(no subject)

While one of the reasons I had been avioding the half-life series prior to this was the Ateam product activation system, apparently even it has some uses. For instance, I find it surprising that under 2.5% of the users of a top of the line first person shooter have systems set up to use DirectX 10, and that under 8% have Vista to even be able to support it. I mean, I knew what my opnion on this topic is, but I would have thought there would be more "must have the latest and greatest" folks, and more compters that came preconfigured with. Since I know there's a decent chunk of corporate customers that have zero interest in it until they've had a chance to take a look at service pack one, a lack of uptake among the upgrade often crowd suggests that it isn't going well at all. Even Windows 2000 wasn't far behind Vista in the rankings of operating systems used for Steam gaming, and that was optimized for business use.

(no subject)

Okay, this little device is one of the most creative steampunk props I've seen. A number of the others I've posted about have been more elaborate, but this one manages an effect I hadn't even considered. It's too close to halloween for this to help out those planning elaborate costumes, but there's always next year :)