LANCOZA Blog

When I first upgraded to Ubuntu 8.04 I was caught in the rapture of a true Linux zealot. Flowers abounded and I am sure that I heard the sound of music. This was quickly erased by the proceeding 2.5 hour marathon to re-install my HP 1020 printer. This process was made all the more painful by the fact that the problem was caused when my printer ran out of paper. The printer froze in an error state and the only solution was to run HP-Setup and re-install the printer again. This is patently ridiculous. Before the Windows fan boys start rubbing their hands with glee - I do not blame Ubuntu for this, this appears to be a problem specific to the 1020 in Linux. Apparently problems can arise because the 1020 does not have it's own firmware and has to have the driver related info fed from the PC.The other issue relates to a conflict between CUPS and the HP software regarding the  USB connection. I cannot go into more detail because I was starting to fall asleep and with the printer re-installed I really didn't care for more information.

As of last night, my printer works perfectly. I re-installed Virtual Box and my Windows XP emulation works well too. There are a few areas that I wish that Ubuntu was more Windows-like and that OpenOffice was more MS Office like but as it stands I am very happy to have a PC which is spyware and virus free.

The local launch date for Street Fighter 4 has finally been released. Nu Metro secured the Capcom license and announced that it will reach our shores on 27 February. This date is subject to change and for the sake of our local gaming market I hope that the change means an earlier release date.

The Capcom license debacle is yet another example of our local distributors not  getting their act together. It also acts as additional incentive for gamers to import their games so that they receive the game on release day. In the end it's the small, independant, retailers that suffer but as we well know by now, the distributors only care about volume of sales not small retailers.

 

I have worked on Ubuntu 8.04 a bit more and I really like it. I have not noticed alot of major changes to the OS but the GUI looks more polished and seems to work alot smoother.

Linux has far better security than Windows and with the new releases of Ubuntu, they are closing the gap on the Windows holy grail of ease of use.

Each time we receive a price list from MI Digital , more hardware disapears from it. The first item was the wired controller, then the wireless receiver for PC and then the wired headset. I can't really imagine what will be next. If you have a warranty claim on any of the above, what will they do?

I can't see the sense of it. My guess is that the wired controllers are most popular with the PC crowd. But without the wireless receivers, they are completely out of options which means that MID is excluding the PC gaming market segment which also makes no sense unless of course it was not worth much to them to begin with. But Microsoft is heavily invested in PC gaming...

Divining the opaque motives of local distributors has never been easy, and the ever shrinking list of Xbox 360 hardware beggars belief.

I finally upgraded to Ubuntu 8.04 , I was tempted to do it on the day of release but sanity prevailed. A few months after the release, most of the bugs have been worked out and my installation was relatively smooth.

I had to download about 500MB of updates which took a while, and the install process was smooth until it failed with 4 minutes left. But a bit of Googling soon fixed the problem, I had to repair a few packages and then resume the installation.  I have not noticed any gound breaking improvements but I have read reports that wireless support is greatly improved.

The part that I am most happy about is the fact that I did not have to format and re-install in order to upgrade to 8.04. I was considering moving back to XP but with this upgrade I am going to stick to Ubuntu and see how it goes.

Tycho over at Penny Arcade says that there is nothing wrong with the Resident Evil 5 controls . Although I would not call them sluggish more stunted and unnecessarily cumbersome. The control scheme for a first or third person shooter does not have to be fine tuned to maximise your twitch reflex but it also should not be so cumbersome that it acts as a barrier to the game experience.

In other news, Nintendo plan on converting you all to Islam, so you had better be prepared .

The local Capcom license is floating freely at present. This means that the release dates for Resident Evil 5 and Street Fighter IV are in doubt. The forum grapevine mentioned that there have been several delays with the release of Capcom games and this hints at problems with the distributor. It may also explain why the license is in its current state of limbo.

For all the RE and SF fans out there, the best option will be to import the title from one of the International online retailers.

The Live Horde adventure was resumed recently, our merry band of 5 managed to get to level 31 before the Witching hour interrupted festivities. In a confined space the Blood Mounts are a force to be reckoned with. I highly recomend the River level.It suits my style of play because I prefer a support role and the sniping position that I found alternately spawns the Torque bow and Longshot rifle.

I knew we were in unknown territory when 3 active reload, headshots failed to take down a Boomer .

My first encounter with Street Fighter was in a local arcade called the Outer Zone in Kenilworth. My main interest was in games like Raiden and Final Fight so I was not particularly excited about it. I am also not good at fighting games, my twitch reflex is a bit delayed so I generally steer clear of them except for the easy ones like World Heroes (not Jet) .

When Street Fighter 2 came out, I bought a gaming magazine and studied each new character in detail. I decided that Dhalsim was perfectly suited to my style of play but in actual fact he was really slow and it also did not help that I was unable to do any of his special moves.

Street Fighter IV is coming out soon, and the trailers are very promising. There is a limited edition available as well as a few arcade sticks. Although which one you buy will depend on how deep your pockets are and whether you can find one.

I have seen a few posts mention that the cheaper Hori sticks are a viable alternative to the Tournament Edition from Mad Catz . When I was in Tokyo, I went shopping for arcade sticks and I found the cheaper Hori sticks were very cheaply made and not really worth the price. Hori has also released new Street Fighter IV sticks for the PS3 and Xbox 360 and these may be worth a look.

 If you are a fan of the franchise, the latest Street Fighter looks like it is definitely worth getting.

Our webhost has done some routine maintenence which appears to have affected the images loading on our website. We have contacted the Support desk and they should resolve the problem soon.

If you notice any other strange behaviour on the site, please drop us a line.

It looks like Microsoft and MI Digital have back tracked on the ridiculous price increases for their games. Complaints and pressure from gamers on Tech sites and forums have been successful in forcing the change.

I was really sceptical about the success of the campaign but I am really glad to see that gamers have made MS and MID buckle under the pressure.

I have still not received the updated price list from MID but this should hopefully arrive in my mailbox soon. We even made headlines internationally .

I was quite excited about this custom firmware which promised to provide a cheap wireless ethernet adapter for my Xbox. Until I realised that I don't have a spare wireless router in my attic and buying a new one would still cost me about R500-R600.

I then did some Googling and discovered that there are a few wireless ethernet adapters on the market which I could buy, but none of them are any good. I also prefer that the more expensive the device the more feature rich it should be. So an over-priced ethernet adapter should work with more than just my Xbox.

In the end Zak shot down my geek-project with a few well placed words. It would be cheaper to run a single cable from my existing wireless ADSL router to a cheap hub and then to my PC, Xbox and Xbox 360. In the end it may not get me any geek-points but is the more robust solution.