Owned !!

ROTFLMAO !!

Check this out - >Game Over !!

WTH just happened ?

I turned on my computer and it popped a message "BIOS Checksum Error. Starting recovery ...".
It started searching my floppy drive( non-existent :P ) and the Cd-Drive for the BIOS ROM.
Fortunately, I had the support CD at hand and quickly pushed it into the CD-Drive.

Up came the message :

"M2N-MX.ROM detected
Starting Erasing...|
Starting programming ....| "

Then the mobo beeped twice-thrice and the computer restarted. And, the BIOS checksum error message popped again !! WTH !! i just saw it getting flashed !!

Happened 2 times in a row....frustrated, i decided to take out the mobo manual (dunno why i didn't take it out earlier ... :P)

It had 2 full pages regarding BIOS recovery... one way was to press Alt+ F2 before POST to start ASUS' "EZ Flash Utility " that would apparently help me flash my BIOS.

Computer restarted. I pressed Alt+F2.
The utility started and searched my Cd-Drive for a BIOS file.
Up came the message "M2N-MX.ROM detected"
and immedialtely followed by "Error ! the ROM file is outdated and cannot work with the hardware "
WTF !! This is the BIOS that came in the manufacturer's CD !!

I was starting to freak out... Fired up my old machine and downloaded the LATEST BIOS for my mobo, bought a CD and burned it onto the disk.

Computer restarted.
Up came the message:
"M2N-MX.ROM not detected !"

huh?...Sigh, the file i had downloaded had a different name ....fine, i'll just have to rename it and burn it again....I removed the Cd from the drive and instead of pushing the "power-off" button, accidentally, pushed the "restart button"...

My BIOS was detected !!

"There is a CMOS checksum error :
Press F1 to start recovery
Press F2 to reset to default settings and continue " ?_?

F2 pressed.
The screen went blank and up came the familiar message
"GRUB Loading stage 1.5. "

Wheeeee !! problem solved !!
But WTH just happened ??? The computer was running fine until yesterday ...
My guess is a faulty SMPS which isn't providing the required current at the required voltage to the mobo....
Any pointers ?

TrackManiac !!

Ahh ! Writing after many days...this post is guaranteed to be scratchy :P

After playing TrackMania Nations , I just had to try this newest version of TrackMania, The TrackMania Forever !!
For those who don't know what TrackMania is, here's the wiki topic link : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trackmania

The official website is : http://www.trackmania.com
The setup can be downloaded from the their site. This game is free to download and free to play :D

TrackMania Forever was released on 17-18 April, 2008 ( when the PL had just started :D ) and it has around 1 million ( 980k , to be precise) registered online players.The Indian community is not-so-strong with just around 2,500 odd players....i'm currently ranked 254th among the 2.5k players :D
TMForever lets you choose between online and offline play...i just love games which have both online and offline modes :).
TrackMania in the offline (Solo) mode offers campaigns.The campaigns have been changed significantly. Their difficulty is now reflected by colors (White - easiest, Green, Blue, Red, Black - hardest), and progression to harder tracks is limited by requiring you to finish the previous track(s) with some medal first: You need bronze medal to proceed to next track in Green difficulty, silver for Blue, and gold medal in Red. The black tracks only unlock after you gain gold on ALL the previous tracks.Nice practice before you jump onto the online community :-)

There are basically 2 types of tracks...Dirt tracks and Stadium tracks.There are more stadium tracks than dirt ones, but both the types are equally engaging.

A stadium track :

Dirt track :

Online Action :

Online mode lets you choose different servers from around the world. What I liked most is that it also provides a list of recommended servers, where the average player ranking is close to yours...
Winning races or finishing in the top 5 ,gives LP points, which is the basis for the rankings.
Online mode is madly addictive ( though MMORPGs are more addictive :P).
The only downside to the Online play is that, in India, where bandwidth is metered, online play can cost quite a lot of "MBs" ( thats the reason why i love MMORPGs :P).


The more thing that I haven't touched yet is the track editor ....which as the name suggests lets you edit tracks or create new ones !

If you haven't played Trackmania yet, then this the game to start with.If you have been playing since the United version, this version really doesn't add much ( I read this on some other review :P).

For : Good graphics, Addictive gameplay, Offline and Online modes, Track editor ,Its FREE !!
Against : May cost you lots of "MBs" during online play.
Rating : 9.5/10
(- 0.5 less coz it really uses up too much "MBs" :-( )

Hardy Heron is finally out !!

The Heron is finally out, and i can't wait to install it on my box.
Wait, why haven't i installed it yet ? Because i have an earlier installation of Gutsy, and I downloaded the Live CD instead of the Alternate CD (sad)...so i'll have to wait one more day and my exams are around the corner so I won't be able to tinker much...

Anyway, I did run the Live CD for about 10-15 minutes and though i didn't look around much, the first thing that came to my notice was the booting time....it booted in around a minute from the Live CD ,thats fast compared to the Gutsy Gibbon.
The next thing that pleased me instantly was the native resolution of my monitor was detected flawlessly....something that didn't happen in either Gutsy Gibbon or Fedora 8...
also,
Internet was configured within 60 seconds...typical of Ubuntu...
and the wallpaper is awesome.

But one thing was amiss, I remember reading that Ubuntu was going to do away with the human theme in the Hardy Heron, but the default theme still happens to be the human theme.......whether the idea was dropped, i know not....but i was really excited to see a new theme.

Overall the first impression was that the Heron does seem to be an improvement over 7.10,

More later.

Cheers !