Monthly Archive for October, 2006

Anyone Want Any Cylon Pie?

Published on October 26, 2006 in Random. 0 Comments

Last year round about this time we posted the Pumpkin Case Mod. This year, we have the Cylon-O-Lantern. Now I have to admit, I haven’t watched any of the new Battlestar Galactica series on Sci-fi, but I do remember these baddies from the original series back in the day. Somebody took the time to make this pumpkin as “authentic” as possible, but I thought I’d post to get y’all into the spirit of Halloween. Enjoy!

If you’re interested in making one of these for your own porch, Click Here. Please be aware before hand that this pumpkin just screams to be smashed into a gazillion pieces in the middle of the road.

It Feels A Bit Like Winter…

Published on October 17, 2006 in Flash Fun and Games. 1 Comment

It’s almost winter time… and with that comes fun winter sports. Skiing, snowboarding and sledding are among the first the come to mind. So, to get you all prepped for the sweet winter fun-ness ahead, here’s a nifty little flash time waster. Found this one on fsk’s profile on Deviant Art. Enjoy.

Line Rider – beta by ~fsk on deviant ART

A Real Nintendo Revolution…

Published on October 12, 2006 in Games, Geek Fun and Nintendo. 1 Comment

At some point everyone has to come to terms with who they really are deep down.

Personally, I’m a nintendo fan. Don’t take this the wrong way, I love my PC and I’ve even been known to play an XBox or (gulp…) Playstation now and then. But deep down, I remember my roots and I can’t deny it’s a part of me.

I got my first NES when I was about 8 and I remember many days of my youth spent basking in the soft glow of my parents giant wood-encased RCA console TV. The Tecmo Bowl theme song blaring on the crappy TV speakers. My ultimate goal… to win the Tecmo Bowl while not allowing a single point scored against me (only did that a couple times). On other days it might be to beat Contra WITHOUT the 30 guy code. Or maybe to visit -1 world in Super Mario Bros. Ahhh… the good old days.

Anyway, the point of this post is a fun new site I found that provides a way to relive all the NES glory days from the comfort of your Firefox browser. VNES is a nifty little site that has over 300 NES games available to play through a Java browser plugin. I’ve used a few emulators that have worked quite well, but this is a great alternative for those unable to install an emulator or download roms (read “work”, “school” or “library computers”). So click on through and get your old skool Nintendo on.

Additional NVidia GeForce Go Card Drivers

Published on October 11, 2006 in Drivers, Hardware and Video Cards. 0 Comments

Earlier today, Zach posted about updating drivers for various NVidia Go cards and the frustration that usually comes along with that process. All notebook manufacturers who use these cards generally provide an ‘optimized’ driver that works well with the card and plays nice with the rest of the system. In many cases though, these drivers can hinder the capabilities of your card. And in almost all cases, updates are non-existant.

Case-in-point… I own a Dell Inspiron 8200 (yeah, I need to upgrade). When this machine was new back in 2003, it was bleeding edge and came with the quickest mobile video card on the market, the GeForce4 440 Go. As time went by, there were updates to many of the ‘official’ drivers for this machine, but there was only ever 1 ‘official’ video driver. This driver was released in April of 2003 and to give you some idea of how old these drivers are, NVidia still called them “Detonator” drivers and they were at version 42.58. Even today, this is the only video driver that Dell offers for this card/machine.

Continue reading ‘Additional NVidia GeForce Go Card Drivers’

Updating NVidia Drivers for Go Graphics Cards

Published on October 11, 2006 in Drivers, Hardware and Video Cards. 0 Comments

Some of you with laptops using NVidia’s various Go chipsets will understand the frustration involved when trying to update to the latest drivers. My laptop, a Toshiba Tecra M2 with discrete GeForce Go5200 graphics, is a decent little gamer at the KOTOR/Guild Wars/Quake 3 level. The problem is that Toshiba’s latest driver update is for version 46.44 of the NVidia drivers, and NVidia doesn’t support a unified driver architecture for most Go cards.

Well, here’s the fix. The guys over at LaptopVideo2Go have a hacked inf file you can use to update your laptop graphics drivers. What this does, basically, is remove the restriction from installing the drivers so you don’t get this error message:

nVidia setup program could not locate any drivers that are compatible with your current hardware. Setup will now exit.

Here’s a link back to the thread with instructions for making the update:

ForceWare Updater’s Quickstart Guide

Gotta thank guys like that for keeping laptop gaming good, even on hardware that’s a little bit older.

Solid Wood Computing

Published on October 3, 2006 in Case Mods. 0 Comments

Well, here’s a worthy mod. I spotted this on engadget today. Being that we originally started as a modding site, this is a throwback to some of our earliest posting days. These things are pricey; the one I was checking out would set you back about $6300. Sad thing is, your grandpa could probably have made one in his garage in an afternoon. I lack both the equipment and the know-how to make fine wood crafts (though I did build some wicked-useful shelves for my wife in the pantry).