Big Fat Ostrich

Well if it isn’t time for some Ostrich News!

Yeah that’s right. Lego’s new Prince of Persia themed collections includes one called Ostrich Race, and that’s just fine by us here at BFO Industries, Incorporated, Limited ™.

Check out the radical box:

I’m really digging the Lego scorpion over there on the left.

There are a bunch of different Prince of Persia themed Lego collections being released in anticipation of the Prince of Persia movie coming out in May. It stars Jake Gyllenhaal who’ll probably cry his way through the whole thing. I really don’t know what I have against Gyllenhaal tonight, but the idea of writing anything about him seems to be pissing me off. So let’s just leave it at that.

Man, Prince of Persia.

I don’t really care about the movie or the newer games, although I hear the Ubisoft games are pretty good. They’re probably available for the PS3 and Xbox and those other snazzy gaming consoles. But that’s just what I hear. All I know is that I used to play the olden one from olden times on my ancient 386, and it was awesome for one reason.

Because you got to fight skeletons and shit:

Someone I know (Dan) has not shut up for the past 3 weeks about this “Demon’s Souls”. Yeah yeah, I thought. Just like WoW, and “Hero Guys”, or whatever it was called. I figured it’s just another MMORPG, but it’s not.

In fact, me and co-blogger Dan had a real live gaming session over at his pad this week, and you know what? It’s not a MMOPRG at all! It’s actually a pretty sweet ass game.

Now I may be like 70 years old, but that doesn’t mean I’ve gone through life wearing big oversized sunglasses. I’ve SEEN the evolution of computer games, and I’ll be first to admit that I was wrong about Pacman being the end all of videogames.

But Demon’s Souls is special. Even an old dude like me can see that. It’s like they took the best elements from the last 20 years of “single dude killing bad guys games” and rolled it all into Demon’s Souls. And made it look amazing to boot.

Figuring out how to move the guy around the map was pretty easy, even for me. In fact, once I got used to the gorgeous landscapes and smooth move-ability, I could concentrate on killing bad guys and stuff. Oh yeah, it’s a medieval setting if you didn’t know, and you start off navigating through a huge ass freaky castle. Classic dark ages stuff. You can almost smell the plague and become friends with it.

Demon’s Souls is also REALLY hard, and if you die, you go back to the beginning of the map. But it’s totally worth it. It’s rare for me to say this but it’s a fun game to be in. Like a cozy slime-filled sock or something. If I had the console that this game is played on (PS3 I think?) I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t shut up about it either.

Oh yeah, I got to see level 2 where there are these disgusting cthuluesque motherfuckers that electrocute you and then suck your soul out through a horrendous kiss of death. The makers of Demon’s Souls managed to make it just realistic enough that I really felt tense as I VERY cautiously explored the stinking dungeon.

So yeah, it’s a really well made game. I might suck at it, but this non-gamer is impressed.

m.

Upgrading to 5.1 should do it.

It’s that simple.

After upgrading Google Earth (a fresh install works fine) on Ubuntu Karmic Koala, you may see this at the end of your install:

Installing desktop icon…
./googleearth-bin: ./libstdc++.so.6: version `GLIBCXX_3.4.9′ not found (required by ./libgoogleearth_lib.so)
./googleearth-bin: ./libstdc++.so.6: version `GLIBCXX_3.4.9′ not found (required by ./libbase.so)

Google Earth will not launch at all, but here’s how to fix it. You need to remove the 2 library files that Google Earth is complaining about. Here’s how:

Move out or copy the following 2 files from your Google Earth installation directory like so:

google-earth$ mv libstdc++.so.6 libstdc++.so.6.bak
google-earth$ mv libgcc_s.so.1 libgcc_s.so.1.bak

Google Earth should then launch.

So there you have it. Another half-assed tech note. Hopefully we’ll get some new gaming reviews when Dan finally takes a break from playing Demon’s Souls and drooling.

I could. So I rented Defiance (2008) starring Daniel Craig and a bunch of other dudes.

This time it’s in Nazi occupied Eastern Europe focusing on the The Bielski partisans played by Craig and Liev Schreiber. They hideout in the Belarusian forests where they build a survivalist camp, saving many lives.  They also hook up with the Russian resistance.

My impression: It’s exactly like Inglourious Basterds, except without the scalping, the fantasy WWII history rewrite, Brad Pitt, the comedy, Tarantino’s “hip” soundtrack, the French dialogue, urban Nazis, and a hilarious Hitler.

Otherwise, it’s the same movie. Check it out.

Speaking of being on the bleeding edge of technology, a recent update/upgrade of my Debian server revealed a bug with man-db. Yes. man-db. Out of all places it could have happened, it happened here. It’s shameful!

After upgrading, you might see mandb taking up 100% of your cpu. And not only that, the upgrade is likely to hang on it.

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND

2653 811 man 20 0 21500 1256 488 R 100 0.1 154:39.62 mandb

This was found in man-db version 2.5.6-4 but it’s already been fixed. You’ll just have to do an apt-get update followed by an apt-get upgrade. After that you should have man-db version 2.5.6-5

You can also look at the bug report here:

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=562503

Exciting times.

Thanks once again to Big Brother, i.e., Google for bringing us another fine result from our “Ostrich” news search. Thing is, there’s nothing recent about it. Ostrich 2.0 was released like 2 years ago.

But that’s us, man. Always keeping you on the bleeding edge of technology. We’re so bleeding edge, we’re haemorrhaging.

So our search came up with the Ostrich 2.0. It’s an emulator. Get it? Emu-lator? Ostrich?? We think it’s a great name.

The Ostrich 2.0 is from Moates. Since they know waaay more about this than I do, we’ll let them tell you what it is:

“This is the newest Ostrich, the 2.0 unit. It is extremely small and compact, durable, versatile, and powerful. Full 921.6k speed, from 4k (2732A) up to 512k (4mbit 29F040) and everything in between (27C128, 27C256, 27C512). Also works in conjunction with the FordEmu interface.”

Here’s the product link: http://support.moates.net/2008/09/11/ostrich-20-overview/

Anyway, watch the video for more info. The great thing about Ostrich News is never having to explain ourselves.