Burnout 2

First off, let me say this is a top notch game. Full marks on what ever system you use to rate them. 100% or 5 out of 5 etc, you know what I mean. Let me say that as I am about the only person on the entire planet NOT into Sims, Final Fantasy, or any other RPG/management game, this is going to be a short review.

Burnout 2 is a game of speed, and wonderful crashes. You race in cities or along country roads, with normal law abiding (read slow) cars puttering along. So it's like driving in a real world enviroment all the time, but without worrying about jail time. The races consist of either a 3 other player madness, a bash the other driver until he's out thing, or my all time fave of all time, the CRASH mode - juicy stuff indeed.

You see they give you a little set piece of road, nothing too large, and you have to cause as much financial damage as possible by making cars crash. This is where it gets good. In the normal game the crashes are satisfyingly crunchy, with glass flying everywhere, trucks skidding across lanes, and cars piling into eachother. I am sure if you have ever been in a real pile-up you would certainly NOT want to play this game!

The game physics is just believable enough so you don't get cars doing odd mid-air trickery or rebounding strangely from obstacles, but not too real, as real spoils things right kids? You get squealing tires, LONG skid marks, smoking tires, smashing windows, even police chases thrown in, and YOU can be the cops if you like!

My only reservation seems to be that on my first go I appeared to unlock nearly everything, although personally I can come back again and again to this game for the crash mode alone! Not had the chance to go multiplayer as yet but I am sure that would be good also.

Thanks Criterion for an amazing re-energizing of my computer playing time! And it seems that in September of 2004 there is version 3 coming out!! This was referring to the XBOX version of the game, it's one of the first XBOX games I have bought, but it looks like it's going to be a long and happy relationship.



Speed and crashes like you would not believe!

Sasser Author

According to p2pnet.net, the Sasser author did not know what he was doing. Tough banana, he should get a hefty penalty, to show others not to do it. The amount of computers I have seen lately that have his handywork all over them is considerable! The only good thing to come from all this is to raise awareness of patching systems and virus protection.

If in any doubt about an email, simply delete it, if it was important the person will get in touch somehow, or you could send them an email asking what the attachment was.

When you are looking at Internet Explorer, go to TOOLS, then WINDOWS UPDATE. Follow the on screen instructions and make sure of all the updates you get, it's the CRITICAL ones you need. If you do this, then some things like the Sasser Worm would not have affected you, as it only needs to see a computer on the internet to infect it. No email, no download, in fact, no user action is required at all on this one!

Do yourself a favor and keep your systems up to date, and then you can show off to all your skanky infected friends, by informing them loudly and proudly (and annoyingly) that you have had NO TROUBLE at all with any of this iccky virus whining they keep moaning about.



Sasser Worm, even people WITHOUT computers seem to have heard about this one.

Golden rules chaps..
Do NOT open attachments from people you do not know.
Even if it is someone you know, were you expecting it?
But of course, you will be scanning all incoming email with your virus protection software right?
And you are setting your virus scanner to actually be ON when windows starts?
And you are GETTING new virus definitions regularly?
Windows Update, you can never go there enough either!

ALL MESSED UP!!

This blog is offline for now


It seems strange or fortunate that my own site Krysss.com and this blog have screwed up at the same time.

Weep for me, and then laugh as you walk away....

Where is a bottle of something...

Using Outlook Express to download AOL Email.

Ok here is the deal. You want to get your AOL email and read it offline, or just be able to manage it without having to deal with constant 'helpful' windows slapping you in the face every three seconds.
Go to this About.Com walkthrough, and you too can have all that offline goodness of email.

A teensy tip for anyone with AOL access right now. You SHOULD be able to connect to AOL in what ever way you do, be it dial-up, DSL, or Cable and then minimize the AOL window.

After that you can simply use your Internet Explorer which came with your computer, or any other browser such as Netscape, or Mozilla perhaps, to browse the web. With the above tip to read your AOL email in Outlook Express, you will suddenly know what it is like when you remove the restrictions of the AOL software.



AOL, just shake your head and say nothing.
I am sure anyone who has the slightest opinion of AOL realizes how many edits I have made to keep my comments to a minimum regarding the whole AOL thing.

Shaolin Soccer

Just saw an amazing movie, called Shaolin Soccer. It was at a movie theatre that seemed to show all those arty-farty movies, that by definition never show any information about them on the posters, only the actors and rave reviews from all those places you have never heard of.

I am NOT into Hong Kong movies, and certainly NOT soccer movies either. But this was one of the best movies I have ever seen at a theatre. You know how some movies are great in the theatre, Shaolin Soccer, was one of those. It has amazing humor and perfect special effects. Even the trailer doesn't do it justice, as it gives it a more sinister edge. Very tongue in cheek.



Shaolin Soccer is such a great movie, if you don't like it email me and I will refund your ticket, honest, yeah, uh huh!

Sasser Worm Removal Tool

If you are having trouble with the Sasser Worm, then click here for the Symantec W32.Sasser Removal Tool. If you regularly visit Windows Update, then you should be ok. If not then you should sit there and pretend you do, and when you finished reading this, go and visit it.

Microsoft have a special What You Should Know About the Sasser Worm page online which you can visit for more details, and even check for infection. The patch (prevention) for this was released in April.

Apparently the Sasser worm does not need to be sent in email or even downloaded in any way. It scans for vulnerable computers on the net and jumps right in there. This worm WILL affect your online day, or in the case of one person I spoke to, simply could NOT go online at all!

Windows 95 or Windows 98 users, are safe from this latest naughtyness, they cannot get it.



Sasser Virus, ikky!

Crappy slow Internet Connection (whinge whine moan)

Verizon crapped out right now, and I am barely getting dial up speed. H-e-l-p...

Speaking of which, I called them the other day when the usual mystery networking er.... mystery, ensued. You know how it is, you plug it all in, check everything a million times and it still doesn't work? Well, this time it turned out to be a wrong username, but in the conversation I was told that the engineer could check the modem from their end and see how things were going. They could tell that there was a particular router attached, as well as how many computers were on at the time. They even asked me what the strange router name that was appearing at their end was. I had to explain that some thoughtful people nearby had an unsecured wireless access point which was powerful enough for the computers to latch onto, but of course, not at all powerful enough to get any usable signal from. Thanks chaps! Oh and it was a lawyers office so if you were in my area a while ago and wanted a quick look at your ex's legal files, just hang around a couple of mins and you may just find them!


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No Image, it would take 30 mins to put one on the page.