Today, we picked up a The Ant Commandos Double Range wireless controller. Tomorrow, it goes back to the store, because it doesn’t play nicely with our wireless network, and is supposed to be interference free. If you leave the controller on, and don’t press any buttons, it randomly sends signals to the PS2. If I turn off the wireless router, it stops doing this. Our wireless router is a standard standalone Linksys Router, although I’m running DD-WRT on it so I can have better control of our wireless network. No matter what channel I change to (from 1 to 11) there’s still interference occurring. Seeing as a single wrong note in Guitar Hero or Rock Band can blast your score and progress to bits, this is unacceptable, and I shouldn’t have to turn of my wireless network to be able to use a wireless controller. So, back to the store the controller goes, and I’ll just have to get an additional wired controller. At least those don’t suffer from interference, just people tripping on them, or kids chewing on cables.

Tags: Borked, PS2 by Teh Bagder
749No Comments »http://iam.tehbagder.com/2008/12/21/guitar-hero-interference/Guitar+Hero%3A+Interference2008-12-21+23%3A56%3A43Teh+Bagder

A few years back we had a subscription to RealArcade. This was before we discovered GameTap, and we thought the value of a subscription was worth it. The gist of the sales pitch that RealArcade made was that any games you bought would be yours to keep and you’d be able to play them in the future. They basically put a wrapper around the main executable that tied it to the RealArcade player, which was a standalone executable that ran as a program launcher on your computer. Due to finances we eventually decided to stop the subscription last year, knowing that at any time we could reinstall the RealArcade player and still play the,

Except that’s not what happened.

Real has upgraded RealArcade to a browser-centric application that won’t recognize the old file format of the games that we bought and archived. As RealArcade gets rid of purchase history beyond a current year’s time, we archived all of our games so we could play them again. The problem is that there’s no way to load the new games into the new executable, because the new executable launches a web-browser and operates completely differently.

My laptop got wiped a few weeks back, so of course, I didn’t have the old version of the RealArcade software installed. It took me a couple of hours research to find a way to get the old executable back (which is no longer supported by Real). This mad me quiet mad, but I’ve archived a copy of the installer so that we can continue to install the games we bought and expect to be able to play.

Other games services such as Steam and Impulse keep track of all your previous purchases, so why doesn’t Real? From now on, we’re buying games through Steam, Impulse and GameTap, because these service providers get that you don’t piss off your player base.

Tags: Borked, Opine, PC Games, Play by Teh Bagder
717No Comments »http://iam.tehbagder.com/2008/12/15/borked-realarcade-retrofitting/Borked%3A+RealArcade+Retrofitting2008-12-15+17%3A17%3A00Teh+Bagder

Today, my laptop AC starting playing up. When the power cord neck near the actual wall plug moves in a particular direction, the main AC unit gets no power. I’m sure this is down to years of having the plug pulled out using the length of the cord, instead of pulling the wall plug unit. Anyway, I don’t need to replace the entire AC unit, which is $69.99, but just buy a replacement 3 wire connector for $12.99, plus shipping. I had the option of a 3 foot or 6 foot lead, and sprung for the 6 foot seeing as both were the same price. When I got to checkout, Dell asked if I wanted a Dell Preferred Account! Erm, thanks, but no, not for a $12.99 cable.

They’re going to ship this out on 12/18/08, which means it will be lost in the Christmas mail, and I need to work with a dodgy cable plug until I get the new plug. Anyway, $12.99 is better than $69.99.

This is pretty important to fix because one simple short and I could blow my AC, as well as cause a surge into the laptop. Seeing as I rely on this laptop for pretty much for school, family and games, that’s $12.99 well spent.

Tags: Borked, PC Games by Teh Bagder
709No Comments »http://iam.tehbagder.com/2008/12/14/for-2025-dell-asks-if-i-want-a-credit-account/For+%2420.25+Dell+Asks+If+I+Want+A+Credit+Account2008-12-15+01%3A03%3A13Teh+Bagder

Hmmm. My ANUS won’t fit on the game board. Can anyone help me fit my ANUS on the board?

Tags: Borked, Web by Teh Bagder
703No Comments »http://iam.tehbagder.com/2008/12/11/bum-rush/Bum+Rush2008-12-11+05%3A59%3A21Teh+Bagder

This burns my bum. While looking at a blog, I saw a banner for the site ThePokemonQuiz.net, and decided to have my daughter and I go through it and see what quiz it was and what type of Pokemon it said she was. We get 80% of the way through and find out that it’s an ad for a company that sells ringtones. To see the results, you need to send a mobile SMS to your phone. Not only that, but the terms of service indicate that by signing up, you’re subscribing to a $9.95 per month service. Scammy, to say the least. Needless to say, we didn’t sign up.

Perhaps someone needs to let Nintendo and the Pokemon Company know that this company is doing this, because you can bet that there will be a bunch of younger kids who go through and put their cell phone number in their and subscribe to this service without realizing it. As I say: scammy, really scammy.

Tags: Borked, Web by Teh Bagder
694No Comments »http://iam.tehbagder.com/2008/11/29/borked-pokemon-ringtone-scam-the-pokemon-quiz/Borked%3A+Pokemon+Ringtone+Scam+-+The+Pokemon+Quiz2008-11-29+18%3A40%3A30Teh+Bagder

Courtesy of Pwn or Die [via Gamepolitics.com], here’s a great riff on the All Your Base meme that floated around a few years ago.

Tags: Borked, Web by Teh Bagder
676No Comments »http://iam.tehbagder.com/2008/09/30/web-all-ur-base-2008/Web%3A+All+Your+Base+20082008-09-30+20%3A01%3A48Teh+Bagder

When you put an ad together for a set of new game servers in a distant continent that speaks a different language, it’s a good idea to not only:

• Proofread the text in the ad.
• Ensure that any graphics in the ad – which should be sexually stimulating – don’t suddenly take on a whole new meaning in light of any typos.

I found this ad for Wonderland Online at the I Can Has Cheezburger? website when doing a search, and will admit to being drawn into the ad by the seductive pose of the girl in the picture (I’m male – it’s genetic). Then I noticed the typo regarding the GRAND REOPENING of their new game servers. Seems that people in Europe are playing a version of the game involving uniped re-animated corpses that have to lean against ad borders so they don’t fall down, or you only get to play half a character. Of course, with Anime-inspired games, anything is possible. Anything.

Tags: Borked by Teh Bagder
673No Comments »http://iam.tehbagder.com/2008/09/30/borked-half-woman-all-fail-uniped-mini-games/Borked%3A+Half+Woman%2C+All+Fail%2C+Uniped+Mini+Games%3F2008-09-30+18%3A49%3A43Teh+Bagder

I just popped onto the home page for the site here to see what it currently looks like and was presented with an interesting series of Google Adwords: Adult Only Video Games. How the heck did Adsense manage to decode THAT from the text that’s on the page? Mind you, the actual link takes us to a page with a bunch of M-rated games such as Grand Theft Auto San Andreas and Rule of Rose. Strange.

Tags: Administration, Borked by Teh Bagder
567No Comments »http://iam.tehbagder.com/2008/08/06/adult-only-hardly/Adult+Only%3F+Hardly%212008-08-06+21%3A50%3A12Teh+Bagder

Just out of curiosity, I decided to check the current stats on the visits to the site, only to find that 6.66% of visits come from the "Evil" United Kingdom. Thanks to the Mrs to noticing this.

Tags: Borked by Teh Bagder
552No Comments »http://iam.tehbagder.com/2008/03/05/666/6.66%252008-03-06+03%3A03%3A48Teh+Bagder

My current number of unread items on the Joystiq blog inside Google Reader. Looks like I better read something, quickly.

Tags: Borked by Teh Bagder
5471 Comment »http://iam.tehbagder.com/2007/12/07/the-devils-blog-reader/The+Devil%27s+Blog+Reader2007-12-08+01%3A37%3A57Teh+Bagder