Enemy Territory: Quake Wars – Limited Collector’s Edition Review – Preorder Issues

I finally got around to picking up my reserved copy of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, and it is truly stunning. And I haven’t even played the game yet. I’ll get to that in a second. The packaging is very nice looking, and has a nice heft to it. It’s a thick cardboard shell with a slide-out flip case that holds the game installer DVD, the 10 Collector’s Edition trading cards, a keyboard map, the manual, and the Bonus DVD. Don’t let the fact that it’s cardboard and not metal talk you out of buying this, however. The 10 cards added to the 2 that came with the preorder are now taped on my wall encircling the poster that came with the preorder, as well as a PC Gamer cover I taped up there too. It’s a nice little shrine if I do say so myself. ***PICTURES*** I have the pictures on my Flickr, please take a look. It’s awesome. The Collector’s Edition as well as the Regular Edition include an “Enemy Territory: Quake Wars Desktop Map Guide.” This desktop map guide is a neat idea. It’s basically a flipbook that sits on your desktop and shows you an overhead photo (simulated satellite shot) of each map included in the game, with starting spawns, primary objectives, an explanation of what the attacking team must do to win, and finally what class you need to be to complete a given objective. It’ll be a great help when I play the maps for the first time, as I won’t have to waste my time stumbling around and getting run over while looking for the objectives. Plus it just looks damn cool.

The reason I haven’t got to play yet is because my reserved name is being very finicky. The issue is detailed here (post on the Enemy Territory Community Forums) but what it boils down to is they screwed up somehow and “There is a problem with your gametag, it is basically stuck in the database. This issue should be correctable, but we will need a little extra time to get it fixed (we will be contacting the appropriate people asap). We will let you know when this problem has been resolved and you can Activate your pre-order name.” That’s the reply I got on my Activision Technical support ticket. From what I’ve read on the QW Forums, they should fix it within the next day, and I’m hoping sometime tonight so I get to try the game. My friend reserved his name about three weeks ago and his processed without trouble, so I’m guessing that between then and when I reserved mine (June 6, 2007) their servers crashed or they misplaced all their data or something… Point is, I preordered the game specifically so I’d be able to get my game immediately and play under my reserved name (SupremeBeing). Although I did wait two days to actually buy the game since its October 2nd release due to my busy schedule, I should’ve been playing it within minutes after installing it. I’m very dissatisfied with Activision’s conduct of the preorder, mainly because the preorder only requires them to do one thing, and that is to keep track of what name I reserved and then give it to me later. They sent the email to me containing a confirmation link to click when I purchased the retail edition of the game, and when I clicked it, instead of seamlessly letting me take possession of my phenomenal name, it gives me an error saying I have the wrong code or wrong activation code or something like that. D- guys, try harder next time.

I will, of course, update you when I get a chance to play some of the other maps included in the retail edition, but for now, I’m waiting for Activision to get their act together. Fun fun fun.

Thanks for reading though

UPDATE: I submitted a ticket on Activision’s technical support site at about 4:00 that afternoon, and the problem was resolved by the time I got home the next day.  I’ve been enjoying the extreme awesomeness of Quake Wars since then.

Computer Trouble…

Okay, so the reason I haven’t posted anything new recently is that my computer has basically screwed me over.  I woke up on Saturday morning and decided to plug in one of my spare hard drives to my computer.  This didn’t go so well.  I plugged in the 40gb drive and turned the PC on.  Bios detected nothing, and also my DVD rom had vanished.  I unplugged the HDD, and I eventually figured out that the DVD drive’s IDE cable had come out…on Sunday evening.  Lol… Sunday morning, I turned on my computer, logged in at the login screen (of Windows, unfortunately), and BOOM.  Windows logs me out as soon as I caught a glimpse of my desktop.  I tried logging in to the guest account too, but the same thing happened.  I researched the problem on a different computer, and came to the conclusion that one of my antispyware programs had removed a vital windows file because some piece of adware or spyware renamed it.  This caused the login/logout loop.  The solution was to copy over a new copy of the file from the Windows recovery console.  Only problem was, I hadn’t figured out my IDE cable issue on the DVD drive yet, so I thought I was locked out entirely.  I spent like four hours trying to get my computer’s BIOS to let me boot from my usb drive and stick a new copy of the file into the system32 folder, but it was to no avail.  Eventually I rechecked all the cables in the computer and discovered the unplugged IDE cable, and fixed it.  I tried the solution that was posted in multiple forums, to recopy the .exe into the system32 folder.  Unfortunately, it didn’t work.  At this point, I decided to repair my Windows installation in a desperate attempt to get into my computer.  One problem.  It didn’t work.  I repaired the Windows installation, and then when it went to restart the computer to complete setup, my display shut off as soon as I saw the Windows setup screen.  My monitor went to sleep, its little blue light flashing on and off, mocking me.  My thoughts now turned to file preservation/recovery.  I tried Hiren’s BootCD, which by the way is an amazing tool for PC repair, but so far I haven’t been able to access the harddrive, as the file managers seem only to be able to read my floppy drive, the cd-rom, and the 50mb drive it mounts in the memory to operate.  Pretty unhelpful.  I tried resizing my main Windows partition and creating a new one, and then installing a fresh copy of Windows there, but I either had the same problem or it booted the wrong partition.  Who knows.  This brings you up to the present problem, what data I should sacrifice if it is indeed unrecoverable.  There is a slight chance that if I didn’t format my main partition but overwrote the copy of Windows, I could use a file recovery tool to undelete my old My Documents folder, but it’d be quite risky.  Anyway.  That’s my epic saga/chronicle of computer mistakes.  Thanks for reading.

Chellberg.WordPress.com is moving!

I’ve just got a new domain and hosting package from 1&1, so as of today Chellberg.Wordpress.com is moving to Slaxxor.com. I thought of the name a few days ago and realized that it could be the next engadget or Gizmodo It’s a cool name. Slaxxor = Slacker like Haxxor = Hacker. Yeah. I have a pretty nice theme on there right now and I plan to add some features and edit the theme, so check it out.

Thanks for reading

How to use Google Docs and Spreadsheets to track your vehicle’s fuel economy

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In case you haven’t heard, the greatest thing since Google is Google Docs. It basically sticks Microsoft Word inside your browser, letting you access all of your documents, spreadsheets, and just recently, slide show presentations, all from anywhere with internet access. It’s a fantastic service, allowing multiple people to collaborate on one document with real time updates as they edit the document. I’ve been using it for homework, writing my various attempts at stories, and most successfully so far, my journal. I’ve never had success keeping a journal until Google Docs came along. Now I’m writing in it nightly, and haven’t missed a day in two weeks (since I started). Anyway, on to the project at hand.

To demonstrate the ease-of-use and utility of Google Docs, I’m going to show you step-by-step how to create a spreadsheet and graph to track your vehicle’s fuel economy (gas milage, for those of you with IQs below the room temperature).

Step 1. Create a Google Docs account.
If you don’t already have a Google account, first slap yourself for a few minutes and rethink your life, and then go make one. It’s simple, fast, and the most useful account you’ll ever sign up for on the web.

Step 2. Create a New Spreadsheet.
From the Google homepage, click the “more” button in the top left corner of the screen. From the pull down menu that will appear, click on Documents. This will bring you to the Google Docs control panel. Next, click the New button and select spreadsheet. A new spreadsheet will now appear as a new tab, unless you have IE6 or older, in which case, slap yourself for a few minutes, rethink your life, and get Firefox. Congratulations, you just made your first Google Spreadsheet.

Step 3. Name your spreadsheet and prepare it for data entry.
Here’s the fun part. First step, title your spreadsheet by clicking once in the upper left hand corner where it currently says “Unsaved Spreadsheet”. I’d recommend naming it [Your Car] Fuel Economy or Gas Mileage, but it’s completely up to you. Once you’ve done that, click into square A1. Type into this box the word “Miles”. Next, enter the word “Gallons” into box B1. If the word don’t fit entirely at first, simply click and drag the side of the column to expand it as needed. Enter the word “Date” into box C1. Finally, enter “MPG” or “Mileage” into box D1. If you’ve followed me correctly so far, your spreadsheet should look like mine.

Step 4. Collect and Enter Data
This part may take some time if you don’t keep track of your mileage to some extent already. Here’s what you do, if you don’t already. The next time you get gas, reset your trip odometer. Note: for this method to work, you have to fill your tank completely. Next time you fill your tank, write down or remember exactly how much gas it took to completely refil my tank. For my example, the last time I bought gas I had driven 320 miles and it took 14.9 gallons of gas to fill up my tank. Now, enter this date into the spreadsheet. I would write 320 under Miles, 14.9 under gallons, and the current date under date. Your spreadsheet should look like mine but with different numbers.

Step 5. Insert a math function into the spreadsheet
In order for the spreadsheet to be able to calculate the gas mileage, you have to tell it where your data is located. To do this, first select the Forumulas tab at the top of the screen. Next, click cell D4 and press the “more>>” button on the far right side of the screen, next to Sum, Product, etc. This will open up a small window. Scroll down in the Math category until you see QUOTIENT. Click on Quotient. This will insert an incomplete formula into the cell you selected (under MPG). It will read as follows:
=QUOTIENT(numerator, denominator) To complete this formula, plug in A2 for the numerator and B2 for the denominator. Your forumula should now read =QUOTIENT(A2,B2) Next, press escape. If you set up the formula correctly, a number should appear in box D4. My number is 21. If you get a reasonable number, you’ve successfully set up this part of your spreadsheet. Note: you do not have to repeat this step each time you enter data. Just put your mouse over the corner of cell D4 until your cursor becomes a + (plus) sign, and drag downward to apply the QUOTIENT calculation to all the cells below it.

Step 6. Create your graph.
Here’s where your spreadsheet starts to look cool. Go back to the Edit tab at the top of your screen. Now, select cells C1-D5, or however much data you have entered. Be sure to include the headers. For explanatory purposes, I’m going to add a few more lines of date. Click the Insert Graph button that looks like a pie chart (it’s on the left side of the edit bar). This will bring up a window that looks like this.

To make our graph look right, we need to change a few of these options. First, click the “Lines” button where it says What Type? For the subtype, I recommend choosing the second option from the left (lines with dots). Check the box that says “Use Column C as labels”, as well as the one that says “Use row 1 as labels”. If you like, you can label the horizontal axis Date and the verticle axis MPG. Now that all that’s finished, click Save Chart. Congratulations, you’re finished! If you followed my directions exactly (and I didn’t mess up) your chart should now look like this.

This spreadsheet will let you monitor your car’s fuel efficiency, as well as your driving habits. For example, if you drive consistently faster from one filling to another, you will see a dip in your car’s fuel economy. This will allow you to adjust your driving habits for minimum fuel consumption.

Thank you for reading, and I hope this tutorial/instructable was helpful to you. Tell your friends!

How to use Google Docs and Spreadsheets to track your vehicle’s fuel economy

In case you haven’t heard, the greatest thing since Google is Google Docs. It basically sticks Microsoft Word inside your browser, letting you access all of your documents, spreadsheets, and just recently, slide show presentations, all from anywhere with internet access. It’s a fantastic service, allowing multiple people to collaborate on one document with real time updates as they edit the document. I’ve been using it for homework, writing my various attempts at stories, and most successfully so far, my journal. I’ve never had success keeping a journal until Google Docs came along. Now I’m writing in it nightly, and haven’t missed a day in two weeks (since I started). Anyway, on to the project at hand.

To demonstrate the ease-of-use and utility of Google Docs, I’m going to show you step-by-step how to create a spreadsheet and graph to track your vehicle’s fuel economy (gas milage, for those of you with IQs below the room temperature).

Step 1. Create a Google Docs account.
If you don’t already have a Google account, first slap yourself for a few minutes and rethink your life, and then go make one. It’s simple, fast, and the most useful account you’ll ever sign up for on the web.

Step 2. Create a New Spreadsheet.
From the Google homepage, click the “more” button in the top left corner of the screen. From the pull down menu that will appear, click on Documents. This will bring you to the Google Docs control panel. Next, click the New button and select spreadsheet. A new spreadsheet will now appear as a new tab, unless you have IE6 or older, in which case, slap yourself for a few minutes, rethink your life, and get Firefox. Congratulations, you just made your first Google Spreadsheet.

Step 3. Name your spreadsheet and prepare it for data entry.
Here’s the fun part. First step, title your spreadsheet by clicking once in the upper left hand corner where it currently says “Unsaved Spreadsheet”. I’d recommend naming it [Your Car] Fuel Economy or Gas Mileage, but it’s completely up to you. Once you’ve done that, click into square A1. Type into this box the word “Miles”. Next, enter the word “Gallons” into box B1. If the word don’t fit entirely at first, simply click and drag the side of the column to expand it as needed. Enter the word “Date” into box C1. Finally, enter “MPG” or “Mileage” into box D1. If you’ve followed me correctly so far, your spreadsheet should look like mine.

Step 4. Collect and Enter Data
This part may take some time if you don’t keep track of your mileage to some extent already. Here’s what you do, if you don’t already. The next time you get gas, reset your trip odometer. Note: for this method to work, you have to fill your tank completely. Next time you fill your tank, write down or remember exactly how much gas it took to completely refil my tank. For my example, the last time I bought gas I had driven 320 miles and it took 14.9 gallons of gas to fill up my tank. Now, enter this date into the spreadsheet. I would write 320 under Miles, 14.9 under gallons, and the current date under date. Your spreadsheet should look like mine but with different numbers.

Step 5. Insert a math function into the spreadsheet
In order for the spreadsheet to be able to calculate the gas mileage, you have to tell it where your data is located. To do this, first select the Forumulas tab at the top of the screen. Next, click cell D4 and press the “more>>” button on the far right side of the screen, next to Sum, Product, etc. This will open up a small window. Scroll down in the Math category until you see QUOTIENT. Click on Quotient. This will insert an incomplete formula into the cell you selected (under MPG). It will read as follows:
=QUOTIENT(numerator, denominator) To complete this formula, plug in A2 for the numerator and B2 for the denominator. Your forumula should now read =QUOTIENT(A2,B2) Next, press escape. If you set up the formula correctly, a number should appear in box D4. My number is 21. If you get a reasonable number, you’ve successfully set up this part of your spreadsheet. Note: you do not have to repeat this step each time you enter data. Just put your mouse over the corner of cell D4 until your cursor becomes a + (plus) sign, and drag downward to apply the QUOTIENT calculation to all the cells below it.

Step 6. Create your graph.
Here’s where your spreadsheet starts to look cool. Go back to the Edit tab at the top of your screen. Now, select cells C1-D5, or however much data you have entered. Be sure to include the headers. For explanatory purposes, I’m going to add a few more lines of date. Click the Insert Graph button that looks like a pie chart (it’s on the left side of the edit bar). This will bring up a window that looks like this.

To make our graph look right, we need to change a few of these options. First, click the “Lines” button where it says What Type? For the subtype, I recommend choosing the second option from the left (lines with dots). Check the box that says “Use Column C as labels”, as well as the one that says “Use row 1 as labels”. If you like, you can label the horizontal axis Date and the verticle axis MPG. Now that all that’s finished, click Save Chart. Congratulations, you’re finished! If you followed my directions exactly (and I didn’t mess up) your chart should now look like this.

This spreadsheet will let you monitor your car’s fuel efficiency, as well as your driving habits. For example, if you drive consistently faster from one filling to another, you will see a dip in your car’s fuel economy. This will allow you to adjust your driving habits for minimum fuel consumption.

Thank you for reading, and I hope this tutorial/instructable was helpful to you. Tell your friends!

Quake Wars: a Quick Review!

I have little or not time to write this, but I’m gonna do it anyway, because I’m just that dedicated. I got to spend one glorious hour playing Quake Wars before being whisked off to a college fair thing, and it was one of the best hours of my life. Quake Wars is everything I could’ve hoped for and more. Put simply, “BF2 killer” – IGN. The hitboxes are impeccable, the game runs very smoothly on my mediocre computer, even at full resolution (1440×900) and Normal graphics quality. The gameplay is very similar to that of the game’s inspiration, Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, a free multiplayer sequel to id’s Return to Castle Wolfenstein. The classes’ roles are all the same, but modernized, and the game as a whole is familiar but not redundant. The medic, for example, has defib paddles instead of a “revive needle”, but the functions are the same. The mouse/aim reaction time (for lack of a better phrase) was great, especially when compared to games like BF2, in which there could be a .5-1.5 second delay between your mouse and the crosshair. The vehicles were fairly easy to control, but difficult enough that practice and skill would give you a significant advantage on the battlefield. The included map, Valley, has its shortcomings, but if it’s par for the ET:QW course, I’m very happy with the game.

That’s all I have time for right now, got an English paper to write before I go to bed, so until tomorrow, goodnight.

P.S. – I’ve got the name SupremeBeing reserved for the game’s official release, so if you decide to use it in the demo, don’t get too attached.

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars Demo Released!!

Today’s the day! I’ve been waiting for roughly two years and I finally get to play Quake Wars! I’ve just started downloading the 727 mb file at about 140 kb/s. Kinda slow, but not bad considering that when I tried the torrent there were 380 seeders to about 3000 downloaders, yielding a grand total down speed of 17 kb/s for me. By 4:30 I should be fragging away in a bliss that will be matched only by the game’s full release. I’ll report back when I’ve played for a while on how awesome the game is. Yes, how awesome it is. This game has no capacity for bad qualities. None.

If you have a suitable computer, please do yourself a favor and download this amazing game here.

From what I’ve read, the map, Valley, that comes with the demo, favors the Strogg forces heavily, so keep that in mind when you get to the spawn select screen. Also, ATI users need to download and install an ATI Hotfix released today to run the Quake Wars demo. This Hotfix can be found here. Thanks for reading!

XM Radio! (Delphi Roady2)

I know this is way old news, but it’s new/old to me. Confused? Yeah, me too. So here’s the deal: I got XM (satellite radio for anyone living in or under a rock) shortly after it came out, when the second generation Delphi receivers were the top o’ the line. I got a Delphi Roady2, a nice little radio, for $50 bucks at BestBuy. It comes with everything needed to use in the car (mobile antenna, cassette adapter, DC power adapter) and even has a built-in FM transmitter for those of us without cassette decks in the car. For (I think) another $30, I got the Roady2 Home Kit. This included an AC adapter, larger Home antenna, and a nifty little remote control. As for content, there’s more than any one person could possibly want, and this is not a bad thing. There are now 4 24/7 comedy channels, whose only downside is the 5 minutes (or so) of annoying commercials per hour. Evidently all the music channels are commercial-free, but some of the talk/comedy/etc channels have commercials. Not a large problem though, all you have to do is change the channel. Anyway, I like the comedy and classical channels best, so I stuck those on my presets. Very easy interface overall, and there’s 30 presets available, like 8 backlight colors, and a neat little song recall function. When you hear a song you like, you hold in the OK button for about 2 seconds. It then saves the song’s info, and the next time it shows up on any channel, it notifies you, and allows you to go to the song with the push of one button. This feature might be the coolest thing about satellite radio in general, as it allows you to monitor all 200+ channels for your favorite songs. This radio now sells for less than $50, and there’s also a little conversion kit that turns the Roady2 into a mobile radio, including a battery, headphones that act as an antenna, and an FM tuner for when you can’t get the satellite signal (which is almost never). Really a superb piece of electronics at a tiny price.

Additionally, there’s a promotional code you can use when signing up that waives the activation fee and the first three months of service, as well as letting you purchase a year of service for 77.00 instead of the 12.99 monthly rate. Based on the amount of time I spend using the radio and its quality of sound and content, I think the 12.99 price is too low. But please don’t raise it XM

Thanks for reading,

Corin

New site – not moving yet though.

Well it’s finally up, Chellberg.Flphost.com, and I’ve got WordPress installed with a nice looking theme, but I’m not moving yet.  I posted over there about it, but basically, I like getting the traffic from WordPress, I’m not thrilled about it being Flphost.com, and plus, I’m on vacation for the next week.  I’ll be back on Sunday, and I’ll probably have made a decision by then.  Installing WordPress was very easy, and once it was running I imported this entire blog with a few clicks.  Very simple.  I also added a little icon to my page, the one that appears next to the URL in your browser and bookmarks It’s a little picture of Einstein. 

Anyways, that’s the news about that.  I’ll probably do a few more posts today, and a few tomorrow, and then I’ll resume posting on Sunday.

Latest update on the subdomain

I think that due to how great WordPress has been, with a number of hits (amazing) and the immense ease of use, I’m going to keep the blog here until I get a real domain, and use chellberg.flphost.com (whenever it propagates) to hone (learn) my skills regarding web design.  If I somehow accidentally got something to look really really cool, I might decide to move to chellberg.flphost.com, but I kinda doubt it.  This current setup is just too nice to walk out on until I get my own domain.

My other option would be to start some other kind of website with chellberg.flphost.com, besides a blog.  I thought of making a forum for my entire high school once, but come to think of it, it’d be next to impossible to moderate without 30 or 40 dedicated moderators (my high school has ~4000 students) so that idea’s out.  I also thought of making a forum just for my friends, to put funny stuff or interesting stuff or whatever, but then I realized, *doh*, Facebook already did that.  So I’m sorta running low on ideas…but I’ll think of something.  Using it to practice web design isn’t a waste at all, really.  So yeah, that’s the update for Technology tonight.  Hopefully tomorrow I’ll have something interesting up on chellberg.flphost.com to show you. 

Until then, good night, and good luck.

Hehe.  Always wanted to say that.