So you just installed a fresh copy of the free multiplayer FPS game Urban Terror on Windows 7 (or possibly an earlier version).  The problem is, you keep getting a “GLW_StartOpenGL() – could not load OpenGL subsystem” error when you try to launch it.  You’re so close to fragging someone, yet so far.  If your video drivers are up to date, then herein lies the solution:

The game’s default full-screen resolution doesn’t match a native resolution of your hardware.  If you launch UT in windowed mode, you can then access the setup menu to select the correct video resolution.

To accomplish this:

1. Go to the install directory (probably “/Program Files/UrbanTerror” or “/Program Files (x86)/UrbanTerror”)

2. Inside here, go into the q3ut4 directory

3. Open the file q3config.cfg in your favorite text editor.  Keep in mind you may need to use Administrator permissions to modify the file.

4. Find r_fullscreen and change its value to 0 (zero).  Save and exit.

5. Lauch UT and access Setup->System.  Set your video mode.  This may involve choosing Custom and entering your video width & height.

6. Set Fullscreen to Yes.  Apply settings.

While this worked for me, your mileage may vary.

I just wanted to say thank you to Google for sharing my private contacts with my other contacts. I appreciate you turning my private email account into a Twitter, err, Gwitter account without warning.

Smooth move.

After years of using Gmail, I’m considering going elsewhere. Only problem… Hotmail and Yahoo append advertisements to the end of outgoing emails, and that’s just as unacceptable!

Don’t get out your torches and pitchforks. Let’s just turn Buzz off and forget the whole thing happened.

The link to disable Buzz is hiding down at the very bottom of your Gmail inbox in small, unnoticeable font (bolded for your pleasure):

Gmail view: standard | turn off chat | turn off buzz | older version | basic HTML Learn more

After a recent relocation, I re-signed up for Comcast and was pleasantly surprised to find my broadband speeds have increased!  Whether this is a new HSI product, or a function of my new location, I’m not sure, but I now seem to be sporting about 23 megabits down and 2.5 megabits up, which equates to over 2 megabytes per second streaming!  (Yeah, hella fast—for America anyway!)

The last couple of days, the service has been rather slow… but not in download speed.  When going to a webpage, the initial lookup took 2-6 seconds!  6 seconds is a long time to wait for your webpage to start loading!  In doing some tests, initially with nslookup and dig, and by timing requests to Comcast’s DNS servers, it was clear that the problem was Comcast’s DNS  servers.  Many packets were being dropped, but only to their DNS servers.  Since the queries are UDP packets, there is no “guarantee” that they will make it to their destination, so ostensibly much of the delay was in client-side time-outs and re-querying.

While some forums suggested OpenDNS as a solution, I went about using Level3′s DNS servers (pick two from 4.2.2.1 through 4.2.2.6) simply by entering the IP addresses into my router config.  Big improvement—pages now pop right up without delay!

This comes two days after being surprised by Comcast’s DNS hijacking redirection, which sends users to a page full of adverts, rather than returning an error, should they mistype a URL.  This [dis]service, dubbed “DNS Helper” by their marketing department, requires its users to opt-out, which I was able to do.  Sign into Comcast’s Customer Central and you should find the option in there, somewhere.  Or better yet, use someone else’s DNS, which is perhaps their master plan for scaling DNS.

So what is going on with Comcast?  Googling the problem reveals a history of complaints, so clearly their new redirection “service” isn’t to be blamed.  Slow DNS queries are a bottleneck for web surfing, yet don’t show up on “speed tests,” which may be why Comcast is happily ignoring this problem.

For now, I’ll just enjoy the fast connection without Comcast’s DNS until the billing department starts f—ing with me in about 12 months when my “deal” runs out!

WolframAlpha, the “computational knowledge engine,” is fantastic for those interested in math, science, engineering, music and more. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s worth investigating. It’s not a web search engine like Google or Bing, but instead is a searchable database of just about anything science-related.

Want to know about the Sun? Do you like caffeine? Have a need to convert AU to parsecs? Looking for a solution to a differential equation? Wolfram’s got your back!

WolframAlpha cranked out this integral calculus problem almost immediately! I wish I could say the same about my HP calculator!

I’ve been a long-time fan of the Firefox web browser, and I’ve been enjoying some of the new features that have been creeping into the beta builds lately. But I recently upgraded my Mac to Safari version 4, and I have to say, I am very impressed!

Acid3 tests a browser’s compatibility with Web 2.0 standards. When I ran this in Safari 4, I was surprised to see a result of 100/100!

My current version of Firefox, 3.5b99, made it to 93/100.

I do enjoy the usefulness of some of Safari’s new features, such as the Top Sites grid and the Developer tools. Others, like the Cover Flow view in History, offer some pleasing eye candy. The main improvement seems to be in Java-script engine performance. Gmail loaded noticeably faster and my Netflix queue drag-and-drop was much snappier with Safari 4′s “Nitro Engine.”

Both browsers offer a new “private browsing” mode, dubbed by some “porn mode.” Firefox seems to have a better implementation of this private browsing experience by suppressing cookies. Safari, on the other hand, keeps your cookies present when switching from normal to private browsing.

To test this yourself, login to Google while in normal browsing mode, then activate private browsing, then reload Google and you’ll see you’re still signed in. Try this again with Firefox 3.5b99 and you’ll notice the same doesn’t happen.

Safari’s private browsing seems silly when cookies stay intact, allowing websites to still identify the user. If anything, it gives the user a false sense of anonymity!

Private browsing flaws aside and despite the features and speed increases, until there’s an Adblock Plus for Safari, I’ll probably stick with Firefox as my primary browser. I’m sure others have extensions they’re attached to as well, and this alone may keep market share with Firefox.