C&C Reborn

26th Feb 2008

Posted at the request of a friend of mine.

For anyone who's been in the C&C community for a while now, C&C reborn, the total conversion for Renegade to Tiberium Sun, is out! The public servers will soon be up, and once they're up, a serial for renegade will NOT be required to play the game. If you have some time on your hands and are bored, check this out!

http://cncreborn.planetcnc.gamespy.com/forumreborn/viewtopic.php?p=17800#17800

P.S: Also check out its sister project Apathbeyond, for another free standalone modification (AKA free game.)

www.apathbeyond.com

GIMP 2.4 released

9th Nov 2007

Hello chaps,

Just thought I'd pop in to let you know that a new version of the GIMP has been released. It's much better than the previous version in my opinion. The GIMP is used in the tutorials about how to make graphics for MR.

You can download the windows installer here:
http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html

This page illustrates the new features very nicely:
http://www.gimp.org/release-notes/gimp-2.4.html

Lots of people have expressed concern about how my hand is doing. It's recovering slowly and I'm getting much less pain and more strength in it. Obviously, I have to be careful not to over-do it and regress, but so far so good.

I'd like to thank Lokey again for taking over the admin of the site - it's a massive help.

Steve

Ubuntu is good for windows owners

4th May 2007

Carefree_Butterfly requested that I continue with these bits and pieces posts once in a while, particularly about Linux, so here goes!

I downloaded and tried the latest Ubuntu release recently and I must say I am impressed. There is now quite a noticeable gap between Ubuntu and Fedora. (I run Ubuntu on my desktop, and Fedora on my laptop.)

For me, the most impressive things were what it can do for you if you're a windows user. (Which I, very intermittantly, still am.)

First, you can easily connect to your local windows network to share files with your windows using brethren.

Second, you can very easily set up a network printer that's on a windows network. (I was blown away by this since I have been without printing since switching to Linux.)

Third, you can access your files and folders that are on the windows part of your hard drive.

It's this last one that's the real reason for writing this piece - An average windows user can use ubuntu as a recovery CD. Imagine that for whatever reason you can't log in to windows or when you do, the computer sits in an endless loop. (I've seen both these things.) You know you need to re-install but you have data on the hard drive you don't want to lose. So you pop in the Ubuntu CD and it boots up to a windows-like desktop. You go to Places > Computer and click on the icon marked (in my case) "HDD" (yours might be different). Now you can plug in an external hard drive and copy all your files across before re-installing windows. How cool is that?

If you want to try Ubuntu you can download it for free at the following link:
http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download

If you don't have a broadband internet connection, you can request them to send you a free cd!

Lego Star Wars 2 -Mini Review

9th Jan 2007

I'm well overdue for one these bits and pieces things. That Net neutrality post has been there for so long, I'm not even sure if I agree with it any more - apparantly the issue is more complicated than I first thought (aren't they always?)

Anyway, Lego Star Wars 2. I've been playing the PC version and it's really good. If you've got the cash to burn, I would recommend it to you.

The game is fun, and I really like the way they've handled difficulty. You can go play through the game no problem, you pretty much get infinite lives to do this. In order to make things more challenging, there are various goals and secrets to achieve and discover on the levels.

I don't have a lot of time to play through games, let alone spend hours actually getting good at them, so I appreciate a game that gives me my money's worth without too much effort from me. At the moment I've only played through Episode 4, and the first chapter of Episode 5 on story mode. But even if you like more of a challenge than I do, you should still get this if you can afford it cos whatever way you look at it, it's bloody good. And if that offends you then it's blummin' good. And if that offends you then it's very good (but now you're not really getting how good it is).

Net Neutrality - Save the Internet

12th May 2006

If you live in the US, please take a moment to check out this site and participate by sending a form. All of our futures are in your hands.

Those of us outside the US cannot influence this but will we all be affected by it.

http://www.savetheinternet.com/

Thanks!

News from around the web

10th Feb 2006

Occasionally I glance up from beavering away at MR3 to see what else is going out there. Here are some things I've noticed:

Retrobits podcast
This is just a way-cool podcast for anyone interested in old computers (like me). Earl Evans talks about some of the systems you used to love, or maybe have just heard about and would like to know more. Check it out!
http://retrobits.libsyn.com/

Ricky Gervais Podcast
Still on the Podcast theme, if you haven't checked these out, better do it now. It's just about the funniest thing to enter your ears in ages. It's not the world's no.1 podcast for nothing!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/rickygervais

C64-Takeaway Podcast
Just one more podcast I want to tell you about. This one is by Jan Lund Thomsen and he does a great job bring us news of the C64 remix scene and related news and music. I check it out every week!
http://c64takeaway.com/


Minority Report becomes Real
If you think retro computers are for other people, think again - you're using one! This video of the new multitouch screen makes all our PC's look like yesterday's news!
http://mrl.nyu.edu/~jhan/ftirtouch/

GP2X
This is a handheld gaming system that I really want to get my hands on. It runs Linux and has loads of "homebrew" games available for it for free.
http://gp2x.co.uk/
http://gp2x-emulation.dcemu.co.uk/

Ok, back to work!