I fired up Trillian this morning, as I usually do once we’re out of the morning meeting or huddle at work, and immediately for every contact I chat with using Google’s system I started getting a slew of “error” messages, several at once every couple of minutes:

“This conversation is no longer off the record.”

That’s funny, I don’t remember ever going off the record to begin with… let alone several times per second.

It took some digging around Trillian’s forums, but I found the problem: Did you know that, by default, Google Talk chats are logged by Google?

No, I didn’t either. And I don’t want them logged.

If you feel the same way, go into your GMail web interface, click Settings, then go to the Chat settings and select “Never save chat history,” and Save Changes. This will also keep 3rd party chat clients from going nuts from time to time, apparently…

UPDATE: As the lovely Kylanath points out, you then probably want to go to the Chat “folder” in GMail and blow out everything in there. You may be amazed at how many are in there. Then, empty your Trash.

This may not apply to many folks, but here goes:

If you’re running Windows 7, if you have an nVidia card but it isn’t an “uber” card, and you play City of Heroes, and you decide to upgrade to the 266-series drivers… make sure you remove the PhysX and “nVidia 3D” components via Programs & Features or risk abysmal performance.

I’ve had to run without FSAA, without Anisotropic, and with basically none of the Ultra Mode fancy stuff turned on since I converted to Windows 7 on my HP xw4400 workstation with the 9800 GT. Which struck me as a bit odd since I ran with most of the “UM” goodies enabled (at lower settings, mind you) under XP on the same hardware. (Yes, it was a fresh install. This isn’t my first rodeo, Mr. Stark.)

Tonight a CoH patch came down, and after that applied… I got less than one frame per second. Much less. I had to find the command line arguments so I could force a lower screen resolution just to get the Options display to appear. After an hour of frustrated tinkering & researching, I was getting ready to roll back to a much older driver release. While in Programs & Features getting ready to yank them out, I noticed the other two nVidia entries in the list. On a whim I pulled just those out, and rebooted.

And… City of Heroes ran like a dream, albeit with the reduced settings I’d been forced to adopt. So I turned on FSAA to 2x, which had previously brought the game to its knees.

Still smooth. And after I turned Anisotropic Filtering back on. And the Ultra Mode shadows. And bloom. And depth of field. (Yes, all of those were off to get any kind of performance, previously.)

I don’t know what the hell “nVidia 3D” is, but I suspect it doesn’t play nicely with City of Heroes, and I don’t have anything else that needs it. Good riddance. As for PhysX… if that was the culprit, I’ll live without it, thank you very much.

After months spent not doing much of anything in the way of website maintenance, I finally threw some more top-header rotation images into the queue. Most of them are earth- and space-sciences material for now. I’ll be taking more pictures this summer and plan to scour through the results for suitable material… probably more skylines and plant life, that sort of thing.

(And what’s this? Posting two days in a row? Who’d have thunk it?)

The question was put to me recently, one which is guaranteed to spark spirited debate among a particular subset of society. (Read: Geeky types.)

Batman? Or Superman?

There’s no doubt that Batman is cooler. His character is the result of being able to throw vast amounts of cash and dedicated physical training and a keen intellect at any given problem. His operating mode is to gather evidence, plan carefully, and prepare for contingencies. Then, to go forth and kick copious amounts of ass.

So, yes, he’s cooler.

But.

I still have a soft spot for ol’ Supes. Growing up, I dreamed of being that kind of superhero, the invincible Boy Scout. For all that I engage in the flagrant disregard for certain societal norms, I have a deeply ingrained belief that there’s a Certain Way Things Should Be. (And I try not to let that get away from me too often, because it can be a tedious thing to be around… nobody’s perfect, wot?) Not that my Way Things Should Be necessarily matches most other folks, I suppose, but hey. And Superman is the truth-and-justice guy. (Batman lives in much more of a grey area.)

Of course, then there’s the feeling like you’re not quite like everyone else around you. You look like them, but you’re just a bit “off.” Not better, just… different. So I identify with that a bit, too.

I guess it boils down to, I think Batman’s cooler but I like Superman more.

Let the flamewar commence, I suppose…