DarkRyda has been fine-tuning the Midway map for Battlegroup 1942. His latest version is up on TPU. Here are the changes:

1. Removed all duplicate ships. Only one kind of each ship now, with a total of six ships: four destroyers (two per side), an Allied sub and the second Yamato.
2. Removed a carrier from both sides; each side now has only one carrier.
3. Removed one of the Allied battleships.

These changes were made to reduce the amount of lag around the island. Thanks, Ryda!

Last Wednesday's run of DC Extended was a hit. But before I go ahead and switch to DC Extended on Tuesdays, I thought I should just make sure everyone has a chance to vote. So there's a new poll. Check it out and don't forget to vote.

The XBox 360 Kinect hardware now lets you control your XBox by talking to it. That's all well and good, and apparently it works reasonably well, but the vast majority of owners (including me) use our XBoxes almost exclusively to play games.

No matter how hard you try, no amount of talking to your XBox is going to get it to grab a game disc and insert it into the disc tray. Now, if tomorrow we all wake up in fantasy land, where the big media companies have finally realized that copy protection and DRM are utterly pointless, we could all merrily install our games onto nice big hard drives connected to our XBoxes. At that point, voice control starts to become useful. Of course, you still need to find the controller to play a game...

On the other hand, people who have hacked their XBoxes, allowing them to run games directly off the hard drive - without requiring the disc - may find this very useful.

So, is Kinect voice control the best reason yet to hack your Xbox 360?

The map list for DC Final has been updated. The extra "Day2" and "Day3" maps have been removed as they were basically duplicates. One exception is Bocage, where the "Day2" version was left in and the original version removed because it causes the server to crash. I also removed the oddball DC Final version of Battle of Britain because it was causing problems as well.

We'll be trying out a new mod next Wildcard Wednesday: DC Extended.

You can download the mod from the Files and links page:
http://jdrgaming.com/geeklog/staticpa...nloads#dcx

As always, feedback is greatly appreciated.

UPDATE: Guadalcanal and DC Oil Fields removed from the DCX map rotation as they were causing server crashes.

I've just posted another entertaining video from Sisko in the 'Files and links' section of the site.

Here's a direct link:
http://jrc-core.com/files/Sisko_TPU_video_02.flv

Apparently there is a new crash exploit targeting Battlefield 1942 servers. So far I have not seen any evidence that it has been used against TPU, but it's probably only a matter of time. Please let me know if you witness any unusual crashes or anyone claiming to to able to crash the server. There is an unofficial patch that I will apply if TPU gets hit.

Details are here: http://www.bfmods.com/viewtopic.php?t=1204

Sisko has been hard at work putting together showcase videos for TPU. I've posted his first one on the 'Files and links' page under the 'Videos and other media' heading. This video shows off some of the fun changes DarkRyda has been making to his Race Track map. Check it out!

Here's a quick link:
http://jrc-core.com/files/Sisko_TPU_video_01.flv

The Internet connection here has been intermittent in the past couple of days. It's up right now, but there's no way to know how long that will last. I'm posting this while I can, just to let you all know that if you're having trouble connecting to TPU or the TPU BF2 server, that's why.

We got a bunch of snow on Thursday and everything outside is alternately frozen and wet, so the problem is almost certainly related. Just now I went outside and hammered on the main cable junction box on the outside of the house, and that brought the connection back. For those of you scoring at home, that's called "percussive maintenance".

Anyway, I hope it lasts. The cable company can't be here until Monday afternoon.

The CRTC has reversed their earlier decision and rejected UBB. This is a win for consumers, but the full range of implications won't be known for some time. Meanwhile, Shaw Cable has been subtly changing their billing system, although so far those changes have been reasonable. On the other hand, here in Canada we pay more for Internet access that most other countries, so we still have room for improvement. You can read all the details on Michael Geist's blog.