The world is full of fail; my slice of the world is no different. I found this fail door at Vintage Gardens in Modesto. I don’t want to give them any bad press, though. They’re running an awesome venue over there, but it seems there is some confusion regarding entryways. Click the image to vote for the photo. Give it a 5, and if I’m lucky, it’ll make it to the front page of the Fail Blog.
Its official: Blizzard has made the decision to completely axe LAN support for Starcraft 2.
We got quite different answers about local area networking (LAN), where both Dustin or Sigaty said they were still discussing it, however, Pardo knew immediately: “we don’t have any plans to support LAN,” he said and clarified “we will not support it.” The only multiplayer available will be on Battle.net. – StarCraft II Developers Talk
Behind the reasons to forgo a geek’s birthright to enjoy LAN parties include limiting piracy and the claim the new Battle.net will be an experience so mind-boggling, heart-pounding, and tear-jerking, you’ll forget all about LAN parties and lock yourselves away in your dark room, playing SC for ours on end with your “friends” over a WAN.
I’ m sure Battle.net will have it’s features, but there are limitations to massive gaming over a typical WAN connection (expecially if one isn’t available), so I’m a little apprehensive about how this will change the dynamics of traditional LAN parties or even quick games between a couple of friends. I’ve played SC on numerous occasions when my WAN connection was down, or I was somewhere where there was no Internet connection. Then again, SC2 won’t be laptop friendly, so mobile SC will become decidedly more difficult.
In other news, I came across this a couple years ago. It’s a printed tech tree for Starcraft, pre-Broodwar I believe. Forgive me, I have no scanner:
I bet you didn't know Siege Tanks came with disguises (click for full size)
Upgrading WordPress is ridiculously easy. Between the new “one-click” automated upgrade and the automated SQL database backup plugin I use, it’s just too easy! Those darned kids nowadays will never have to go through the old methods of manually upgrading plugins and the core program. They won’t appreciate it!! They won’t! 
Getting ready to sell that old PDA of yours for some quick cash? You might want to wipe your old media off that thing lest your Christmas list and questionable photos wind up in a stranger’s hands.
To completely erase the data on a PalmOne Tungsten E2 PDA: Hold the power button, then press the reset button (found, recesessed, on the back), and continue to hold the power button until the a prompt appears asking you to confirm the erase. Press up on the directional pad, and now you’ve got a fresh start with your Palm!
On Friday, Google announced that they will be using their Google TV ads service to place advertisements for Google Chrome on various television networks beginning this weekend. Some time ago, Google put out a call for videos that exemplify Chrome’s unique features. While those videos are doing their viral thing around the web, the video from Google’s headquarters in Japan will be gracing television screens across the nation.
And computer monitors as well.
Saturday morning, while watching Dollhouse on Hulu, I was presented with the aforementioned advertisement. My nerdy excitement was primarily fueled by the fact that I do not subscribe to any traditional forms of television service (cable, satellite), so I thought I’d never get to see the ad, but secondly, I was viewing the ad using the browser in question. (I also got excited when I noticed that all the spiffy computer monitors in the show Dollhouse were the same wide screen Dell monitors I have on my desk. I like the affirmation, alright?)
Though, I’m not sure if Internet Explorer, Opera, or even Netscape in its hey day had entire TV spots dedicated to them, Firefox had a series for select markets back in 2006. Google obviously isn’t giving a lot of details, but their use of the word “networks” instead of “markets” leads me to believe that the advertisements are showing up on, at least, one of the “Big Four.” Chrome has already enjoyed a sizable jump in the browser market share due to hype, Google loyalty, and a massive online advertising campaign, but the company realizes that the majority of users on the world wide web can’t tell Google from MSN or Yahoo, or Internet Explorer from a fish tank screen saver. So, to rope in the technically un-savvy, but technologically curious, Google’s taken it to the ‘tube to sway a group unlike those who will ever read this blog.
According to Google they built a browser out of the goodness of their hearts, using components from today’s best browsers, and in turn, released Chrome as open source. Google’s aggressive push to get Chrome in the hands of users led them to tear the beta label off Chrome in record time (Gmail is still in beta and it’s been around since 2001!). With text, video, and image advertisements all over the web, and now television ads, obviously Chrome means a lot to Google. But, with Internet Explorer finally getting a clue, and the gents over at Mozilla not being the ones to let another browser introduce any feature that isn’t matched and/or bettered, will all this work?
If you wanted to take a look to see what’s inside your favorite gaming consoles or controllers, but didn’t have the guts to rip it apart, now’s your chance! See what happens when a x-ray technician with an affinity for gaming has a slow day at work. The beauties of Nintendo’s consoles and controllers, new and old, Xbox, PS3, and even a coconut bare all in Reintji’s photoset “X-Ray Funnies.”
[via Engagdet]
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator Utility
The problem: This recent discovery–rather, rediscovery– was the final straw, causing me to reformat and reinstall a fresh copy of Windows on my laptop. I had been meaning to do it for a long time (something like 2 years), but I never found myself in the mood. However, something came up, and I needed to play a video on my laptop, which hadn’t worked for a few months (sound worked, no picture). On previous occasions I reinstalled the graphics driver, I reinstalled all the required codecs, and I tried playing the videos on Windows Media Player, VLC, Windows Media Classic, and Quicktime. Flash based videos from Hulu and YouTube worked wonderfully, just nothing else. So, on this particular occasion, I decided that it was far more difficult to troubleshoot the video problem than to just wipe the sucker.
But, the problem returned. $%&#!!
The solution: In a rare moment of serendipity, I recalled the Intel driver for my laptop’s integrated Intel 915GM Express Chipset installs a utility. This utility, the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator, includes a interface for adjusting the color, contrast, and brightness of a hardware accelerated video overlay. Years ago, I had the same problem where I eventually discovered (likely serendipitous as well) that, for reasons unknown to me, the options for the video overlay had been set to zero, so the overlay would appear pure black. So, the picture had been there the whole time, it had just been blacked-out. Returning the values to default will set everything right.
Now, knowing what to search for, I’ve found that it’s a known issue with the latest version of the driver, and can be corrected by downgrading (meaning Intel no longer support the driver, and you’re stuck with it.).
For more information, see the official Intel support page.
