Sigh.

Trying to upload my latest and greatest TF2 glitch pics results in an “HTTP error”:

OK so far…

Bummer, denied! Thank you so much, asshole.

By the way, I had to upload these screenshots by hand with an FTP client.

Update: It looks like the problem was with the Bad Behavior plugin. Upgrading it to the latest version was a snap, and good exercise for 2.5’s automatic plugin upgrade functionality. See this article for more.

This engineer’s dispenser is showing the same type of glitching that I’ve seen before.

This is a new one: There should be water in the bottom of this sewer. Instead, all we see is wireframe polygons where the water is supposed to be; obviously, those polygons are missing their “water” texture map.

The Windows desktop itself continued to glitch after I closed Team Fortress, so I had to reboot my machine. After that, TF2 ran fine.

Previous TF2 rendering glitches.

The polygons in this sniper are all facing in odd directions. Notice the two long, thin polygons going down and to the left.

This sniper’s head and rifle butt seem fine, but the rest of him is being stretched to infinity. What’s with the hook floating over his head?

I was running ATITool while playing last night, and saw the following temperatures in the log:

2008-03-07 22:50:34 I Temperature: GPU: 83.3°C GPU environment: 63.0°C
2008-03-07 22:50:44 I Temperature: GPU: 83.4°C GPU environment: 63.0°C
2008-03-07 22:50:54 I Temperature: GPU: 83.4°C GPU environment: 63.0°C

This seems pretty hot. Is it too hot for the graphics card?

Another factor is making me think that temperature is the culprit: when I switched out of the game to save my screen capture, the card temperature would drop. This is expected, since the game’s graphics aren’t rendered when the game is minimized:

2008-03-07 22:52:39 I Temperature: GPU: 82.8°C GPU environment: 62.0°C
2008-03-07 22:52:49 I Temperature: GPU: 69.3°C GPU environment: 62.0°C
2008-03-07 22:52:59 I Temperature: GPU: 67.0°C GPU environment: 62.0°C

When I switched back to the game, with the card now much cooler, the graphics returned to normal. It looks like I need to start shopping for a cooling solution.

I also saw this, which is probably a bug in the game. Unlike the glitches above, this is the only time I’ve seen this:
This soldier moved around the map and fired his weapons, but there was no animation: his arms and legs didn’t move. It was like fighting alongside a floating mannequin. Only his eyes were still animated, adding to the creepiness factor.

I’m not sure if this is a bug or a hardware issue, but I’m suspecting the latter, as I’m the only one I know of (so far) that is seeing this. My first step is to monitor the temperature of the video card with ATITool while playing. (I’m not overclocking the card, just monitoring the temperature.) The next time it glitches, I want to know if the card is overheating.

Also funny is what happens to Steam after quitting a session of TF2 that’s been glitching. As you can see, Steam’s glitching too!

Hopefully I’ll turn something up on this. In the meantime, I’ll post more screen captures as I manage to get them.

Update: Followup post here.

This is a nifty feature, except for one problem: during Daylight Saving Time, it calculates the time at foreign locations incorrectly. For example, the two locations I entered were “California” and “Hong Kong”. During Standard Time, Hong Kong is 16 hours ahead of California, but during Daylight Saving Time, it is only 15 hours ahead. But while it is 6:08pm in California, the iPod is displaying 10:08am in Hong Kong. It is actually 9:08am in Hong Kong — 15 hours ahead.

The same error is made with locations within the United States that do not observe DST. For instance, it is currently 3:08pm in Honolulu, but the iPod displays it as 4:08pm.

The iPod and the Mac it’s connected to both seem to be configured to observe DST, so I’m pretty sure this isn’t a configuration issue. My conclusion is that this is a bug. A rather annoying and obvious bug that should have been caught before release.

BTW, I like the keyboard on this MacBook. I’m not typing double characters like I often do on other laptops.

MySpace is an example of what happens when you release a half-assed, hacked together demo to the world instead of a fully-designed and tested product (i.e. something you actually thought through beforehand). You have to keep fixing it, and yet it never works quite right all the time.

Update: Apparently a large power outage in San Francisco has knocked out a major data center. Other websites, including Craigslist and NetFlix, are also down.

Hopefully these won’t be common.