The Flow of Consciousness

Both ThinkComputers, run by Bob Buskirk, and BIOS LEVEL, run by Sean Potter and myself, have been very busy lately.

BIOS LEVEL

After a busy five-article February, BIOS LEVEL had four articles in March to-date. We might have another one out before the end of the month, though.

• StarTech.com WattSmart 750W Power Supply by Sean – one of the most stable power supplies I’ve seen, certainly worth investigating if you’re in the market for a new PSU
• Pittco’s Iron Storm 8 by Sean – Pittco held the largest LAN party ever in Pittsburgh in mid-March, and most of the BIOS LEVEL staff was there—some were even staff!
• Mini-Feature: Inside a Plextor DVD+-RW drive by me – a quick look inside an optical drive which I recently fixed myself
• Nexus Technology Cooling Supplies by me – in which I discover the quietest fans I’ve ever heard, or, rather, didn’t hear
• D-Link DNS-323 NAS Enclosure by Sean – a pretty cool Linux-based NAS
• GMC AVC-M1 Noblesse AV case by Sean – GMC’s neat HTPC case
• Vantec NexStar 3 hard drive enclosure by Sean – an excellent USB/eSATA hard drive enclosure
• Xigmatek HDT S1283 CPU cooler by Sean – a very cool (literally and figuratively) CPU cooler
• Corinex GameNet Powerline Network Adapter by me – a Powerline networking kit meant for console gaming, and it performed acceptably for console gaming

ThinkComputers

Bob has been posting four or five articles per week since CES! He’s really ramping up the coverage on ThinkComputers, and doing a great job even in the midst of moving. I’ve written a number of articles this month, with another coming up before the end of it.

• ASUS WL-520GU wireless router – another Broadcom router yearning for DD-WRT
• ASUS M3A32-MVP Deluxe – This review took me nearly a month because of all of the problems I had with the board. The largest of them wasn’t even the board’s fault: Windows can’t handle a motherboard swap, whereas Linux can. It’s a decent board, but I’m still having problems getting USB to work reliably on Gutsy. Hopefully, there are driver fixes in the Hardy kernel.
• Cooler Master Cosmos S – One of the coolest cases I’ve ever seen, I drooled upon seeing it at CES. It’s now the case for rahab, my primary workstation.
• Yoggie Gatekeeper Pico Security Mini-Computer – The Yoggie is a neat device which is plugged in to a USB port on a Windows computer and offloads network security functions—antivirus, firewall, etc.—onto the device, which is actually a tiny Linux computer
• Targus Grove Convertible Messenger Backpack – a combination messenger bag and backpack which looks a lot like a WWII rucksack.

In the coming month, I’ll have a bunch more reviews—several power supplies, an enterprise-level NAS, a video card, and some knick-knacks I’ve uncovered along the way. Keep your eyes peeled and feed readers updating!

ThinkComputers Feed
BIOS LEVEL feed

Saberwolf of the Pittco Forums pointed out an interesting table on the Presidential issues in a Hillary or Obama thread.

It lists several issues and is very understandable. I might do a more in-depth post on it later today or this week.

<venting>

I’m looking through the ALP source while Jon and Zack work on adding PayPal integration.

This code is not easily readable. I know the developers probably didn’t aim for MVC, but if they did, they failed. The page class is called universal. What does that do? What does it mean? UniversalPage would be a better class name, or better yet, Page or GenericPage or PageGeneric.

Then, in /include/modules/mod_controlpanel.php, there’s a Javascript function that, if I’m understanding it correctly, catches the user’s login and md5()s the password, then sends that in the request instead of the plain text password. It then stores/checks that md5 in the database. THERE IS NO POINT TO THIS. Elementary security procedures show this. Needless to say, we’re going to have to fix this.
</venting>

Bioshock is the reason I’ve not written in a while. Orange Box isn’t helping, either.

Bioshock is one of the more rivoting (misspelling intentional, har har har) games I’ve played lately. I enjoy single player games with a good story line and atmosphere, and Bioshock hits both.

What else have I been up to?

I finished my first quarter as an adjunct instructor at ITT Tech. It doesn’t look like I’m going to have a class this quarter because of scheduling conflicts, but, AFAIK, I’m on the substitute list.

I have one night left of an Advanced Visual Basic class at RMU. Enough said.

Pittco announced Iron Storm 8, the LAN party group’s ninth event. Sean is heading up the planning for the event and doing a very, very good job. Cat herding is an art.

CES is a little more than a month away. I’ll be covering it for ThinkComputers. I’m in the process of reviewing a new cooler for ThinkComputers, too. It dropped my GPU temperatures by more than 12° C!

I’m going to a rapid application development party this weekend, at which we’re going to attempt to add a payment system to Autonomous LAN Party, a LAN party management system. Unfortunately, the newer versions of ALP at Q Licensed, a license which is incompatible with the GPL. Under the Q License, changes to the software can only be distributed as patches. Users are free to redistributed the source of the software, but their changes must be separate from the source. If this license shenanigans turns out to be that much of a problem, we’re just going to write our own LAN party management software and GPL it.

The Pittsburgh LAN Coalition, of which I am a staff member, held its eighth event this past weekend: Iron Storm 7 (the number difference is a result of a smaller LAN called Pittco Lite that was held very quickly and was very small).

While attendance wasn’t its highest because of both Quakecon and the Family Values tour being in Pittsburgh on Saturday, it was still a very energized and highly interactive event.

We held a Counter-Strike: Source tournament and a Unreal Tournament 2004 tournament officially. I didn’t play in the former, but I did manage to get hosed in the latter. We’ll not go into the scores, but suffice to say that I need to learn how to use the shock combo far more effectively. I also need to remember that the shield cannon cannot counter said shock combo and that I should stop trying to use it in 1v1, no matter how hilarious a kill with it may be.

I conducted the 8v8 Battlefield 2 tournament on Karkand. Three teams vied for bragging rights: ITO, Spyder, and Pornalicious. I played with ITO against Spyder in the first round. We lost by about 70. A not-so-narrow defeat, but we still played well for having a team that was thrown together haphazardly. Spyder went on to defeat Pornalicious narrowly (I believe by less than 10). Spyder kept the crown, having won at IS6, too.

I tried to get in on some Far Cry action, but the guys who were playing quit by the time I was patched and ready to go. I really miss Far Cry multiplayer FFA–it’s insane.

Jon, Zack, and I fetched some sushi from Giant Eagle Market District. I had a summer roll and blue crab California rolls. We also picked up some hummus and pitas as a side and a strange kosher candy bar that Zack likes. It was made of crushed sesame seeds and was pretty delicious. Zack said that a person can only handle one once in a while so as to not come to dislike the incredibly sweet taste. I agreed.

I did play CS for a little, but only enough to get myself pissed off. It happens when I play that stupid game.

The jackass tournaments went well, too. The karaoke tournament was small but amusing. I think I will do it next time. I’m certainly a better vocalist than the chap who won. The boxer sprint made a return, too. At least this time, it wasn’t snowing outside like at IS3.

I’m looking forward to IS8. We’re considering adding some more official tournaments using newer games that will be out then (UT3, Crysis, etc.). I want to get an official BF2 tournament going, too.

Check out the activity on the forums.

The Pittsburgh LAN Coalition Inc. proudly unveils details about its next LAN party, Iron Storm 7.

When: Saturday August 4th – Sunday August 5th
Where:
Castle Shannon Hall
3600 Library Rd
Castle Shannon, PA 15234
(map)

How many:
150 seats

Look forward to:
Jackass Tournaments
Counter-Strike: Source
Unreal Tournament
COD2
World of Warcraft
DDR
Console Gaming
Prizes
And much more!

Make sure to keep these dates open. Stay tuned for more information.

-The Pittco Staff
www.pittco.org

Pittco is a great organization, and its Iron Storm LAN parties are among the best I’ve ever attended, MillionManLAN included. I was on staff for IS6 and will be on staff for IS7, as well. Most of my work is in the background, excepting the Battlefield [1942|2|2142] tournament and bouncing at the door during check-in. I’m working on producing a booklet with a schedule, rules, and other feature-y things with some advertisements for sponsors and local colleges. I’m looking forward to it.

I’ve finally got around to writing about Pittco’s Iron Storm 6, held March 17-18, 2007.

It was a great event—one of Pittco’s best parties (it’s held seven) yet.

Ask someone else about the CS tournament. I choose to ignore it.

The UT2k4 tournament was insane. More than 60 people signed up for it, so Obsidian had to hold free-for-all deathmatches in order to chop the field down to a bracket-able size. I, of course, shield cannon’d my way through the entire FFA, but ended up getting second to last in my server. I held fourth or fifth place (fourth was the lowest place to go onto the 1v1) for the first 10 minutes of the fifteen minute round, but others just kept on truckin’. The craziest thing is that, on another server, the first place player had more than 50 kills on top of the second place player—and it’s wasn’t perfecti0n, the guy who usually wins all of Pittco’s UT deathmatch tournaments.

I organized the BF2 tournament. It was kinda rocky, but there was a definite winner. We had three teams signed up, then one team lost at CS and left the LAN (argh). We played FuShe Pass and Dragon Valley, both on 16-player mode. I had a lot of fun organizing it, as well as playing in it.

We had a lot of prizes to give out. Ultra was a big sponsor. I’m pleased with their products, and actually use two of their cases and two of their power supplies.

IS 7 planning is already underway, and it’s going to be another good one. We’re getting even more organized, and that can only mean a better experience for both attendees and staff.