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Fond memories of a modding past

July 15th, 2010 Wade No comments

Years ago (and I do mean years ago now) I used to make maps and mods for Elite Force, then Jedi Academy. My main thing was Stargate, bringing Stargate to the FPS world in a way that I enjoyed playing. Things like a dialing Stargate and so on in an engine that people had not seen that level of “tech” before.

The reason I’m posting this is I was Googling around tonight trying to find an online “backup” of my old Stargate mesh, got the sudden urge to try rendering it on my new quad core, see how quick it renders. I came across this thread when I searched for stargate model wadev1589 (my old online moniker was wadev1589). It just made my evening reading it so I replied there saying thank you and I just wanted to post it here to for anyone who finds this to say thank you to anyone who used to enjoy my maps and mods for Elite Force and Jedi Academy. You guys are what made it worth while and I thoroughly enjoyed bringing the modding community something different.

Categories: Gaming Tags:

Final Fantasy XIV Release Date Announced

July 1st, 2010 Wade No comments

They finally did it yesterday, Square Enix have officially stated the long awaited next MMORPG from Square Enix will be released on September 30th with a collectors edition for us lucky European folk out on the 22nd of September.

Best of all, if you pre-order the collectors edition, you’ll get some extra goodies (besides being able to access the servers a week early) in game and a few out of game things like a wall map too!

Bad news for PS3 owners though, you’ve got to wait until 2011 as the PS3 version has been delayed!




Categories: Gaming Tags:

Upgraded PC – Love AMD’s Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition!

June 13th, 2010 Wade No comments

Recently I decided to finally upgrade from my AMD Athlon X2 6000+ to a shiny new AMD Phenom II X6 965. Being AMD, that meant I didn’t have to change my motherboard, nor did I have to change my memory. Their Phenom II range is designed for AM3 but works in AM2+ motherboards; that means it will work with DD2 and DDR3 memory and also shares the same socket design – thank you AMD!

The new processor cost me £144 in total, with free next day shipping (incidentally, eBuyer are incredible sometimes, I ordered it at 22:10 and it arrived at 09:00 the next day, no shipping charges at all!)

So, the Phenom II 965 is designated a 3.4GHz processor, quad core. But the “Black Edition” part of the name means it is multiplier unlocked – i.e. it’s really really easy to overclock the CPU. I do love overclocking, it just feels like you’re getting a little bit more for a cheaper price. After hopping into my BIOS and changing the CPU multiplier to 19, I restarted, got into Windows, loaded up CPUz64 and was welcomed by the image to the right, yes, 3.8GHz. That’s 400MHz extra and all I did was change one value from Auto to 19.0: I didn’t have to increase the voltage or muck around with multiplier x bus-speed mathematics: and it’s completely stable!

In summary, if you’re looking for an upgrade in the near future that will really do well, consider the Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition, it’s always over £100 less than an Intel equivalent and will perform superbly for the price.

Now if only I could find a game I enjoyed enough that would really take advantage of this, 8GB ram and a GTX 265!

Categories: Hardware Tags:

Kylie Minogue – All the Lovers Video

June 12th, 2010 Wade No comments

If you’ve not seen Kylie’s new video for “All the Lovers”, I’d certainly recommend watching it, it’s just so….well different; not in a “we expect different, it’s GaGa” way, in a “that’s not usually done in popular music”

Unfortunately, the HD clip isn’t embeddable on Youtube so there’s a link to it below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frv6FOt1BNI

And if you like it, buy it!

Categories: Random Stuff Tags:

Hong Kong Architect Turned Shoebox Apartment into 24 rooms

May 14th, 2010 Wade No comments

Very smarty guy this, turned his tiny living space in a Honk Kong apartment into 24 unique rooms using sliding and folding walls. Makes maximum use of space for a batchelor!

Categories: Random Stuff Tags:

VPS.net – Send a postcard, win an iPad + $10 off your next bill

May 10th, 2010 Wade No comments

The VPS provider this site runs on, and that we use rather extensively in the office, is currently running a neat little promotion which is very simple. Send them a postcard and you’ll get $10 off your next bill plus you’ll be entered into a competition to win an iPad! I’d love to win an iPad so I can flog it for a few hundred :o )

The competition is open to everyone (UK and USA) and there are only a couple of rules:

  • The postcard must contain a location or landmark
  • It must be postmarked by 4th June
  • Your email address (presumably matching your VPS.net email address) must be on it

To enter, send your postcard to:
VPS.NET
164 North Springcreek Parkway
Providence, Utah 84332 USA

Original VPS.net blog post.

Categories: Events, Software Tags:

Job Perspective

May 9th, 2010 Wade No comments

Not sure who to credit this one to, but it certainly is a good one:

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Categories: Random Stuff Tags:

Reset MySQL root password if you forgot it #mysql

April 12th, 2010 Wade No comments

Just had a need to reset the mysql root login password for a server, did a bit of Googling and found out this is how you do it (I work on Ubuntu so you may have to tinker with the lines slightly depending on your distribution):

  1. Stop the current MySQL instance from running:
    /etc/init.d/mysql stop
  2. Run mysql with –skip-grant-tables
    /usr/bin/mysqld_safe –basedir=/usr –datadir=/var/lib/mysql –user=mysql –pid-file=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid –socket=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock –port=3306 –skip-grant-tables &
  3. Log into mysql, straight into the mysql database
    mysql -u root mysql
  4. Reset the root password.
    UPDATE user SET Password=PASSWORD(‘newrootpassword’) WHERE User=’root’;
  5. Flush privileges
    flush privileges;
  6. Shut down the new running mysql.
    /etc/init.d/mysql stop
  7. Start up mysql as usual.
    /etc/init.d/mysql start

Et voila, you now have a new root password without needing to know the old one!

Categories: Programming, Support Tags:

xbox360 to get USB storage support – finally!

March 27th, 2010 Wade No comments

Starting on April 6th, an upgrade will be pushed out for the xbox360 enabling the use of storage devices  between 1 and 16 gigabytes. So provided you store your save games and profile on there, if you were to get the dreaded RROD, you’d not loose a thing and could continue to play on another xbox!

Categories: Gaming Tags:

Large Hardon Collider breaks energy record

March 21st, 2010 Wade No comments

Yes, it’s finally happened, The Telegraph website made the typo when referring to the LHC:

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Categories: News, Random Stuff Tags: