First of all, I would consider myself an automotive enthusiast, albeit a light one… I grew up around things with engines on them, and my inner-geek is intrigued by the workings of all systems, not just those with LEDs and screens. I learned to drive in a manual transmission, and I got my license in a manual transmission.

I think everyone should know how to drive a manual, but that’s where it ends for me. Driving an automatic doesn’t make you less of a man – I’m secure enough in my manhood to get from point A to point B without feeling the need to grab some phallic control lever ever few seconds. Most of the people I see saying this crap are wannabe-racers who feel like they’re driving faster if they rev-out, slam the shifter through the gates and then grip the steering wheel as if they’re about to be rounded on the home turn.

I have to wonder about the genitalia-inadequacies of these types of people “I only drive stick-shifts”… the types of dumbshits who jack off into bags of random ferrari parts and disable the ABS on an otherwise okay vehicle. Don’t even get me started on that.

ABS is there for a reason, and even though every pencil-dicked retard will claim they can out-brake ABS for the most part they’re full of shit. You can’t modulate brakes at the same rate those little servos can, and while there’s some truth in the whole “more parts to break” theory, a well maintained ABS system works good in the majority of panic-brake situations.

Where are these people, unfortunately, right? I don’t particularly have a problem with an adult who owns a vehicle in full disabling (partially or fully) torque management systems. There are times when you might want that extra oomph (or to light up a pair of perfectly good tires) and if you’re a responsible adult who wants to inhale a couple hundred bucks in rubber who am I to disagree. Teenagers who don’t know any better, or adults who haven’t finished paying off their vehicles probably don’t want to be subjecting their drive-train to that kind of hurt.

Cars that parallel park themselves are a definite bad idea. I’m not speaking in automotive-luddite terms here either, but the inability to parallel park illustrates a blatant lack of understanding of the mechanics of driving.

While I’m quick to disown the “driving purists” who seem to want us all to go back to wearing aviation goggles while we drive, we must walk a fine line about understanding how to operate a vehicle… regardless of how “appliance-like” they get, because there’s no amount of technology that can make up for the fact that you’re still piloting several hundred pounds of metal projectile down the road.

But no, we’re not all still driving cars with drum brakes, manual-chokes, wood-spoke wheels and open-diffs. Nope, these “automotive-luddites” are perfectly content to use technology when they don’t feel “doing it old school” can help their manliness. Driving a stick-shift is what real men do, one wheel peels aren’t.

The PS3 is even better because most games support Dolby Digital 5.1 native – the PS2 lacked the processing power to generate this signal dynamically, only pre-rendered cut-scenes had Dolby Digital.

I started out modest – an old “Paramount” Pro Logic decoder, which I eventually traded in for a Yamaha 5.1 receiver. This thing is great – it’ll fill up a huge room with modest speakers no trouble at all, and it’s been in our “great room” since we moved out here. Unfortunately, our “nice TV” broke permanently, and we shut off our satellite TV in favor of streaming NetFlix… meaning my beautiful receiver was relegated to my younger brothers in law playing PS2 on it.

This morning I decided enough of that, I’d bring it up here and use it in our bedroom. Story time over: I decided to see if I could hack digital output from my HP Pavilion a1213w desktop. I checked the motherboard, it’s an Asus K8S-LA “Salmon” board… bit of a piece of shit really, but it does the job.

It sports a RealTek (ugh!) on-board audio with 5.1 output. Awesome – but no digital output in sight. Searching for the manual, I found an S/PDIF output on the board which requires a daughter-board to give you a coaxial/ToSLink output. Check eBay – ~$20… fffffuuuuuu that.

A quick Google search shows plenty of other folks hacking their own so I decided to give it a shot. Ratting through my box of parts, I came up with a 4-pin CD-ROM-Audio cable from years gone past and cut it apart. I also dug out an RCA cable (I went with Coaxial for the PC since my PS3 will be using the only available ToSLink socket on the receiver) and cut it up too.

A simple hack really. Pins 1+2 are ground and digital-out respectively, with the third pin being +5vdc for powering the bits for ToSLink communication… irrelevant for my purposes. I carefully cut the connector to a little larger than the three-pin connector, then used a Dremel with a sanding wheel to smooth it to a perfect three-pin shape. I pulled the unused extra wire out, since I didn’t want to accidentally short my mobo’s +5vdc. I had the black wire on the GND pin and the white on the S/PDIF pin (see diagram at left) and it was a simple matter of soldering colors to colors to connect the RCA. Route it out the back of my PC and into my receiver.

Digging through the RealTek control panel’s “Multi-Channel Sound Manager”, the instant I clicked “Enable Digital Output” the PCM light came on my receiver and I’m good to go. Turn off all the DSP shit the kids had turned on, and my iTunes output is so manly I need chest hair supplements to keep up.

Update: Okay so apparently my RealTek card can’t output Dolby Pro Logic II (or even anything remotely close to surround sound) over S/PDIF – PCM is it (and PCM is limited to two channels). According to a thread on Overclockers, most sound cards are limited like this… if you want surround sound in games, you’re stuck using the analog outputs and the 6ch input on my receiver.

So I scrounged up some 3.5mm to RCA cables, and hooked it up… and low and behold I have full surround on games like Left4Dead. I press the 6ch button on my remote, and I’m switching back to digital output, so I can take advantage of my receiver’s vastly superior DAC for music. Not optimal, but the best I can probably do without a heinously expensive Pro Logic II capable sound card.

That’s what people are basically saying about Facebook these days. I’m not a big Facebook user, but I do have one – and full disclosure, I know someone who’s workin’ for them temporarily, though that hasn’t changed my outlook on the site.

Nope, apparently, there’s a bunch of really smart (HURRRRR) folks out there who have figured out that you should probably avoid using Facebook if you care about your privacy.

Wow – what an earth-shattering revelation. I guess it’s news to these folks, like you should avoid sunbathing if you don’t want suburn, or avoid working in an asbestos mine in 2009 if you don’t want Mesothelioma.

I shudder to think at the magnificent amount of idiocy it takes to think you can go post everything about yourself on the internet (on a “semi-private” site or not) and then be horrified when it shows up elsewhere on the internet.

Or better yet,the skanky girls (and guys) who put naked pictures of themselves on the internet in a locked photobucket, or something like that. They must rationalize it, “oh it’s only in my photobucket” or something. Stop thinking like this right now.

You’re not posting something “on your facebook” you’re posting it on the internet, using facebook. That’s what’s broken here folks, not Facebook’s care (or lack thereof) for your privacy… the expectation of privacy you have when you post your pixelated genitalia on the internet and the shock you have when it shows up “on the internet” is completely and utterly retarded.

Don’t post anything on the internet if you’re not prepared for everyone on the internet to possibly see it.

I could get a muzzle loader, but that doesn’t sound like my idea of a good time – Nor is bow-hunting, though I respect how many it makes some folks feel. Nope, where I come from, I didn’t know anyone that didn’t hunt deer with a rifle.

I asked an Indiana native about it, and he said that the preferred method here is sitting in a treestand, waiting for a deer to walk underneath (or within range of a 12ga slug), and then blowing it away. Apparently hunting with a rifle “wasn’t sporting” in this particular guy’s eyes.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t drive around in a motorhome with jars of my own urine and a sniper rifle (I’m Australian but not that Australian) – but how is sitting in a treestand any more sporting?

Apparently if I pick up enough private property for it to be considered “safe” I’m allowed to do whatever the hell I want, I just need to get rich enough for that to be an option.

Our first certificate was signed by GoDaddy. I used to be the biggest GoDaddy fanboy ever back when they were the cheapest around – but realistically the total cost of ownership on anything sold by GoDaddy is so insanely high really. Sure that first year where your domain is $1.99 or whatever is great, but then you forget about it and they auto-renew it the month before it’s going to expire for $16. That cert that’s $12 with a free year of .com/.net/.org registration suddenly becomes $30.

I’m so sick of their predatory billing and doing the coupon dance every year that I moved all of our domains over to Moniker instead. But now it came time to renew the cert for Sabrienix’s portal… I found namecheap, who resell RapidSSL for a ridiculous $10.95 a month and as near as I can tell there’s no scams or anything.

I was going to just pay for the verification for StartSSL, but unfortunately our car probably needs a tire, and the portal certificate expires tomorrow (which would break Google Checkout) so I wouldn’t be able to get the verification done in time. Boo.

Maybe next year.

… but there’s something just wrong about this. If you moused over the image, you read correctly: his name is Mr Wasup and he’s an NPC in this goofy little MMORPG a few of us have been messing around on called WonderKing. He enjoys talking in horrendous ebonics (both the “double-click sound effects” and his NPC text), beat-boxing and presumably gang warfare with oversized hammers against an eastside group of cacti.

His form is grossly caricatured and basically everything that was wrong with racist cartoons of yesteryear (or today if you’re one of those unfortunate enough to be on the fax-to list for racist cartoons), in fact you’re almost left wondering why the artists and designers didn’t go whole hog. Negotiate product placement for some Kentucky Fried Chicken and some Black and Mild cigars and make some money off the whole thing.

Nope, I’m not entirely sure who’s idea it was, but I just don’t think it was such a great idea. I am, of course, going to hell for laughing when I first saw him.

Here are the few reasons I could come up with off-hand:

• The Overlay. This is a huge feature in my opinion, and it’s all set to get better. Basically you can have either an opaque or transparent overlay over most any game (as long as hackshield/gameguard/punkbuster doesn’t mess with Mumble’s ability to inject the overlay code) so you can still see what’s going on in a full-screen game.It’s set to get better too… open up a Steam game, and press shift+tab. Rumor has it, that’s the direction Mumble’s overlay is headed in.
• The Translations. This is pretty much a non-issue for people like me who only really speak English, but for non-english speakers, it’s a godsend. Instead of half-arsed automated translations that say shit like “Oh, Dios mío, el Minka Aire!” when they really mean “Enable Push-to-Talk”, Mumble has a dedicated group of volunteer translators, most of whom are very skilled in their own language and instead of taking the source text and translating it out-of-context, will translate it based off their own usage of Mumble and knowing what the function does.
• The Quality. Not only does Mumble sound awesome (full disclosure: TS3 rivals it at times because they share the CELT codec), but it’s well written code as well. The bulk of the software is written using publicly available libraries like QT4 and Google Proto Buffers which means that much of the code has already been audited and vetted by thousands of other developers and any bugs show up quite quickly.

  We have a disclaimer on our Mumble servers webpage about how Murmur is constantly under development and “Bad Things” can happen because we were expecting Murmur to crash every so often. We  typically track the git HEAD at each release and we build on a not-terribly-well-supported OS (FreeBSD) so naturally we were expecting to have a few bombs here and there.

  So far though, we’ve had exactly one (knock on wood) Murmur crash, and the cron script brought it straight back up. Our UK server was unsatisfactory, but that was the host’s fault not Murmurs.

• It’s Growing and Evolving. Mumble hasn’t really stagnated at all in it’s history – it’s constantly evolving and there’s always something new to look forward to. It doesn’t sit with the same release for two years because there’s been no security bugs.

Overall, if you’re a voice-chat user and you haven’t given it a shot (or worse, you used it in the 1.1 days and wrote it off), I genuinely urge you to give it a shot.

So we setup Nagios on a small VPS and we now have it monitoring all our servers, including the public instance on each of our Murmurs. We were monitoring Murmur using check_tcp, which is basically the same check Pingdom uses… unfortunately it’s really bloody noisy in the logs!

So I went on IRC and bugged pcgod for his Python Mumble-Pinger script, which implements the UDP ping-sweep used by the Mumble client’s connect dialog, and returns your ping to the server, how many users are on it, etc.

It was a hop, skip and a jump to modify it to output something useful to Nagios – I removed the timestamp and added “OK ” in front of the output – I believe this is optional because Nagios mainly goes off the return code of the script. Speaking of which, I modified the exception for the socket timeout (to indicate the server’s down) to print something like “CRITICAL – UDP Socket Timeout”, and to exit with return code 2.

A quick command definition in Nagios, and it’s working. It’s not great – there’s no support for warnings for elevated pings or anything like that… but it’s working. I’ll probably go through and write a better one and post it eventually, but right now I’m busy going through moderating all the junk from my comments… Viagra? Slimquick review? GTFO.

Last night’s karate class was one of the worst-feeling experiences I’ve had in a long time – if that sounds bad, I don’t mean it to… I had an absolute blast, but jesus I’m sore.

One of our instructors has been doing some Kali seminars, so he ran us through some real basic Kali training in the last few weeks. It’s not the sort of school where they do an 8 hour training seminar and then come try to teach us, no no… that’s not the purpose here. We’re not actually trying to train in Kali, our interest is in how to defend it. But if no one knows how to swing a stick, our practice is going to be pretty unrealistic and uninteresting.

So last night it was decided that the kids weren’t putting enough into it, they weren’t taking it serious enough. So we did a little bit of light sparring with foam covered escrima… let me tell you, the foam doesn’t do a whole lot when you get a couple of adults who should know better acting like kids (Tyler and I). I’ve a couple of nasty bruises on my body that hasn’t really seen these kind of welts since I quit playing paintball on a regular basis.

I took a couple of shots to the wrists as well, courtesy of Tyler’s training. After that we moved onto disarms and takedowns, which basically involved rolling into wristlocks at it’s core… more stress on the wrists.

It was a total blast though, I learned a lot and got some real good practice in… I’m just sore as shit.

Today I was supposed to split some more wood, but I knew as soon as I woke up it just wasn’t going to happen. I experimented with our new Nagios system, despite the fact it’ll probably be tore up when the box it’s on moves to it’s new host. We’ll probably be ditching Pingdom – which sucks, because I kind of like it, but it’s just cheaper and more effective to rent a decent VPS and run Nagios from it than paying to monitor all our services from Pingdom.

I went through and moderated some comments on this blog and on the Moodoo forums – same spammy crap really, water filters, diet pills, accutane reviews, but strangely no porn. I suppose I wouldn’t really mind unsolicited email and links if they were remotely relevant to my interests, but they never seem to be.

I’ve been playing a little bit of MAG lately, which is probably what I’m about to go do in a moment. My brother in law bought it on the advice of a friend of his, and then promptly decided he hated it. I was in on the original Beta (one of the few beta invitations I got from Twitter, but not the one I really wanted) and I thought the game was just not fun.

I’m sure I’ll wind up writing a review eventually, but here’s the long and short of it… in an FPS, if you’ve got one or two noobs on your team but otherwise the rest of your team is evenly matched to the rest of everyone on the other team, you’re bound to lose. MAG is like that, except that with 256 players you’re bound to have a lot more noobs. During the Beta, I never played a single game that wasn’t a roll one way or the other, either my team lost by a landslide, or we won by a landslide.

I don’t know what they changed since Beta, but it’s actually a lot more fun. It might just be that at the lowly level of 7 I’m not high enough to play with the good players, because most every game I’ve gone into I’ve kicked ass – and I don’t say this to toot my own horn, because I’m really not that great at FPSes. But it’s definitely a whole lot more fun than it was, and it’s a lot prettier too. It doesn’t have the visual polish of say, Modern Warfare 2 – but fuck, when there’s 256 people in a map, with vehicles and artillery and everything else going on, it’s no surprise there.

If you played it during Beta and like me, wrote it off – I’d urge you to at least rent the game and give it another shot.

Perhaps it’s because I’m Australian, but the “cowboy” fantasy thing growing up was never really there – the only real exposure I had to cowboys was that my dad was a huge fan of Mel Brooks, so I saw Blazing Saddles at an age that was most likely far too early.

That lack of cowboy hysteria growing up didn’t stop me from enjoying Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood though. Nope, what follows is an interesting story (even if a little far-fetched) that spans from the civil war onwards. The civil war parts are actually pretty cool – they show how fucked up it must have been for both sides, without taking the southern-apologetics stance that pisses everyone off. Nope, Barnsby is every bit the racist southern scumbag we all love to hate.

As a first person shooter, CoJBiB ain’t terrible. It’s not awesome, nor is it gorgeous for showing off the PS3’s capabilities in the same way as say, CoD4… but it’s solid and I had a good time playing it. The story’s a bit far-fetched, but hey, what good cowboy story isn’t – and it kept me up until 4am one morning playing it.

If it’s starting to sound like I don’t have any real complaints about it, well, think again. First of all the most aggravating thing is that the game freezes for a half second or so at every checkpoint – the way it does this doesn’t make me think it’s intentional.

The controls are also not very customizable, with you only having about five choices for control schemes and no ability to change anything manually. That’s fine in the instance of say, MAG… who’s controls closely mirror the standard used in CoD et al. But if you’re going to change things up, you bloody well better have a way to change them back.

At first the weapons-select thing pissed me off, but I quickly got used to it and it actually worked out pretty well, particularly when you have an inventory full of weapons.

My final gripe – this game suffers badly from assuming you have a great new TV: the Indians in the mountains of Arizona are almost impossible to see at times, so you basically wave your reticule around until it turns red. I’m not sure how badly it affects those with HDTVs, but my SD CRT turned into a nightmare on that level.

The gunslinger duel portions of the game are pretty intense, depicting really well the nervousness that must have gone into the whole thing – though I’m not entirely sure why everyone waits for a bell to draw in the game. They can get aggravating if you’re not good at them, but once you start figuring out the best place on the screen to keep the enemy and the perfect spot to keep your hand you can breeze through them most of the time. Barnsby, who’s supposed to be really really quick on the draw, was down for the count on my 4th try on medium difficulty – which didn’t seem too terrible to me.

Online Multiplayer in Bound in Blood is “there”, and there are some clever additions such as bank robberies and western-twists on the whole “marked man” thing but it’s not exactly a dynamite experience, and it’s also a bit of a ghost town at the moment (though you can definitely find a game, unlike F.E.A.R.2).

I think I would have been upset if I’d paid full price for this game, on account of it wouldn’t have kept my attention for very long at all. But now it’s down under $20 used, I think it’s worth a play. When it drops down below $15, without question pick it up.