Category: General

I faced off against the Fiero’s electrical system this past weekend. Ever since the fusible links blew and it was taken to a mechanic there had been problems with the internal lighting, headlights, radio and starter all failing to work on occasion.

After a bit of research, I tracked down the single point of failure for all of the above to a single point near the starter where everything daisy chained off of each other. It was a hard to reach spot, but I had noticed a good deal of black electrical tape wrapped around the connectors, and after taking off the air intake unit, I was able to removed the tape and replace most of the connectors. Several days have gone by and not even a single hiccup in the electrical system, so I’m considering this a minor success.

Now I only have to attack the clutch pedal, speed sensor, fuel filling hose and brakes, and I’ll be pretty much where everyone else with their vehicles. The joys of keeping a twenty year old piece of the 80s running.

I approached Battlefield Vietnam with a bit of trepidation based on my experience with the early bug filled releases of Battlefield 1942, as well as the host of online forum critics who panned the game prior to release on the premise of a Vietnam game being nothing more than glorified and expensive expansion pack.

The game does have a number of day one bugs, especially for those of us running ATI Radeon cards, which cannot use anti-aliasing or ansiotropic filtering without severe graphical issues. However, once these features are turned to the default settings, the game runs well and looks good. Other bugs include the inability to sort servers in the network listings by ping as well as some lag issues with online play.

However, it is very much a playable game despite the technical issues, and I soon found myself able to try both the single player and online multiplayer experiences with little setup. Battlefield Vietnam is similar to Battlefield 1942 in that the included single player mode is nothing more than a training tool and substitute for the more interesting online gameplay. The included bots play the game adequately, but often show lackluster AI abilities in their standard gameplay.

I found the changes in gameplay interesting, including the reduced number of soldier classes, though each of the four included provides two separate but similar loadouts to provide sufficient choice of tactical play. My only real complaint here comes from the balance issues of having an anti-personnel weapn in the form of the M60 that tends to be more accurate than the M16s combined with the anti-vehicle LAW, making this the class used by most of those players on the US and AVRN teams.

The helicopters are a great addition to the mix, and are extremely easy to fly, even using the keyboard. The ability to hang out the side of a UH-1, firing your M16 into the jungles below while anti-air missiles streak upwards makes for some exciting play. The jets work well, though the maps often seem constraining in their size for the faster aircraft.

Overall I would highly recommend Battlefield Vietnam for anyone who enjoyed Battlefield 1942, as its not just a graphical makeover of the previous game, but offers a number of subtle gameplay differences that improves upon what came before.

Why is the opinion that anyone who takes medication for mental disorders such as depression or attention deficit disorder is “weak” as common as it is? Are people who take medication for a physical disorder weak as well? Now, I know some will point to instances where someone is medicated for either minor or non-existent problems, but the same happens just as often for physical disorders. Yet there seems to be a significant bias against anyone who’s going through suboptimal problems that can be corrected through the use of medication as being “weak”.

An apt description of what a bumper sticker is, courtesy of Documented Life:

Reading through More of the Straight Dope, I came across an interesting section based on the question as to whether early man could only see three colors.

Most of the evidence that ancient man did not have the same level of color perception that we do today comes from both artwork and literature of the time. For example, the naturalist Lazarus Geiger put forth a couple of theories based on his studies of Greek literature, the Vedic hymns, and other ancient writings, as well as the fact that most artwork from the period only contained four colors: black, white, red and yellow.

Many scientists today dont quite accept this as fact by any means, but there are some interesting rules that have appeared in studying the patterns of ancient languages:

1. All languages contain terms for white and black.
2. If a language contains three terms, then it contains a term for red.
3. If a language contains four terms, then it contains a term for either green or yellow (but not both).
4. If a language contains five terms, then it contains terms for both green and yellow.
5. If a language contains six terms, then it contains a term for blue.
6. If a language contains seven terms, then it contains a term for brown.
7. If a language contains eight or more terms, then it contains a term for purple, pink, orange, gray, or some combination of these.

For more information, check out the original piece on the Straight Dope website.