didn't see any freeware that was still available, and my QTVRAS installation was but an ancient memory. Well I figured out a way using iMovie and QTVR Edit Object (still available from Apple.com). The catch is that it's an OS 9 app, so you'll need Classic mode, but hey it was free. More details next time. Happy holiday shopping to you!

(Sep 15): Santaduck Toolpak Utilities for UT2004 updated: This is a really minor updated, I've added the new 1280x800 resolution and added an arrow in the results pointing to the AVG fps, which is what you should normally be reporting and comparing. I need to examine all the new Intel Macs (and new CDs) for any resolutions I've missed, but I'm sure Rob-ART Morgan of Barefeats.com will quickly let me know of any. ALSO there have been reports that all the download URLs for the Santaduck Toolpak are dead. So download it here:

Santaduck Toolpack for UT2004 version 3.3 (Sep 2006)

Keep your eyes peeled at Barefeats.com, they are running a lot of great new gaming benchmarks on the latest Intel Mac Pros.

(Aug 12): 25 Greatest PCs of all time: PC world has written an article to hail the 25th anniversary of the 8086 IBM PC, listing the twenty five greatest PCs of all time. They've really done their homework, as the list ranges from old faves such as the MITS Altair 8800, Trash 80 (wups, Tandy TRS-80), Amiga, Atari 800, to models that changed the industry or started popular trends such as the 1986 Compaq Deskpro 386, Shuttle SV24 Barebones, Alienware Area-51, Gateway 2000, and Sony Vaio. Of course Apple is represented, with the Apple ][, Powerbook 100, 2nd gen (Sunflower) iMac, and Macintosh. Even the Apple eMate 300 made the list, and of course the GUI Grandaddy of them all, the Xerox 8010. In case your favorite rig was not listed, they've covered themselves by oroviding a list of "near greats" for each of 3 approxiately decade-long spans: 71-83, 84-89, 92-05. Check it out.

Toolpack update: I've heard that the download links at Macologist for this file no longer work. I'll try to update this ASAP and host it.

(July 20): Santaduck Toolpak update: A very small update is coming, mainly to incorporate some of the new native resolutions in the new Macs. I did a quickie internal version for Rob-ART Morgan of Barefeats.com, and I just need to package it up and fix some typo bugs.

April 21): Windows apps on Mac without Windows???
Robert Cringley, host of PBS's Electric Money and former columnist for Infoworld, wrote today in his blog regarding the relationship between OS X and Windows.

One of the most attention-grabbing topics was the possibility of running Windows applications on Apple Macintoshes, without installing Windows XP, and without Windows virtualization:

"I also believe that Apple will offer in OS X 10.5 the ability to run native Windows XP applications with no copy of XP installed on the machine at all. This will be accomplished not by using compatibility middleware like Wine, but rather by Apple implementing the Windows API directly in OS X 10.5...

'm told Apple has long had this running in the Cupertino lab -- Intel Macs running OS X while mixing Apple and XP applications. This is not a guess or a rumor, this something that has been demonstrated and observed by people who have since reported to me.

Think of the implications. A souped-up OS X kernel with native Windows API support and the prospect of mixing and matching Windows and Mac applications would be, for many users, the best of both worlds. There would be no copy of Windows XP to buy..."

Cringley begins by thinking through Apple's strategy regarding Windows, given its latest moves. He comes to his speculation based upon Steve Jobs' 1997 $150M deal with Microsoft, where Apple may have obtained some legal rights to the Windows API, which could enable Windows apps directly in OS X.

Granted, Cringley simply makes several speculations and offers these all up as possibilities to think about, but the legal issues and the impact on users as well as the future of Apple are far-reaching.

Read more here: Robert Cringley PBS blog article

Tactical Ops:Crossfire Interview: I just interviewed my long time friend Petterf regarding the upcoming Tactical Ops: Crossfire release. TO:C is the free mod for UT2004, an updated of the original mod for UT99 which was the most popular mod for Unreal. Of course, the prerelease begins today (see April 2 news below), with the server version being released, as well as a client encrypted with a password-- the password will be released in one week (Apr 28), so that servers will be up, running, and populated from minute one. Petterf is the official Mac member of the TO:C team, but I also know him from his earlier roles as TO:AoT [rm] server admin, and an official Mac betatester for UT2004, the original TO and TO:AoT, as well as for TOST. Petter also gave us some exclusive screenshots, and Province looks very nice indeed. Check it out.

XIII Review: Our reviews editor just finished up his review of Feral Interactive's XIII. Now I saw this game before on a Feral preview disk, and it was beautiful-- it's a FPS based on the Unreal engine, but omg, it's beautiful with severe tweaking of the engine which results in beautifully cel-shaded (think comic) graphics. They did a great job on this, much better than that old Robin Hood cartoon mod. You'll see comic panel headshots, and POW! hit damage, and the like. The thing is, now I want to buy this game, after reading his review. The storyline is apparently Robert Ludlum-esque, with the conspiracy theories ratcheting up a notch at every step, and of course, you wake up with a loss of memory and the world after you. Check out the review here.

(April 14): iPod Claims: Well, I'd nearly forgotten all about it, and guess what popped into the mailbox this week? It's good for either the Apple online or brick-and-mortar stores, but only on Apple branded products. What to do with fifty dollars. . .



Intel Mac Benchmarks: I forgot to mention, we just published a XXXX-load of benchmarks on the new Intel-based iMacs and the MacBook Pro, in comparison with the Macologist staff's machines, from an iMac G4 all the way up to a quadcore PowerMac G5. The article is HOT apparently-- we've only had it up three days and it has gotten almost 30K (yes 30,000) unique hits. See the secret is quantity = quality =x. Haha, Actually it was such a bear to do all of these benchmarks, and coordinate the staff, I'm happy to have what we have, and just left it at that, but the FUN part is that I've tried to provide crystal clear instructions so that you can run all of the benchmarks yourself. I'd like to do an update soon, as Cinebench got updated (for the 3rd time since we began testing for this article: we had started with CB2003, then we had an internal Universal Binary, then they came out with the UB 9.5, and now they have some OpenGL optimizations), we also had some tips on running a compiled SciMark (rather than relying on Java's JIT-- just in time-- compiling), heard about an interesting benchmark called GeekBench (MBP results here), and need to finish up some more rigs on the Photoshop benchmark. Man, the iTunes vs. QT player finding was really neat too...

Go take a look: Macologist's Intel Mac Benchmark Smorgasbord.


Q4: Oh yeah, and Quake 4 is now shipping from Aspyr, hopefully it won't be the last big title we see in a while with all this Boot Camp madness. Thank you Glenda.

(April 2): Tactical Ops Release Date: Well this is actually April 1 news (I'm a day late), but it's not April Fools. Do any of you remember the alias MadOnion? He was the head of TOST, that Tactical Ops anticheat app way back when, and I had lots of chats with him back in the day. Anyways now he's the lead coder for TO:C, that's Tactical Ops: Crossfire for UT2004, the mod that was announced on April 1 of last year. Well on year later, they are ready to go. They have announced an April 28 launch date for their first public release. Actually it will be a slam BANG of a release, since they will prep the community to be up and running from the first minute. Here's how: Downloads of the server app will be made available one week earlier, on April 21. Also the client will be made available for download on that day via bittorrent, but it will be password-encrypted. The password will be released on the official launch day, April 28, when the normal http and ftp download links go live.

In case you missed the original Tactical Ops, it was a semi-realism shooter, that became the most popular mod for the old Unreal Tournament (UT99). TO:Crossfire, like the original, will stay true to its action-oriented roots with well-planned multipathed maps but with beautifully updated looks for the UT2004 engine-- that maps are just stunning. Updated screenshots are available at the official site, and the Mac member of the team, Petter, let me know of the ModDB feature url on TO:C.

Nongaming: I just saw the youtube, the video blog upload site (or should I, in my spare time, be browsing vimeo, or google video?), recently instituted a 10 minute limit on videos, to combat video piracy. Interesting too, as recently I missed the latest Southpark Scientology-Tom cruise episode that was in the news, and found it posted on youtube. It's still there last I checked. Youtube was also in the news as the latest viral video was there, a pretty pedestrian video of a girl vidblogging about her latest breakup, while using some fun effects on her webcam, you can see her video here, and it has almost 300,000 hits-- if this was Digg, that would be dugg, with a capital D-- which reminds me that Trent from Apple-X.net recently spammed me to digg his article here, something he wrote for parents to understand networking sites such as myspace, facebook, xanga, etc. Geesh so many sites, so little times. That brings me to my last procrastination, I've been putting it off but, maybe this weekend I'll finally jump into del.icio.us. Then will I finally be hip and accepted as techno-cool? Of course if you get into these sites too much, it works against your cool factor as it ups your technonerd quotient, which is a nono.


(Mar 7): Bird flu update: I would ususally write this in the righthand side offtopic column, but I want to spam my fledgling bird flu update site, deadswans.com. I've been periodically posting in offtopic on these issues since before the hype started.

However I had been losing track of all the seemingly repetitive news lately, but it turns out the news is different each day as the virus spreads, primarily via wild bird migrations, especially in swans and ducks. Hence Dead Swans allows me to force myself to sit down and learn about it, which I have wanted to do for months. I tossed in some Google Ads, and hopefully that'll help support the site at least so I can keep it going. To-do for this month is to figure out when the regional bird migrations will end for the year, when we'll see if the disease really persists in western Europe or goes away for the season. Example, news this week is that the first mammals (domestic cats) were infected in Germany, and is causing a minor panic there and in France.

Currently there's a list of infected countries by region, and a graphical map is coming soon. When the virus hits the United States and Canada, I'll be tracking states and provinces individually.

(Mar 6): Political sim, The Republic: We just posted a review of The Republic from Feral. From what I hear it's really a unique game, you're trying to run a revolution from a person's point of view, using individual interactions. I remember in the 80s there were some early PC political simulators running in DOS, and they were quite sophisticated-- you would choose either the USA or USSR, and you'd wield your influence over minor countries, and you might think some small country in southeastern asia or south africa wouldn't be a big deal, but even minor decisions would soon snowball and you'd be at war. It was very educational back then, and I'm trying to remember what it was called. Anyways... apparently this new game, The Republic, is quite different, and will be a lot of fun to sim fans. We found a few graphical bugs (mouse pointer issues) that we've forwarded onto the engineer over at Feral, and we're told it'll be bundled in their next patch if possible. Read the full review here.

The other Feral review we have in the pipeline is for XIII. If you don't know it already, it's a cel-shaded game based on the unreal engine. It really modifies the engine hard, so that the cell shading is pretty awesome (including zoom-in comic panels for headshots, or POW bubbles for damage hits), especially compared to similar efforts I have seen such as the ambitious cartoon-style Robin Hood mod for UT2004. XIII graphically blows such efforts out of the water with its close to seamless professional quality. Anyways, surprise! I had played the game on a demo disc (also available for download from the XIII page at Feral), and had a lot of fun, and was impressed by the graphics. However, I soon forgot about it in my flurry of busy work, and only remember later when Feral shipped it to us for review. Then I heard the absolute raves from our reviewer, Mac_Jedi, who is actually quite picky. Now I was intrigued. What I didn't get from the demo is that it's this huuuuuuge conspiracy game-- think Robert Ludlum, Bourne Conspiracy, all that in a game. Your memory is gone, you don't know if you've killed the president or you've been framed, and both sides are out to get you while you are trying to solve this deadly political conspiracy. According to him, it's totally embroiling. I mean, he essentially said: just buy it now. Anyways, so that review is coming soon.

(Feb 27): Apple Media Event: In case you haven't heard already, Mr. Jobs is hosting another Apple Media Event, in less than 12 hours: 10 AM PST on Feb 28. New Intel iBooks? Touch-sensitive iPods? An Apple-Disney merger? Or something more pedestrian like an Intel MacMini, or portable iPod speaker/carrier? Macrumors.com names these all, and even a movie download service, as possibilities. Check out their live coverage on their Macrumors front page, or the live line by line play by play via irc at irc.krono.net #macrumors.

More on Woz: Hey does anyone know if Wozniak still drives that big Hummer? Some acquaintances used to go to one of his infrequent lunch spots, and I heard the rumor from them he owned a big Hummer, back before they became common.

(Feb 26): The Woz Way is an actual street back in San Jose, CA, and I thought of it when I read this interview of the other Steve, Steve Wozniak, as he talked about Apple to the Globe and Mail.

Apparently he's nominally still on their payroll (I hadn't realized that), but unlike most normal Apple employees, he can speak his mind, and does he.

He isn't convinced of the need to jump to Intel, and is skeptical there, but might concede the point.

"
"It's like consorting with the enemy. We've had this long history of saying the enemy is the big black-hatted guys, and they kind of represent evil. We are different, and by being different we're better... All of a sudden we're the same in this hardware regard, so it's a little hard to swallow your words from the past."

However he is deeply suspicious of the iPod, because according to him, that distracts from Apple's focus as a "computing company."

On the possibility of Microsoft entering the mp3 player fray, he says:

"If they do it, they better do it excellent, excellent, excellent because the iPod sure is. Doing something weaker and somehow trying to use your size and market power . . . that's just not good [enough] if you don't turn out something superior."

He's like the company's anti-mascot, how great is that? I love it. Read the full interview here.

(Feb 24): Anti Lag Technology Startup, Bigfoot

The story is I was at this millionaire's business place (I was about to go flying with him for work), and on the table was Fortune magazine, and on the cover was some startup company contest, and something about gaming lag. A gamer article in a business mag? Intrigued, I picked it up. (Note, I found the online version of this article here, scroll down to the 3rd place winner).

I think the article was about young business school grads who compete to receive some startup seed money from Fortune-- one was on an online test prep course (for SATs), one was for a brain pressure monitor, and one was by a couple of MBA CS fans who wanted to fix lag now and forever, so they've formed a startup called Bigfoot Networks, and have developed a product, and are, as I understand it, waiting to be bought out.

I found their website, which has not had any news updates since november of last year, so perhaps they are just waiting. It looks like a network interface card, but I'm not sure if it's for clients, or the gameserver, or somewhere else inline. Here's a short quote:

"A chip architect at Intel until 2004, Beverly had already developed technologies to accelerate the speed of Intel's servers by offloading some of the computers' processes onto a storage card. After researching how to fight the dreaded lag, he realized that he could speed online games similarly. Beverly's breakthrough: a computer card that communicates with servers, downloading some of the processes that they perform online and allowing them to run faster, thus speeding up online games.
...they formed Bigfoot Networks and developed a prototype called NetBlazer, a gaming accelerator card that can eliminate disruptions caused by server lags. Assuming that Bigfoot can raise more money, it hopes to begin selling NetBlazer by July for $300...Although computer manufacturers such as Dell are luring online gamers with ultrafast processors, none, says Cole, has offered a solution for lag disruptions."


OK whatever. But what is really cool is their research on lag. I mean we all know lag, different kinds of lag-- warping, stuttering, dropouts, etc., but you haven't thought about it like these guys. I present to you:

Bigfoot Network's White Paper on Lag (pdf)

whoa. I'll keep an eye on these guys to see if they get bought out, and begin shipping a product.

It makes me wonder if, in the future of gaming, if network demands will rise as fast as graphics demands have been rising with each generation-- this has certainly not been the case so far-- UT2004 has much the same network demands as UT99-- but would could a game do with a world in which we had a lot more bandwidth and less latency? hmm. I remember when I couldn't imagine what we'd do with more than 128K RAM, or the yawning abyss of a 10megabyte hard drive in the 8088 IBM XT-- it simply changes the parameters of what is possible.

Anyways, here's a brief quote from the Intro of the Lag White Paper:

"One of the most annoying things for an online gamer is "lag"...This paper will first explore what is Lag in today’s gaming world; what is a fair definition? Lag will be defined as one or more of the following in-game events:
* Game Freezing and Stuttering
* Warping and Rubber-banding
* Ghosting and Vanishing
* Slash-Slash-Pause
* Delayed Responses
* Frames-per-Second Loss

After Lag and the above terms are defined clearly, this white paper will discuss what the causes of Lag are in today’s internet system using broadband connections of the above phenomenon. The causes will be clearly shown as:
*Server Slowness/Congestion
* Internet Packet Loss/Spikes
* Client Slowness
* Network Latency

Several case studies and research will be used to illustrate the concepts explored here. The case studies will include:
* Sony Everquest Client Test
* Sony Star Wars Galaxies Client Test
* Star Wars Battlefront Client+Server Test
* Battlefield: Vietnam Client+Server Test
* Counterstrike Source Client+Server Test

Finally, the obvious question would be what can be done about Lag?

Defining Lag
Lag has no definition. It is a slang term that online gamers have been using since the early days of online gaming to represent anything ‘funky’ going on in an online game. Today, anything bad that happens in an online game is called Lag... Lag could be loosely defined today as everything bad that happens in an online game. It’s become like an online curse word. The only way then, to define Lag, is by looking at those perceived events which gamers attribute to Lag. Those events vary in type and cause, but they are collectively called Lag.

First among these perceived events are the movement or action related events. Game Freezing, Game Stuttering, Warping, and Rubber-banding are terms commonly associated with movement or action based Lag events. Game Freezing occurs when the game appears to suddenly pause for no reason, then after some perceivable time, resume. Game Stuttering is the same as Game Freezing, but happens in rapid succession one right after another. Warping is a movement action weather 3rd person or 1st person perspective, where the character or persona is suddenly in a new position on the screen/in the game world than was expected. When the warping is back to a location that the gamer believed he just left, it is called Rubber-banding.

The next category of Lag is those events where other users or computer controlled characters exhibit strange perceived behaviour. Ghosting, Vanishing, and Slash-Slash-Pause fall into this category. Ghosting is when..."

Okay, you get the idea. We've all experienced it, and here are guys who take it seriously, and are trying to tackle it with a boatload of startup capital. Read more at the PDF yourself, and take a look at their site:

Link:
Bigfoot Networks


(Feb 22): Mortal Kombat fix in P2: AW 7: User Firestorm PM'd me with info he recently posted on Postal forums on fixing the Mortal Kombat subgame in Kamek's AW7 mod for Apocalypse Weekend. He's the one who cornered me into making that Mac Install Kit for AW7 a few weeks back. Read full instructions here, apparently Kamek didn't really provide clear instructions, so Firestorm has done it for you.

(Feb 20): UT2004 Shadows reminder: Just in case you don't already know, full dynamic shadows are now available in Mac UT2004 via the 3369.2 patch. Yup, better than blob shadows. However Ryan said he made a li'l mistake in implementing the settings menu in the GUI, so it doesn't actually work via the menu. If you want real shadows, you need to edit your INI file manually (you know, the ut2004.ini and user.ini in your ~userhome/library/application support/unreal tournament 2004/system folder).

In UT2004.ini in the [OpenGLDrv.OpenGLRenderDevice] section:
UseRenderTargets=True


Also in the User.ini in the in the [UnrealGame.UnrealPawn] section:
bPlayerShadows=True and
bBlobShadow=False

and you might as well set in the [Engine.Vehicle]section:
bVehicleShadows=True

One of my favorite maps to check this out is in our old standby Antalus, because you can see the shadows of the trees on the ground, and the shadows of the branches and leaves are visible, and they *move* in the wind! Of course, take a look underneath other players or bots to see real character shadows, and not just fuzzy blobby ovals.


(Feb 19): Santaduck Tools for Mac UT2004 Updated:
I've just updated the Santaduck Toolpak, which if you don't already know is a set of utilities for the OS X version of Unreal Tournament 2004. Specifically I updated three of the tools: The installer app DropInstaller now correctly installs .upl and .ucl files. I haven't had the time to exhaustively test this, say with the Community Bonus Pack manual zip, so no guarantees atm. I was suddenly inspired and just tried to do it as I was falling asleep at 3am. Also, the retail and demo benchmarkers now enable full rendering of shadows, and allows for the enabling or disabling of audio as well as graphics rendering. (Demo benchmarker hasn't been tested-- the 3am syndrome again-- that, and I no longer had the Demo installed so I didn't bother downloading it at that time of nigh). The disabling of graphics rendering provides and indication of the CPU-limited processes, and we've long since known that UT2004 is a very CPU-limited app, so this is a fun option-- look for it in some of our future reports. The use of shadows during benchmarking brings the results closer inline with Windows-based UT2004 benchmarkers (such as UMark), as full shadows have been enabled in the recent v3369.2 patch to the game, despite the UI option for shadows having a bug-- in other words you can get shadows in UT2004 by tweaking the INIs (ut2004.ini and user.ini), but checking the box for full shadows in the settings menu of the game might be broken.

It's cool, run the Antalus botmatch benchmark (in "Max" detail), and you can see the shadows under the trees moving, and you can see each individual branch and leaf! And of course the shadows under the players are no longer ovals.

The other tool applications remain unchanged from the previous release, and include tools for UMod extraction, UZ2 compression and decompression for online servers, and a cache cleaner-- this utility set is the only one of its kind available for the Mac version of UT2004. The Santaduck Toolpak has previously been recognized with an honorable mention in the Make Something Unreal contest, and benchmarks using these tools were cited by Apple in introducing the Rev. A iMac G5.

Download it here at Macologist

Yes, btw the download works, even though 99% of our download system at Macologist is still down. We are working on a solution that looks good, but it will take time, and all of us are volunteers and we just went through moving the entire forum at the beginning of the year so this is the next big step.

Tactical Ops: Crossfire: Well the news is that there's no news. I'm still trying to get Petter to get us any information from the team-- I know they are testing away, but have no idea how close they are for release. This will be a big release party I'm sure, since this is probably the only UT2004 mod that will have an absolutely huge waiting audience, if the mod gameplay turns out to be recognizable to fans of TO:AoT.


(Feb 8): Apocalpyse Weekend 7 mod for OS X: Today a stranger IM'd me with the charming yet creative online handle of Satan's Beer Can. It didn't surprise me that he then proceeded to ask me about Postal. Specifically he was trying to get the good Mr. Kamek Magikoopa's mod AW7 to work. Now AW7 is a mod for Apocalypse Weekend, the bug-ridden (sry RWS) single player expansion to Postal 2: Share the Pain-- I think Kamek has added new animations, weapons, and maps, as well as removing the constraint of a linear story line. Sounds like even more political incorrectness served up hot and toasty. The problem is no one seemed to be able to get it working in OS X. A few people had posted about it in our forums at Macologist about a month ago, but I hadn't had the time to take a look. The first thing to do was look at the windows .bat launcher. Basically it just launches the postal game with the switch -ini=PostalAW7.ini. Sounds easy enough. Of course the default PostalAW7.ini uses D3DDrv as the render device, and WinDrv as the viewport manager, so I changed these to OpenGLDrv and SDLDrv from my Mac INIs. What results is the game boots up into a small square room with the bubbly texture-missing textures. Boo. The INI just didn't make sense. No where did it specify the path to the Apocalypse Weekend folder, which is where all the AW7 content gets installed-- no wonder it can't find a texture, or even a menu. But neither does the retail AW's INI file, so I was missing something. I took a look at Ryan Gordon's launcher that he wrote for retail AW. Nicely he left an uncompiled .c version, (which includes instructions on how to compile it w/gcc in its comments!), which revealed the commandline in its true glory, which is different probably because the compartmentalization of OS X .app bundles as well as some bugginess in the implementation of the unreal engine switches. Long story short, this commandline worked. Now I'll clean up the INI file as well as the default.INI file (which presumably is used to generated the AW7 ini from the stock AW ini), and write up an launcher. Maybe I'll even compile one with gcc instead of using Applescript, which is kind of clunky anyways.

BTW on that note I've been doing a lot of Applescript yesterday. I'm making some big improvements to the UT2004 benchmarking application by adding some features to really improve the options. No, I haven't made a convenient radio-button version yet, you'll have to do with stock Applescript dialog boxes still, but you'll love what I've got up here for you. Thanks in advance to Ryan Gordon, as well as PetterF and Rogue for help suggesting fixes and doing the legwork on how to implement the options. I'll write up an equivalent version with the new options for the UT2004 Demo benchmarker as well, and pack it up as a new Santaduck Toolpak version 3. No, the dropinstaller will not be fixed yet-- it doesn't install .upl or .ucl files, which usually isn't a problem with most packages, but I'd like to address that some day, since some packages like the Community Bonus Packs use these filetypes.


(Feb 3): Dual Boot Intel on Mac Contest pot surpasses $10K:
A informal contest to achieve a dual boot Intel Mac today exceeded $10000 USD in donated community prize money. Blogger Colin Nederkoorn started the contest on a whim just over a week ago on January 23, and contributions accumulated to over $2500 in one week. After the contest was "Slashdotted", the total pot now stands in excess of $10K. The contest ends March 23, and if no winner is apparent by that deadline, the prize money will be charitably donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The rules are as follows:
1. Instructions must boot Windows XP (at least), not Vista or any other version of Windows.
2. Windows must be able to coexist with Mac OS X and each system may not interfere with the operation of the other (basically a traditional dual boot system where one OS is running at a time)
3. Your method, upon starting the computer, must offer the user to boot either OS X or Windows XP (hint: GRUB)
4. The first person to post complete instructions, including pictures of the boot process to The Forum will be the winner. Instructions will be peer reviewed once they are received and once the solution is guaranteed working, the prize money will be transferred via paypal
5. You give this website the rights to post your solution
6. If it is determined impossible to boot Windows on the Mac by March 23, 2006, all donations will be donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. If you donated prior to 2006/01/23 2:10pm CST, and you do not wish to donate to charity, I will return your money minus the paypal fee
7. You cannot use virtualization software such as Xen or VMWare

Any interested users may donate any amount $5 and above toward the prize amount through PayPal, and in return for donations over $10, a URL of the donor's choice will be linked on the contest site. Nederkoorn has set up a new domain for the contest at windowsxp.onmac.net, with a new contest blog and forum. Open accounting of all donations are also available as an Excel file on the site.


UT2004 Universal Beta released:
Well, Ryan Gordon had the MacNinjas testing this one for a bit, and only a few of us had access to Intel iMacs. Originally the release was just going to be the old 3369.1 PPC released glommed onto the Intel universal binary. However now it's been released as a full-blown 3369.2 revision for PPC as well. I was also curious about OpenAL, since fellow MacNinja Petter always seems to have something interesting up his sleeve. When I asked Ryan in email, he told me: "It was rebuilt to the latest version in Subversion. Originally the PowerPC side was just going to be 3369.1 glued to the new Intel build, but the UseStencil fixes required a rebuild, and SDL had some serious changes recently, so I opted to rebuild everything so we had known quantities on both CPU architectures."

Anyways 3369.2 does not exist on Linux or Windows, as these are Mac-specific issues. Also, the server exploit fix from Dec 2005 has also been incorporated, and even better, the Epic Mega Pack is now included with the update, which causes what would be a rather small download to now weigh in a hair short of 200 Mb. If you want to know about the 9 new maps in the Mega Pack, see BeyondUnreal's overview. Anyways see all the download mirrors at Gordon's site here. If you want a faster mirror, I don't know if it's listed yet, but Petter got a mirror up in Sweden here, and I think MGF has a link as well, but it usually just redirects to Gordon's icculus.org site. If you're doing a brand spanking virgin install of UT2004 on your Intel (or PPC) Mac, and the retail installer crashes on you, make sure to use Gordon's fixed retail installer for Tiger at Macologist downloads. I don't see a link for this file at MGF, so get it here as icculus.org will be slammed for a few days, and the file was previously in a temporary folder so who knows if it's still there. Finally, if you want to see our preliminary benchmarks of Universal UT2004 running on Intel iMacs on a pre-release version last week, read our article here, which we wrote in collaboration with barefeats.com. It flies. Keep your eyes peeled as we'll be working with barefeats again on another benchmarking feature with more universal binaries. w33t indeed. It's already a good year!


(Jan 18): Google Earth beta released: One of the smaller bits of news in the MWSF week was that Google Earth is now officilaly released in beta form, and is available here at the Apple site. I believe the beta, like the unofficial leak, does not work in Panther-- Tiger is required. Still I remember when this was all Keyhole, a paid-subscription service for Windows, and I was so tempted to purchase it, but now that Google has acquired it, turned it into a free app, and now ported it to Mac, I'm very pleased indeed.

Misc: So one of the overall reasons Apple went with Intel, instead of say AMD, now is apparent: Core Duo. I found a review of the MacBook Pro vs. current Core Duo Notebooks, it's worth a read here. Still waiting for more multimedia TV integration and the TiVO killer app, but Apple has some serious momentum going, if you compare things the past few years at MWSF 05 and 04. It's very promising, but I'm still hoping Apple doesn't lose its way. They nicely handled the iTunes privacy problem, which looked like it might spiral out of control, but now the new privacy notice is very clear, as well as intstructions to opt out of the ministore (which sends your library information to Apple to compute possible purchases to show you).

And of course we just moved Macologist to a new server, and a new forum system. We're now vBulletin instead of clunky phpBB with mods on top of mods. We still have a few things to iron out, but it's doing well, and thanks to Rogue for the evolving slick look of the site. We also just named our Mod of the Year, so read up to look at great mods for a wide range of Mac games!


(Dec 10): Google Earth Leak: I saw today that uneasysilence.com is hosting a leaked beta copy of Google Earth for OS X. It's apparently still an early beta and still has lots of XP icons and such. I haven't seen it yet, although the download pages require you to slog through all the premium options while you search for the Free download link. See for yourself here. I'm sure the link will be taken down within days.

(Dec 9): Google Earth: In news that really pleased and surprised me, Google is apparently working on a Mac version of its Google Earth application. Think Google Maps, but with more detail, and quasi 3-D rotation, and some skyscraper model information. I love it on my XP machine, and the satellite photos frequent have better coverage and better resolution than the satellite source in Google Maps. In other related news, Google maps is also trying out a public transportation map search, initially confined to the Portland, Oregon area (northwest US). It's currently incompatible with Safari, so you should use Firefox. I haven't tried spoofing Firefox with Safari however.

Other: Of course UT2004 has seen a new update from Ryan Gordon, days after the XP release, it's version 3369 and more info is here. Ryan also did the Linux and Win64 ports. The render-to-texture support has been fixed (and shadows), so this means some motion blur effects may be fixed-- in other words try out all those UT2004 mods that had bugs. I'll try the puzzle mod Metaball soon and see if that now works completely well. I'm also proud that Macologist got its third mention in MacAddict magazine, see the bottom of Page 16 in the December 2005 issue-- they featured our C&C Generals: Zero Hour mod conversions by our C&C expert super_kev. Unfortunately one of the mods they mentioned, Imperial Assault (a star-wars mod), was taken down from our downloads due to some issues relating to its very early beta status.

Recent releases: Stubbs the Zombie, Zoo Tycoon 2, Lego Star Wars demo.

Casual game releases: This is a few weeks old, but some games I betatested for Ryan Gordon a long time ago have finally been released for Mac. These are some great casual games. One is a breakout themed game, but the real selling point is that it comes with a map-editor that works in OS X. The other game is one of the best casual puzzle games I've seen in a while, and it features something called "Mouse Party": up to six USB mice can be simultaneously connected, so multiple players can compete with each other in completing the one puzzle. The breakout game is called Richochet: Lost Worlds, and the fun puzzle game is called Big Kahuna Reef.

TONIGHT IS MAC BATTLEFIELD NIGHT: Macologist is having another Mac-only game night. The server will be running Desert Combat Final. To install, be sure to install the latest 1.61D patch for BF1942, then install Desert Combat 0.7, then install Desert Combat Final. We also will be running a Teamspeak server, courtesy of Monoman & Vir2l of MacGamingMods. For server IPs and times, see this thread. For DC mod downloads, see our BF1942 mods downloads.


(Nov 3): America's Army Framerate fix: There's a fix for those of you experiencing extremely slow framerates in 2.50. Simply disable "Auto Login" in Settings>Personnel Jacket. Quit, then restart the game. When you join a server, your settings will be reloaded automatically anyways. (Save login info should remain checked). My framerate went from sub 10 to over 50 on an iMac G5/FX5200. For more information see this thread at official AA forums.

(Oct 28): America's Army 2.50 released for Mac & Linux: Read more at my news post at Macologist, if you want details on the server browser and OpenAL. Will summarize tomorrow. But for now, check out that post for download URLs. I'll tell you right now that you should use the official bittorrent download if you know how, since the download speed using bittorrent tonight seems to be about 50-70 K/s, and that's only with 8 seeds. It will only get better by Saturday morning. The regular web-based downloads are getting filled, and their rates are capped at about 35-45 K/s it seems. I recommend the Tomato Torrent client, but you can also use the Bittorrent client 4.1.2... just install, then click on the bittorrent download link.

Teamspeex: BTW we're currently looking at the R294 internal beta. If you want to see what features author Hun Zheng Hu is working on, and what has already been fixed, it's actually pretty interesting, you can look at the list here.

(Oct 17): Teamspeak Downloads: The developer's website for Teamspeex has been absolutely overwhelmed by demand, and you probably won't be able to load it to download the file. I've listed two mirror URLs for this file at the bottom of the news post, but I'll link them right here:
Macologist mirror (484K), and Mac-Civic mirror (484K)

America's Army 2.50 this week? Ryan Gordon has been busy all week. Over the weekend and late last week I've been getting automatic emails from Bugzilla saying that old bugs (even from 2.40 testing) are being resolved by Ryan, and his most recent .plan reads that although he had been hoping for a simultaneous release with the Windows version (which was released last week), we can tentatively expect the Mac & Linux versions this week. I'll keep you posted. So far the betas have been extraordinarily stable without a single crash, so these look to be real nice builds!

(Oct 16): Teamspeak client for OS X released: Develop Yun Zheng released Teamspeex, the first Teamspeak client for OS X. Tired like the rest of us waiting for a TS client for Mac, Zheng decided to write his own. It's been in internal beta, reaching final stages in the past few weeks, and I got to take a look and speak with Zheng a bit. Now it's been released here. Read more info and his comments at the Macologist article here. A forum user has also started a thread listing servers here.

Oh, and watch apple.com on Oct 19, there's yet another announcement coming, possibly PowerMac & Powerbook upgrades that had been rumored but didn't arrive on Oct 12 with the video ipods and updated iMacs. Possibly we might see quad-core systems: a dual processor dual-core Powermac! Keep your eyes peeled.

(Oct 11): Check Apple.com Wed Oct 12: Tomorrow morning there's to be an invitation-only media event by Apple in San Jose CA's California Theatre. The promo tagline reads "One More Thing" which is usually a key phrase associated with new product releases, according to Macrumors. Rumor site Thinksecret now predicts a video iPod is likely to be released, or at least new 80G iPods and Powerbook/PowerMacs speed bumps as well. One sort of out-of-touch columnist at Businessweek is predicting the video screen is actually a stealth entry for Apple into portable gaming. Although that's unlikely, it will be a super coup if she is right. Anyways, sleep tight, and we will see in the morning at 10:00 PDT (GMT -7).

(Oct 3): about the ROKR: So what was Steve Jobs thinking, teaming up with Motorola, a company with proven lameness with respect to Apple? Remember, the company that couldn't provide enough chips fast enough for the Mac line before being dumped for PowerPC? Sure enough, the ROKR was underwhelming, but notice the ads are being placed by Motorola and Cingular, but none by Apple. It's all about the big picture, and the big strategy, and the power of the wireless network providers. There's a great article at iPodGarage that connects all the dots together, and it makes perfect sense. Steve has gotten his foot in the door with Cingular, and used Motorola like a one night stand. Read more here.

America's Army: Well, IMG has reported it so I'll assume it's not a secret anymore: MacNinjas and the extended ArmyOps test group has indeed begun betatesting Americas Army version 2.50 for Mac. Thus, it turns out we will be skipping 2.40 on Mac altogether. I haven't had a chance yet to run it through its paces, but the initial word is that Ryans seems to have given us an airtight-good build. Stay tuned!


(Sep 15): X-Plane: OK I'm excited folks. I've just posted the interview with X-Plane flight sim creator Austin Meyer. This guy is a very very smart engineer, and you won't be able to help learning a lot about flight sims just by reading it. He gave me one of the most interesting interviews ever, and it was neat doing it directly over the phone because I got a real feel for his go go go personality. Smart guy, smart interview, go take a look!

(Sep 13): Random: I'm still chuckling over how Apple hid one piece of big news (iPod Nano) by leaking another bit of big news (ROKR). Everyone thought it was about the phone and the rumors pundits were smug, but the iPod Nano was much bigger news of course. Go team. And for the rest of you, read the neat profile by Time which describes its top-secret development process... and don't miss the Jonathan Ive interview-- Jonathan is one of the design geniuses, and was behind the Nano as well. If I had to guess, I'd say he was not behind the disastrously performing Mighty Mouse.

Well I was musing about a few things that just seemed to connect to more things. I saw a random article about how mozilla was a midget taking on the giant microsoft, but the title of the piece was: "Mozilla Is Gaining on Godzilla". That made me think of googlefight.com, where you can compare two search terms to see which gets more hits in google. I thought the article was going to talk about how Mozilla is a word based on Godzilla, but it is slowly becoming more referenced in the online world. WRONG. Mozilla is not gaining on Godzilla, it has long passed it. The result is about 136 million for Mozilla to about 3 million for Godzilla. Oh, and the site has a little stick figure animation which reminded me of the greatest stick fighting animation ever, here. As I did a search for the stick figure video, lo and behold Google provided a bunch of URLs of tongue-in-cheek nude stick-figure sites. I'd be curious if Google's safesearch weeds these out or not, but that's enough effort spent on stick figures for today.

I also got sick of iTunes' visualizer, and rediscovered a custom visualizer I had downloaded a long time ago called Gaslight. It's great. Sometimes you want the swirling motion of the stock visualizer that gives you that psychedlic "I'm falling" feeling, but sometimes I just want a calm view more akin to a technicolor Duraflame log in the fireplace. Gaslight is it, and has apparently been updated recently for Tiger (although my old version worked fine). Make sure to start it in windowed mode so you can push the big iTunes button to change its settings to your liking, because the defaults sux0r. Download here.

Macologist: We got mentioned again, in this month's (October 2005) MacAddict magazine! It was a tiny blurb about download Doom3 mods, but I'm excited. That was the work of our staffer Adamward, who also does some betatesting for Aspyr, but he can never tell me what he's testing atm. The X-Plane (flight sim) interview I was working on with creator Austin Meyer is going out in days (maybe tomorrow), it's awesome. I mean you'll actually learn a lot just reading the interview. This guy is a genius, and he has a secret weapon. And nooo, despite what the photo implies, he doesn't touch XCode, he's a Metrowerks man. Ahh read the interview and you'll see what it's about, and learn all about supersonic flow.

Feral & Running with Scissors: Wow some great things coming from Feral! Some of our staff are reviewing the helicopter sim Enemy Engaged, and it apparently is very mod friendly (they've released a community mod pack of the best), so I'm itching to see what our reviewer comes up with. And Fable: The Lost Chapters will be a megahit. The 'TLC' means it's the pc version with tons more content than the console. I'm not really an RPG fan myself, but it's got a cool sims cum black & white mentality: you watch your character grow, and your choices in life affect your appearance. Anyways hopefully the Mac release won't be too far behind the Windows version. Oh, and a new trailer here. Makes me almost want to see Postal 2 redone as a RPG-- imagine a happy Mr. Dude, or a darker one with tats. You know that reminds me, I forgot about a link I was going to post earlier in the year (back in June!). Postal is published by Vince Desi and Running with Scissors, and when he goes to E3 every year, he has a blast, with Gary Coleman, the postal babes, and all that. HOWEVER... he's a really smart guy and he had a summary of the games that really caught me off guard, and he had some nice opinions I respected... It's worth a read, see Vince Desi's E3 Game Impressions. Quoting from him...

"The most creative and innovative new title I saw was on PC. It's called Hellgate: London by Flagship Studios, a new dev company founded by the boys that brought you Warcraft and Starcraft, the old Blizzard gang. Unfortunately most of the other games are re-runs - how many World War II games do we need? I saw one new game that was all about being a Sniper - whatever happened to keeping sniping as a feature?

In addition to all the big name companies offering the usual crap, from North America there was Majesco. They've been around but seem to be one of the few publishers willing to take a chance on genuinely original games like Psychonauts...

The Ghetto-fication of videogames continues apace, this year even Sonic the Hedgehog has been rastafied by 20% with the introduction of "Shadow" the Hedgehog. Sega even had a life-sized statue of the swarthy Shadow aiming his "nine" gangsta-style into the crowd. I would've taken a picture, but I was too busy vomiting.

But, as surprised as I was, E3 wasn't ALL gloom and horror and rape and gangstas! Nope, there were actually some brief shining examples actually worth caring about. Top of the list is Yoot Saito's Odama. Now, I dunno who Yoot Saito is, maybe he invented the tamagotchi ..., I'm not sure. But the game proves it's still possible to create fun without the aid of fairies, power armor or Fifty Cent. It's hard to describe, so I'll just confuse the **** out of you with some disjointed words and phrases like: Pinball, huge armies, mass destruction, hamburgers and voice-controlled.

Another thing that surprisingly didn't suck was The Incredibles: Rise of the Underminer which sported ACTUAL co-op play that mattered, not just both characters on screen shooting at the same time."

See? Unexpected stuff! If we could rein him in, I'd love to get him to write a feature for us. =x Yoot Saito's Odama sounded really intriguing, and even Gamespot's preview was unintelligible. .

(Sep 8): Well I won't comment too much on Apple's big wednesday this week, other that to say it was brilliant how they had a leak via the 'worst kept secret' regarding the iTunes phone (whose capacity was thankfully bigger than one rumor, which said 20 songs)-- but that it was almost smoke-and-mirrors red herring to distract the rumor mongers from the other big news, which was the demise of the iPod mini, and the introduction of the iPod nano. Smaller, solid state, same capacity, with colored sleeves in case you like that hot pink color.

Anyways, also note that Skype 1.3 is now out for OS X, along with a widget to check your address book & calling rates. Skype is free voice-over IP chat, and is available here.

X-Plane flight sim: Have I got a GREAT interview with the maker of X-plane, Austin Meyer, coming this week! If you don't know already, this is the only PC flight sim that is FAA-certified to log actual flight training time for pilots. For $50 (actually on sale now for $39), you get the same engine and flight sim that is used in commercial FAA-certified ATDs (aviation training device). Other equivalents cost from $500 to several thousand dollars. Wow. Stay tuned for this great interview with an engineer whose mind goes a million miles an hour.

Older News Items

May-Aug 2005
Mar -April 2005
Dec 2004-Feb 2005
Nov 2004
Oct 2004
Aug-Sep 2004
Early 2004

Mortal Kombat Matrix PingPong
(from original roguedawg site here). (3.4M.wmv, it's worth getting the player if you don't have it)

Accused of camping
from BBspot. "Saddam is such a lamer," claimed Rumsfeld in a press conference today. "He's probably wallhacking too."

Owned. (Pic from Star Wars). From somethingawful.com, Two more great star wars humor (nongaming) pics here and here.

Classic Megatokyo: Does anyone speak 1337? Also: Trolls, TF, mmorpg, Lag, mmorpg2...

Money Hack. You either get it or you won't. From TO-Scene.de.

Landover Baptist UT and more here

F3ll0wsh1p of teh R1ng

(june 1) Back in the real world this month, Michael Moore wins accolades and the prize at Cannes Film Festival, casting more attention at Disney and its relation with the Bushes and its subsidiar Miramax, Bill Cosby is riling racially charged waters, and of course Fantasia Barrino is The Idol-- geesh I hate to admit I watch the show, but that last song... (faint)...both her and teenager Diana sang the same song, but only one rendition had Camille Velasco in utter sobbing tears. I hear they're best buds (they both pour out their emotions easily, so it's no surprise) and she may even stay over at her house in Maui after the summer Idol tour ends in late September in Hawaii-- maybe she'll pick up some stage skillz from Fantasia. The big surprise was the Season 3 CD, and the most repeat-listenable tracks include Fantasia's (obvious), but also Camille and Bulgarian Girl (what was her name--hm, iTunes says Leah Labelle), who would have guessed? It's not just me, apparently I've been told the various chat forums also noticed Camille's performance-- go my little kitten! Admittedly the sound engineers butchered the dynamic range (soft-to-loud range) of all the tracks-- I'd love to hear LaToya belt it on an audiophile label acoustic recording with tubed mikes, but she sounded absolutely flattened by the engineers. No. 3 Jasmine is gonna cause a traffic jam headache if she ever returns back to school next year; it's crowded enough with three schools within one block of my street including her school, Maryknoll, but this year she'll get even more press-mania than her counterpart at the other school across the other street, Punahou School, the home of the talented and surprising and stunningly stylish Michelle Wie. Jasmine should take fashion advice from the Big Wiesy. I mean c'mon,do you want to be a pop star or what? Do it, live it, but dress it hon'. Just look at those a la mode romanesque spike sandals at the Laureus awards (closeup), which were statue-artwork-like appropriate to her chiseled calf musculature (think Michaelangelo)-- sheesh even I know more about fashion trends from my GF's Vogues than poor Jaz, although I admit there's no substitute for being 6 foot and leggy, which is generally difficult (to be born as) for the typical azn grrl, but even Wie's hair & highlights outdid the Idol stylists... I'll admit Jasmine has been improving by leaps and bounds in the limelight-fashion deparment though, we have not yet lost all hope, General Kenobi we don't need your loyal services yet. Go girls...

(may 6) Doing way too much coding, but I'm learning a lot of Applescript. I'm almost done with the Macintosh UT2004 "Santa's Toolpak" which will have 7 or 8 tools. On another computer note, I must say I am happier and happier with my electrostatic Monsoon MM-1000 speakers-- excellent soundstage and localization, and I can live with the coloring from the metal cage resonance since my computer-based audio isn't for minimalist signal path audio anyways. If you tap your speaker case, and you hear something, then it will color your audio... rap your knuckles on high end speakers (not circuit city stuff), and it will be dead, not like knocking on wood or plastic. Like I said, I can live with it on my desk, and it blows away the HK Soundsticks/iSub system I had here for a while, and the flat electrostatics look very cool. Saw some culturally translated Kabuki last week, sort of a local tradition here since the 20's-- it's english-language kabuki, but everything else from the antics, exaggerated tonality, speech, postures, and live music, is an attempt to be faithful to the original. Very cool. Mother's Day Reminder!!!

(may 1) Get your mother's day presents now & send them off! I wanted to plug a product that I will be giving for mothers day that seems like voodoo to me but it works-- Phiten titanium products-- What is it? Think magnet therapy but instead of magnets, it uses titanium to relieve pain (muscle, joint, nerve) and increase strength. Nope, doesn't make sense to me, and I don't believe in magnets. But I have used their necklace in endurance sports (including a marathon), where shoulder muscle cramps that I always get after 15 miles of running simply never appeared during the entire marathon (more than 26 mi.) when using the Phiten necklace! I saw other runners using Phiten brand taping on their legs-- If I ever do this crazy run again, I'll use that tape for sure, which I have heard remarkable stories about. This stuff is endorsed by Randy Johnson, the NY Jets, USA Volleyball, and is even bigger in asia in sports from golf to soccer. Phitenusa.com is their website. Carpal tunnel from too much gaming? Try it. For starters I'd recommend their tape or depending on the need the necklace-- I wrap a necklace around my wrist or hand sometimes. I have heard their clothing products are more diffuse in effect than the necklace and tape. For beauty products for mom, head down to your local Sephora or something similar, and consider the Astara activated sea mineral mask (as opposed to masks, Astara or otherwise), or Joey New York's Rest-a-line eye treatment for fine wrinklez-- it's like magic. If you're doing web, Bliss Spa Labs also has these products. Someone's gotta help the clueless gamer look like they have a clue about this stuff... On the younger side, for another day, the GF would probably even enjoy the mask (don't get a younger girl the eye wrinkle treatmen !), or just walk into your department store and ask for advice-- you'll come out golden if she realizes what you went through to get some Chanel, MAC, or some other new york or euro skin or face product or some nail or lip thing--Gurlz are product whores, every last one of them, bless their hearts =).

(apr 25) Jonathan Cheechoo's between-the-legs onetimer (4.1Mb wmv) on Aebischer during San Jose Sharks' 2nd game 2nd round win over Colorado. "The play actually went up to the video goal judge..."We watched it on the video and saw why they thought it was kicked in...It was unbelievable. It might be the best goal anybody has seen this year...To a man, the players could only recall seeing that move successfully pulled off before. It was by Mario Lemieux..." Full article here

(apr 18) Star Wars as an ascii movie!: just do this: telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl . On a windows machine, type that in from Command Prompt, and in OS X, type it in from Terminal (in applications/utilties). To save, I think this will work:
curl -f "telnet://towel.blinkenlights.nl" -o "starwars.vt100"


(apr 17) Looks like my powerlogix CPU upgrade (7457 G4 1.4ghz) is simply incompatible with nearly every maxtor drive, including my stock 60Gb as well as my upgrade a 120G/8Mcache. With some help from Cubeowner.com, I'll do some testing with a western digital drive and see how it goes, but after 2 unsuccesful RMAs, PL downclocked my card to 1.35Ghz-- not a noticeable difference of course, but now that I am 99% sure the CPU wasn't the problem, I want to get it back to 1.4 =\ Anyhow my lil cube will tide me over until a 2nd or 3rd gen G5 in the future.

(apr 5) This is a random sidebar today. Ran into a couple at brunch (Like Like Drive In), and the woman was final-trimester pregnant and *not* wearing maternity clothes. How did she do it? A youthful outlook to fashion and an island climate: Her super low-rise bottoms cinched below her belly and baby, and her crop-top Roxy surfwear came out on top of it. Who knew a girl's closet could have such diverse functionality?

On another note, by UTXp3 based Tactical Ops kept killing my internet connection. I checked for OS X updates, and found & installed a secruity update dated 04/05/2004, and my problems are gone. Coincidence? I haven't figured it out yet...

(apr 4) Waiting on my 2nd RMA for my powerlogix G4 upgrade. It' a sweet 7457 G4 (with L3 cache and low voltage) at 1.4 Ghz, which will keep my Cube from feeling too behind. Not bad for a 3 and a half year old computer, and subtle casemods make it look CUTE. It'll tide me over til I splurge on a 2nd or 3rd gen G5.

(march 12) Well I always knew my defunct foosball website (foosballheaven.com) was ranked #2 in Google for the word "foosball" (it used to be #1 for a while), but upon looking at some spam mail, I learned that the same website is ranked top 10 (#8) for the words: tournament bracket. How odd. I do have great double-elimination brackets that can be used for any event or sport in PDF format, but odd. The spam was for link-hosting (presumably for google-bombing for commercial purposes) for a construction company, "just like your site." What? Oh, the word "bracket." I shot up my work site to the top 5 in two different two-word Google searches (from about 125th place), so maybe I should hire myself out for this hehe. I'd charge a lot less than the others too haha.

Update: omg (literally)-- the same day, I also got an email regarding these tournament brackets as follows: "Rob, I like to say thanks for these brackets -- I've been looking for some brackets to use for   our Bible Quiz Tournaments that we have in Indianapolis,Indiana." Like I said, it's appropriate for any event or sport. 8-)


(march 2 pm): Sorry for more Idol stuff... tonite was hawaii's 3rd contestant Jasmine Trias... We live by maryknoll school, so we just packed some seats and went over to the high school and watched with the true 'home crowd,' and it was fun. We text-messaged on some at&t phones a few hundred times probably. The funniest was the cute little sister who had no clue what was going on, but she was adorable & knew that clapping was good.

(march 2): Working on a flyby-like benchmark for UT 2004demo. Ideally I want to set gamespeed very high, killall pawns except for one bot, set the bot's drawscale to 0 (and/or eliminate its mesh), but I either can't get this to work in exec or startup with the -benchmark flag. Simply having one bot and turning sound off (-nosound flag) still results in a benchmark that seems CPU-bound on both windows & mac.

On other news, was very disappointed by William Hung on idol. He was still clueless, but not disarmingly and charmingly so. His slight elevation in self-appraisal kind of undercuts the entire appeal. *sigh*. The puppet girl was more fun. Go Jasmine tomorrow.

(march 1): William Hung update: you MUST download this Trance DJ Sonar remix (2.2M mp3); the mixer obviously tweaked William Hung's voice to be exactly in tune with the remixed beats, and IMHO it's one of the best of some remix contest. Tell your local radio stations to play it & give them the URL. Don't miss this phenom =) Oh, watch him tonight (mon mar 1) on american idol, where he performs live hahaha.

(feb 24): On a pop culture note, I am really happy to hear that American Idol William "She Bangs" Hung is appearing on next week's 'uncut & untalented' broadcast. I was hoping they would at best mention his fansite williamhung.net, but better yet they're flying him out for a live performance, one which won't be cut off mid-stream so we will actually see all his choreography. And come on, he was actually hitting real notes in tune. The best was the intro, which R.Seacrest began with: "and yes, HE will be here..." That was enough introduction. If you haven't seen the fansite go see it. He was the best.

(feb 21): I am really irrational. I spent good money upgrading my G4 cube. I mean the thing is a collectible, (and many might question why I put money into it when I could just get a new lowish machine), so in stock conformation is probably worth as much now used as it was new. That said, it's now sported a powerlogix 7457 G4 running at 1.4 Ghz, Radeon 9000pro, 1.5G RAM, and 320G HD space. For a 3--yr-old mac, that's pretty damned good. I'm playing with Garage Band now with my new m-audio keyboard, and I'm waiting for my 10-yr-old Roland Sound Canvas, which is now old enough to be in-style-retro! Well, at least you can say I haven't put any money into my VPI turntable rig lately.

On a more personal note, I recently joined a marimba band, and it is a cornerstone of my sanity. As the new kids (such as me) are starting from scratch, it may be 2 more months yet when we can gig on the bustling sidewalks of Waikiki. Should be fun. I'm trying to build my own at home out of some spare keys, but without resonators, just so I can practice.

Final note: LOL someone remixed one of my old Tactical Ops installers and put it up at mac.torrentskickass.com. From the looks of it, they did a good job, it has everything that I couldn't distribute such as the UT files and the retail AoT files. It didn't have to be this way if they only released it for Macintosh in the first place; I bought it for PC and converted it to mac, but can hardly expect the casual Macintosh user to do the same. Mixed feeling on this. I'll still try to find someone to distribute my legit installer set which has everything except the UT files and retail AoT files.

postscriptum-- i hope all yers valentine's days went well. I shlepped to neiman marcus and got some $40 chocolates (tiny tiny box) and that went well. If your V day wasn't so hot, I hope at least y'all had a romantic president's day. errr...

(feb 20) I'm now officially geex0r. I discovered megatokyo and read the whole thing (online & clicking) in two or three days. w00t. Obviously the gaming & 1337 references are funny, and although I really don't get the appeal of what we call "Anime," I do get most of the humor from my Japanese background. Just give me Totoro (jap DVD + english literal subs-- the disney dub is horrendous, really) & I'm pretty happy thankyouverymuch. Disney didn't spend nearly as much care and money dubbing the older Miyazakis (totoro, kiki, etc.) than the newer ones for theatrical release (spirited away/s&c no kamikakushi & princess mononoke(hime)), and man it shows. I don't mind the theatrical dubs at all-- they are different, but competent. The others are manifestations of sheer incompentence. *sigh*