After discovering a universal binary patch for Quake 2 (a friend has an Intel Mac), I’ve started playing it again.

We had fun with deathmatch for a while and then figured we’d give coop a go.

Since Quake 2 doesn’t have coop built in I had a look around for a mod. There were quite a few but unfortunately I couldn’t get any of them to work. It seemed they were all designed to work with version 3.1, but we were running 3.2 (and 3.21 - a fix of OpenGL support to make it work on Linux and the one the Mac patch was based on).

The reason why was mind blowing. Apparently in their last update, id software actually added native coop support. Bring up the console and type “set coop 1” and voila, multiplayer single player gameplay (rolls nicely off the tongue eh?).

Although Quake 2 was definitely not designed with coop in mind though. A lot of fighting in corridors where one person can’t fire for risk of blowing his partner(s) up. Although we certainly tried from time to time - occasionally with dire consequences. But fun nonetheless :)

Oh yeah, one more thing. Make sure you change from the default skin as it looks just like one of the enemies…

In an interesting move, AOL have old of their UK business to none other than Carphone Warehouse. This will not mean in re-branding so it seems AOL and TalkTalk will remain separate. It also seems that AOL will take control of advertising through TalkTalk as part of the deal. More information is available from BBC News.

First, read this blog post.

A law has almost been passed in a the United States (the Military Commissions Act of 2006, passed by Congress on September 27 - just needs signing by Bush) that allows aliens to be detained indefinitely without access to legal counsel and without even having anyone notified of their detention simply by having been declared an enemy combatant. And this declaration in itself doesn’t require any serious evidence and has no serious oversight (meaning in reality it requires no evidence).

So the War on Terror apparently isn’t a fight for freedom…

Interesting, I first read it on XML.com which has more detail.

IBM are working on an impressive looking product called QED Wiki, developed with the Zend Framework.

Fundamentally it’s a wiki like any other. But there is a cool layer on top of it that could be revolutionary (although like many Web 2.0 concepts will probably fall short and just be “cool” - we can hope). The interface allows you to create “situational applications” that can link different components together with the ease of a wiki. It doesn’t really make much sense just reading about it so go watch the video about it.

On a related note, you can now get snapshots of PHP 6.

The very eagle eyed amongst you may notice I’ve altered the layout of the site slightly. One of the most prominent changes is switching to a smaller ad size for old posts (before I had a large rectangular ad above any post that is more than seven days old figuring that anyone visiting old content on a blog really wanted to be there and would get over it).

The new 200x200 size immediately started showing video ads on a few pages. For an example, visit my post about the cartoons of the prophet Mohamed.

It seems Google have updated PR of their index - I’ve finally reached a PageRank of 6 for the homepage :)

I just found an interesting document released by the European Broadcasting Union (their most prominent activity is the Eurovision Song Contest) regarding the future of television, specifically relating to PVR systems.

Free-to-air Television and other PVR Challenges in Europe.

It’s quite long but definitely good. Suggests revolutionary ideas like broadcasters making EPG and programme meta-data publicly available and that they should embrace “new business models” relating to content viewed through a PVR since traditional advertising is far less effective.

At no point by the way does it endorse DRM or content protection and even speaks of “the offensive use of patents” in rather negative terms…

Yet another dev blog entry includes more information on what will be in the first two phases of Kali. Since it’s all there I’ll just summarise.

The seamless map is integral to the new scanning format and exploration. It seems the scanner interface is now built into the normal view. Lots of hidden things will now be available everywhere for people to find.

Related to the seamless map is improved combat awareness including hierarchical gangs. Have fleets of squadrons of ships along with better gang situational awareness and apparently built in voice chat.

Invention will provide a new path to tech II. Gather random materials and mix them with tech I blueprints to create limited run inefficient tech II blueprints.

Loot will be revamped. No more shiny canisters dropped from ships but actual wreckage with “components” that can be used to make rigs - things that work like implants for ships allowing greater customization.

And all this is in Kali 1, before we get factional warfare.

The Focus of Kali 1 versus Kali 2

The current problems with EVE Online mean that Kali, the next big update will probably be delayed at least a month. But some more details have been released in the latest blog, including screenshots of the new seamless zoom feature.

The idea is to integrate the map into the main display and simply let you zoom out - from your ship, through to solar system, region and finally all the way to the whole galaxy.

Kali Testing

A few recent entries to the list of problems with TalkTalk seem like they could be software related.

People not being able to use MSN Messenger or having problems getting their TalkTalk email for instance. The first one could be caused by a badly configured firewall which the TalkTalk software installs and the second by an apparent typo in the default mail settings. The reason I bring this up is because installing the the TalkTalk software is one thing I never did. Since I was going to use a router with a modem built in I didn’t bother waiting for my welcome pack and just tried from the day they said the broadband would be active and everything worked fine.

The irony is one of the first things any broadband technical support would ask you if you had a problem would be whether you are using a modem or a router since a modem should be simpler.