Oldie But Goodie

This is more of a retro-review and commentary of Unreal Tournament, now known as UT Classic or UT 1999. UT Classic is much more fun and faster than the UT 2004 blown up incarnation, also available for the Mac. Granted the addition of stategy games like Onslaught teamplay and vehicles (thanks to Halo) are nice additions to UT 2004, the feel is not as good as the Classic version, in my opinion. UT 2004 requires steeper system requirements, mostly because of the highly detailed worlds and characters. Heavier graphics doesn't make for a better game. I thought, perhaps, I was out-of-touch of the graphics and mechanics of the newer game. However, even when I played Unreal Championship (a spinoff of the franchise) on the Xbox, the movement was choppy in the same way. Something is terribly wrong with the integration of the coding and Invidia graphics card. Still, UT 1999 has a plethora of customized maps that are downloadable and playable online. Enough to satisfy any FPS gamer for a very long time. I've been searching for a way to keep the great classic shooter in OSX. Alas, sadly, even the one beta patch update available out there doesn't work properly. It crashes. I read plenty of forums and there is still a popular demand for the game to be playable in OSX. Unfortunately, developers don't want to support Unreal Tournament 1999 anymore. If you can afford the hard drive space, keep OS 9.2 on your Macs a while longer, my friends, so we can keep playing this Classic together!

Ying and Yang

Charles Schultz once said, "Happiness is a warm puppy." Can I add warm cats to that? Introducing my cats - BooBoo (left) and Mac (right). BooBoo likes to play hide (and seek), especially when a stranger comes over. But he is a soft loving hug when everything's back to normal. Mac is truly user-friendly. Named aptly because when he was a kitten, he'd sit on my lap and look at the screen whenever I was surfing on my computer. Plus, he is friendly to all, even to new comers.