If you are old enough to remember the video game for DOS called Scorched Earth, then I am sure you know the many hours of tank smashing excitement it provides. Especially when you play with a co-worker.

Recently I was referred to Charred Dirt. As the website claims, it is the unofficial sequel to Scorched Earth. While it does have some new weapons and quite a new look and feel, the best feature is has to offer is the multi-player LAN capability. This is something I have been waiting for! The main reason behind this is that while at work it is really hard to convince your boss that you were just going over a spreadsheet. Because any intelligent boss will be able to see that you are very happy about something, and that stupid spreadsheet wont create that happiness. So you can see how having the LAN capability is sweet.

While we’re on the topic of bosses, this game lacks a “Boss Key” or quick exit feature. The ALT+F4 keystrokes have been disabled, and hitting ESC a bunch does nothing. So if you do use this game, go in to options and turn off the music, because it still plays when you ALT+TAB off of it.

The game’s graphics are not too shabby. They do look home-grown though. Some basic shadows and rendering of pseudo-3D graphics. Hand drawn terrain to include high-rise construction, land forts, mountains, waterfalls, and cliffs. Overall for the fast paced action the graphics are nice.

The game play is different from other angle/power games. This game has fast weapons and explosions. No waiting for the impending doom, especially when you have 8 players on the screen. The weapons fire quick and the destruction happens quickly. Sometimes you are dead before you can realize it. But, this is also the game’s downside. The animations are too fast to really follow what is going on. If it’s just you and a buddy you’re okay, but if you have a small LAN party going on it can be retarded.

Overall, if you want a decent game that you can play on the LAN while at work, then I would get this game for sure. You can check their site out here.

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This new tool is called ScribeFire for Firefox (www.getfirefox.com). It allows me to update my blog without having to log into the long and tedious WordPress panel. Now I can just type what’s on my mind and add stuff from cool websites as I see fit. This should allow me to update things more often. I found myself not wanting to post anything because it became such a chore to log in. Especially at work where our ping times are over 600ms!!

Anyways, ScribeFire has been around for awhile now, I sorta stumbled upon it by accident while looking for new extensions. But now that I have it, I wish I had heard about it before. You can grab the extension here.

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