This is just a quick page to list whatever I’ve been watching…maybe a quick review of cinema releases. Of course, I have to choose the best…and a few real turkeys! Remember, these might not be the latest, especially the DVDs, just what I’m watching. Bear in mind, that sometimes I go to the DVD/video rental shop looking for truly terrible looking films. August 2003 (A bit of a summary here for the last couple of months!) ...
All I can say is that these are all real - none of them are faked. In fact, if you’re lucky you may be able to repeat them! I decided to do a search from the MS press page, looking for logos, I clicked on a link and… So there I am. Attempting to install the Exchange 5.5 Administration Tools on my PC, when Outlook makes this complaint: ...
December 2002 Damn - December again! That makes this ‘diary’ a year old. Anyway, time for a small change. Now, I’m going to do more frequent, smaller updates under a given title, as shown this month. The holidays I often get asked if I work Xmas day in Japan. Of course I do, as Japan, despite the TV shows, the shops and all the adverts does not celebrate Xmas as such, not being a Christian nation. However, the adverts and shopping sales are hard to miss. The ’thing’ for Xmas then is geared more towards girlfriends/boyfriends, and many go on dates or to hotels on Xmas Eve - like a souped up Valentines day. It often surprises foreigners that Xmas decorations in Japan go up at the end of November, and often come down on Xmas Eve - it’s purely a look and doing an ’event’ - something which is a popular part of the culture. ...
December 2001 (26th) Well, a bumper update for December! And why not, it’s been an eventful month. I’ve been learning a load about Linux, GIMP, Quanta and all that - I guess every cloud has a silver lining. I also now have ADSL - a download increase of about 15 times over ISDN (I get 800K/s - 1.2Mb/s on mine). It’s amazing, and of course with the router, I no longer have to slave my Linux box off my 2K one like a second class citizen. Amazing - 2 years ago I tinkered with Linux…November 2000 it got it’s first box to itself, now it’s a full equal to my PC and Mac. I’ve updated Quanta to 2, but I’m still looking for alternatives…a few things kind of bug me about it. Anyway, looking forward to Linux into 2002! ...
Logitech Wingman 3D Extreme Digital If you have a game like Freespace 2, then you need a good joystick, and this one represents great value for money. It has a good solid feel, and the drivers offer many presets for many popular games. The directional hat is also a big advantage for looking around in cockpits. PCi 8 Port 100Mb LAN hub If you’re going to have 3 PCs all running off the internet, it’s not essential to have 100Mb available, but hell, it’s cheap enough now, you may as well, and it makes a huge difference when transferring big iso files and such. ...
Fasuto Fu-do ファストフード If there’s one thing that I find difficult to understand, it’s people who don’t like food in Japan. Why? Great selection, variety and everything from all over the world. Certainly way better - certainly in Tokyo - than many other cities. Certainly, it wouldn’t take much effort to write a lot about purely ‘Japanese’ food - cooking it, great restaurants to go to etc. - there are whole websites devoted to it. For this page though, let’s look at fast food. ...
So what is Myth? Well, Myth is strategy action war game mainly set in 'Lord of the Rings' type times. In it you must play through 25 levels again the evil Soulblighter and his armies of the dead and generally unpleasant creatures. The normal single player game is excellent, but Myth 2 (M2), can also be played multi-player over a LAN, or over the internet. Also, extra maps and levels can be downloaded from the net, and played single or multiplayer. So what makes M2 a great game then? Well, basically because it gives such a variety, some games are straight on kill everything that moves. In some levels you are well outnumbered, so you must learn how to fall back whilst not being overrun. In other levels you have to sacrifice large numbers of units to ensure others survive. Oh yes, and lots of huge explosions. There are a few bonus levels too, in one of which you play red-necks with blunderbusses, shooting suicidal exploding sheep (I'm not making this up). Although this game was released in late 1998, it still compares well, and is far better than other 3rd person war games like Age of Empires 2, which is just dull. Excellent animation, excellent sound (including Scottish berzerkers) and very impressive graphics make this a great experience too. It's available for Mac, PC and now Linux too. As far as hardware requirements go, I recommend a 3D accelerator card for hardware rendering, but it still plays well in software rendering on a standard 8Mb ATI. Sound also supports A3D and EAX for 3D stereo, and I must say, it sounds really good. The online M2 community is huge, producing hundreds of new maps to play, everything from American Civil War, to futuristic battles too. ...
In Hindsight ‘Densha De Go!’ in December 2020. I don’t remember much about writing this one, though the title is a play on the name of an arcade game which came out around the same time, and made it onto consoles. You played a train driver and had to get simulations of real trains to real stations on a real timetable. Yup, it was a big thing. There were sit down versions also, where you could even put a driver’s faux uniform on. There were fans indeed. All I remember from the few times I played it was that I was horrific at braking, cueing small animations of passengers being thrown around in the carriages. ...
Posted: 2000-05; Updated: 2000-12 December 2020: Looking Back At: ‘PC Upgrade - May 2000’ We can always have a good laugh at PC specs and prices from decades past, but this was fairly balanced I suspect for the time. Ah, VersionTracker, I used to check that thing every day in the 90’s until RSS and in-application updaters were a thing. I have fond memories of that first GeForce too, if only because it was indeed my first gaming card. I want to say there was a DDR version, but mine wasn’t that, mine was the cheaper version. I’m pretty sure I was mostly playing Counter-Strike and Myth II around this time. That obsession with BIOS updates would take a long time to abate, and wow, 2 CD/DVD drives. Some of these companies are still going, some aren’t and some are shadows of their former selves. This also reminded me of that ATi Rage Turbo too. I’d completely forgotten about that. I cannot explain the sheet number of commas though. ...
First of all, you’re probably wondering what a fun bus is. Well, I’ll tell you (that’s just the open kind of bloke I am :-). If you live in Japan - specifically the large cities, you’ll have probably seen them, but if you live outside Japan you maybe not have heard of them. Basically, they’re the busses of the various Nationalist parties in Japan and a few smaller racially based groups. Let’s be straight here - every country has racism in some shape or form, and anyone who believes that’s not true is either blind or dangerously ignorant. One more thing before I get into this - racism is about people, and the changes therefore come from people - sitting back and thinking ’that’s how it is’ and do nothing just perpetuates it. ...