The guys at ActiveWindows send word that we can hopefully be seeing a new DirectX7 public release as early as this coming Friday.

Pigs in a blanket at IHOP gives me gas.

I'm gonna uh.. dig through some email and see what's cooking for Sunday for you guys. How's it goin?

So, I'm messing around with a little chat client since so many of you guys have been asking for one. The client only works in IE 4/5 right now which according to my stats is about 70% of you guys. Not sure about Netscape since I'm a loser and havent re-installed it since my fresh hard drive. Give it a shot and lemme know what you guys think. Right now it's just pointing at an ETG channel without any administration. It's just a test.

You doing anything cool over there?

In response to all the backdoor accusations being thrown at Microsoft, they have issued this response saying. "We don't backdoor!" Thanks George K.

Well now, since so many of you guys have been asking for these pictures KillCreek was kind enough to send along 3 of her new pics that Details took of her recently. There is no nudity in them so don't worry kids. Well, um.. here are the pics: [shot1] [shot2] [shot3]. Yeah feel free to bitch at me about this not being gaming related. Then tell me you didnt look at the pictures. Btw, these are poloroid scans so they are a bit bright.

I miss anything cool? Nothing like going to Tom Thumb at 2:30am to buy some Cherry Pepsi and kick frozen burritos down the aisles. It was a scientific experiment though, I swear.

The IOTD for today is something linux users can chuckle at. Slap your caption here.

Yesterday's IOTD caption winner has to go to #28 with "Entrance in the rear""
Wednesday's IOTD caption winner went to #11 with "As his last act in office, President Clinton has another monument added to Mt. Rushmore in his honor."
Be sure and check out all of the other IOTDs.

Well, rumors have been abounding about a particular Ion Storm employee appearing in a future issue of Playboy. Here's the info I just received, Stevie "KillCreek" Case, level designer at Ion Storm will be featured in an upcoming issue of Playboy magazine to hit stands in a couple of months. She's going to be shooting the photos the 2nd week of October up in Chicago. The "theme" of course will be based around her being a female gamer and developer, and there will be nudity involved. Curious how it happened? Stevie was "discovered" when a Playboy exec spotted her in a LA Times article and they just gave her a call. Wish I had people calling me saying "Hey, wanna get naked?"

update: Here is word from Stevie "FYI, Playboy had some test pictures taken before the decided to feature me. Also, the whole deal was set up without the involvement of Ion or Romero. I actually have my own brain and make real life decisions all by myself now! God forbid!! Its just one giant conspiracy! ;-)"

Everybody and their mom is talking about how some scientists genetically engineered some mice and they are a good deal smarter now. What does this have to do with anything? There is hope for sTeve yet :)

I uh, just woke up? *cough* I miss anything cool?

Figure I'll put the IOTD in this slot since it is already here. Yesterday's IOTD caption winner has to go to #11 with "As his last act in office, President Clinton has another monument added to Mt. Rushmore in his honor."

The IOTD for today is where I buy all of my booze. Slap your caption here. Be sure and check out all of the other IOTDs.

What's up? How's it goin?

Time for the freaky ass news item of the day for you guys to check out. Head transplants. No kidding. They sure as hell arent cheap but apparently they have already been conducted on small animals with some success. Just check this stuff out:

The operational procedure, described by White in a paper published last week, would involve two teams of surgeons. Deep incisions would be made around the necks to expose the six major blood vessels and the spine. <snip>

Am I the only one who thinks that <snip> placement is a bit ironic?

The wack links for the week have been updated/posted or whatever you wanna call it. Please don't send me too much hate mail because you're offended by some of that stuff. I dont endorse it, I just think it's demented or funny eh?

PCA has posted their first impressions and a batch of screens from the recently released BattleZone II demo. At 15MBs, I recommend you try it out.

So, after that embarrassment that was the suckage a couple weeks ago I decide to get high on reese's bites and cherry pepsi. This is what came out of my head so maybe you guys wont hate me anymore? Have a look at the stuff that sucks.

Yeah, I know, this has absolutely nothing to do with 3D games, but plant a wet one here: (_o_). It seems that Unisys, the monkeys who came up with the whole GIF thing in the first place want to make a whole lot of money off of it, and are threatening to sue websites, including noncommercial sites, that use GIFs for a $5000 licensing fee. Even if the GIFs were generated by a licensed editor. You can get more info at Don Marti's Burn All GIFs Day site. These people are morons, I'm sorry. Everybody start using the .PNG format now. And get rid of all browsers that don't support .PNG. PNG, for those of you who are uninitiated is a 32 bit, compressable, non lossy format that does multiple levels of transparency and basically rocks. Saw all this over at Slashdot.

Seeing as how Paul Steed, model dude over at id Software doesnt really have a "public forum" to post his thoughts in rebuttal to a recent Dear Mynx column, well here I am with a web page so I'm forking it over for ya guys. This is a letter from Paul Steed in reference to "Paul Steed, The Man, The Myth, The Fad" in the August 19th edition. Here is the opening of the letter from Mr. Steed:

While I think you exaggerate about the number of times I had women surrounding me at QuakeCon, I'd like to point out that I paid those girls to hang out.  The reason why I did this is of course the obvious stir it would cause, but more importantly the frivolous, guy-oriented entertainment value of the act.  Thankfully most women who have cared to share their opinion of that sad...er said act have done so positively or at worst ambivalently.

Oh, my 2 cents. If I could convince hot girls to run around in tight clothing and hang all over me I would do it too. Oh btw check out the letter right above the one for Steed in Dear Mynx. Muahahaha.

Well, since noone's posted any news today, I may as well get this one out of the way.

I'm announcing the new winners of this caption contest. As you may recall, I said I'd have two winners, one for general and one for a bonus section. The winner for the general one is Fusion with:

Steve, come on in... take your ears off, stay a while...

The bonus award is for best song parody and goes to Spezzer for this:

A Great Anomaly
Inspired by the song "Lit-My Own Worst Enemy"

Can we forget about the modeling I did last week
I didn't mean to look like that...
I can't remember what the guy had even said to me

Please tell me, please tell me whyyyyy
I'm wearin such a dumb tie...I'll die,
I'm posin with my shirt off...
I put on some red lipstick, last night...it's not...gone. gone..

It's no surprise to me I'm a great anomaly,
cause every now and then I gel my hair to look pretty...
the smoke alarm goes off and there's my "nice" hair burning up,
still burning...please tell me whyyyyyy
I'm wearin such a dumb tie...i'll die
i'm pouting like a small fry...
I'll have to use some rogaine, i'll lie, but it's...gone. gone...

(insert solo here)

Please tell me whyyyyy
I'm wearin such a dumb tie..i'll die...
career's end is now nigh
so i'll start up a website...for games,

It's no surprise to me I'm a great anomaly,
cause every now and then I gel my hair to look pretty...
Can we forget about the modeling i did last week
I didn't mean to look like that...

I should have a new one up next week, and let's just say that the Japanese finally noticed the ear problem too and came up with an inventive solution.

IGN PC had a chance to interview a couple of the guys at Monolith about their newest engine technology, LithTech2.0.

Epic Games (via CliffyB from Fingershack) welcomes James Green to their team, who is described as "a great modeler/animator/artist who has cool hair and a cool attitude...Plus, he hates the sunlight just like the rest of us." Here's a sample of his work from the Love Doll contest, enjoy :)