SpawnPoint

I've just played one hour straight CS:S.
Not a big deal, you're gonna tell me, but for me, it was ! In the last few weeks, I couldn't play more than 20 minutes without the game crashing. Bad as I am, I already blamed it on Vista, but eventually, today, I decided to run a memtest to check my RAM and indeed it was my 3rd Gb of RAM memory, from the Kingmax brand, which was causing the troubles.
I removed it, run memtest with my other 2Gb of Corsair, and it's working fine (until now) :-)

I can't precisely choose a weapon with my mouse scroll anymore. Don't ask me why, but I can assure you I'm going to nag my friends to buy me a Logitech MX Revolution for my birthday. For example, when I want to take my knife it picks the nade... So if I was not dumb I would not play on GunGame servers as kniving is harder for me, heh ??? Well I just can't help joining the server.

Since more than 10 days now, I have more than 250ms latency on N.Y based servers, though I should get something like 80-120 max. So I'm laggy and can't kill anyone (yes even when I'm not laggy I can't aim much, shhhh), though I keep on joining those servers.

There is something that should not go well in my head. Or this is addiction.  (which is better ?)

As promised, here are my thoughts about the Microsoft/Razer Habu mouse, that I have been using for about a month now.

I bought this mouse after my Logitech G5 suddenly died. I had to choose a new mouse (as the shop where I work had no G5 anymore), so i typed in google "mouse with cord and lots of buttons" or sth like this and along with the G5, the Habu was in the first results. As I was in a hurry (try to play CS:S without a mouse !), I just went to the first shop that was selling it and bought it.

The first impression was great. The blue light around the mouse is cool, the driver installation worked greatly. I tried to update the driver after the installation, as there is a link "update" in the driver options, but it links to the razer website and I couldn't find update for the Habu mouse (apparently I already have the latest version of the driver). I think Microsoft should have make a direct link to its website, it would have been easier.

What is really great with this mouse, is that you can preset 5 different settings for it. It's nice as I use different settings when I'm browsing the internet than when I'm playing CS. Now I'm still awaiting for a mouse that could automatically change its presets depending on the software in use. There was a similar option with the Logitech G5 mouse, but those presettings only work with MS Office softwares...

The mouse has a total of 7 buttons. If you forget about the 3 usual ones, it makes 4 more buttons, 2 on the top of the mouse, 2 on the side, that you can set to nearly whatever you want. I have chosen shortcuts to action button (defusing, opening doors...), spray tag, walking and throwing a weapon, which is with my current keyboard layout really fine. I hadn't that much buttons on the G5 and had to set the "horizontal scrolling" buttons to some of these options, which was not nice as I couldn't switch between another settings when I was not playing CS:S.

I won't be talking about the precision of the mouse. Because I'm not a specialist of this, I know some of you have felt the difference when you began to use a laser mouse instead of an optical one (or at least a more precised mouse). To be honest I don't think I have become a better player when I bought my first laser mouse (Logitech MX1000) than I was before. Now it has a max 1600 dpi, I never used more than 400, I can't stand the speed when more than 800 dpi, so I don't see the point. Now it is a precised mouse, and I haven't noticed any reaction differences between Habu and G5.

All the previous text was written about 3 weeks ago. At that time, the mouse was working fine. Now, the story isn't the same anymore :(  Since about 2 weeks, the scrolling ingame became imprecised. I use the scroll to change weapons, but when I wanted to use my knife I had a nade in the hand, and when I wanted to fire my weapon I had the knife  :o   As it was unplayable and that was pissing me off, I decided yesterday to uninstall and resintall the driver and software (unfortunately, there were no updates available on the Razer website). I did, it worked fine yesterday (no more scrolling issue), then today I tried to switch between my presets, and the mouse lights, that should turn off for a few seconds, didn't. So I tested the setting, to see if it has actually applied or not... it hadn't... Ok, I stay calm and choose my CSS setting,  clicked on "apply" 10 times at least, then launched the game and played, to finally notice I was unable to use my mouse binds.
So I just tried to uninstall and reinstall it once again (I rebooted the computer after the uninstall and the reinstall), and guess what ?? The settings were still saved, as if I hadn't totally uninstalled it, and it was still not working properly.

As I think this is a software problem, the warranty won't apply, so I guess I will have to buy a new mouse once again (something like my 6th or 7th mouse in 3 years...)

So if you want my advice... don't buy this mouse. I think I'm gonna buy another Logitech, still don't now which one though. I'll let you know in a next blog entry   ;-)

I woke up this morning, I was happy as for once I have 2 days off in a row, and I just felt like playing CS:S all the day. Then I took a look at my Internet modem... the led indicating if the ADSL connection is synchronised or not was going on and off, which is not how it should be (consistent on is fine, it means ADSL is synchronised).
As it happens a lot those times, no worries, I just turned the modem off then on again. I wait a few seconds so it initialized... same problem again. As I had things to do this morning, I went out for a few hours, hoping everything was gonna be ok when I would come back. Of course it wasn't. I turned it off and on again. Nothing better.
So I decided to call my ISPs hotline. I waited 5 minutes before I can talk to someone, he let me do some tests on my comp and modem, then said "ok, so we are gonna get some investigation about this. A technician is gonna call you back when investigation will be over. Let's says Sunday, between 9 and 10 p.m, ok ??"
So I said "ok", but I was thinking : "WOOT !!! 4 days without Internet !!! OMG what I'm gonna do !"
I was so desperate this noon that I even decided to try and play agains bot, when just at the moment I created the server, my eyes are attracted to the ADSL led of the modem ... woot it stays consistently on !!

So hopefully I could play on spawnpoint servers this afternoon, chat with Guns, Sapphire and Drifter on IRC this evening and share this with you on my blog...

Yeah ! France won against New Zealand tonight in the quarter final of the World Rugby Championship !!!!
Thought we had no chance to beat them and that they were gonna destroy us, but we won ^^. I don't really care about sports and rugby, but this is France and World Cup, so I'm happy we made it.

And if that can get on the nerves of some of you (cough Mr_Me_II cough) that we talk about France... well that's even better  :D

My Logitech G5 crashed on Thursday night. I had some "hard point" when I wanted to click the right button. Hopefully that happened just a few second before I decided to stop CSS for the night.
Yet I am a bit confused. I had this mouse for about one year and half, it is suposed to be a gamer mouse (so to be used a lot), and though the right click crashed, even if I used this button 3 times less than left click...
Let's be honest, it was a good mouse. I didn't care about the 2000 dpi or so, but it was working well until then. I just find there were not enough buttons on it. There were 3 more (I mean, other than right, left and wheel buttons), but I always needed more.

So I had to find a new one, and I googled "cord mouse with 7 button". And I found the Microsoft (Razer) HABU mouse, that was in my prices and decided to buy it. I'm going to play a bit more with it and then make a review of this mouse. Maybe with some comparison between Logitechs and Microsofts mice, as I bought a lot of mice in the 3 last years, most of them MS or Logitech (MS basic cordless mouse, that I still have, then MX1000, then MX518, that I bring back to the shop before even using it as I didn't want cordless mouse anymore), then G5, and now Habu...).
When I bought my first optical mouse (Logitech, yeah !), I find this so much better without the ball that I thought I would never buy any other mouse anymore !! LMAO, had I known !!

I have a blog draft since August 29... that's just a shame. It was a brilliant idea, wanted to make a list with at least ten items, would have been a funny blog and... I just have no idea what to write after 5 items, included 3 who are not that funny...
So I just quit. Gonna send it to trash and find new ideas.
Not that I am afraid by this Weaver guy threatening me to be reported to the bogeyman if I don't blog soon... :D

Coming back in a few minutes (I hope) to tell you about my mouse.

Imagine a notebook where you would put names and then those people would just disappear... Well I owe one  ! I put a name, then a steam ID, and most of the time soon after, those players are just removed from the spawnpoint.com network !! Amazing, right ?
Of course I'm just talking about the scratchbook where I write down all the names and SteamID from the players I record.  Not all of them are hacking, but unfortunately most of them are.

Since I began to use a computer, I have always been using a "scratchpad" to write down important things that I should not forget (mostly usernames and passwords for my mail accounts, website login...). Then I became admin and find it very useful to have another one to note the names of the demo I take and which are the best to send to the ACT.
Since I've watched that Anime, I am used to call it my "Death note", as most of the names that are written on it are now banned from the spawnpoint.com network, just like they were "game-dead".

My problem today is that the notebook I'm using at the moment is nearly full... When I began to do so, I would never have  thought I would fill in so many names so rapidly ! This notebook has sth like 100 pages... In an average of 5 names by a page, that makes 500 players recorded (and accordingly to cpnichol's list, out of them about 200 were really cheating).
I got this notebook from my work. It was given by sales representative (don't remember the company, maybe Symantec) and tbh remained unused for 6 months. As I hate waste and found it would be useful to me, I just took it home and began recording cheaters.

Now I don't know what I'm going to do. Buy a new one ? Will it be as "powerful" as the former one ? I will have to put a spawnpoint bumper sticker on it to give it the fabulous SP  anti-cheat powers...yes,  that's my voodoo tip to catch cheaters LOL !

For all those who don't know what Safari is, it is the integrated web browser for Macintosh computers, like I.E is for Windows. And it is now available (in beta version) for Windows users too (works with XP and Vista for sure as I tested it on both). Here is the link to download it : http://www.apple.com/safari/download/

Like any other Apple equipment, Safari is announced on their website as “the world's best browser”. So i decided to test it and see if I agree with this sentence or not.

On the first impressions, it just looks like any other current browser, IE or Firefox : tab browsing, no problem with importing my favorites from Firefox (I didn't test with IE as I don't use it), predictive completion of the address, integrated google toolbar for quick researches on top right, RSS support.
It displays text in a special font, which is just fine when you browse the Apple.com website (must be optimised for it), but looks in my opinion a bit blurred when browsing any other sites.
The browser layout takes the entire screen, so if you chose the option to hide the windows taskbar at the bottom of the screen, you just can't access it anymore. If you want to launch another software or look to a file while browsing, you have to use « alt + tab » which is not very handy.

So far, Safari is not a bad, nor an especially better web browser. Let us see what's really wrong with it.

As a member of the spawnpoint.com gaming community, one of the first website I browsed with Safari is www.spawnpoint.com. Take a look at the screenshot, and see what I blame Safari for.



On the top of the website, there is a navigation bar where you can browse the “forums”, the “files” that are available for free download, “the blogs”, the new “clans” functionality and the “ladders”... Unfortunately, all you can see in the screenshot is “ladders”, because this navigation bar doesn't display correctly with Safari.
I don't know if this has something to do with safari or the coding of this menu, but to summarize, with this web browser I could simply not browse my favorite website !

The so-called “world's best browser” isn't that good at all, and my conclusion is : there is no point at the moment in using Safari for Windows, unless you are a big fan of anything Apple creates. Remember this is just a beta version, maybe this bug will be corrected in the final version of the software.

Dave / Skydavo

First of all, for all of my fans all around the world, I want to reassure them : after this long week of absence, I'm finally back !!! (who said no one ever noticed I wasn't there ???)
I'm currently on holidays (youhou !), by my parents, where I should have got an Internet connection since a week now, but "France Telecom" couldn't manage to make it. To be totally honest, they even manage to completely disconnect my parents' phone line for 2 days... When I tried to call them, someone else was on the phone (??).
Well, now everything is back to normal, and I can live again my addiction to Internet and CSS (really, I should see a doctor about this...).

Now that I had Internet, what was I gonna do ??
First (bad) idea I had, checking my spawnpoint emails... Nice, more than 60 messages unread in  a week !
After half an hour (and almost 25 messages read), I thought about another very good idea : check the servers to see if some friends were playing. So my usual server, Common Grounds :  hum, no one I ever know there !! I don't play on this server for a week, after having played there every day for 2 years or so now, and I can't see anybody I ever played with ! Such a shame.
Than I tried to have a look on the UK assault server, just in case, (God, may someone I know play there, please !) and OMG ! there were three noobs with negatives stats and bad names there ! So I had to join it and stay spectators for 10 minutes to record them and take screenshots, and try to get them behave like good kids... (that's how I learned I am apparently not good at teaching LOL).
After such an incident, what do anyone do ? yeah, I had to report them, so I went back to my mailbox, and decided to finish reading my mails (one more hour), before  reporting them to the abuse team (ten minutes or even more as I had to install a zip software for the screenshots I wanted to attach to the mail).

The only funny thing that happened this evening is when I looked at the "spam" section (not sure how it is called in English, you see what I mean) of Windows Live Mail (as it is the first time I use it), and apparently some messages sent by Tony or Shane are considered spam by Live Mail... That makes me lmao, especially as Shane's mail was sth about "blog, blog, BLOG !!!"
So here I am, making fun of him and trying to get you have some pity for me and my very hard life... No ? No one ??
Next time I can't use Internet for a week, please remind me that it is SO MUCH BETTER !!!! lol