Author: John Witt

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Infinium Labs Soliciting?

I received an email today from Infinium Labs. It seems to be some sort of fact sheet designed to peak my interests to invest in the company. That’s what I have to guess because it is very vague and seems designed to show that it is looking to get listed on the Stock Exchange. They have had a very tainted past with background information about the founding president and lack of a working model for some time. They have also thrown lawsuits against individuals making any claims against their product, company and founder. The main sites that has really been holding a candle to this issue is [H]ardOCP as well as Where is Phantom. Below are some links to articles they have published as well as a copy of the fact sheet I received in my email this morning.

Here are the articles from [H]ardOCP:

Behind the Infinium Phantom Console Infinium Labs Vs. HardOCP – Round 2

Here is a copy of the email I recieved:

 

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Republican Convention: Day3

Well so far there is not much difference with the security over yesterday with the exception of a Fuji/NYPD blimp hovering around overhead. I have a couple of pictures of it but will venture outdoors around lunch and see if I can grab a couple of better pictures. I still have not seen any demonstrators close by Madison Square Garden. The police are doing a good job of isolating the area from disruptions.

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Republican Convention: Day 2

Security is starting to be beefed up more if you could imagine that around Madison Square Garden. I arrived at Penn Station about 6:45 this morning and there was a much stronger police presence. I also saw some secret service agents in Penn Station which I hadn’t seen earlier. As I came out onto 7th Ave. from the main entrance you also noticed more officers and more Sanitation trucks. They are using them to block of sections of the street. They are also keeping a more vigilant eye on pedestrians now. I walked out of the building to take pictures of the very low flying Coast Guard helicopter that had been circling for an hour or so. During that time I walked through one of the barricades to get to a Starbucks. When I came out with my Iced Quad Venti Latte I decided to take a couple of shots since I was at the corner of MSG. After the second picture I gained the attention of the police officers nearby, who promptly inquired what I was doing. My reply was “Just getting a coffee and taking some pictures”, at which point I was escorted towards my building. So things are definitely getting much tighter around here I can only imagine what Thursday will bring. Well enjoy the pictures I shot today on my Moblog.

Ciao

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Republican Convention

Well anticipating a nightmare trying to get to one of my clients today which are situated two blocks from Madison Square Garden I decided to take the early train out of White Plains at 5:59am. When I got into Grand Central I noticed that security wasn’t as heavy as it has been over the past couple of weeks which surprised me since the Republican Convention kicks off today. When I got off the shuttle train at Times Square that’s when the police presence became evident. They watched everyone getting of the shuttle and boarding trains at going downtown to Penn Station. When I got off at 28th St. since I didn’t want to deal with the barrage of policemen at Penn Station I was surprised at the police presence and the barricades that were put up. They have concrete dividers and fences up all around the Garden and nearby streets. I happen to have a letter that should get me into my clients building since they are within the blocked off area. Since I got in early I was actually able to get up close to the garden and snap some pictures with my Cannon 10D. They actually came out pretty good and they will be posted on the “Moblog“ section. You can reach the Moblog section by clicking the link above in the menubar. I decided to situate myself right next to a cop so that I wouldn’t have to worry about one walking up to me and asking me what I was doing. The cop I was next to watched me open my bag and take the camera out, at which point he asked me who I was with as if I was affiliated with some news agency. I just let him know I was working locally and decided to take some pictures. He was pretty cool about it and we chatted a bit about all the mad hours he and his fellow officers had been putting in over the past week or so. I was speaking with the president of the company I am visiting today when I noticed outside of his windows what seemed to be a sniper perch on top of the Rotunda at the Garden. I decided to climb out the window onto a type of patio area and take some pictures with my telephoto lens. Under close inspection of the photos it seems as if it’s more of a coffee hangout rather than a security detail. If I was one of the delegates attending this I would want these guys watching the surrounding building windows rather than chilling. So enjoy the pictures, I will venture out during lunch and take some more pictures, it may be a little tougher though I noticed from the window that they are limiting foot traffic near the garden.

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Site Imporvements!

I have just finished a lot of background coding to the site. I have also upgraded the software used to create the main Blog. I went with a commercial program over the open source alternatives for its vast feature set and support. The software I went with is ExpressionEngine made by pMachine. If you’re looking to create a Blog you have to give this software a look at it is a great piece of software. The forums have been updated so log in and give them a whirl. I will try to complete the “Photo Album” section over the next week. Once that is finished I will complete the family & friends section which will be password protected.

Check back over the next couple of days, due to the frequent post that will be made here. One of my largest clients is 2 blocks from Madison Square Garden. There building is in the blocked off zone, so it will be interesting to see the troubles I have to get trough and get to their building. There was already a large police and security presence there last week. I can only imagine what it will be like with the Republican Convention in full swing. I will bring my Cannon 10D along and snap pictures off and send them directly from the site.

Well, let me go for now to continue coding. And check back for all the changes coming.

Ciao.

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Website Relocated

Well it is somewhat relocated, still in the same location just on a different box. When I decided to add a forum to this website, I ran into one real big problem. It ran fine locally, however when I tried to access features of it over the Internet from a remote site it would just hang. At first I thought it was a security problem with Windows 2003 Webserver Edition. So I built a new box with Fedora and Apache and low and behold the same problem. At that point I focused on my firewall which has an intrusion detection module and sure enough that was the culprit. On a previous version of the forum software I am using there was a vulnerability, so to protect my web servers from being compromised it was dropping those requests automatically. So after turning those rules off on the firewall all was operating properly. So I guess I could have left it on the other box and all would have been fine. However, the new box is a dual processor box running on Linux so it should be able to handle a lot more requests due to the low overhead without breaking a sweat.

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CounterStrike: Source

Well I started my day yesterday by preloading ‘The Source’ through Valve’s Steam network. It downloaded fairly quickly over my broadband connection. All and all I believe the total download time was somewhere in the range of about 20 minutes or so. Then the anticipation began the official kick off for the second stage of beta testers was slated for 10pm EST. This group comprised of Condition Zero users and those who had keys from their ATI/Half-Life2 bundles. I never thought I would see the day that I would actually be able to use that key and get product for it. I had that bundle for well over a year now and it was quit an adventure having to locate it after all this time. The first set of beta testing was reserved for those who belong to Valve’s cybercafe community. Once my preload went from ‘Coming Soon’ to playable I was excited and ready to go only to be disappointed. My disappointment was from the fact that Valve’s steam network was so overwhelmed that I was starring at messages for the next hour that their network was to busy handle my request. So now the waiting game began, when was I going to be able to give thing a test drive? We’ll at 11pm I was connected to their network only to be further disappointed. My next disappointment came from not being able to find an open server. All the servers were full and I’m not talking about an 8 or 16 player server. I am talking about 50 player servers were packed and no one was dropping off for fear of not getting back on. After some server list refreshing I found an open slot on a server. Now let me preface by saying I have been playing CounterStrike for well over 3 years on and off and I consider it the best online game period bar none. That being said ‘The Source’ had a lot to live up to in my eyes and it meet and far surpassed any expectations I might have had. Now mind you that this is beta software and there are some physics issues which I will discuss further later in this ranting. Well I was greeted by my tried and true Dust map at least it has the same name. This was CounterStrike on steroids bearing a super model’s stunning beauty and finesse. The graphics and detail was just jaw dropping and I was running at 1600×1200 with all my video settings maxed on a GeForce 6800 Ultra. I don’t know how else to describe the initial experience, I just couldn’t believe this was possible for CounterStrike.

The movement takes a little getting used to and some of the physics of the game are of in this beta version. What I mean by physics is how characters move and how guns fire. For instance when you jump, you jump much higher than you would in CounterStrike 1.6 and you kind of come down a little slow almost as if the gravity at had been turned down. Also some guns recoil are off like the Auto-Sniper there is basically no recoil evident (Have fun with that tip). You now have objects which can be moved around such as barrels, paint buckets, cans. You can move them by bumping into them or shooting them. Also be careful of bottles while you sneak around, step on one of these and you just gave your position away. My biggest gripe with CounterStrike was with flashbangs. It always seemed to disorient the person throwing it and his own team rather than the enemy. After ‘The Source’ flashbangs are my new best friend, I just wish I could hold more than two. These things pack a wallop now, you still have to be careful around yourself and teammates but they do what they do in real life now to your enemies. They completely blind you and send your ears ringing. If you get nailed by one of these with a enemy close at hand your toast as in ‘The quarterback is toast’ sorry for the Die Hard reference. You can’t tell which way is up and when your vision starts to come back it’s all blurry and out of focus.

I’ll post more of my findings on my forum which can be accessed from the menubar above. Also I put up a dedicated Source server last night, if you need a server to play in try ‘PC-Doc’s CS Source’, the IP for the server is: 216.46.76.190:27015

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Doom3 a non-event

Don’t get me wrong the game is spectacular and the graphics are gorgeous. The single player mode will have you sitting on the edge of your seat for hours…days…weeks most likely. This game has been highly anticipated for the past couple of years. I pre-ordered my copy a week ago and my NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra will be here tomorrow. I am currently playing it on a tricked out, water cooled Athlon 64 3400+ system with a Radeon 9800XT. When I got my call that my copy reached the store I raced out and picked up. After installing the 3 CDs needed to play the game I was greeted with an amazing display of graphics and smooth game play. After two or three hours glued to my screen I decided to go give multiplayer mode a try. Most of everything I play is multiplayer such as CounterStrike, Halo, BF1942, BF Vietnam, Unreal 2004 to name a few. So I was really psyched to take this awesome display of graphics and game play to the next level. Well to my astonishment DOOM3 Multiplayer hmmm… how do I say this…. SUCKS!!!!! Even on low ping servers with only 4 people the lag and the jitter make it unplayable at best. If I were ID I would have added multiplayer as a patch after they worked out the problems, because problems abound to no end. This would have been the game of the year as far as I am concerned if it were not for the multiplayer issues. If Half Life 2 comes out with as good graphics and superior multiplayer mode ie.. CounterStrike2 they will best game of the year hands down. That’s just my opinion I could be wrong.

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The End Of An Era

We’ll yesterday marked the end of an era for great geek TV. I am speaking of the death of The Screensavers and TechTV. No it isn’t quite dead yet but you can hear the long melodic drumbeat beating ever slower now days. Last night’s revelation at the end of the show is what put the final nail in the coffin for the show and the network. That revelation was that last night was Patrick Norton’s last night as a host of the show and he would not be moving to LA where the show will now be produced. The begining of the end came about a couple of months ago with the purchase of the network and the dismissal of Leo Leoporte the creator and main staple of the shows Call For Help and The Screensavers. The only two shows which kept the network alive. One can only imagine a couple of eldery drunks maning the helm of the G4 network not in the know of technology . Why take over a network when youre going to kill the two shows that make TechTV what it is. I have been watching the show since its inception, a matter of fact that was my main motivation to toss cable and buy a satelite dish. In the begining it was Leo & Kate as the hosts of the show and they had the best chemistry. When Kate left the show I didnt see Patrick filling her shoes however in some strange way it worked Kate seemed a little more knowledgable than Patrick but he did just fine. Leo was never the most knowledgable but it was his character, charisma and ability to pass the ball on when he knew it was over his head that kept you coming back. I had the privledge on several occasions to be on the show via Netcam, I think those days will be my fondest memories. On occasion a new member of the Screensavers staff was thrown into temporary hosting while either Patrick or Leo were unable to be on the show, his name is Kevin. Now kevin a young and very knowledgable individual however a host he is not. And his age shows it, especially in his sometimes irresponisble reporting. His nickname is the ‘Dark Tipper’ for his reports on hacking and so forth which sometimes flirts with being illegal or at least immoral at times. I remember the one show that infurated me the most and forced me to send emails to various senior members of the show and the network. That segment was on building a portable server. Its sole purpose was to trade illegal files wether it be MP3, Videos or a number of other files using someone elses unsecured wireless connection. Now the way he tried to justify it was by saying “you should’nt do this” to the viewers watching the show. My opinion to this is, if they should’nt do it why teach them. I am sure there are probaly a couple of individuals that have had a summons issued to them for illegal downloads by the RIAA caused by some want to be hacker after watching that show. Now the show is in the hands of Kevin alone until they find someone to co-host with him. The show lost most of their viewers with the loss of Leo as is evident in the thousands of post on Leo’s site http://www.leoville.com. Now with Patrick’s departure the mass exodus will be in full swing, leaving G4/Comcast with an viewerless network.

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Stuck….

We’ll I had nothing better to do than add an entry into my blog. Right now I’m stuck in a Metro-North train inside the tunnel just outside of Grand Central. I cut my day short so I could catch an earlier train and get some much needed rest. I would have been better off staying at my clients location and earning $125 an hour. So what have things been like lately you might ask. We’ll remember the client with the crashed hard drive, we’ll as fate would have it the data was unrecoverable. We are going to try another service that uses more extreme methods of recovery. I hope they can get some data off that drive, I feel sorry for that customer. Other than that and a couple of minor client emergencies it has beento why relatively quiet. Even though it has been quiet, I have a lot of work to finish and not sleeping much. You know I have a lot of work when I don’t have time to play CounterStrike. Whenever I jump onto one of the game servers I frequent, I hear the regulars exclaim “Whoa..PC-Doc is here, where you’ve been?” That leads me to where I am right now so tired I left early to get home have a couple beers and take a nap. Funny how life continually screws me at every chance available. We’ll the train is finally moving again after 30mins of sitting in the dark and un-air-conditioned train. I am going to submit this now and try and call my wife that is waiting for me at the station in White Plains.

Ciao