As I surf through various news sites around the web, I often enjoy reading user comments. On many of the sites I frequent, the comments truly add to the discussion and are a good for a belly laugh or two (or three). The feedback left on nearly every story at Gizmodo is hilarious, and visitors to Slashdot are often quite funny as well, making those my favorite tech news sites. Other sites can be hit or miss. Take Digg.com for example. Occasionally, some classic comments can appear on a popular story, providing some insight into the story, or more often, supplying a funny, sarcastic remark about the story as a whole. Other times, the comments are mostly juvenile and unhelpful.

Unfortunately, the comments on some sites are painful to read. Take my favorite gaming news site, Blue's News. Nearly every comment on the site falls into one of these categories:

• {Insert Game or Publisher Here} is Lame
• {Insert Game 1 Here} is Better Than {Insert Game 2 Here}
• Software Pirates Rule
• Steam Sucks
• OMG PONIES!
• Yo momma!

The target demographic of the site is most likely males aged 13 to 21, but you'd think that someone would eventually have something good to say. Are there no civilized gaming websites in the world? This problem doesn't just affect gaming websites. Places like CNN.com or our local news station WRAL are nearly as bad. It's a shame that discussions vary so much. Do you read the comments at various news web sites? If so, what do you think?

I'm not exactly sure when Valve made them available, but player statistics are now publicly viewable on the web. You can keep tabs on my stats as I make progress on the various achievements recently added for the Medic and Pyro classes. If you click the "Return to jgbCodeMonkey's Steam ID" link, you can view stats for a few other games (though not all games report stats).

In other related news, Valve has recently put up an official Team Fortress 2 Blog. Lots of behind-the-scenes artwork is being shown, and some explanations for decisions they've made are presented. While the blog isn't the most active in the world, the nuggets of information they have provided so far are quite intriguing. Definitely a recommended read for fans of the game.

On Saturday, Blizzard officially announced Diablo III, the next in the highly popular role-playing game series. Although the first Diablo was fun, it was Diablo II that put the series into the upper echelons of gaming. It has been over 7 years since the one and only expansion pack for Diablo II was released, enabling the game to run at 800x600 instead of a paltry 640x480 (those were the days).

I highly recommend the game play trailer on the official website (linked above). One of Blizzard's employees shows a number of new game mechanics (destructible environments that you can use to your advantage), as well as one of the new playable classes (the witch doctor, which looks super cool). I am super excited about this title, and I'll definitely be picking it up once it's released. Blizzard, like Valve, seldom disappoints with their releases, and this is one to definitely watch.

It's no surprise that the internet, along with 24-hour news channels, are killing off newspapers as a whole. But it seems as if the end of newsprint is nearer than expected. Earlier this month McClatchy Company, the group responsible for publishing our local Raleigh News & Observer, slashed over 10% of its workforce. This cut leads to the inevitable: less news in the newspaper.

When I read the newspaper, I mainly look at the local news section, the business section, and the comics (the most important part). The News & Observer will be merging the business section with the local news section, cutting coverage in both sections in the process. Happily, the comics section is (for now) being left alone. But these changes are leaving less for me to look forward to. I can only see this change as a snowball effect. Provide readers with less content and they'll leave. Have readers leave, and then cut back even more as a result, causing yet more readers to leave.

How do you purchase your music? Does anyone still buy CDs, or has everyone moved to digital music? And where do you purchase your music from?

Call me old school, but I still purchase CDs through my favorite retailer Amazon.com (I gave up buying music from brick and mortar stores long ago). Seeing as my musical tastes are outside of the mainstream, it's not surprising that many of the albums on my radar are difficult to find. For example, I recently picked up a few albums from 1970's progressive rock band Camel, and both were imports (and therefore more expensive than the domestic albums might be). But the imports were the only thing available. One other album I'm seeking is currently marked as shipping in '4 to 6 weeks' which, in Amazon speak, means that it's unlikely to ever be available again. This isn't an isolated case; I'm finding that it's increasingly difficult to find certain albums on CD.

As a result, I'm wondering whether it's worth buying CDs anymore. I primarily listen to CDs on my way to and from work, though I listen to my iPod exclusively at work and on the occasional trip somewhere. When I'm at home, I listen to my music through either iTunes or WinAmp. Having a CD gives me something tangible as well as a backup (in case the digital rip gets destroyed or corrupted). But CDs have their own problems. The jewel cases are bulky (they way a ton en mass), and they're always a bother to open up after purchasing them (what's with all those stickers and cellophane wrap?).

The Amazon MP3 Store seems very appealing, in that all the offered music is DRM free. But, not surprisingly, not every album is available. So what do you do?

The fine folks at Valve have updated Team Fortress 2 once again, bringing new achievements, unlockable weapons, and a core change to the Pyro class. Along with all of these changes come two new community maps: one control point map and one capture the flag map. If you're interested in checking out the new content for free, you can do so this weekend, from June 20 to June 22. As always, friend me up if you jump into a game; my nickname is jgbCodeMonkey.

I recently noted in Firefox 3.0 RC 2 that the sort order for autocompleting input fields is broken. In Firefox 2.x, items are sorted alphabetically (different from the insertion order scheme used in Firefox 1.x, if I recall correctly). Now, it appears that the items are sorted according to how they were inserted, with the most recent entries appearing on the bottom. This strange result unfortunately affects Googlebar Lite, beginning with Firefox 3 builds. I haven't received any complaints about this at the moment, but I'm guessing that most people haven't switched away from 2.x, so no one has caught it yet.

It's possible that this issue is a valid Firefox bug. I see that bug 418343 has been written against the search autocomplete results, though I'm guessing it applies to all autocompleting elements (with the exception of the AwesomeBar).

The autocomplete textbox inherits the sortDirection property from the base XUL element, but I have yet to try setting that manually to see if it has any effect. And I'm not sure whether to set it on the textbox itself, or on one of the child elements that lives inside.

Hopefully setting this property will fix the issue, though I'm only given three sort options: ascending, descending, and natural. I'm guessing that the natural option is what I'm seeing now in Firefox 3, with newest at the bottom. One of the largest feature requests that I get for Googlebar Lite is to sort search history items in the order they were inserted, with newest at the top. While I may not be able to easily sort things like people want, I might at least be able to return to the behavior seen in 2.x.

Mozilla Developer News reports that Firefox 3 will be officially launched next Tuesday, June 17. Make sure you download your copy that day, to help Mozilla break the world download record. I've been using Firefox 3 for a while now, and it's worlds better than Firefox 2 (which was already super awesome).

I have added a new section to the sidebar of this site, showing the most recent comments posted here. Hopefully, this will help foster further discussion on older topics (which occasionally get comments). This new feature comes via the aptly named Recent Comments WordPress plug-in. I'm quite impressed with the customization options available, and installation was a snap.

Does anyone have any recommendations for how the recent comments list should appear? Plenty of options are available, including an excerpt preview of each comment. I tried several options out, but I'm not sure what visitors would find most useful.

Your suggestions would be appreciated.

Are there any readers here who use Windows and don't make use of an anti-virus client? I've been thinking about ditching my anti-virus client altogether on my personal system, and after reading an interesting article on the subject, I'm wondering if anyone else out there has taken this route. In my experience, anti-virus solutions are slow, ineffective (I'm not sure they've ever flagged anything for me over the years), and are generally a bother to keep up with.

If you've ditched anti-virus, why'd you do it? And what have been your results?

It's official: I am switching to Firefox 3 RC1 as my primary web browser. All of the extensions I use are now compatible in some form or another (Firebug and Linkification are still in 'beta'), so that's no longer holding me back.

One interesting note about Firebug. The new version has removed the 'Disable / Enable' feature for individual sites. Or so I thought. This functionality has now been moved to the Network Monitor and Script Debugger sections of the extension. In other words, I can now explore the DOM tree for any site, without having to pay the performance hit from the network monitoring code. Woo-hoo!

While working on a Windows batch script earlier today, I ran across an interesting side effect of the call and exit commands. Let's take this simple example, which we'll name script_a.bat:

@echo off
SETLOCAL

call :function
cd %SOME_PATH%

goto :functionEnd
:function
    set foobar=1
    if "%foobar%" == "1" exit /B 1
    goto :EOF
:functionEnd

Unlike Bash, Windows batch files have no function capabilities. Clever hacks like the above can be used to fake out functions, but these hacks hide some subtle quirks. You see that exit call within the 'function'? It only gets called if the %foobar% variable is equal to 1 (which is always the case, in our example). Also note that we exit with an error code of 1. So, in short, this script should always return an exit code of 1. Now, let's create another batch script which we'll name script_b.bat:

@echo off

call script_a.bat
echo Exit Code = %ERRORLEVEL%

This second script is very simple. All we do is call script_a.bat, and then print its resulting return code. What do you expect the return code to be? One would expect it to be 1, but it's not! Our second script will actually print out Exit Code = 0. Why is this?

The answer lies in the call command. Again, unlike Bash scripts, stand-alone batch files do not create their own context when executed. But if you use the call command, the thing you call does get its own context. How weird is that? So, let's trace the first script we wrote to figure out where the error code gets changed.

After some initial setup, we call our function (call :function). Inside our function, we create a variable, initialize it to 1, then test to see if the value is 1. Since the value is indeed 1, the if test succeeds, and the exit command is called. But we don't exit the script; instead, we exit the context that was created when we called our function. Note that immediately after we call our function, we perform a cd operation. This line of code gets executed, succeeds, and sets the %ERRORLEVEL% global to 0.

In order to exit properly, we have to exit our initial script twice, like this:

@echo off
SETLOCAL

call :function
if "%ERRORLEVEL%" == "1" exit /B 1

cd %SOME_PATH%

goto :functionEnd
:function
    set foobar=1
    if "%foobar%" == "1" exit /B 1
    goto :EOF
:functionEnd

See the new exit call after our initial function call? Then, and only then, will our second script print out what we expected. This subtle behavior stymied me for several hours today; hopefully this short post will help someone else avoid this frustration.

The season finale for The Office was aired last night, and it really threw me for a loop. A lot of what I expected to happen didn't, and some surprising twists and turns occurred throughout the entire episode. Some of my predictions are coming to fruition, though others may be increasingly off the mark. Like before, there are spoilers ahead so be forewarned.

Jim and Pam

I'm surprised that the Jim-Pam storyline took a turn at the end, with Jim failing to propose to Pam (as I expected would happen). Hopefully we'll see the couple take this step at the beginning of next season. I'm not sure I can take the tension any longer!

Jim taking career risks

Jim's two voice-mails to Ryan don't bode well for the future of his career. If Ryan is able to dodge his current criminal problems, Jim could be in trouble.

Ryan gets his comeuppance

This prediction came true, though not in the way I expected. It seemed to me that Ryan's drug problem would catch up to him, but it turns out that his business fraud was what got him into trouble with the law.

Michael grows up

For the first three-quarters of this episode, Michael was maturing at an incredible pace. His behavior around Holly, the new HR rep, was remarkable. Unfortunately, he relapses after finding out Jan is pregnant. I truly hope he ditches Jan and doesn't fall back into his old ways.

Angela, Andy, and Dwight

I certainly didn't see the Angela-Andy proposal coming. And what's up with Angela and Dwight at the very end of the episode? Who knew that they have apparently been seeing one another? This storyline should be very interesting to follow.

Holly and Kevin

I absolutely loved the running joke where Holly thought that Kevin was slow-minded. The entire gag was genuinely funny, and Brian Baumgartner did an amazing job as Kevin (this is his best performance so far in this show).

What did you think of the finale? Are you as excited about next year's season as I am?

Back in November, I picked up a Kensington Digital FM Transmitter for my iPod Classic. And on my way back from Dustin and Sarah's wedding yesterday (congratulations, you guys!), it occurred to me that I hadn't yet posted a review of the device.

Having never used an FM transmitter before, I was unsure about the reception quality. Thankfully, this specific Kensington model is top notch. It's rare that I encounter static, and I've noted that it most often happens when driving under a particularly large overpass. The audio quality is excellent, though I find that I have to turn up the volume on my car stereo a little higher than I normally would with the corresponding audio CD. This might simply be related to the compression that MP3's provide, but it's a minor nuisance.

The unit provides 3 preset buttons, which is very useful to lock in multiple unused stations. This feature was really handy when I went to the mountains last Thanksgiving; one of the preset stations I was using in the RTP area was being used in the Asheville area, and switching was simply a matter of pressing a button (and then tuning to the right place on the receiver).

While your iPod is attached, the unit charges the battery. Unfortunately, there's no option to not charge the battery, which would be useful for battery conditioning purposes. I don't use this unit every day, so this minor problem doesn't impact me as much. One other minor annoyance is that the iPod-style connector doesn't lock into place. This makes it much easier for the cable to fall out, though I have only seen this happen a time or two.

Overall, I really like this unit. According to the Amazon product page, this particular model is being phased out and replaced by the Kensington LiquidFM Transmitter, which has much lower reviews. If you want one of these models, I suggest picking it up ASAP. You will not be disappointed.

I completed Crysis yesterday, so I thought I would post a few quick thoughts on my experience:

What I Liked

• As can be expected, the graphics in this game are insane. The jungle atmosphere is spot-on, physics are incredible, lighting is superb, and character modeling is excellent. Visually, this game is a real treat to play.
• The nano-suit which the player wears is an interesting game play mechanic. 'Health' is handled via the nano-suit, and the abilities which the suit provides (speed, strength, armor, and cloak) are fun to play with.
• Level design is excellent. All of the locations feel incredibly realistic, and there's a ton to explore. I'll probably play through the game once more just to fully explore each map, because I know there's a ton of stuff I missed.

What I Didn't Like

• Crysis isn't near as long as Far Cry, which really disappointed me. Likewise, the maps in Crysis aren't as large either.
• Crysis has an incredibly weak story line, much like Far Cry did. This comes as no surprise, especially in the FPS genre, but I was hoping for a little more meat than what I was given.
• Again, just like Far Cry, the game turns into a battle against alien forces. I really enjoyed battling the human forces in the early parts of this game, and I wish Crytek had stuck to that theme. The later alien-based levels are, for the most part, not very fun. Why can't we get a game that uses this style engine and doesn't devolve into a 'save-the-world-from-alien-attack' kind of story? Perhaps Far Cry 2 will provide the kind of experience I'm looking for.
• Difficulty is really uneven. I played through on the 'Normal' difficulty, and found myself stuck at a few places (though I never got stuck permanently). Some battles are surprisingly easy, while others are incredibly hard to survive.
• Some of the vehicles the player gets to drive are woefully difficult to maneuver, which is frustrating. I'm not entirely sure why this is, because the vehicles in Far Cry were a pleasure to drive.
• This game is a system hog. I played at 1280x1024 on the High setting (no anti-aliasing or anything fancy), and there were still a few moments where things really chugged (entering and exiting buildings especially). Overall my experience was smooth, but these moments of stuttering killed some of the immersion factor.

I'm not sure if I can recommend this game or not. It's worth playing through for the eye candy, but some of the game's frustrations cancel out that fun. My final verdict for Crysis? C+

A recent Lifehacker article on the Top 10 Tools to Get Blogging Done featured my oh-so-handy CoLT extension. Unfortunately the article linked to the old URL, for which I failed to provide a redirect. This problem is now fixed, and the broken URL now redirects to the new location.

You've got to tell me about this kind of stuff people!

I just finished Half-Life 2: Episode Two again. Playing it through on my new computer was a real treat, and the ending of this episode still brings a tear to my eye. One thing jumped out at me for the first time on this play-through: the end credits. Valve has chosen to present the end credits in a short, yet elegant way. Every contributor is listed in alphabetical order by last name, with only a few notable exceptions (all the voice talent is singled out, for example). The result is a short, concise credits sequence that isn't a bore to sit through. Compare this with the end credits for Call of Duty 4, which go on for so long that a rap song is performed to break the monotony (I believe the end credits are on the order of 3 or 4 minutes long in that particular title).

I'd really like to see more end credit sequences patterned after Valve's design. Others may disagree, but knowing who did what on a project isn't very important. Listing each contributor in a single group levels the playing field and gives everyone an equal measure of thanks.

I'm a big fan of The Office, the comedy television show on NBC (hopefully everyone else is too). Last night's episode was great, and it provided a glimpse of what might be coming down the pipeline (there are only 2 episodes left this season). Here are a few predictions I have for where this series is headed; note the possible spoilers ahead:

Jim proposes to Pam

This seems pretty obvious, and I wouldn't be surprised if it happens during the last episode of this season (and on top of the Dunder-Mifflin building). The proposal will most likely occur either during or immediately after the events of my next prediction...

Jim to be fired (or transferred)

Ryan had some harsh words of warning for Jim last night, thanks to a spiteful Toby (who's scheduled to depart in the coming weeks). I predict that Jim will indeed either (a) be let go from the company, or (b) be transferred away from the Scranton branch, due to his 'wasting time' at work. The latter option in my opinion is most likely, and I predict that he gets transferred to the Dunder-Mifflin branch in Utica, which is now managed by his previous girlfriend Karen. Awkward situations are bound to follow, especially if Pam comes along for the ride (as Jim's fiancée).

Ryan gets his comeuppance

It's pretty obvious that Ryan is a jerk, and we've now learned that he has a drug problem. I predict that this will catch up to him, and he will fall from his current heights, providing him with some much needed payback.

Roy to return?

If we assume that Jim leaves the Scranton office, and Pam doesn't come along, his relationship with her will be subsequently strained. I predict that Roy will make another appearance (perhaps hired by Vance refrigeration?), and will cast some doubt in Pam's mind as to who she should be with.

Michael grows up

For the first time ever, we are seeing some growth in Michael. He finally stood up to Jan, and he showed much more maturity with Stanley in last night's episode. I think Michael will continue to mature, and the show will slowly stop revolving around his character (it's time to flesh out some of the other characters in the show).

NBC has ordered an entire season of The Office for next year, so I'm excited to see where things are headed. What are your predictions?

The long-awaited update to Team Fortress 2 was released Tuesday evening, so I've only had a brief amount of time to play around with Gold Rush, the map showcasing the new payload game type. In a word, the new game play theme is awesome. Gold Rush is much more enjoyable than Dustbowl (which I love, by the way), and I really hope more maps of this type are released over time.

Here's how Gold Rush works. A mine cart, carrying a Fat Man style bomb, must be moved from point A to point B through 3 different stages. The attacking team (BLU) moves the cart simply by standing near it; the more team members surround the cart, the faster it moves. If the cart is left unattended for 30 seconds, it begins to move backwards towards the starting point. The map is played just like Dustbowl; there are a total of 3 stages in which BLU attacks and RED defends. Once either BLU successfully attacks all stages, or RED successfully defends a stage, the teams swap sides and the stages are played again.

Gold Rush is definitely a tough map. The defending team almost always has a height advantage, making it difficult to make quick progress. A number of choke points slow things down even more. But like every other map in Team Fortress 2, things are very well balanced.

The other major change to the game comes through the new unlockable weapons and achievements. Medic is the only player class that currently supports these new features, so everyone is inevitably playing as a Medic. A total of 36 new achievements are available, and for every 12 that you unlock, a new weapon option becomes available. First up is "The Blutsauger," a syringe gun mod that leeches health from each enemy you hit. Next is "The Kritzkrieg," a medi-gun mod that gives the person you use it on a 100% chance of firing critical damage (instead of the standard Ubercharge). Finally, "The Ubersaw" bone-saw mod provides a 25% charge to your Ubercharge meter for every hit you make on an enemy. I've only gotten 4 out of the 36 achievements so far (Surgical Prep, Trauma Queen, Intern, and Group Health), so I've got quite a ways to go. Some of the achievements look impossible to get, so I doubt I'll make it all the way.

If you'd like to try out Team Fortress 2, along with the new updates, Valve is offering a free weekend this weekend (May 5-6). I can't recommend this game highly enough, and the Steam service is great, so check it out. If you do check it out, look for me; my username is jgbCodeMonkey.

Last week, I rebuilt my computer again (making this the third machine I've run on since this site opened up). Here's the list of what I upgraded in the system:

ABit IP35 Pro Motherboard

A great motherboard with passive coolers on the MCH, ICH, and PWM component areas. A very handy digital readout is available on the board to troubleshoot boot-up issues (no more beep codes), and the overall layout is excellent. However, I have a few minor problems with the board. The SATA connectors are angled at 90 degrees, making it very difficult to attach the cables from my drives. I'm currently using SATA ports 5 and 6, because ports 1 through 4 are physically inaccessible. Also, my wireless network card wasn't happy with the board, and I had to switch back to my old one, which has lousy reception. I'm going to fix this problem in a novel way; stay tuned for further details.

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale CPU @ 3.0 GHz

After much thought, I decided to go back to an Intel CPU (after using an AMD X2 4400+ for a while). The Intel chips are just faster right now, and they use less power, allowing them to run a little cooler. I had a difficult time getting the stock heat sink to snap into the mounting holes on the motherboard, causing the motherboard to bend around the CPU socket (which concerns me). I'll probably spring for an after-market cooler at some point to remedy this situation.

2 GB of Geil DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) SDRAM

I've never used the Geil brand of memory before, but Anandtech recommended it on their last holiday buying guide, so I picked some up. The chips run at a default 5-5-5-15 timing, but they support 4-4-4-12. I made one attempt at overclocking the chips, but Windows wouldn't boot, so I reverted back to the defaults. Changes in the default memory voltage is probably warranted here, which is something I failed to do on my first try. The copper-orange heat spreaders are very sexy.

BFG Tech GeForce 8800 GTS (G92) 512 MB

The 8800 GTS-512 line of graphics cards is based on the new nVidia G92 chipset (using a 65nm die). It's notably faster than the 8800 GT, which is the card I had my eye on for a long time. The 8800 GTS has a larger cooler that's not as loud, and it's a beast of a graphics card. This is the first card I've had that takes up two slots on the motherboard, leaving me with only 2 out of the 3 available PCI slots. It runs a little warm (70 degrees Celsius at load), but I'm willing to live with that for now.

Corsair CMPSU-620HX 620W Power Supply

I was concerned that my old 500 W power supply wouldn't have the juice required for this new build, so I bought this highly recommended Corsair model. It's modular, which allows me to use as few cables as I need, and it's incredibly quiet.

2 Seagate Barracuda SATA 250 GB Hard Drives

These Seagate drives are a little faster than my old ones, they're 90 GB larger, and they have double the cache (16 MB).

I have been test driving this new setup with a few games. Call of Duty 4 looks amazing in high resolution with all the eye candy turned on, and it has elevated my opinion of the game. The Crysis demo ran great at 1280 x 1024 at the 'High' graphics setting, and I may be able to push it a little farther (I've ordered the full game, by the way; I'm very excited). Team Fortress 2 is thrilling at 1600 x 1200, and even Half-Life 2, which will be four years old later this year, looks great running at 1600 x 1200 with 4x FSAA. Half-Life 2: Episode 2 should be equally as nice.