Squaresphere

This thing is amazing, let’s face it they have mapped most of the world using their api now, granted with other peoples data but it’s still an interface which is pretty familiar to most people. With the advent of the updated Google Earth to include the sky and space on it’s display there is now the same data (I assume) but mapped with the maps api! It’s pretty amazing that you can now not only explore your own planet but the space around it and also the other planets. I wonder how long it will be before we can take virtual space tours via Google web delivered software.

There really must be something in their offices. Check it out, BBC News.

• www.google.com/sky/
• Explore the Moon
• Explore Mars
• Explore Earth
• Downloadable Earth!
• Don’t forget that you can download interesting places for Google Earth from various sources.
• ..like Naked People
• Check the Community for more places and things to see

For more interesting stuff pop into the lab. labs.google.com/

A few people were making rumblings on irc about a new thing called PicLens which turns out to be a rather awesome Firefox extension for looking at images online by creating a 3d ‘wall’ of images. It’s really worth checking out!

> www.piclens.com
> Firefox addons

Nor did mine when I rebuilt my main rig on Sunday! I had been getting a few BSOD’s recently with my Netgear WG311T wifi card, saying that IRQ_NOT_LESS_EQUAL which is a little annoying as it seemed to be totally random. Well, at least since I moved to using a SpeedTouch modem/router on my new ISP rather than my old Netgear WGT624, which I left at home.

It got me thinking that having worked with the WG311T under Linux that the chipset is actually made by Atheros and they do in fact distribute their own Wifi drivers! Hazaa.. so after the fiasco with Netgears terrible drivers and the fact that during the age of WinXP64 they flatly denied that they would ever make 64 bit drivers they now are.

Just to put this into perspective of just how lame Netgear are at software, don’t get me wrong the hardware is pretty good. Just have a look at these examples.

WG311T Version 5.0
Fixes and New Features

* Added support for Windows Vista.

Known Issues

* 108 Mbps is not supported in Vista

..and as if that’s not bad enough..

WG311T Version 4.4
Fixes and New Features

* Fixed Blue Screen issues
* WHQL Certified version

..and then the crowning glory of the whole thing, (caution incoming geek joke) the driver installation instructions. http://kbserver.netgear.com/release_notes/D103110.asp. Yes really. They actually expect you to physically remove the card every single time you want to install or update the drivers, honestly some people. Anyway I digest.

My hunt for a working set of Atheros 64bit drivers sent me here after a quick google. http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=14833 , as you can see the WG311T is listed as one of the support chipsets, so yey! The strange thing happened when I right clicked on my computer and clicked Manage, to get into the Device Manager. When I tried updating the card’s drivers and pointed the new driver wizard at the folder into which I had extracted the shiny new Atheros drivers, nada, nothing zilch! Oh t3h no3s.. no drivers found.

Well that’s odd as it’s totally the right driver. Next thing, uninstall that sucker! So right clicked the network card and uninstalled it from the system. Next thing is to now manually add a device. So jump into the Add Hardware wizard and pick a Network Adapter. Then when you get to device selection, simply select “Have Disk” and point at the folder where you extracted the new Atheros drivers.

Now for some reason there is an athr.inf and an athrx.inf, now I have no idea what the difference is, but I used the one with an x in because it’s clearly EXTREME and so much cooler Then lo! Vista stops with a giant red warning that these might not be the correct drivers! Well.. Man 1:0 Vista tbqfh. So say okay and the device will install and you’ll then be able to connect to your preferred wifi network!

I have not had one single crash so far on these drivers, and that’s having left Steam running all day. Although as you might notice from my previous post it probably didn’t tax the network as much as it should have done

I’ve been suffering with a Steam related problem for what seems like forever! The client starts up but will only download from the content servers in little bursts. It will download for about 5 minutes or so and then disconnect, to the point where on an 8mb adsl line it would download all of about 10% of a game over the course of a day!

Finally got around to looking into this this morning before work and found this cunning article tucked away in the Steam Support site. http://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=6966-IADH-1503

Turns out that for me at least, deleting my ClientRegistry.blob file and rebooting Steam worked fine! I was getting over 1mb/s download when I left for work. So with any luck this will help out other people who are struggling to get Steam to download their games or updates.

Yes, finally, the dry spell on the PC games front has ended. Plenty of new titles out at the moment. Stranglehold, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer, World in Conflict and Crysis Multiplayer Beta.

So lots of things to keep busy with. I have added a link to my ET:QW stats on the left hand menu, seems I hadn’t been playing on ranked servers or the stats weren’t working or something. At least that’s my excuse, and I’m sticking to it!

Since City of * starting having some lag issues with their packet carriers in Europe somewhere, I went back to playing some OpenTTD. This game has such massive replay value it’s hard not to just install it when bored. I have started using the replacement GRF files too in order to change the game and give it another new lease of life. You can find a list of GRF files on the OpenTTD wiki, over here, http://wiki.openttd.org/index.php/GRF_List

The other decent title out at the moment, similar in play style to Fable by Lionhead Studios, is Overlord. This is a superb game where you play an evil Overlord with a horde of minions with which you wreak havoc among the populace. Fire, brimstone, even your own evil tower! Great game.

I have been working on a new theme for the site. It probably doesn’t need one, but change can be good, so perhaps it’s time for a new theme.

I decided to modify an existing theme instead of making my own I have modified the Dark Black Theme, which you can find here, http://onemorerevision.com/dark_black_release. Slight inspiration from a banner you might recognise

I finally managed to get my bots/dark mastermind to lv50! So I have two 50’s now one on either side of the fence! What to do next? Landed myself the Headline Stealer accolade too

Watch the momentous moment,

This is apparently the decryption key for HD DVD. It’s making quite a splash at the moment, with “the entire internet” spamming it all over the place. It appears to have originated over at digg.com where articles pertaining to the key were removed, they have since been reinstated and hit all time highs. Check it out over at www.digg.com.

It appears to be another Internet vs Corporations debacle. With the whole freedom of speech thing being mentioned in many places. Some more stuff over at :
> http://09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63.com/
> http://blog.wired.com/business/2007/05/wikipedia_locks.html
> http://blog.digg.com/?p=74?
> http://taoetc.org/69

Me? I don’t even know what it is nor what it’s for, but let’s face it, bandwagons rock! T-shirt anyone?

The new set of nVidia release drivers are out now for the 8 series of graphics cards. The jump from 90 to 100 has come from 94 to 158, with the 158.19 drivers being released now. A great deal of fixes for GTX users and various issue for the 86xx cards. Find the Windows XP 32 versions at, http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_158.19.html