Dan Rock and DARKSTAR ... ROCK!

I just wanted to maybe turn some of you on to an amazing, talented guy, Dan Rock, and his music. Dan is the guitarist for the prog-metal group Psychotic Waltz and DARKSTAR is the side-project that he and his friend, German keyboardist Siggi Blasey have created.

This music is just awesome, especially if you love great guitar and great melodies together. Check out their website. They only have 2 CDs available but they are both really great. I can't pick one over the other, truthfully.

Click the album cover to the left to visit their website <em>(Ed: website defunct)</em>. Lots of samples from their songs so you can see that I'm not full of it!

Proxyconn Will Amaze You

Wow, they were not lying about this one. There's a company called Proxyconn that promises DSL speed over a 56k dialup line. AND IT WORKS!! I downloaded and installed the software expecting the usual lackluster performance and a quick uninstall immediately following my test....but wow am I impressed!

In the status bar area is a Proxyconn icon that will tell you the effective speed you're getting - right this second, mine is saying "broadband". Heh. Usually it says 150k or more. You simply must see this to believe it - in fact, if you already have DSL, try Proxyconn for Broadband so you can surf the net at T1 speeds!

Another great feature of Proxyconn is that it totally kills all bannerads and popups before they ever get to your computer. The way Proxyconn works is that your computer is constantly logged into their servers and when you send any HTTP requests, it will send it your way extremely compressed and faster than just going over the net normally. Their site explains all the technical details of how they achieve this amazing speed so I won't go into it here suffice to say that the speed is REAL.

Oh, and Proxyconn also speeds up your EMAIL! You just have to try this to believe it.

Birthdays Galore

HAPPY BIRTHDAY...

Dec 10: DOOM - 10 yrs
Dec 14: KEEN 1-3 - 13 yrs
Dec 15: KEEN 4-6 - 12 yrs
Dec 23: HERETIC - 9 yrs
Dec 23: HDB - 2 yrs

Man, December is the golden month of game birthdays! It's been quite a while since I updated - I did a full reinstall on my computer and I'm still not finished yet. For instance, I'm writing this update in FrontPage instead of Dreamweaver MX (I'll get up to speed soon).

That's 9 games in December alone...wow. We worked pretty hard to get Heretic and Hyperspace Delivery Boy out before January, as you can tell by the crazy date. Most publishers wouldn't release a game that late in the month when they're targeting retail... but we weren't.

So Happy Birthday, my little game babies! Well, maybe games should be measured in something like "game years" or something...like, maybe it should be 3 game years for every human year. That would make DOOM 30 years old....hmm. Thanks to numerous source ports it looks better than when it was a baby!

chiQ's Birthday

HAPPY BIRTHDAY chiQ!

Our very own chiQ had a birthday this month - let's wish her an amazing belated birthday wish!! Uuughh. I'm sorry. I will never again miss this darling woman's birthday ever again.

I should be punished for this somehow. Well, maybe I could make it up with a birthday gift or something. chiQ really helped me through my recent breakup - in a really big way.

Thank you so much for being awesome, chiQ.

Quake's Birthday

HAPPY BIRTHDAY QUAKE!

I am pretty blown away today - none of the Quake news sites mentioned this at all. Blue's News, ShackNews, even PlanetQuake -- everyone has forgotten that today was the day that the venerable Quake was born, 7 long years ago.

Currently, I'm in crunch mode on a Beta of my current game, so I don't have the time to open up the Quake section... but when I do, you will all have access to the original Quake 1 .MAP files. Stay tuned!