Following the Second World War geo-politics became dominated by the Cold War between Communist and Capitalist ideologies.

When the Cold War ended free-market capitalism was often seen as the victorious ideology and successive Governments in the US and around the world pursued free-market economic policies and de-regulatory practices.

It seems however, that just as the fall of the Berlin Wall left communism discredited as a political and economic ideology, so to has the recent financial crisis, the result of a lack of effective regulation and oversight, discredited the notion of pure free-market ideology.

Seems like the answer to the debate between socialist style Government control and intervention and free market capitalism is not about one extreme or the other, but as always somewhere in the fuzzy middle.

The Dark Wizard was not just any ordinary cheesemaker. He was an insane, cheese making machine with robotic arms and milk as black as his heart. The Dark Wizard wowed the villagers with cheese so tasty it made roses smell like rotting flesh in comparison. Bobby was driven out of town, his cheese making deemed substandard and ordinary.

Bobby ventured high into the Patagonian Mountains, his life’s works and accomplishments a distant memory, his back hunched over and riddled with arthritis, his pantaloons long abandoned and replaced with plain trousers, lacking in style as they were. Onward he climbed into the deepest depths of the mountains, the chill air sapping at his strength.

It was there he found a cave which he climbed into for shelter. The cave was small and Bobby had to duck down low and crawl through the entrance. But once inside he gazed upon a wondrous sight. Bobby had stumbled upon an ancient secret, a secret that had once been guarded by an order of Religious Warriors that had long since died away. For thousands of years the secret had laid unguarded but now Bobby had uncovered it.

Back in the village the peasants grew fat and became addicted to the Dark Wizard’s delectable cheese. They craved his Gouda and Swiss, and fought over his Blue Vein. Soon dark clouds began to form around the town. The villagers became more and more agitated. Fights began to break out and soon a great fire began to rise up in the town centre. Hotter and hotter the fire grew while the Dark Wizard concocted more and more dark and delicious rolls of cheese.

Then, out of the fog, mist and smoke that had embroiled the town emerged Bobby, returned from the cave and sporting the flashiest pantaloons crafted out of the finest mole hair and embroidered with jewels and cheese making equipment the likes of which had not been seen since the time of Alexander the Great and sometimes sheep herder. The people cowered from Bobby as he passed by, his pants jingling as he walked, clutching a banjo, whose origins had long been forgotten and whose inclusion in this story was a late decision, above his head.

Slowly he began to play the banjo and the smoke, clouds and mist began to clear. Louder and louder his music became until nothing else could be heard. Then a second banjo appeared, then a third and a fourth. Higher and higher Bobby stacked the banjos until no less then 8 (and no more then 9) had been stacked. Bobby’s hands ran with blood as he furiously played the stack of banjos.

Then out of nowhere Bobby produced a roll of Tasty cheese that had been forged in the pit of a great volcano. With expert precision he began to strum the banjos with the cheese and as he did so the shaved pieces tumbled atop a salad his feet had been preparing while he played. More and more cheese was shaven until the roll had been shaven down to a perfect arrow. And it was with this arrow that Bobby speared himself a moose that had been minding its own business and lofting the moose with the arrow he strummed the banjos with the moose’s antlers.

The villagers cried out as one, as the music Bobby had produced reached its dramatic crescendo for at the final note Bobby made his Coup d’état. He thrust an Atomic Bomb into the mouth of the moose and strummed the most beautiful note the Universe would ever know… the note from the long forgotten Double Atomic Whipsnake.

For those who haven’t seen the original page you can check it out here.

Now it’s time for the follow up as I finally got around to buying and playing Valve’s new release The Orange Box, which features Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2 Episode One, Half-Life 2 Episode 2, Team Fortress Two and Portal.

I’d firstly like to echo most sentiments that the pack represents amazing value. But one can’t shake the annoyance at making loyal games fork out for games they’ve already bought by not selling a hard copy version of Half-Life 2 Episode 2 in a stand alone pack. I probably would have bought The Orange Box anyway because I wanted to play Portal, but the lack of choice gets to me. (I know I’m being pedantic, I could have bought it off Steam, but I don’t entirely trust the whole Steam process and I prefer to buy the physical DVD)

After the troubles I had with Episode One I’d like to say that everything to do with The Orange Box went smoothly without any crashes or errors but alas that wasn’t the case. Fortunately my problems weren’t as bad as with Episode One.

The two problems I suffered when playing Episode Two were a graphical issue and a stuttering issue. But it should be pointed out that the stuttering problem I suffered isn’t the one that most people have had with Source games.

The graphical problem came up from time to time. Basically every now and then, after a loading screen, some of the textures would become all hyper coloured, instead of their normal colour. Re-starting the game or changing the resolution usually got rid of the problem. I never actually fixed this issue. I figured it was probably something that could be fixed with a video card driver update but I never did anything about it. I’ve noticed on other forums similar complaints but I haven’t seen a solution posted yet.

The other problem I had was much more serious. It came at a key point in the game in the chapter called “The Vortigaunt Coil”. Now for those that haven’t played the game I won’t describe what happens but suffice to say that during this episode a significant event occurs which is key to the entire Half-Life story. Unfortunately for me when this event occurred the entire game froze up and began moving at something like one frame a second with sever stuttering and sound issues.

At first I thought this issue was a re-occurance of the looping sound problem that was common in Episode One. So I followed some of the fixes posted in the Episode One thread but nothing seemed to work. I also tried a solution posted by Valve which suggested that AVG anti-virus which I was running at the time uses a lot of memory and interferes with Steam Games. So I completely un-installed it and still no fix.

Finally I came across a different solution posted on a forum. Turns out the problem comes from having too little ram. I only have 512mb of ram. Adding more RAM would have fixed the problem.

Luckily that wasn’t necessary. Turns out you can fix the problem by changing the “heapsize” which allocates memory to the game.

By adding the following line to the launch options: “-heapsize 256000″ (With out the “”) where 256000 is half your RAM, measured in bytes I was able to overcome the problem and play the game through as normal.

Once I’d overcome that problem the game ran fine the rest of the way through and it was an awesome experience. The final battle is one of the most intense gaming battles I’ve ever experienced.

I still get annoyed sometimes by the inability to shake the notion that your playing the game on rails with all your moves laid out for you. I understand that Valve’s intention is to guide you through the story, but my favourite game ever, Deus Ex presented the gamer with genuine choices at various points in the game. It’ll be a mighty game that eventually finds the balance between these two styles.

Of the other games in the pack I haven’t had much of a chance to play Team Fortress 2 and multi-player games aren’t really my thing. But Portal was great and it was fun to play something different and genuinely innovative.

So all in all that was my experience. Like the other post if you have any feedback, problems, advice or solutions please post them in the comments so that others can use this page as a resource.

Colonel

As a follow up to that post I sent the screenshot I posted into Media Watch and they aired the story!

You can see a clip of the show here:
http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s2082207.htm

Colonel

I was looking for news coverage of the Swann/Costello debate and had to take this screenshot of the front page of the Daily Telegraph website.

The banner which I’ve circled in blue is an attack on protesters who held up a sign but got the letters around the wrong way.

Apparently this is big news for the Daily Telegraph, pointing out that handful of protesters had made an error, a big enough deal that they labelled it a “shame”. This caught my attention first as I couldn’t believe they felt like this was news worthy.

But then, I scrolled down the page to the part I’ve marked with a red circle and saw how they’d spelt Howard!

Surely even the Daily Telegraph can’t be that dumb?

Anyway, the Bird Goes ‘Round galleries are back and working again after a long down time.

Devslashtux fixed them which we are most appreciative of, we just wished he’d actually told us.

So everyone can once again see the marvellous adventures of the mystical flightless bird.

The site has now been running since late 2005 so a fresh look was a bit overdue. And the new front page better reflects the original premise of the site by being a kind of gateway to the various Middle of Nowhere projects the team has worked on over the years.

Hopefully the new site will make navigating all that much easier.

And of course a big thanks to the official Middle of Nowhere web designer Devslashtux for putting it all together.

When the new site is done we’ll be dumping the existing news service and replacing it with this blog which will double as a blog and news updates.

In other MON team news Dex is currently overseas and I’m hoping he’ll post a trip report of his travels when he gets back.

Devslashtux has just got his new computer back from the shop for the third time so fingers crosses he’s worked through the kinks.

And I’ve just recently returned from a week at the snow which was awesome. If you’re interested I’ve posted a couple of photos at the bottom of this page.

We’re hoping to get together during the break and put something together.

In the mean time there’s so small news to report. Devslashtux has put together a very flashy Zoltan comic which I’m hoping he’ll be putting up online soon.

We’re also hoping to get the new front page up and running in the near future.

And finally the MON team has entered the world of social networking having just created a Middle of Nowhere group on Facebook. We’re not sure what we’re going to actually do with it, but it’s there for anyone interested.

They’re generally of a terrible quality and not funny at all.

Enjoy!