Holy Shmoly!

Jump Around in Bad Company 2!

Donncha — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 21:58:07 +0000

I spent way too much time in Bad Company 2 when it came out. I’m still rubbish at it and haven’t played the PC version enough to unlock the much coveted “magnum ammo” upgrade! It’s just not the same without the guys I used to play with.

Regardless. EA have never allowed mods in the game but with NexusBF, a reverse engineering of the BFBC2 server, you can install mods. This is a video of the jump mod and it looks insane!

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Jump Around in Bad Company 2! originally appeared on Holy Shmoly!.

Dinosaurs of Computing

Donncha — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 19:43:37 +0000

The Dinosaurs episode of This Developer’s Life struck a chord with me. Not because of Fortran or Dataflex although hearing about developers dealing with small memory constraints or attempts to convert an archaic piece of code into something shiny did make me grin stupidly.

No, there’s a bit about the Commodore 64 in there and some great SID chip music throughout the podcast. That sealed the deal for me!

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Dinosaurs of Computing originally appeared on Holy Shmoly!.

YouTube keyboard shortcuts?

Donncha — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 19:49:31 +0000

From the “so obvious I should have known” department.

I was watching a gaming video and the start of the video was really slow. I realised that I rarely fast forward through YouTube videos and when I do it’s with the mouse to skip big chunks of video.
I only wanted to skip the bit about the game menu and the mouse would have been painful clicking on the progress bar all the time. What about the keyboard? I had read that using j and k goes back and forward but it didn’t work for me so I searched for this most obvious of answers and found this page.

J and K still don’t work but right and left arrow do the job and there are also many other controls!

/Captain Obvious

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YouTube keyboard shortcuts? originally appeared on Holy Shmoly!.

Xbox One Reveal in 2 Minutes

Donncha — Wed, 22 May 2013 16:29:42 +0000

If, like me, you missed the fantastic Xbox One reveal yesterday or whenever it was here it is in all it’s glory, but cut down to two minutes.

Via this post on r/videos where you will find such witty comments as:

I welcome our new $1000 HDMI repeater overlords

COLLAR DUTY: NOW WITH REALISTIC DOG GRAPHICS AND PHYSICS.

Be sure to follow @collarduty too for the latest collarduty news.

I can’t see myself buying one of these, not when I have a keyboard and mouse on my PC and I looked in vain for decent replacements for those when I did play games on consoles. The thought of going back to using a controller for anything but flight/car/platform games makes me shudder.

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Xbox One Reveal in 2 Minutes originally appeared on Holy Shmoly!.

ORBITAL DEATHRAY KICKSTARTER

Donncha — Mon, 20 May 2013 13:52:48 +0000

Forget all those projects on Kickstarter that are trying to recreate the games of yesteryear. This is a project we can all be part of. An orbital deathray to destroy the Earth. Amazing.

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ORBITAL DEATHRAY KICKSTARTER originally appeared on Holy Shmoly!.

SwiftKey does arrows too

Donncha — Thu, 16 May 2013 17:38:00 +0000

I didn’t know that SwiftKey had arrows at the bottom of the keyboard. You have to enable it in the settings. The arrows allow you to move around the text box with ease. It’s much easier than trying to place the cursor marker with my thumb.

I’m playing with the themes too. The original keyboard is a lot darker so this is quite the change.

And yes, I did start editing this post on my WordPress.com blog but copied it here, all without leaving the comfort of the WordPress app on my phone!

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SwiftKey does arrows too originally appeared on Holy Shmoly!.

Google now understands me

Donncha — Wed, 15 May 2013 19:42:01 +0000

Google now has been updated. You can set reminders by talking to your phone. It understood my Irish voice, but then I haven’t had huge problems with voice apps in a long time. It’s quite amazing how will this tech has come on in the last few years.

It’s funny that the first web result is the apple forum, someone complaining that reminders don’t work…

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Google now understands me originally appeared on Holy Shmoly!.

My Galaxy S4 Home

Donncha — Wed, 15 May 2013 17:30:09 +0000

It’s crazy how many pixels the screen of the Samsung Galaxy S4 has. 1920×1080 pixels. That’s more than many computer users have on the desktop.

Of course, in 5 years time everyone’s going to be marvelling at their 4096 pixel wide screens and this will seem oh so quaint.

These are some of my most used Android apps, including Reddit is fun, Gmail, Feedly, Falcon Pro, WordPress, FBReader, Podkicker Pro, Amazon Kindle and Google Plus. Flipboard looks stunning on it and is one of the pre-installed apps that unfortunately takes up around half the 16GB internal space. The camera is superb. The background image is one I took in my back garden and processed in Pixlr Express. You can find some more photos in my Blarney post I made this morning.

It beats me why manufacturers of Android phones couldn’t make it possible to uninstall those apps I don’t need. I have all the gesture stuff turned off, and the Samsung Keyboard but they still remain on the device sucking up space. There’s still 4GB of free space so I have some breathing space still. Phew.
I really need to set up Folder Sync on this phone to copy stuff off on a daily basis.

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My Galaxy S4 Home originally appeared on Holy Shmoly!.

The original Pinocchio was a dark, grim story

Donncha — Sun, 12 May 2013 21:07:51 +0000

My son Adam has taken an interest in Pinocchio after receiving a little wooden toy that looks similar to the well known character. He watched a few videos on Youtube of the Disney classic and since I knew the original would be available as a Kindle download I offered to read him a few chapters before going to bed.

What an eye opener.

I never saw the original Walt Disney cartoon but I’m familiar with the characters and the story. I’ve only got to chapter 6 of the story but so far Geppetto is in gaol for child(puppet) abuse and Pinocchio has killed Jiminy Cricket (Talking Cricket in the story) with a mallet to the head. (Apparently he reappears alive at the end of the story but it’s not explained how)

.. but unfortunately it struck him exactly on the head, so that the poor Cricket had scarcely breath to cry “Cri-cri-cri!” and then he remained dried up and flattened against the wall.

In an awful twist, later on in the novel Pinocchio is caught and hung by the cat and the fox. He dies and “Collodi actually intended that to be the end of his tale, but public outcry from fans got him to return to the story and bring the puppet boy back to life.” (src)

I may read the story for myself, but I’ll track down a book based on the Disney movie instead. It’s not just the much darker imagery and events in the book but also the odd, old fashioned English. It’s difficult going. Reading the story aloud is difficult.

Pinocchio to Talking Cricket: “Take care, you wicked, ill-omened croaker! Woe to you if I fly into a passion!”
The soldier without disturbing himself in the least caught him cleverly by the nose and gave him to Geppetto.

For further reading, you can find the original Pinocchio for free in many places including Amazon. Also take a look at this commentary and this one.

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The original Pinocchio was a dark, grim story originally appeared on Holy Shmoly!.

Disco Budgie in the hooouuuuse toooniggght! Eat some millet, and have a good time!

Donncha — Fri, 10 May 2013 20:25:16 +0000

A talking parakeet called Disco. What a superb mimic! (via Reddit)