SpawnPoint

My sister got married two weeks ago, this isn't something I'd normally blog about but there were some circumstances that made it a bit more special than your usual wedding.

This was my sisters second wedding, her first husband died of leukemia after a year long battle about three and a half years ago, aged 33.  It's impossible for me to explain just how tough this was for her, they'd had a child about ten months before he got ill, so looking after a child and a seriously ill husband was extremely hard.  The next few years were also extremely tough as she dealt with the grief, raising a child and then trying to move on with her life.

She started dating again and met her future husband after appearing in a TV documentary called Young And Widowed (not 100% on the title).  Someone she worked with mentioned that her brother had lost his wife at a young age too and suggested they meet up.  They hit it off straight away, around six months later he took her on a trip to New York and proposed to her in Times Square, on one knee, in the rain.

Her new husband had three children with his first wife, so all of a sudden I'm now an uncle/step uncle to four children, rather than just the one.  Fortunately they are all great kids and get on with each other well.

The wedding went really well, my five year old nephew gave my sister away and all the other children had a part to play in the ceremony.  The couple both looked so happy, he hardly took his eyes off her all day.

It didn't sink in until a few days later just what a massive difference they have both made to each others lives.  The change in my sister from a few years ago to now is truly amazing, and I'm sure it is the same for her husband who went through the same things.

I suppose the moral of the story is that no matter how low or unhappy you are, good things can happen if you give them a chance.

The internet can be a confusing, bizarre and frightening place, filled with incomprehensible language and terrible things hiding behind innocent sounding names.  It can also fill your head with really pointless knowledge, like the names of foreign TV presenters of shows you will never see or sports stars from sports you will never watch.  I found this out the hard way, curiosity isn't a good thing on the internet so ask yourself before you look something up, do you really need to know?.

In order to defend myself from any more internet horror or filling my head with utter crap I have decided not Google certain things, like these;

1.  Leroy Jenkins.  A common name on online games, sometimes used as a battle cry.  Who, or what, is a Leroy Jenkins?  I don't know and I don't care, I can live quite happily without knowing.

2.  Goatse.  This could be a trap.  Apparently it does not include goats, which is probably a good thing.

3.  A mudkip.

4.  Chris Hansen.  looks like a tool, probably is, I don't need to know any more.

5.  Any American sports star.  I'm English so I have zero interest in American sports like Baseball, Basketball or eating competitions.

6.  Paris Hilton.  If everyone follows my lead and ignores her, the world will be a better place.

7.  Rule 34.  The internet apparently has rules, at least 34 of them, I'm not exactly sure what Rule 34 is but it is usually accompanied by disturbing pictures.  Avoid.

8.  Any of my brothers ideas for "new" fetishes.  They're weird and I really don't want to find out that people actually do any of them.  Possibly related to Rule 34.

9.  Chocolate Rain.  Sounds like a trap or an annoying song, either way it's best avoided.

10.  Obscure acronyms.  If it's not obvious from the context then I'm not looking it up.  DYJHIW PUTMAs?

For those of you that know about some of the things I've listed and want to spoil my ignorance, I will not be reading any of the comments.  Ha!

Ever wanted to know how many Tom Cruises weigh the same a testicle of a Right whale?  Now you can find out at www.weirdconverter.com.

5.5115565 Tom Cruises weigh the same as 1 Right whale testicle.

1 Jennifer Aniston weighs the same as 249.489 average bowel movements.

74.567 small intestines would be the same height as the Empire State Building, assuming you could get them to stand up.

It would take the average person 90.849 days to fill up an average bathtub with urine.

Or 1666219.88 days to fill up an olympic sized swimming pool.

There are 3 categories, weight, height/length and volume, you can convert from standard measurements to all sorts of weird stuff.  If only I'd had this in science classes at school.

I found this excellent website and I thought I'd tell you all about it.  Actually I'll let the good people at GalaxyZoo tell you about it because I'm lazy.

"GalaxyZoo, the project which harnesses the power of the internet - and your brain - to classify a million galaxies. By taking part, you'll not only be contributing to scientific research, but you'll view parts of the Universe that literally no-one has ever seen before and get a sense of the glorious diversity of galaxies that pepper the sky.

Why do we need you?
The simple answer is that the human brain is much better at recognizing patterns than a computer can ever be. Any computer program we write to sort our galaxies into categories would do a reasonable job, but it would also inevitably throw out the unusual, the weird and the wonderful. To rescue these interesting systems which have a story to tell, we need you."

Once you have registered you get a tutorial page, which shows you some of the galaxies and other objects you will be asked to classify.  These include; elliptical galaxies, spiral galaxies (clockwise and anti-clockwise), stars, satellite streaks and merging galaxies.  Once you are happy that you know what you are looking for you move onto a quick test in which you are asked to classify 15 objects, get more than 8 right and and you can move onto to the galaxy classification page.

Once you are there it's fairly straight forward, you are given an image and pick one of the six options that you think best describe the image.  You can also get more information on the image you are viewing by clicking on a link, this allows you to view an image that you can zoom in and out on as well as providing plenty of measurements.

Most of the images you get are unspectacular fuzzy blobs, but these don't take long to classify.  What makes it worthwhile to me is the occasional beautiful galaxy you will come across or a mysterious object that you can't categorise.     They have an excellent forum where you can post pictures of the strange things you find and get other peoples opinions or explanations.

It is very addictive, I soon started saying "just one more more" as you get a real sense of discovery when you find something interesting.  If you have a bit of spare time and are interested in this kind of thing then I highly recommend it.  Even if you are not, I'd still recommend having at look at the site, maybe you will get interested.  Beats wasting time on minesweeper or solitaire.

http://www.galaxyzoo.org/Default.aspx

Here are a few of the more interesting ones I've found so far.

My copy of Bioshock arrived today, so I got it straight out of the box and started installing it.  Unfortunately it wasn't long before I ran into problems.  Here's a list of what I had to do to get it working:

First install.

The recommended updated driver installation program crashed after finishing.

Restart.

Computer frozen.

Restart.

AVG detects Bioshock.exe as containing the virus Obfustat.JXR.

Can't run Bioshock.exe, just get an error message.

Uninstall Bioshock.

Quit AVG.

Try installing Bioshock again.

All goes well until it gets to the auto patch part of installation, where it tells me the patch has an invalid signature.

Try again, same error.

3rd time lucky?

No.

Off to 2K Technical Support forum.

Discover that since the patch came out, Bioshock is incompatible with AVG.  There are two solutions to this, uninstall AVG and replace with Avast or just disable AVG's Resident Shield.

After disabling AVG's resident shield the patch downloads correctly.

Next was the online activation.

Which worked perfectly, surprisingly.

Now I can play Bioshock after an installation process that took 3, frustrating hours.  I'm sure these problems will be fixed soon, but I thought I'd better warn you.  If you buy Bioshock, here is a link that will probably need, 2K Technical Support Forum:

http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=42

So this week I made my 1,500th post and banned my 300th cheat , next stop 2,000 posts and 400 cheats banned.

I've stopped calling people who cheat in games hackers, and now call them cheats, which is all they are.  Hacker makes them sound like they actually know something about how the games work, whereas in reality all they do is download something and follow some instructions.

They have about as much right to be called a hacker as athletes who take performance enhancing drugs have to be called a pharmacologist. 

I always love it when someone gets shown to be a massive hypocrite, so I was highly amused by an Italian Member of Parliament recently.

The story revolves around Cosimo Mele, 50, a member of the UDC party in Italy.  The UDC are a Christian party who promote family values, as you would expect of any Christian political party.

The trouble started for Mr Mele when he was caught in a hotel room with two prostitutes and a large quantity of cocaine.  He's not the first politician to be caught in a situation like this, but what truly makes him him stand out in the world of hypocrites is his attitude after the incident.

Perhaps I should let Mr Mele explain it in his own words:

"I did nothing other than go to dinner with friends who introduced me to this girl,"

"Since it was late, she came to bed with me."

"We hit it off... I didn't even know she was a prostitute, I only realised later. I didn't exactly pay her. Instead I gave her a present - some money,"

"So politicians in the UDC do not make love? Of course I recognise Christian values. But what has that got to do with going with a prostitute? I cannot be branded a bad father and a bad husband simply because after five or six days away from home an occasion presented itself."

He's since resigned as an MP.  He denies taking any drugs.  Perhaps unsurprisingly the prostitutes don't exactly corroborate his version of events.

It's supposed to be summer in the UK a the moment, but we seemed to have lost it somewhere. After the wettest June on record we've just had the wettest July on record, and July hasn't even finished yet.

I know the UK has a reputation for being wet but this is ridiculous. Large parts of the country have flooded affecting over a million people, tens of thousands are without power and water, tens of thousands evacuated from their homes and thousands needing to be rescued from the flood water. The damage is expected to cost up to £3 billion. Some pictures:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/53621220@N00/

Food prices are going up as well, as lots of crops have been ruined by the rain.

The thing that annoys me most every time there is a flood is the inevitable footage of really smug people in canoes. You see them on the news, happily rowing past flooded houses looking so pleased with themselves for having the foresight to buy a canoe. They look like they are almost happy that their house got flooded just so they can get some use out of their canoe.

I joined the UK Officefest server to check out a player who had got a high score quickly.  Sure enough he was cheating, so I started recording a demo.  He got killed before I'd got enough on demo so I was watching the player who killed him.  And he was cheating too.

So now I need another demo of the first player I was speccing and some demo of the second cheat.  Easy enough I thought, only the next round he died early on, so I stopped the demo and went to record the second cheat.  He got killed too, so again I was watching the player who killed him and would you believe it he was cheating too.

Ok, three cheats, all killing each other, that makes it a bit more complicated but still ok.  A few rounds pass and I'm happy that I've got enough on two of them.

If there are more than one cheat on server, I make sure I get demos of them all before I start banning as I don't want any getting away.

Only trouble is a few more players have now joined and two of them are cheating too!.  That's 5 all together.

It took me over half an hour to get demos of them all because they kept killing each other before I got enough proof.  I missed My Name Is Earl as a result, not happy.

The really fun bit was when it finally got to ban time, I opened my ban menu and oh joy, they are all next to each other in the list of players.  This means I just had to hit 6 five times to ban them all.

I really should have got a screenshot of that.

Rockstar's Manhunt 2 has been refused a rating certificate by the British Board Of Film Classification (BBFC), meaning that the game is effectively banned in the UK.  The original Manhunt was granted an 18 certificate.

David Cook, the director of the BBFC stated:

“Rejecting a work is a very serious action and one which we do not take lightly. Where possible we try to consider cuts or, in the case of games, modifications which remove the material which contravenes the Board’s published Guidelines. In the case of Manhunt 2 this has not been possible. Manhunt 2 is distinguishable from recent high-end video games by its unremitting bleakness and callousness of tone in an overall game context which constantly encourages visceral killing with exceptionally little alleviation or distancing. There is sustained and cumulative casual sadism in the way in which these killings are committed, and encouraged, in the game.

“Although the difference should not be exaggerated the fact of the game’s unrelenting focus on stalking and brutal slaying and the sheer lack of alternative pleasures on offer to the gamer, together with the different overall narrative context, contribute towards differentiating this submission from the original Manhunt game. That work was classified ‘18’ in 2003, before the BBFC’s recent games research had been undertaken, but was already at the very top end of what the Board judged to be acceptable at that category.”

“Against this background, the Board’s carefully considered view is that to issue a certificate to Manhunt 2, on either platform, would involve a range of unjustifiable harm risks, to both adults and minors, within the terms of the Video Recordings Act, and accordingly that its availability, even if statutorily confined to adults, would be unacceptable to the public.”

This makes Manhunt 2 only the second game to be refused a certificate, Carmageddon was the first.  Carmageddon was eventually given a certificate after the makers of the game agreed to make changes to the game.

My 4 year old nephew is staying for the week, so finding things to keep him entertained is pretty important, otherwise he starts bouncing around the house like a short, hyperactive drunk.  This makes me unhappy.

So he'd been here for a couple of days and I was getting bored with the games that he liked and the books he wanted to read so I thought "why not show him some of the games on my computer?".  He was keen so we get to my computer and then I realise that I haven't thought this out very well.

He's four and hasn't played computer games and he gets scared at children's TV.  So looking though the games that I'd got it wasn't looking promising:

Counter Strike, FEAR, Grand Theft Auto, Silent Hill  are all too violent and complicated.  Oblivion has monsters and is complicated.  S.T.A.L.K.E.R scares me in places so far too scary.  RTS and management games are a bit much for someone who is four.

So this left driving games and I only have Colin McRae Rally 2005, which involves driving in places like mountains and forests at 100mph.  It's fairly hard so I wasn't optimistic. 

Sure enough he just couldn't get the car going in the right direction.  So I suggested that I steer and he does the accelerating and braking, it was a bit of a squeeze having two people on one Playstation one controller.  This was much better, he would just hold down accelerate and I would try my best to get the car round a hairpin corner at 100mph.

He loved it, he felt like he was playing and thought crashing was great, even better if bits of the car fell off.  Before we started a race I'd say "That's a nice looking car" and he'd reply "It won't be when we finish" then giggle all the way through as we bounce from tree to tree.  I found it a challenge too, so I wasn't bored.

Anybody know any good computer games for young children that can also be played by adults?

I've just been to the local ASDA supermarket to pick up up a few things and a really nice bottle of whiskey.  I got to the check out and the guy at the check out didn't scan the whiskey so he asked for £3.47 instead of £33.47.  Without much thought I said "are you sure about that?" then he realised his mistake and scanned the whiskey.

A free bottle of whiskey from ASDA (owned by WalMart) would have been nice and I doubt I would have felt too guilty about it.  So now I'm regretting my honesty.

People often ask me how I manage to catch so many hackers. Ok, maybe no one has ever asked me so far, but I'm fairly sure a few people have at least wondered. So here is how I do it.

First you need a few things, spare time and HLSW (http://wiki.hlsw.net/index.php/Main_Page). HLSW is useful because you can quickly cycle through all of the servers you want to check for cheats, you can use your steam favourites in a similar way but it is more time consuming.

All I do is check through SpawnPoints servers every now and then looking for players with high scores or hacker type names. There is more to it than that, it's easier to get a high score quickly on deathmatch or gungame than it is on assault, so you need to take into account the map and game type. So it can be useful to look for players that are outscoring everyone else. Once you have identified a suxxxxious score, go and spectate them and see if they are cheating.

This is not a perfect method as it only leads to the more blatant cheats and there are also legit players who can get high scores quickly.

It is a bit dull, but it doesn't take long to cycle through the servers and I catch enough cheats this way to make it worthwhile. I really don't like cheats.

I've been in the Anti-Cheat Team (ACT) for 7 months now, having been invited by Hitman about six hours before I was going to volunteer. Always nicer to be invited though.

It's been a learning experience so far, I taught myself to spot cheats just by watching players and then watching the demos before sending them in. Now I know a few more tricks to help make a decision, like demoui and r_drawothermodels 2. Not only that but I also get to see a whole range of legitimate tactics and techniques that can look like cheats on server.

The actual work on the ACT is mostly copy and paste, data entry and keeping things in order. Here is what I will typically do with one demo:

• Download demo and save to cstrike folder.

• Watch demo, with demoui and r_drawothermodels.

• Watch the demo again if it is not an obvious one

• Repeat until I am certain that the player is cheating or not. Ask for second opinion if I can't be sure.

• Copy and paste SteamID and name of the player in question to Notepad.

• Reply to the person who sent in the email, copy and paste response then SteamID and name of suspect player from Notepad.

• Copy and paste details into the ban list, if applicable.

• Make a note of who sent in the demo for the "who got the most cheats banned" list.

• If sb_status was used and the demo was conclusive use winrar on the demo and submit to Steambans.com.

• Delete the demo from my cstrike folder. I had 1000 demos in there a few months ago taking up 1.5Gb, not fun going through all those.

• Move the email and my response to done folder.

• Next!

I've got organised now, so all the things I need are all open and I can do all of the above quickly now.

We can get up to 10 demos a day, we got about 70 in the last week, not including the demos we receive for other things. So as you can see it's important to be as efficient as possible when dealing with demo submissions.

Fortunately I hate cheats so I don't mind the dull parts of the job and I take great pride in the fact that we quickly and fairly deal with the demos we receive.

New from the Dutch T.V. company Endemol, that brought you Big Brother is a new show in which, (I swear I'm not making this up) a terminally ill women decides which of three "contestants" should get her kidneys when she dies.

Each of the "contestants" need a kidney transplant and the terminally ill woman, known only as Lisa, will decide who gets her kidneys based on the "contestants" history and conversations with friends and family. Viewers will also be able to text in their advice during the show.

Unsurprisingly this has caused a lot of controversy, particularly amongst politicians and those involved in organ donation.

In their defense Endemol have stated that this program is designed to highlight the plight of those who need an organ transplant, especially those needing a kidney transplant. They also point out that the "contestants" have a 33% chance of getting new kidneys, compared to around a 1% or 2% chance on a waiting list.

The problem that I, and many others, have with this program is that the two "contestants" that don't get the kidneys will die unless they get kidneys from someone else. As there are more people on the kidney donation waiting list than there are available kidneys there is a fair chance that they will die if they do not "win" these kidneys.

This is just too much for a television program, choosing who lives and who dies for the sake of entertainment is just wrong.

I would encourage everyone to donate blood, and sign up for bone marrow and organ donation. You can save somebodies life, even if you just donate blood.

Channel 4 in the UK is going to broadcast a documentary about the immediate aftermath of the crash that killed Princess Diana along with Dodi al Fayed and Henri Paul.  There have been lots of programs about Diana so why the controversy?

The program is going to use photographs taken in and around the tunnel the night of the accident.  And this is where the controversy starts, Channel 4 stated that some of the photos "have not been seen on television before" some seem to have interpreted this as meaning these pictures must have been considered taboo by everyone else.  This then leads people to assume that the pictures must have been considered taboo for a good reason, so they think the pictures must show something gruesome.

The result of that kind of logic is an ever increasing sense of outrage that snowballs into some sort of national campaign against Channel 4.  So now we have massive media coverage, politicians getting involved and the whole thing becomes impossible to ignore.

Apparently one of the most controversial images in the program was also used on the front page of a daily newspaper, yet I don't remember any controversy about that.

Here's my cynical view on the whole thing.  Channel 4 make a documentary about Diana, the press release makes it sound a bit controversial.  The papers then seize on this, because as we all know Princess Diana sells more papers.  Really, put a picture of Diana on the front page of a newspaper and it sells more.  Then some rent-a-quote politicians join in just because they can and they don't get the chance to be on telly much.

The end result is more people watch the program and more newspapers get sold.  Wow, anyone would think they planned it.

Anyone tuning in just to see the pictures should just stick to watching Police, Camera, Action or the one with Sheriff John Bunnell.

I think I did, though I've never done it before so I might be wrong. 

I wasn't too sure what a blog was so I went and had a look on Wiki and found this definition:

"Blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject such as food, politics, or local news; some function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs."

I suppose this is a commentary of a tired and slightly confused guy losing his blogging virginity and you can interact, so I declare this a blog.  At least I know what a blog is now so my next one will be far more exciting than this one, or not.