Xbox Live thoughts

I received a 12+1 month subscription card to Xbox Live as a part of my Father’s Day gifts. It’s something I’ve been wanting, as I haven’t played against anyone else yet. After entering the card info, and turning my Silver Live account Gold, I’ve played a bit of Gears of War online the past few days.

My, I must say its quite a different game online than off. On Live, the matches are short & brutal. I must’ve played well over an hour spread across 2 nights before I won my 1st kill, and it certainly carried a sense of accomplishment, knowing that this was against another player, rather than the game AI.

Of course, I expected the standard trash talking and adolescent bravado: what else do you expect from gamers with (relative) anonymity? Although, I must admit the high-pitched kid nearly crying because his kill was stolen was a bit more funny than pathetic.

I’ve decided I need to pick up a few more bargain priced online games to try out, maybe GRAW 2, who knows? What I do know, however, is that playing against real people is much more rewarding, and its something I look forward to.

Maybe I’m beginning to understand the appeal of those things people refer to as sports… 🙂

Firefox+mouse, Part III – done

OK, I’m weak. After seeing that Firefox 3.0 RTMed today, and that it was finally in the repositories, I installed it again. Not surprisingly, the mouse behaved normally, and I can scroll up & down with impunity. All is good…

But I’m keeping Firefox 2 as a backup 😉

Firefox+mouse, part II

Ok, so after fussing with Firefox 3 for a while, I decided fighting to get basic mouse functioning in a single browser wasn’t worth the fuss. I went back to Firefox 2.0.0.14, and all is well. We’ll see how 3.0 is after another update or 2.

Firefox 3 latest + mouse wheel scroll = ouch

Ok,

I’ve discovered today that Firefox 3.0, aka 3.0~rc1+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.1 is causing issues with my mouse.
It’s just a standard, cheap 2button+wheel optical mouse (making 5 buttons technically) from logitech. It’s always treated me well.

The problem is, in Firefox if I use the wheel to scroll up, it acts lke I hit the Back button, and the previous page loads. Highly annoying, to say the least.

No, there is no problem with my xorg.It’s been set as both of the following, with no change:
Section “InputDevice”
Identifier    “Configured Mouse”
Driver        “mouse”
Option        “CorePointer”
Option        “Device”    “/dev/input/mice”
Option        “Protocol”    “ExplorerPS/2”
Option        “ZAxisMapping”    “4 5”
Option        “Emulate3Buttons”    “false”
EndSection

and simply as

Section “InputDevice”
Identifier    “Configured Mouse”
Driver        “mouse”
Option        “CorePointer”
EndSection

And yes, I’ve loaded about:config and check the appropriate settings:
mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.action = 0
mousewheel.withnokey.action = 0

No change. And, If I load Firefox 2.0.0.14, it behaves fine. So does Konqueror, and any other window browser app. Something is broken in Firefox, and it had better be fixed shortly. I’m not one to complain about FOSS (I haven’t payed for any of it), but this is highly annoying, right on th verge of 3.0 Final. I’ve hunted around, and haven’t found any solution that works. Maybe somebody can provide some insight.

work-obsessed slacker = old-school gamer

I realize I haven’t been active the last couple of weeks. Been bogged down at the office lately.

However, in the midst of that I have found myself playing old(er) games, rather than my shiny Falcon Elite. In fact, She has found me playing Neverwinter Nights natively on my linux box. I’d forgotten how much fun it was, and she was interested in it as well. I may have to pick up another copy to install on her Inspiron so we can play together. Of course, then I’d need to set up my own NWN server 😉

In other news, I’ve found myself playing old-school emulated games on one of my modded xboxes, notably MAME roms, but a few Sega Genesis games as well. My infatuation with Sega goes back to the 16bit era, having owned a Genesis (we played that thing constantly early in our marriage as cheap fun), SegaCD, then Saturn. She is still bitter about the Shining Force III disc ONE cliffhanger Fiasco, and refuses to play any other Shining Force games (except SF CD) until she can someday play the completed discs TWO and THREE. I may have to look into Saturn emulation again…