Blog of Leonid Mamchenkov

I’ve been ordering stuff from Amazon.co.uk rather frequently.  I never had any problems with any of the products or deliveries.  Until my last order.  For some reason it just didn’t come.  And because it was a DataPost delivery, it couldn’t have been tracked either.

So, when all the dates for estimated delivery passed, I emailed back to Amazon asking them if they have any information about that order.  They told me that they haven’t, but if the order won’t arrive in the next few days (they gave me a specific date), then I should just let them know and they would resend it free of charge.

The date they mentioned came and went but the order still wasn’t here.  So I waited for another couple of days and asked Amazon again.  They emailed me back and said that they will place a replacement order within the same day.  A few minutes later they confirmed that the replacement order has been placed, and just wanted to know if I still want all of the items, since one of the DVDs that I had on the list changed status from “In Stock” to “Usually ships within the next 4-6 business days”.  I said that I don’t mind about more delay and would rather just get all of the things that I ordered.

And that was it.  Two weeks later the re-placement order came in.  And now let me state the obvious: I am a really satisfied happy customer.  My respects and thanks go to Amazon for handling the situation the best way they could.

P.S.: A few days after the replacement order arrived, the original order came too.  Very much delayed, but it came through as well.  Because I am a greedy bastard, and because those DVDs are just so good, and because Christmas is almost upon us, I won’t be sending one of this orders back.  I’ll keep both of them.  But I will for sure order more, a lot more from Amazon.  Thank you, and an early Merry Chrismas.

I have recently upgraded my laptop to Fedora 9.  Those of you who come often to this blog or follow me on Twitter, know that I’ve been waiting for this release like for nothing else.  Two technologies in particular - KDE 4 and Firefox 3 - were the center of my focus.  Of course, I could updated them separately and tried them earlier, but I wanted to follow the path of the distribution.

The upgrade itself went fast and easy.  But starting with the first reboot, I was getting more and more negative towards the new release.  While booting for the first time, I got two messages, notifying me that wpa_suppclient service and CUPS daemon failed to start.  While I don’t care much about printers, wireless connectivity is vital for me, so that was a bit discouraging.

The login screen.  It was changed quite a bit, and I didn’t like it much.  Logging in.  Somehow I ended up in Gnome, even though my desktop environment was KDE for the last 7 years or so.  Logout.  Switch into long awaited KDE 4.  From the first look it was beautiful, even though not quite for my tastes.  Surely, I’d need to reconfigure and change a few things. Not a problem for me at all - even more fun so.

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Most of the people who I told that I was going to Amsterdam for a conference responded with some combination of one or more of “Oh, the drug capital of the world“, “Oh, the city of red lights and legalized prostitution“, and “Oh, this is the best place to get high and get laid“. Quite a few people that I know have already visited Amsterdam before, and less than a handful of them could name a point of interest not related to either sex or drugs.

That felt a bit to narrow minded for me, but there was not much I could express in return. Reading Wikipedia articles and tourist guides is all fine, but it doesn’t beat the experience of a visit.

I am glad to report that there is a lot more to the city of Amsterdam than just coffeshops with legalized pot and red lights district. So much in fact, that I didn’t manage to visit those high profile places in my almost four days there. So, what’s up there?

Streets. Lots of streets with some nice architecture. A complex system of canals is laid through out the city, and that makes for some amazing scenery. Canal waters, industrial skyline, lots of parks, lawns, and trees, and developed infrastructure for pedestrians and cyclist make it all a pleasure to explore the city. I wish the weather was any better, but even as such (+3..+7 C with a bit of wind and rain) it wasn’t a big problem.

One of the things that I kept pointing out for myself was how well-organized and clean the city was despite all the industrial works in the area. Canals are pretty busy with ships of all shapes and sizes bringing stuff in and taking stuff out. Railways are going throughout the city. Trucks can be easily spotted around. Also there are quite a few sites which look like factories and plants. But, somehow, it is very easy to imagine that all of that industrial infrastructure is just not there. Because it doesn’t affect the city life very much. The air is clean and easy to breath, the water is fine, and the streets are nice and clean too. Coming from a very industrial city myself, it kept surprising me over and over again.

One aspect of this infrastructure was particularly catching my attention - the railways. Railways are going through the city inside out. Plenty of passenger and non-passenger trains are passing by. But, the railways are clean and trains are very silent. Many buildings by the railways have tables and chairs on the balconies, arranged in such a way that there is no doubt some people are using them to enjoy the view and to rest a bit during their free time. In fact, the hotel in which I was staying was only about five minutes away from Amsterdam Central, and I never even heard or felt any train passing, although I could see many of them out of the window.

Of course, when talking about Amsterdam, it is impossible not to mention bicycles. They are everywhere. They come in all shapes, sizes, and colors, much like those people riding them. Bikes are used both as a form of transportation and as means of exercise. And while many people have cars, it looks like absolutely everyone has a bicycle, and what’s more, everyone seem to prefer a bicycle to a car no matter what is the goal of the trip, the distance to the destination, or the weather outside. Amazing really.

Amsterdam, they say, is well known for its cultural life. Museum and exhibitions in particular. I saw a few proofs of that, in the form of museum signs and all sorts of passes and batch tickets, but I didn’t manage to enjoy any of that. A few people from the conference did sneak out to museums and said that they were indeed pretty good, but I can’t trust that until I’ll see it with my own eyes. Yes, that means that I want to go back and spend some more time in Amsterdam…

As I mentioned earlier, I’m back to Quake 3 battle fields.  I am still trying to remember things, and adjust my brain to how it all works.  While major things are still there, and still important, there have been quite a few small changes.

Quake 3 is very much about mods (modifications).  There are many mods out there, and each of them takes Quake 3 into a different direction - different physics, different graphics, different gameplay.  When I used to play Quake 3 five years ago, the two most popular mods were OSP and RA3.   I never particularly liked RA3, despite its beautiful graphics.  All my time was spent in OSP.

That’s where I started now.  But what I quickly found out is that OSP isn’t as popular now as it used to be.  The mod of the new generation is CPMA, which stands for Challenge ProMode Arena.  It has OSP built-in as an option.  It is also based on the ProMode settings, which we also played sometimes.  But overall, it’s a different thing.

What is different?  Here is a quick overview as I saw it:

• CPMA is much much much faster than OSP.  It’s unbelievably fast.  OSP was never slow by any means, but CPMA is so much faster that I’ll need a lot of time to adjust.
• CPMA introduces more moves and enhances the old ones.  Double jumps are there.  Circle jumps.  Strafe jumps are there, but they are much faster now.  There is more in-flight control, as it was in ProMode.
• CPMA brings in more maps with more tricks.  With all those increased speeds, a new set of maps was pretty much a requirement.  The well-known pro-q3dm6 used to good enough for TDM and 1v1.  With CPMA it feels very small, almost tiny, even for a duel.  CPMA maps are bigger, but not more complex.  They also provide features for all those tricky moves.
• CPMA uses faster weapon-switching, like it was in ProMode.   Instantly switching between weapons in heated combat adds to intensity of the game.
• CPMA handles timing differently.  First of all, the timer doesn’t show seconds.  Players are forced into doing timing in their own head.   Although this is not a big problem for a mildly experienced player, it still feels a bit weird.
• CPMA handles health and armor stuff different.  I’m not sure yet how differently, but it seems that when hit, player loses more health even if he has armor, than he does in OSP.  Also, picking up armor is a bit different now.  Basically, you can’t pickup yellow armor after picking up red, without receiving some damage in between.  Oh, and there is a green armor there too now.  So it works out like this:   green armor is the weakest, then yellow, and then red.

There are probably a few other things that I haven’t noticed, but even these are make for a sufficient list.  How does it feels now?  Here is how I feel about it after playing a couple of times:

• Extremely intense!  I still can’t believe how fast this thing is.  It’s painful to watch.  It’s even more so to play.  I can’t blink once over the course of a whole match.   Two main components of this intensity are greatly increased movement speeds and instant weapon switching.
• Timing and movement is everything.  If you can’t move, you are dead.  Instantly.  If you can move, you are dead instantly anyway.  The only way to survive even a brief fight is to have you health, armor and weapons packed.  And for that you need timing.  Aim is a good addition to the list, but it’s not a requirement.
• Respawn points are much more important in CPMA than in OSP.  Respawn points are well known (CPMA even highlights in the special way).  When a player enters a game, he is not moving.  For a split millisecond he’s stationary.  That’s an easy target.  And when a player enters a game, he has no armor or weapons (except for a tiny machine gun and a gauntlet).  It’s like shooting fish in the aquarium with a shotgun.   Oh, and there is a sound that notifies your enemies at which point you respawned.
• Communications in TDM are less important now.  Things are changing too fast - items availability, players locations, etc, to notify team-players about them.  And there is  plenty of stuff going on on its own…

Stay tuned for more of these, as I get more practice…

I am back in Quake 3.  It all happened very fast and very unexpected.  I used to play Quake 3 about five years ago, and I have to tell you, we had plenty of fun back then.  But one thing led to another and I dropped out.  I haven’t heard anything about Quake 3, haven’t watched any demos, or haven’t even talked about Quake 3 in the last 5 years or so.

A few days ago I noticed a colleague of mine spending his lunch break chasing someone in pro-q3dm6 map.  I got a overwhelmed by a wave of memories and forgotten feelings and I asked him if I could play a round on his computer.  He agreed.  It turned out, he was playing against my own brother.  My brother, being a mean chap as he is, started playing Quake 3 too, with some guys from the college, but never pushed me to return.  Now that I was chased by him around the arena, I remembered that he mentioned his comeback once or twice.

Anyway, the quick match showed that my Quake 3 skills were gone.  All of them.  Even despite playing on somebody else’s computer, using half-baked configuration, and playing over 150+ ms ping, I still could feel how bad I am in the game.

In a quick chat after the game, my brother mentioned that my laptop should be fast enough to run Quake 3.  Of course, it’s not a gaming station by any means, but it should be sufficient to handle a game written a decade ago or so.  He was right.  I fetched a dusty CD-ROM and installed the game.  A quick Google search over my blog archives helped me to get back my old config file.  And I started practicing with the bots a bit.

Boy, was I ashamed.  Bots were killing me with any weapon on any map in any position on any level of difficulty.  It was almost unbelievable.  Everything was gone.  I couldn’t move. I couldn’t aim. I forgot the maps.  I forgot the controls.  My hands were getting tired after just a few minutes…  It was like I never played Quake 3 in my life, but worse.

Anyway, I got interested in getting back what I once had.  I was never by any means a top player or a particularly skillful one, but I could run around properly and kill a few people even.  I wanted my skills back.

It turned out I wasn’t the only one.  I quickly found another three or four people who wanted to play some proper Quake 3.  We played a few matches on our own server.  It was slow and laggy, but it felt good non-the-less.

I jumped on my connections to find out what happened to the old servers and old people that used to play.  Surprisingly, the server is still up, and there is another new one brought up just a couple of days ago, and there seem to be some interest - a few people play on a daily basis.  Wow!  That was much more than I hoped for.

Today I truly got back into Quake 3.  I played for three hours, and I played with some people who I haven’t seen for the last five years.  I was surprised to see that they remember me, and that they missed me and all that…  So, what have changed?  Here is a briefing:

• There are more maps and mods than I can remember.
• There are more servers around.  Back in the days we had like one or two servers with all proper maps and patches.  Now I have four servers in my bookmarks.  And most of them are faster and richer than those that we used to play on.
• People are more interested in the game.  Five years ago, Quake 3 in Cyprus was more of a fashion game.  Most kids were playing Counter Strike, and Quake 3 was sort of a “change of environment”.  Not many understood it, not many liked it, but many tried it.  With this, a lot of people were passing by.  Now, Quake 3 is a classic game.  Many games have been made since it was released, and most players moved on.  Only those die-hard fans are still around.  And some new blood, people who want to learn the proper game.

A few things changed.  But the main one is still there.  Quake 3 is still a lot of fun.   The years that passed by, the new technologies, the life changing experiences that happened, none of these changed the my attitude towards Quake 3.  And I feel that I am not alone… and it feels like Quake 3 is not just a game, but a lifestyle.

You will probably hear more about my Quake 3 adventures on this blog in the near future.  Until then, happy fragging!