I sense something's coming

What can I say about the third Mummy film? It's terrible, in almost every way. It doesn't even feel like its part of the same series as the previous 2 films. It's boring, the dialogue is terrible, the characters are dull and irritating, and the film just doesn't flow well. The special effects were pretty good though.

Avoid it, unless you are really, really, bored.

It's a shame. I really liked The Mummy franchise and was looking forward to the third part. Oh well... lets see what Tropic Thunder brings.

I've long been a fan of ClarkConnect, it's very easy to use and has all the features most home users would want in a home gateway/server machine, such as:

• DHCP server
• Firewall/Proxy
• Web server
• Bandwidth allocation
• and much more

However, the one thing that is missing from the free version, though it is available in the commercial version, is load balancing multiple Internet connections. Now for the majority of people this is not an issue as they only have 1 Internet connection. I was the same until only recently. Seeing as I am not willing to pay for the commercial version, I need to look elsewhere for a solution, and I have settled upon pfSense.

pfSense is not as complete a solution home server solution like ClarkConnect. It is specifically a firewall/proxy that does support load balancing multiple Internet connections. I haven't played with it much, and actually have a problem likely due to unsupported hardware in the machine - which I'm hoping the newer BETA 1.2.1 will support. I plan to have another look at it over the next day or two.

Both are great products, and I'm hoping I will be equally pleased with pfSense as I am with ClarkConnect.

We all have fond memories of video game introductory movies and sequences. In fact, I can remember buying a game primarily from seeing the introduction movie. I've only chosen pre year 2000 games as modern games generally have very high quality pre-rendered or in-game introductions. I'm only interested in those uncommonly great introductions. Here are a couple that spring to mind:

1. Mechwarrior 2

This has to be my all time favourite intro. Damn near perfect for it's time, from the skull being crushed by the Mech's foot, to the fireball engulfing the screen - brilliant. All the Mechwarrior games had good intro's.

2. Syndicate Wars

This hasn't aged well, and is in fact quite poor, but at the time I thought it was cool.

3. Command & Conquer

Whilst the intro movie itself isn't spectacular, the entire experience was. Everyone should remember the very fancy installer and the movies throughout. All the Command & Conquer games had good movie sequences - except for Generals.

Any others that you can think of?

Well, I finally got home from watching the opening ceremony at a friends' house. I have to say, there was some pretty spectacular stuff. Apparently much of the drumming was reciprocated by the baby in the womb - similar types of noises, such as the fireworks, seem to effect the little fella.

As far as the idea of the 4 major Chinese inventions, I wonder what the Korean's think about the movable type claim? I believe China considered Korea to be part of China at the time, perhaps they still do... Maybe you could argue Tibet invented movable type?

My only complaint, and it's a sizeable one, is waiting, for what seemed like 4 hours, for the athletes parade... I think most of us would've gone home earlier if we weren't waiting for Australia, which as luck would have it, was third last.

Here's a final thing for you: How the Beijing Olympics got its logo

I just finished watching Starship Troopers 3: Marauder (yes, there was a Starship Troopers 2) and quite enjoyed it. It returns to the style of the original movie, rather than the darker atmosphere present in the second film.

The good: New bugs, new ships and new breasts to look at.

The bad: The special effects really could've done with a few more $$.