There is major rebbelion in eve. An mmo for thepeeps that don't know.

A demo of Ravens new release has been released, click here to download.

More cars and tracks can be added to Race 07 via Steam right now, American muscle cars and Formula Masters series.

Version 2.4 was released recently together with a high production movie which can be seen at their home page.

Overview

More-LAN is proud to announce it's second, and far more ambitious LAN party which will start on Friday 30th October 2009 through till Sunday 1st November 2009. The event will take place in the small village of Alconbury (details below) and will offer the chance for 50 gamers to bring their own computers for a weekend of gaming and fun!

Location

The event will be held at Alconbury Memorial Hall. The hall was built 7 years ago. It has a large 19m by 9m hall with a stage, separate lounge area, kitchen facilities and male/female toilets. The tables are around 6ft long and will each sit 2 people.

Address:
The Memorial Hall Alconbury
School Lane,
Alconbury,
Cambridgeshire,
PE28 4EQ

Dates/Times

The event will open its doors at 5pm on Friday 30th October. All attendees must leave the premises by 7pm on Sunday 1st November.

Tickets/Payment

A discounted ticket price of £35 will be available if purchased before Friday 18th September (£40 thereafter).

Clans will be able to take advantage of our clan package. Buying 5 tickets together will cost only £30 per ticket. If you have more than 5 people coming from your clan then please contact sales@more-lan.co.uk This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it to arrange payment. Please note that payment will have to be made for all tickets at the same time.

Online payment via Paypal is the preferred method of payment. If you choose to pay via paypal through the website you will be able to reserve your seat from our seating plan (as well as temporarily reserving seats for your friends) and create a team for your clan/friends.

If you cannot pay using Paypal but would like to attend please contact sales@more-lan.co.uk This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it to arrange an alternate payment method.

Games

Below is a list of the typical games our attendees are likely to play. We will be arranging tournaments and prizes based on the response of our attendees on our forums prior to the event.

* Call of Duty 4
* Left 4 Dead
* Counter-strike Source
* Counter-strike
* Team Fortress 2
* Day of Defeat
* Trackmania
* Age of Empires 2
* Fifa Tournement (Console)

Computer - Minimum Specification

To play all the games listed above you will need:

* CPU: Intel® Pentium® 4 2.4 GHz or AMD® Athlon(tm) 64 2800+ processor or any 1.8Ghz Dual Core Processor or better supported
* RAM: 512MB RAM (768MB for Windows Vista)
* Video card: NVIDIA® Geforce(tm) 6600 or better or ATI® Radeon® 9800Pro or better

Please note that lower specification machines can be used but they might not be able to participate in all the tournaments.

Food and Drink

LAN Cafe

Fried breakfasts, pizzas and burgers are on the menu and depending on the feedback we get from our forums we may also cook other popular meals such as curries which will be on sale for a reasonable price at specified times of the day.

There will be snacks available to buy such as sweets, crisps and chocolate as well as hot drinks and soda beverages.

Local shops

There is a local shop about 3 minutes walk from the hall. This is just a small convenience store. There is a large Tesco about 10 minutes drive from the hall.

Takeaways

There is nothing in Alconbury but there are take aways that will deliver to Alconbury. Alternatively if you drive to Huntingdon (10 mins) you will find a range of fast food outlets including Indian, Chinese, dominos pizza etc.

Sleeping

In the hall

There will be a small room available as a quiet room during the evenings which can be used for sleeping. However, due to limited space sleeping near your table may prove the easiest option.

Nearby Accommodation

Some people may choose to get a room close to the venue rather than slum it like the rest of us! The following places are within 10minute drives from the hall:

The manor (public house) – 200 yards!

The Marriot – A14 – 10 mins

Premier Inn – A1 – 10 mins

The days of the mushroom coloured PC boxes are long behind us - you can buy some nice looking PC cases in a variety of colours and finishes (and plenty that have taken a real beating from the ugly stick!) but they still all largely follow the same shape.

The mod community have come up with some interesting designs - but unless you are handy with a dremel and have little in the way of a social life there's never been much hope you'd have something similarly cool tucked under your desk...

Thermaltake have come up with a very unusual design which might just change that (if of course you can afford the entrance fee! ;)

What do you think of this?

There's a YouTube walkthrough of the case here, and the official site is here.

I for one love it! :)

Earlier this week Sam and Henry made it to the finishing line at UlaanBaator in Mongolia!

It had taken a couple of days to get through the Russian-Mongolian border as the process of officially importing the cars into Mongolia (the whole point of the charity event) took a while with 40 teams all trying to do the same at once!

They have spent a few days in UB, and should be back in Blighty this weekend!

Yoda's a dirty boy...

CounterStrike skills put to the test?

Whilst in UB Henry & Sam visited a children's orphanage and were deeply moved:

Today Monday I went with Edward Thornton, the General manager of the charity in Mongolia for the last 5 years, to his HQ in town and to his orphanage in the slum surrounding the much-expanded Ulaan Baator. The Christina Noble Charitable Foundation has constructed a one-acre oasis in the poverty all around. Ten yurts (or ger as it's called in Mong) each with a ger-mother, house half a dozen orphans or rejected children. There is no "mother" for the ger run for themselves by the elder teenage girls, nor for another ger with the elder boys (known by the girls as 'The Cave', because it is comparatively scruffy. Each ger 'family' prepares and eats breakfast and supper as a family, while lunch is prepared communally in the dining hall. All the children go to the local Mongolian state schools, but with free uniforms and equipment from the Foundation.
There is also a kindergarten but it is open to the children of the surrounding slum - one cohort of pupils do classes in the mornings, and a second cohort with separate teachers in the afternoons (like I remember it was in Hong Kong in the 70s).
Mongolian culture is stressed (self-confidence is learnt through drama, music, song and dance) and the language taught, but no religious emphasis is apparent. English is also taught.
One of the many things that impressed me was the charity's system of divorcing the cost of their projects from their administrative expenditure: the public like me subvents only the children themselves. Other entities, such as a big corporation, provide the money to run and administer the organisation. See also http://www.cncf.org/en/mongolia/aboutmongolia.php Henry and I would like any donations to be passed through Clara (see below) as then we can ensure that the money goes to the very project that I visited, and not possibly to any of the many other projects (possibly equally worthy) elsewhere in Mongolia or even in Viet Nam.
I'll try to put some of my snaps on our "Gallery"; so click here, for a selection.
I have been deeply impressed. So Henry and I have decided to donate 1000 pounds for this really worthwhile charity, so please AGAIN be generous and send cheques to our Team Base HQ in the name of Sam or Henry (or both!)

As they have yet to reach their full donations please consider donating a few pounds to the cause!

To read about their adventure, see their photos or to donate please visit their rally site here

Thank you!

In the last couple of weeks Henry and Sam have made some excellent progress, after ditching the Turkenistan idea and invoking Plan B, the longer route through Kazakhstan.
This proved to be a lucky break, as those that had managed to make it onto the ship to Turkmenbashi were stuck in the docks for several days the other side by the local customs until they could arrange the exorbitant fees "necessary" to allow them into the country proper!

It still took them a day to get out of the docks at Aktau in Kazakhstan though, but during which time they made friends with a van driver who then was able to guide them in convoy out on the dirt roads towards the Aral Sea and Uzbekistan.

Sadly they did not have time to do the 700kms to the Aral Sea and back, and carried straight on into Uzbekistan. A couple of days later they were holed up in Tashkent and managed to find a mechanic to do some urgent repairs on the Hyundai after damaging the sump plate.

From there they passed into Kyrgyzstan and hit the 6,000 mile mark in their journey! Here they weaved their way through the country to Lake Yssyk-Kol and then north crossing again into Kazakhstan through the Karakara valley. A two hour search for the Charin canyon was well worth the effort, very reminiscent of the Grand Canyon (though on a smaller scale!)

In Almaty they found a Hyundai dealer who (despite never having seen an Atoz before!) managed to give the little car an overhaul and raise the suspension a little, all for only $210 which seemed to cover only the labour...the parts were free!

From there they headed NE past Semey and on towards the Russian border at Shamanaika. A packet of Malboroughs saw them through in record time (only about 12hrs - they're used to camping for a few days at borders!) and on to Barnaul before swinging SE to head down to Aktash towards the Russian / Mongolian border. Rather a long way round, but thems the breaks with the impressive Altai mountains in the way!

Then at Tashanta on the border, problems. They arrived early on Monday morning to find a whole pile of other adventurists stuck at the border too. It seems the Mongolians are refusing to import the cars, which is a bit of an issue considering that's the whole point of the venture!

...and that's where Henry and Sam are at present. Camped out on the border in a refugee camp of 39 rally teams! As before, we wait for news...!

Much more info and humour at their blog here
Photos from their adventure here

Mixed class endurance racing modification for rFactor by EnduRacers Modding Team.

Since my last post Sam and Henry have made great progress (via the sceneic route it has to be said!) down into Italy, across through Greece into Turkey, where they spent a few nights.
From there they continued into Georgia, and are now at Baku in Azerbaijan waiting for a ferry to take them across the Caspian to Turkmenbashi in Turkmenistan.
Perhaps not unsurprisingly Georgia and Azerbaijan have proved somewhat expensive to drive through as their stickered bright green Hyundai is an easy target for the cops, innocent or not!

Sadly they did not make it onto the ship at Baku as their names were missed off the Turkmeni invite list, so they must wait until the embassy in London opens this morning to see if this can be sorted.

Plan B is a ship to Kazakhstan for which they already have visas, but that would be a longer way around (and Google Maps isn't showing me much in the way of roads, hmmmm!)

We wait for news!

The few days in Istanbul were particularly arduous

Photo gallery here.
Latest news here.

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