So Ive finished Half-Life 2 Ep1, its a pretty good game, about a third to a half the length of HL2 Id say. The AI of friendlies seems to be slightly improved and the graphics options now include HDR which looks to me like everythings glowing but Im assured that it actually improves the graphics and makes them more realistic.

Steam however is crap. I dont know when it became standard to harass your customers in this way, but Steam (for those who dont know) seems to be some sort of portal into certain games you might buy and install or download from Steam. Well, this wouldnt be so bad If all it did was let you launch and update games or if you could indeed ignore it completely and launch the game directly.

But no, it insists on sitting in that draw thing down the bottom right, doing God knows what whilst Im not using a game, aside from apparently hassling and harassing me with ads. I really dont appreciate software Ive legitimately paid for acting this way.

These sort of actions by software developers upon their customers can only encourage those making no-CD hacks or serial cracks to do more.

I emplore you, stop it before its too late!

My PAL DVI connector for my MacBook Pro stopped working yesterday. When you hit ‘detect displays’ a grey mess appears on the TV screen briefly which looks like its out of sync with the TV (in layman’s terms) and I cant find anyway of fixing it. Ive tried the MBP plugged into a proper screen (obviously not using the PAL connector) and its fine so it cant be a video card thing.

I emailed Apple about this, explaining the situation and asking them what I needed to get done to get a replacement and got this very nice email back not 3 hours later:

Thank you for contacting AppleStore.

I regret that you are experiencing problems with the APPLE PAL DVI TO VIDEO ADAPTER.

Please note that all technical faults, especially those which occur more than 10 working days after delivery, need to be handled by our technical support team AppleCare. AppleCare can be contacted on 0870 876 0753 and are open Monday to Friday 8am - 7:45pm and Saturday 10am - 5:45pm.

As an exception on this occasion because of your order history, I have ordered a replacement adaptor for you. This will ship under the same web order number as your previous order. You will receive it most likely Monday or Tuesday of next week.

Please contact me again should you require further assistance.

Kind regards,

Xxxxx

Thank you Apple

Given the small amount of loud voices over the scratchy iPods and mooing/hot MacBooks its nice to see.

Yeah, OK so its 6-6-6 today. All the fun and origins of ‘666’ being the devils number aside, today is only 6-6-6 by accident of the way our calendars work. So dont expect some kind of devilry today in the same way that we dont see fairies, pixies, father christmas, leprechauns, the minotaur, unicorns, jesus, god or any other mythical being every other day of the week.

Sorry to crush any dreams there.

Image on Flickr.