Spontaneous Monotony

I’m not usually in the habit of posting about Wordpress upgrades unless they offer some startling new feature that you are likely to be salivating over However, this minor security upgrade is the first I have done from my Ubuntu-powered laptop. Installing the necessary software was a breeze (ftp uploading is one of the few things that Ubuntu Feisty doesn’t support out of the box) - just a matter of running Synaptic, searching for Filezilla (there might be better ones, but I use Filezilla on Windows so I thought consistency might be helpful) and then installing it.

Oh yeah, and I’ve got the upgrade to the new major release of Ubuntu to do in the near future. Unlike Microsoft and Apple, who want £250 and £85 for the upgrades to the full featured versions of their new operating systems, the Ubuntu upgrade is free and done from within the usual Updates Manager. Oh yeah, and the updater doesn’t install software without my consent.

According to various sites, Valve have released a second update for Orange Box on the 360, and this one is aimed at Team Fortress 2. The fixes are:

• Reduced network bandwidth usage in multiplayer (so fewer lagspikes hopefully)
• Improved overall game performance (ditto)
• Arranged search results to favour preferred host conditions (so no more having to scroll down to find one with maximum signal strength)
• Improved searching for ranked games (this has been one of the big problems - often the server browser would tell you there were no ranked games available, something Orange Box’s player numbers show to be patently untrue)
• Fixed a problem with the game falsely reporting ‘not enough space’ on the 120gb Elite hard drives

Apparently though, those who have the update say it doesn’t seem to fix the annoying bug that causes the game to freeze and take the 360 with it (requiring a turnoff). Hopefully Valve can sort that one out before too long

Mozilla’s proposed abandonment of the Thunderbird mail client is beginning to unravel at the seams. The plan was to spin-off Thunderbird to a separate Thunderbird Mail Corporation. Mozilla has formed the company and even hired a CEO, but (in what is either a show of dissent or a coincidence of truly epic proportions) the only two full-time Thunderbird developers have announced their resignations. So Thunderbird will have its shiny new ghetto to ‘get more attention’, but won’t actually have anyone to give it that attention. Congratulations Mozilla - you just killed a very promising project

I have recently replaced a TV-DVD combi with a shiny LG high-def flat panel. The result of this is that I need a new DVD player - the 360 is far too noisy for watching films (or doing anything that doesn’t involve BOOM! DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA or a loud engine :P) and the PS2 (while not in the same noise league as El Boxo) still has some fan noise which is noticeable during the quieter moments of films.

My current thinking is the Phillips DVP-5980 (even though I bought its little brother from Asda this morning which refused to output over component), so I started looking at various sites to get an idea of price.

John Lewis (who I usually ignore, but who seem to have a decent reputation on AVForums) wanted £69.50 (which was in itself excessive in comparison to Amazon et al). After noticing how the page title (and the search system) falsely advertises it as an ‘HD DVD‘ player, I then spotted much they wanted for a three year ripoff extended warranty: ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY NINE POUNDS. Extended warranties are dodgy ripoffs at the best of times, but more than twice the cost of the item covered? Why would anyone, even the criminally insane/technologically illiterate who buy their electronics from John Lewis shops instead of online, pay such a ludicrous sum instead of just buying a new player (for £129.50 less than the warranty) if it died within that period?

Oh and, to guard against future price reductions (or the very real possibility that many of you will refuse to go near John Lewis’ website in case you catch coffindodgeritis from the clientele), I’ve stuck a screenshot on my Photobucket account:


(warning: the full file is a 150k-ish 1280×1024 JPEG, for those on mobiles or dunce-slow LAN proxies)

It seems that the Guild Wars minipet promo isn’t as fantastic as I originally thought. Instead of everyone getting a code (as with previous magazine-minipet promos) and certain codes getting one of the rarer pets (as happens with the automated ‘character birthday’ presents), there are in fact only 1,000 codes in total per magazine. Your copy might have a code, or it might not. Given the average circulation of games magazines (over 40,000 for PC Gamer, for example - the link is to a PDF by the way, but it’s only 53kB). Original credit for this story goes to a guildie of mine, but I can’t link because it’s a private guild forum.