Monday, July 19, 2004

Doom 'System Shock' 3?

Many thanks to Andrew; he found scans of a PC Gamer review of the nearly-here Doom 3. The review: page 34, page 35, page 38, page 39, page 42, page 44. (Warning, there are some potential spoilers in the review, and in the rest of this entry).

What I found interesting was this section from the review:

As you make your way through the different levels of the base, the plot is revealed via the PDAs you pick up, and in brief conversations with the few NPCs who weren’t “turned” by the satanic attack. To make your way through the inevitably sealed-off access doors between levels, you’ll have to read through email that progressively reveals a conspiracy of apocalyptic proportions — the nefarious scheme of psychotic Dr. Betruger, UAC’s chief scientist who’s perverted a teleportation experiment to open up a portal into a hell-like dimension. (Oh, and as if you couldn’t guess, Dr. Betroger is also keen on transporting his hellion army to Earth.)

Reading that reminded me of the venerable System Shock 2 (probably one of the creepiest games ever made) - which is no bad thing in my book. Oh, roll on August!

 Saturday, July 17, 2004

Mac Attack

Just about one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time; play this video to any Mac zealots you may know!

Increasingly Fed Up

A while ago I moaned about some eegit who has been using my domain name to send Unsolicited Commercial Email (aka Spam) to the great unwashed.

The problem as it now stands is that 90% of my incoming emails are bounce-back messages from servers, claiming messages I've sent cannot reach their intended recipients. Of course, I never sent them in the first place.

I collect all the mail sent to my domain, and those emails that are not addressed to specific user accounts are fed into SpamAssassin to help its Bayesian filter. However, this means that a large number of bounce back messages are also being learned.

What I need to find is a realiable way of determining whether a message is a rejection notice or not; I could then insert this into a maildrop filter so that only the original spam messages enter SpamAssassin's corpus. Anyone have any ideas on how to achieve this?

 Friday, July 16, 2004

Forthcoming Gigs

After a six month hiatus due to being sent to Israel and the arrival of Chloë, the South West’s worst rock covers band is back in business. For anyone remotely interested, the gigs we’ve got lined up are:

August

  • Friday 20th: The Gander, Bournemouth
     

September

  • Friday 24th: The Swan, Southampton
     

October

  • Friday 8th: The Gander, Bournemouth
    Saturday 30th: Taunton (tbc)
     

November

  • Saturday 30th: Finns, Weymouth
 Thursday, July 15, 2004

Doom 3 Gold!

RE: Doom 3 Reaches Gold Master, Due August 5th
Rogerpq3 writes "Yes, this is the official word that [long-awaited PC FPS] DOOM 3 has been code released and has been approved for manufacturing! According to ...
[Via Slashdot]

I have a sneaking suspicion that I'm going to be struck down with a mystery virus around the 6th August.... ;-)