The Sect of Rama

Amanita Designs finally came out with something new: Questionaut. Its targeted at 11 year olds, but the beautiful art and music are worth the short few minutes it'll take you to run through it.

A local (SF) indie game shop producing a sweet looking hybrid between Lemmings and real life ants? Heck ya I pre-ordered it! (its Windows only for now... good excuse to get VirtualBox set up on those other platforms!) Check out World of Goo.

My recent 103bees report informs me people are looking for where Team Fortress 2 screen grabs go. So I thought I'd whore out my blog for some quick page views ;).

Q: Where can I find the TF2 screenshots?
A: "C:\Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\\team fortress 2\tf\screenshots".

Q: How do people mark the walls with graffiti?
A: Its called "sprays". You can download existing ones, make your own, and install them.

Q: How are people doing those crazy moves so fast? A: The most likely setup bindings.

Sigh... while catching up on some feeds, I caught the above image in this engadget entry, and thought it was yet another spoof on the Team Fortress 2 engineer 'building a sentry'.

Maybe I should take a break from the game for a bit...

I uploaded a few choice screenshots from recent Halflife2 Team Fortress 2 matches. Didn't find any of me yet though.

Via Roy, "How Billy Mitchell became a video-game superstar and achieved Pac-Man bliss." Starts out a tad slow, but I found it riveting once it got into the story. The guy seems mildly autistic, and shares insights I never recognized, like:

Mitchell places a quarter in the slot and begins to dominate the game, giving an extemporaneous lecture on strategy as he goes. “See, each ghost has a unique personality,” he says. “The red one, he’s a complete headhunter. He’s constantly trying to zero in on your position. The blue one is more complicated; his movement is based on your position versus the red ghost.” He holds the joystick loosely with his left hand, maneuvering it with precise flicks of his thumb and index finger. “I use their personalities and put them in places, positions, and patterns advantageous to me.

Definitely makes me want to restore my thrashed Ms Pac-Man MAME machine. Check out some of these videos after reading the article too. Amazing.

Between enjoying the Alps stages of the Tour de France, I spent some time upgrading my home network. I've been using the Netgear FWAG114 for the past couple of years, but this weekend made the upgrade to a Linksys WRT350N . The new router has gig ethernet ports, a built in NAS via USB port, 802.11N, and perhaps mostly importantly, is Linux based so you can upgrade the firmware to DD-WRT.

After installing the new router, the first thing I did was check signal strengths. The Linksys WGA11B wireless game adapter I use for my Stoker had a much stronger signal in the backyard, but my Macbook Pro had a *worse* signal strength via 802.11b. From the office to living room, the furthest possible distance in my home, it would spike to above 50% signal level then plummet to nearly no signal.

Thankfully Joe reminded me earlier in the day that a download was available from Apple to enable 802.11N on the Macbook Pro, for all of $2. (great its available, but why the annoying $2 charge??) So after verifying my laptop didn't include the update (instructions on the apple store page), I went to purchase, install, reboot, then check for a speed improvement. The result? Maybe 30% increase in signal strength, although the connection was still really erratic- jumping from 0 to 6 bars (out of 15 total) in seconds. Also, it seems the combo of the OSX 802.11N plus the WRT350N is responsible for my first two back-to-back system lock ups. (I'm running it in non-mixed Wireless N Only mode as I write this... so far so good. And now I don't have to worry about getting my net locked down to only my MAC addresses to urgently, I doubt there are many 802.11N enabled machines out there looking to snarf free wireless. :))

Time to do some homework on the DD-WRT and WRT350N (will it fix the mixed-mode issues, will it preserve the NAS functionality?) I'll need to sort it out before my next BBQ session- swapping back and forth between mixed-mode and 802.11N only is going to be a PITA, especially if it means a locked up machine if I forget. :-/

EDIT : it locked up again on me 24 hours later. Time for some more debugging...



Update 26-July-2007 : I've had several more lockups since. The only "fix" has been setting the router to 802.11G ONLY. Whether the issue is with the routers implementation or the OSX driver, I blame Apple for writing software that causes a complete system hang for something as high level as a wireless connection.

Update 1-August-2007 : Apple released a patch.

Via, its Cat With Bow Golf! I did well on my third try (36 under par)- it must be all that Scorched Earth in the early 1990s.

UPDATE: new score image from another round this morning. 39 under par.

Via:


See also: bicycle polo.

Via A Welsh Review: Warning: Do not play this game! It is too addictive. Ugh, he was right.

If you're struggling, I got to level 42 on my third round employing this technique (potential spoiler), although I couldn't get the Swarm Tower to work.

Via BoingBoing, this hilarious 24 minute video of a guy's commentary while playing Super Mario Bros. It reminds me equal parts of my friend Brian, and countless wasted hours during my childhood. Good times.

Via:


I dunno about you, but I haven't had one of these OMG video game moments in a long time. Are we past the video gaming heyday, or are my expectations too high?

Shamefully taken verbatim from waxy.org, Line Rider Jumps the Shark. (see this if you don't know Linerider.)

Via Waxy: Flash: Line Rider (oddly addictive; don't miss this incredible helicopter escape) [via]

Reminds me of an old C64 game- simplicity allows for flexibility and thus countless hours of entertainment. The kind of thing you'd prefer to be stranded on a deserted island with.

Wow, my craptacular MAME box actually looks pretty sweet when compared to some of these: When MAME Cabinets Go Bad. Pretty funny (NSWF) commentary.