This just makes me tingle with excitement:

A few years ago, the Lego company was making "Star Wars" toys. LucasArts tapped game-development studio Traveller's Tales to make the critically acclaimed "Lego Star Wars" video game series. Lego made Batman toys. Traveller's Tales got the gig to make next year's Lego "Batman" video game. Lego recently announced plans for Indiana Jones Legos. Keeping the pattern going, LucasArts announced at Comic-Con last week that Traveller's Tales will be making a Lego "Indiana Jones" game for release in summer 2008 From http://www.mtv.com/games/video_games/news/story.jhtml?id=1565980

 

Update (2nd Oct 2007): The VC guys have been responding to the issues raised on the forums at http://forums.tidemedia.co.za/nag/showpost.php?p=21642&postcount=22. I recommend having a look since it does clear up some issues. 

Yesterday was my once a year weekend of nothing but gaming and computers (actually thats a lie, I do it more than once a year, but it's the special one ). For those who don't know it was the Nag LAN at the Rage Expo. Now I have been attending this since it's inception so I classify myself as someone who has some crazy understanding of the event. Let me run through the expo to begin with.

I didn't pay to get in, being that all the lanners get in free so I can't comment on the value for money, but it definitely was smaller than last year and far more commercial. A lot more stalls were just shops selling stuff with very few people actually showing anything special or new. This includes the competitions at stalls which seemed that every second stall was giving away an XBox. The WII was launched and Halo 3 at the expo, but with little fan fare. The WII stand was tiny and had 4 consoles to play on (so the queue was to forever and back) and not the really interesting WII games, just WII sports. Halo 3 was equally bleak with just 2 or 3 consoles at the Microsoft stand showing it and someone dressed as Master Chief walking around. The Project Gothem console at the XBox stand got more attention than Halo 3 due to the chair and pedals and steering wheel. This is all in comparison to last year when the XBox was launched with a massive area with plenty of consoles and amazing give aways and a show that night etc....

It wasn't all doom and gloom for the expo, the booth babes were the best ever (quality and quantity) and the sound was better. Let me explain that last one, in previous years the sound has been more of loud talking with sound effects from games in the background. This year the games were more evident, thanks mostly to the 2 or 3 stands which had Guitar Hero 2 and 3 going. It just made it seem far better. In reality though, if you missed the expo this year, pop round to Zaps on a Saturday and imagine more people.

Next the LAN! It has grown to 1500 people this year, with the extra 300 people taking up the space which was used by the expo last year. The most popular games (using my method of looking at other peoples screens) seem to be Warcraft 3 and Counter Strike. A lot of UT2004 and Supreme commander was also played. This year also showed more female attendees which is great for gaming, and the file sharing on DC++ peaked at a whopping 44Tb (thats Terra bytes) shared!

The network was once again run by the VC crew who did an ok job. The electrical setup was perfectly done (I keep wondering if someone from VC isn't an electrician) but the network was lagging and is showing it's age. The network is a 100Mb with 100Mb backbone and non-managed switches. Considering the LAN is broken into 2 distinct areas (upstairs and down) the lag was occasionally very bad, to the point of losing connection. Definitely next year VC needs to go to 1000Mb and look at managed switches to cope. Their admin was as good as always. A downside is that unless you play a game the VC play, getting a server is impossible. We tried to get UT 2004 server for an informal tourney, and were successful. However it was not (remember the latest patch is over two years old now) patched and missing files so no one could connect, which meant the UT 2004 tourney flopped. The VC staff were unable/unwilling to help with this

However the downside to the LAN was the venue. The dome is not the right place for this anymore. Remember that a large part of that 1500 stay all three days and nights at the event. The toilets were shocking by Saturday night with most getting blocked, no toilet paper, mess on the floor, etc... If the dome wants to keep it they need 24 hour cleaners for the duration of the LAN. The security was also horrible, it was far too easy to get equipment out while impossible to get any food or snack in. This is because the dome has it's own (crappy) fast food, and doesn't want competition from Northgate next door. However at a LAN, getting energy drinks and 2l cokes from fast food doesn't cut it. I had to make a trip back to the car to drop off items I had bought the day before. Unfortunately security (dome management) doesn't care about the equipment and once again there were items stolen and no one really being able to check properly. Also the dome has no area for relaxing so most people slept under their desks and the lights stayed on all night (thankfully I live a few km away and drove home each night). Once again for a 3 day lan, chill/sleep areas are needed.

I will be back next year, provide I still live close by. However if I had to spend all my time there or live far away I wouldn't attend it. The venue just ruins the experience of a great event too much for me.

My last post about the winner of idiot of the year, has prompted me to report him for racist comments on his blog. Hopefully blogger will shut this idiot down. If you wish to do the same you can at: http://help.blogger.com/?page=troubleshooter.cs&problem=&contact_type=main_tos&Submit=Submit

Searching for something else, I found the biggest loser in South Africa. This retard runs a website called South Africa Sucks (southafricasucks.blogspot.com - not linking on purpose since I don't want to raise his Google ratings etc...)

This is the type of person who has blinkers on to all the good and prefers to complain, constantly. Besides the fact the site is horribly racist it's just plain idiotic. Why can't these morons just move to Canada, or America or UK or where ever they think is better and leave the rest of us who really care alone.

Update: If you want to report the idiot see: http://www.sadev.co.za/node/103

Read all at about it at Yves Pitsch's blog

Highlights:

• Integration into WCF and WF!
• Use of CAB
• Better support of ESSO

 

Configurationize - To make a configurable setting in the system for the specific hard coded value.

Something which in my mind was missing from the Guitar Hero 2 box was a book with the lyrics in it. As a spectator, or if you believe some tips sites singing along helps, it is far more fun to have the lyrics and sing along with the music while someone else plays.

In addition some of those metal bands you cannot understand a thing so it should be there so you have an idea of what you are playing.

That said here is a nicely compiled 71 page document with all the lyrics!

Download Here

This video is really not how it is. It is more like this.

BizTalk 2006 R2 - 2 Oct, Microsoft Bryanston

OCS - 13 Nov, Vodaworld

This past week I battled to install MSCRM for almost 6 hours. I've done countless and fought every problem so believe me when I say this is such an odd event in my life now days that it actually is enjoyable trying to find out the problem. Now normal MSCRM install issues happen either at the environmental diagnostic wizard stage, or during the actual install. This happened much earlier, in fact when I tried to add a license key. When Adding the key and hitting add I got  a dialog saying:

The specified license is invalid.

For additional details see logfile C:\Documents and Settings\XXX\Application Data\Microsoft\MSCRM\Logs\crm30svrsetup.log.

Odd, but maybe it is wrong. I try it a few times and think well I'll pop on my trust 90 day trial to get up and running and deal with Microsoft on issuing a new key. Guess what he trial key failed too.

I'm not posting this on my IW blog (see right bar) because it's more than a MSCRM issue, because then I thought maybe something in the OS is wrong so lets install all the patches and reboot. One of the patches was Internet Explorer 7 which also refused to install with an error: Setup could not verify the integrity of the installation files. Make sure the Cryptographic service is running on this computer.

What now? I tried numerous articles and suggestions gleamed from the Internet including a monster (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/822798) on from Microsoft which has reinstall Windows as an option listed (no I didn't do that, this box is running other applications just fine). But from what I learnt is that all Microsoft software is digitally signed but if something goes wrong with the certificates on the machine then it's borks the installation of those applications. MSCRM in my mind had the same problem since (I guess) it uses the digital certif to do the CRC (or similar) check on the key I used.

What was interesting was all the certificates were 100% fine, but if I right clicked on the MSCRM install MSI file and checked it kept saying the certificate had been revoked. Odd? Since it's not revoked on my machine or any other machine. And if Microsoft revoked a certificate like this why don't I know, hell, why are they still shipping IE with it? Something must be wrong.

What I found was a rouge revoked certificate had been installed, where it came from I do not know but it was there. To remove it I opened IE 6, went to the Tools Menu -> Internet Options. Then on the Content tab clicked Certificates, and on the last tab (Untrusted Publishers) I was able to see the rogue certificate and remove it. After that all installed ok.

Now just a side thought round this, but Microsoft recommends digitally signing all software. So if I was an anti-virus company or security company that took this serious I would not only sign the install of the software but the runtimes and update definitions. The downside is that if a virus/trojen could install a revoked certificate (not sure what privileges you need on XP, but I guess this is a UAC controlled operation on Vista) then it could bork all your security. Scary how 1 file can do that.

Update 13 Feb 2008: Trust me to have the wrong link for the monster article, then send it to a client as the solution to there problem. DOH! Fixed now.