Archive for the ‘Computers’ Category

Motivation and direction

Tuesday, February 17th, 2009

 I’ve finally made some more decisions for my life. Besides moving to Sydney in the next couple of months I’ve decided a couple of other things.

Firstly, I want to program games and other applications for the iPhone and Macintosh OSX.  For years I wanted to do programming but could not settle on a platform and language. Well, now I have. This will at some time later this year involve purchasing a Macintosh myself. I think I will get a Macbook as I want a laptop and not a huge machine to lug around and take up space and electricity when it’s really not needed these days.  I currently have an old Dell D600 computer borrowed from work which I’ve put Mac OSX 10.5.2 onto.  It’s enough to be able to program applications for Mac OSX and the iPhone.  I have been reading my Cocoa Programming for Mac OSX book on and off for some time (mostly off) but today I took the laptop to work and started doing some of the exercises. It’s starting to make a bit of sense now.  I also ordered a book from Amazon.com called Beginning iPhone Programming: Exploring the SDK.  It should arrive about March 19th .. two days before my birthday. Great timing!

Secondly, I’ve started researching information on getting into Voiceover work.  I’ve recently created some promos for the Tech Talk Radio show from 3WBC in Melbourne. The presenters asked for listeners to create some new promos they could put on the show this year.  I have uploaded them to my Voiceovers page if you want to have a listen.  There’s some serious attempts and some cartoony ones.  I also joined Voices.com and have my own mini webpage there.  I’m on the lookout for more work in that field and will take up more lessons when I get to Sydney.

Thirdly, I’ve decided to learn about music. I have a Casio CTK-810 keyboard I bought a few months ago but have hardly used.  Tonight I went for my first lesson and had a fantastic time. It’s only $25 for each half-hour lesson or $50 for a full hour.  I started with a half hour lesson to see how I’d go.  I’ve started practicing playing a song and seem to be understanding some of the theory and reading notes already.  I brought the sheet music home and practiced it for an hour.  The first lesson was about notes in the Bass Clef (played with the left hand) and so I did that, but I also worked out where the other notes in the Treble Clef were and played a few with my right hand at the same time as the others with my left.  It took some brain twisting but I could do two notes with my right hand while doing one with my left.  Neat. Only now when I go back to practicing with my left hand only the music doesn’t sound as good hehe.

It’s great having direction and these things are also giving me the great anticipation and direction I need in my life at this time. I’m really happy and optimistic for the first time in years.

Passage - a ‘game’ or experience of life

Saturday, December 27th, 2008

 Passage - a free ‘game’ for Windows, Mac OS and Linux by Jason Rohrer.

In Passage, you’re this little pixelated guy. You live in the stripe of color. The stripe is twelve pixels tall. It’s green. All else is blackness. Your job is to move up and down and left and right through the stripe — the "forest" — in search of treasure chests, sort of like in the Legend of Zelda.

As you walk, the stripe shimmers and flickers, the fuzzy pixels in front of you scroll into sharpness, and the pixels you’ve already traveled blur in your wake. The stripe is your whole world. But soon you have to make a choice: share the world or keep it to yourself. You meet a girl. Your fat-pixeled soul mate. Link up with her and a heart explodes. You’re in love. Now she sticks to you as you move through the forest, less easily than before. It’s a trade-off: You can get more treasure by staying single, but bond with your "wife" and you earn double the points for every step you take.

If you’re like most people, you’ll choose the comforts of companionship. Only, as you trudge across the stripe, something happens. Your pixels begin to fade, gray out. Your hair recedes by degrees. Your wife slurs into a matronly shape. It hits you: This is going to happen to me. Age, decrepitude, ugliness.

Also: At least I won’t be alone. Somebody loves me. Ha-ha-ha.

Then — thwack — she dies.

Jesus. Weren’t expecting that. There’s a tombstone with a little cross.

Then — thwack — you die, too.

Passage: A somewhat poignant ‘game’ or, more like, experience of life. 

You start alone and young, find a mate (or not) and end up dying suddenly. The game lets you experience choices and directions in life to see what will happen.

You can download the Windows, Mac and Linux versions free or buy the iPhone game for AUD$1.19

It’s only in blocky, 8-bit style characters, but many people will argue that the graphics are not what matters.. it’s the message in the experience. Many people have posted comments about being deeply affected by trying out Passage. Either way, it’s only a tiny download (2Mb). Go try it out. It may make you think!

Read more here and buy the iPhone version for AUD$1.19: TouchArcade.

Install Windows XP without SATA drivers on a floppy

Tuesday, November 11th, 2008

Last night I needed to reinstall Windows XP on my computer onto a new SATA drive.  I started the XP install CD but it could not partition the drive or format it or anything because the install CD does not have support for SATA.

I Googled around and eventually found this fantastic post "Install Windows XP on SATA without a floppy".  It details how to use the NLite application to slipstream your Windows XP SATA drivers from your Motherboard drivers CD or download into your XP CD.  You use your original Windows XP CD and it creates a new directory full of files from the XP CD which you then use NLite to create an ISO and burn the image to a CD.  Once you do that, you can boot from the new CD and it has support for SATA automatically.  You don’t need to tell it to install extra drivers during loading of the Windows XP CD. You just install as normal. BRILLIANT!

Google Chrome

Wednesday, September 10th, 2008

I thought I’d give Google Chrome a go.  It seems to render pages really well and is fast.

However, I’ve discovered something weird.  While viewing a page of screenshot thumbnails, when I click on a desktop-sized screenshot one of the Google Chrome processes goes up to 40-75% of CPU usage and causes my iTunes to hiccough and jump while playing.  That is going to be enough to drive me batty! I hope the next update will fix this issue. There’s no reason to use 75% to download and view an image!

It works better with Simple Machines Forum (SMF) than Safari which does not even render the images which let you BOLD/ITALICS/etc so there’s no Rich Text posting which is very annoying.

Sixty Five Million and One BC

Friday, May 9th, 2008

Check out this game. It was created totally in GameMaker.  It has brilliant animations, some really cool humour, lovely sound effects, animated cut scenes.. THE WORKS!

Here’s a screenshot I borrowed from the website:

Click for a bigger view.

This is the velociraptor you move around in the game. He can: walk, run, jump, backflip, climb walls, duck, crawl, swim, bite, tailwhip, pounce, ground-slam and carry objects.

The animation is very smooth and very well done. It has some particle effects and even water splashes up and animates ripples on the surface if he walks in it.

You can download a demo version from the Sixty Five Million and One BC website and then pay US$20 for the full game and play all 35 large levels!

Run Windows Apps Seamlessly Inside Linux

Saturday, March 15th, 2008

Run Windows Apps Seamlessly Inside Linux

You love working inside your Linux desktop, but at the most inconvenient times you’ve got to reboot into Windows—whether to open a tricky Office file, try out a Windows application, or even just play a quick game. However, with some free tools and a Windows installation disk, you can have Windows apps running right on your Linux desktop and sharing the same desktop files. It’s relatively painless, it takes only a little bit longer than a Windows XP install, and it works just like virtualizing Windows on a Mac with Parallels Coherence—except it’s free. Here’s how to set up Windows inside VirtualBox, and then get Windows apps running seamlessly inside your desktop.

Before getting started, make sure you have enough space on a hard drive for a Windows XP installation (meaning at least 5 GB) and enough memory to make two systems worthwhile.You can follow most of these steps if you want to try running Vista inside Linux, but your mileage might vary, of course (and check out this tip on making Vista’s networking work).

Handy to know!

DVD Flick

Thursday, February 7th, 2008

DVD Burning software for Windows: DVD Flick.

About DVD Flick

DVD Flick aims to be a simple but at the same time powerful DVD Authoring tool. It can take a number of video files stored on your computer and turn them into a DVD that will play back on your DVD player, Media Center or Home Cinema Set. You can add additional custom audio tracks as well as subtitles of your choice.

Features

  • Burn near any video file to DVD
  • Support for over 45 file formats
  • Support for over 60 video codecs
  • Support for over 40 audio codecs
  • Add your own subtitles
  • Easy to use interface
  • Burn your project to disc after encoding
  • Completely free without any adware, spyware or limitations

For a more detailed list of features, see the Features page.