Tuesday, July 15, 2003

Pondering the Imponderable -- 2:25 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The news that Rob Halford has rejoined the legendary British metal act Judas Priest has prompted me to break out 1984's Defenders of the Faith. Some sweet stuff there, especially The Sentinel. Why is it that you have to go back to the 80s to find metal bands that actually can play guitar?

In other news, will someone at MSN please fix the router that is making it impossible for me to visit ESPN.com? I'm going into withdrawal.

UGO on UT2K4 -- 2:20 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

UGO has a brief preview of Unreal Tournament 2004 and an interview with Epic's Cliff Bleszinski. Here's my favorite snip from the interview:

UGO: What's the one thing that will convince UT2003 owners to go for UT2004?

CB: Vehicular manslaughter.

You can bet that The Master and I will be nabbing this bad-boy as soon as it hits the shelves. Quality FPS + Linux support = A good time for A.T. Thanks Blue's News.

The Master comments: WWWWWwwwwwwoooooooooooott!

OpenOffice.org 1.1 RC1 -- 9:56 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Release Candidate 1 for OpenOffice.org 1.1 has been released. You can see a full list of the new/improved features here. You can download a build for your OS. Thanks Linux Today.

On a related note, I'm going to start looking into the WordPerfect filter that is in development for OOo. I really would like to switch over since OOo uses a more open format for its files (a zipped-up XML file) and WordPerfect development on Linux has come to a screeching halt. I've got about 15 years worth of files in WordPerfect format so I can't just abandon them all.

UT2K3 Troopers Mod Released -- 9:43 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The UT2K3 Troopers team has released a "demo" version of their Star Wars-themed modification for Unreal Tournament 2003. You can see a complete features list here and several download mirrors here. It weighs in a 146M, but it's apparently just a taste of what the full mod will offer. Get it while it's hot (or before it's Foxed). Thanks Blue's News.

It was a bit of a PITA to get this installed in Linux. Apparently the ut2mod installer didn't want to create the necessary directories. From your ut2003 directory, issue the following commands:

mkdir Help/ReadmeContent
mkdir Help/ReadmeContent/Gifs
mkdir Troopers
mkdir Troopers/TAnimations
mkdir Troopers/TMaps
mkdir Troopers/TSounds
mkdir Troopers/TStaticMeshes
mkdir Troopers/TTextures

After that, run the ut2mod installer thusly (you will need to point the command to wherever you unzipped the ut2mod):

cd System
./ucc-bin umodunpack -x TroopersInstall.ut2mod -nohomedir

Finally, edit the Troopers/TroopersLinux.sh script so it reads thusly (keep everything after ../ut2003 on one line):

#!/bin/sh
../ut2003 -ini=troopers.ini -userini=tuser.ini log=troopers.log -userlogo=TroopersLogo.bmp

If you are running a dedicated server, add -nohomedir to the end of that command. Unfortunately, I must say that my initial impressions of the mod are not favorable. I played a Rebel and if I get hit twice by a Stormtrooper, I'm dead. If I accidentally fall into some water, there seems to be no way to swim. You drown very quickly. I'll read up on it a bit more and report back later.

Monday, July 14, 2003

NVIDIA Drivers with 2.6.0-test1 -- 11:40 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Ask and ye shall receive! Someone posted this tutorial showing how to hack the NVIDIA Linux drivers to work with the new 2.6.0-test1 kernel. Pretty easy actually. Thanks Linux Games.

Linux Kernel 2.6.0-test1 -- 10:03 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Linus Torvalds made a post on the kernel mailing list announcing kernel 2.6.0-test1. He said that he hopes that the testing period will be shorter than it was for 2.4 (seven months). As might be expected, kernel.org is being beaten to death. If you are lucky enough to get through and brave enough to give it a spin, let me know how it worked. Be forewarned, you will likely have problems with binary drivers like those from NVIDIA. Thanks Slashdot.

I guess this means I've officially been using Linux for awhile. This is the second major kernel version to be released since I started using it. I think I'm going to wait until Slackware comes up with a 2.6 kernel before diving in. I can't afford to break my system, and I don't feel like waiting for my Celeron 400 to compile it for my other box.

The Master comments: Oh, come ON A.T. I don't buy this conservative kernel build stuff at all. You gonna try that sucker this week, or next? :-)

J.t.Qbe comments: And how long can it really take on a Celeron 400? A total of 3 minutes? My first kernel builds (on YOUR 486SX motherboard) took 45-60 minutes each, and that was with the 1.2 series. Be a man, A.T.!

A.T. Hun comments: In all honesty, I really don't have any inclination to do it. I especially don't really want to wade through all the configuration options. Plus, a complete compile with all the modules takes forever. Maybe when it gets later in the test cycle or if there's some feature I'm dying to try, then I'll give it a whirl. NVIDIA especially has to get drivers out that support it before I'll even bother.

Pondering the Imponderable -- 9:49 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

This weekend, The Master and I renewed the domain name for The Haus through 2008. In the immortal words of Red Green, "Whatever this is, we've got a lot more of it."

And from the "the 73rd time is a charm" department, a company called Tulip has announced that it is relaunching the Commodore name, focusing especially on the Commodore 64. I'm a Commodore man myself, the proud (former) owner of a VIC-20 and a Commodore 128 (which I managed to run CP/M on). For the first couple of years of high school, we had about 10 Commodore PETs which were later replaced with IBM PCs. I guess we've come full circle. Along with Atari, two of the classic but most frequently mismanaged names in computing have been brought to life. Perhaps it would have been best to let them rest in peace. Thanks Slashdot.

And finally, if you think your relationship with your significant other should be the subject of a major motion picture (or a case study in a psych textbook), you really need to check out this website. You'll thank me later. Thanks to Ars Technica for that one.

The Master comments: I remember reading that a year or so ago. I just had to check it again. I should not be laughing to tears while working. Oh, my.

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