SWATs up then? [Spiny]

T'death have had a rather long (at least by our standards) love affair with Red Storm's tactical shooters Ghost Recon & Rainbow Six 3. To sate my tactical desires while waiting for RS4 I picked up the just-released SWAT 4 developed by Irrational.

So, how does it compare with RS3? Rather well actually.

The first thing I noticed was that the pace was slower. Yes even slower. The shuffle/run of SWAT 4 is about the pace of RS3s walk as I remember it. Things like your reticule cross hairs come in much slower too. This means that emphasis is placed much more on tactics than any run & gun ability. (Heh, who'd have though that about RS?). Naturally this would kill the gameplay if your squads AI wasn't up to scratch & I'm pleased to report that it's pretty good. Certainly a match for RS3 & probably better. The enemy (or "subject" in SWATspeak) is markedly better. They behave much more naturally, taking cover, running away etc. Although I do miss the comedy value from RS3 of the "whatwasthat?" faux east euro accents. In fact the AI provides one of the most entertaining aspects of the game. I was initially sceptical about a shooter where the object of the game was not to kill the bad guys. The idea is that you get them to 'comply' by yelling at them before cuffing them with zip ties. Sometimes the hostages refuse to comply so you get to blast them at point blank range with a bean bag shotty "ow ow ow ow!", spray them with pepper spray "Arrgh my eyes!" or even tazer them "hey, look at the funny granny dance!"

The interface is really easy to use, although oddly missing the 'on zulu' stuff from RS to synchronise multiple entries to the same room. What you can do though is give orders directly to any team member via a picture-in-picture view from their helmet cam. You get to control the sniper this way too, for long range bad guy head'sploding.

I had a brief multi player session which consisted mainly of me dying - there's a lot to learn here even for old RS hands. Knowledge of the map layout is even more important with the reduced walking and aiming speeds. Most reviews I've seen have been giving > 85% for this, I'd make it a 90% for me but that's probably because I'm a fan of the genre. Once I'm through the single player I'll definitely be up for some co-op (4 to a game). Hou, Pod?

Now why didnt I think of that! [Houmous]

Another in the series of the “why didn’t I think of that” items that I came across recently. The OneClick Intelligent Mains Panel is a multisocket extension that links your computer and up to five peripherals so that when you switch you computer on after three seconds it provides power to the peripherals connected to the panel. It also works in reverse, so when you turn your computer off it turns the connected peripherals off a few seconds later.
For me has been particularly helpful for my Zalman reserator, (which up to now I’ve never turned off in fear of forgetting to switch it on next time) external hard drives (which I don’t like leaving on all the time), and my printer (because I’ve had dry inkjet problems through leaving it on standby) – not forgetting all that electricity I'm going to save haha!

AmLan 2 [Am]

Gentlemen - it gives me very great pleasure to continue the owning of noncy clans what don't have cool homespun Lans and announce;
AmLan 2 - Return of Teh Fucksticks
The date is Fri 19th to Sun 21st of August.
Confirmed attendance list as follows:

• Am (doh)
• Lurks
• Brit
• Slim
• Dr Dave
• Shedir (!)
• Meaty (!)
• Lotta (!)
• Spiro
• Muz
• Mugs (!)
• Skeeve
• Pod
• Jay
• KV
• Houmous
• Braddy

Possibles:

• Beej - pending leave or still in possession of torso
• Mistral - assuming not surgically attached to Spiny :-)

Stuff that just keeps working [Brit]

Looking around my den, it suddenly struck me that my SONY "Dream Machine" clock radio is now 10 years old. It hasn't stopped working once, never had a problem with it.
My Epson Stylus Colour 880 printer - likewise, nearly 10 years old and still going strong and I've only had to replace the carts three times during that period. It's covered in wax too; big splodges of it - yet print it does, every time.
Then I look at my iPod; no more than two years old and already consigned to the area designated for devices that I really cannot be bothered with trying to keep alive for more than four hours at a time.
Amazing!

Ipod shuffle review [Slim]

Bloke's 30th birthday here today so we had a collection and got 70 quid. He's always stealing me mp3's so I bought him an Ipod shuffle with it. Was just copying some choons to it now.
As with the biggerer ipods, its got a lot of 'ooh' about it, which is quite an achievement given it does pretty much fuck all. Its very nicely packaged, with stuff like a neck strap, nice white headies, apple stickers, shit like that.
Get it out and you realise just how tiny it is. Most impressive is how thin it is, it's literally no higher than a usb port, just a few mm thick and weighs absolutely fuck all. The slide button on the back for power, play and shuffle modes isn't quite as glossy as the rest of the ipod, but it's not grooved or anything, makes sliding it a bit faffy, but other than that, it works fine. Controls on the front (only five, play, next, back and vol up down) also work fine, and feel nice and solid. Sound qualities fine, although I used me sony headies rather than mucking up the recipients nice new ones with me ear spuds.
Synching is easy as piss. You can use itunes, or i just downloaded an app that shows it up in explorer and you drag the files accross. You can't use the music space as storage space, you have to seperate that up sadly. Just plug it in a usb port and it's charging too.
I'd probably miss the screen if I had one, although it might work well as a 2nd player to a grown up one for taking out on me bike or going fishing. I do like solid state gadgets a lot, always weary of hard disks in mobiles that might get a but of bumpin. I'd like it to be a bit cheaper for that though given there are same size players with screens for almost half the price.
Still, makes a nice gift. Everyone who's seen it has gone 'ooh', which is kind of what ipods are all about.

H & B DRX-430 [Slim]

I was getting a bit fed up with nuking stuff off sky+ to make space when I really wanted to keep it. So I splashed out on a DVD Recorder, the H & B DRX-430.

Well, its a little cracker! It does dvd recording, from the sky rgb output, all well and good. Sky+ has this nice thing where you can schedule playback of multiple programmes to spit out to dvd, so that's fine. It just works, great.
But it also does divx playback, which bloody rules too, cos the xbox was always a bit faffy for the wife n kids to use. This you just shove a dvd with divx's on it, it brings a menu up and plays em. Worked flawlessly on everything I've tried it with so far.
It's also got dv input (firewire), so I can plug me vidcam in and write that shit straight to dvd, it'll even do titles and chapters and shit, nice. Means the wife can write dvd's from the cam without using my pc, woot.
Then it's got a usb port, it'll take media off usb memory. It's 1.1 only, and doesn't seem to work with my big maxtor, but it takes stuff off smartmedia just fine, ace for quicly putting camera pics up on the telly.
It's got inputs and outputs galore, component, progressive scan, rgb, svid, all that shit. And its really thin, slinky and quiet. Very chuffed with it.

Slapping the Python [Spiny]

No not that one :) The much loved XBMC can run the Python scripting language & there's some very neat scripts available.

You're first stop should be here. Download the AQTBrowser. This allows you to view all the quicktime movie trailers at apple.com. Neat. You'll need to have the right codecs though, search the XBMC forums.

That's not all, there's gamespotplus which allows you to view all the Gamespot live and video reviews. R0x0r. There is an error in the script though, see my post here for a fix.

I'm sure it wouldn't be too difficult to write a BBC vid streamer...