Mark E. DeYoung's Miscellaneous Stuff

Kid-friendly, Open Source, Multi-Player/LAN games

noreply@blogger.com (Mark E. DeYoung) — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 14:17:00 +0000

I was looking for some kid-friendly, free, open source, multi-player/LAN oriented games that will work on Windows and Linux boxes. Kept having my kids friends show up after school to play online games. Hopefully, this will spark some interest in “how” the games were made. My main criteria were: support multi-player; multi-computer - prefer LAN server over Internet server; and most-important a low initial learning curve. I wanted a mix of: real-time and turn-based; 2D and 3D.

Here’s a few that I’ve installed. I still have to see how the group responds to the games :

Armagetron – real-time Tron light-cycle arena clone in 3D.
Bitfighter – real-time 2D space combat game with dual-axes controls.
BZFlag – real-time 3D tank battle game. This one can be a bit frantic.
Domination – turn-based 2D “risk” like strategy game that supports alternative world maps.
Hedgewars - turn-based 2.5D strategy, artillery, action and comedy game.
Scorcehed3D - turn-based 3D artillery game.
WarMUX - turn-based 2D Worms-like game.

Here are some that I might try. Depends on how the games above work out:

Aeron – a combat flight simulator.
Freeciv - turn-based civilization like game.
FreeCol – turn-based strategy game like civilization.
JSettlers2 – web-based version of Settlers of Catan.
SuperTuxKart – a kart racing game that supports up to four players on one PC. Unfortunately, no LAN play at this time.

Extract files from executable installation package/Windows installers

noreply@blogger.com (Mark E. DeYoung) — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 15:44:00 +0000

I needed to extract a couple of files that were embedded into an executable installation package. After a few fruitless googles on recording Windows installers, and automated software removal I finally came across Universal Extractor. I used it to extract the files from an InstallShield package in an .exe file.

KODU Game Lab

noreply@blogger.com (Mark E. DeYoung) — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 01:04:00 +0000

I was looking for an approachable, kid friendly, programming environment and found KODU Game Lab from Microsoft Research. Seems fun so far. Also has an online community web site (KODU Game Lab Community) where you can share games. The system is built around Microsoft’s XNA for Windows PCs and XBox 360s. The GUI works with a keyboard and mouse on a Windows 7 PC. Also, works OK with an XBox 360 Controller for a Windows PC. I usually end up using the controller for in game play for a second player and almost never for editing.

Games with constructible/destructible environments

noreply@blogger.com (Mark E. DeYoung) — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 14:57:00 +0000

If you enjoy Minecraft you might want to check out Ace of Spades or Voxatron. Both are voxel based constructible/destructible environments. If you grew up playing Robotron you’ll likely enjoy Voxatron.

A# (ADA for .NET) with Visual Studio Integration

noreply@blogger.com (Mark E. DeYoung) — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 09:59:00 +0000

I decided I really needed to build RAPTOR from source. The program is written in C# and and Ada targeting .NET (A#). Dr. Carlisle released his last version of the A# compiler and a Visual Studio 2005 plugin via SourceForge in May 2006. I installed the tool set into Visual Studio 2005 as described here on Windows 7 64-bit. Although the integration installed it did not work after I patched VS2005 for Windows 7 (KB928957, KB929470).

Since 2006 maintenance of the A# code was taken over by AdaCore. They have released a downloadable version of GNAT that targets .NET 2.0 in the GNAT GPL packages at their LIBRE page. Look for the package that targets dotnet-windows. At the time of writing it was in a file named “gnat-gpl-2011-dotnet-windows-bin.exe” dated 11 May 2011.

The dotnet-windows package includes Visual Studio integration. Appears to be built around ProjectAggregator2 technology from the now defunct Visual Studio Integration Program (VSIP) SDK. It successfully integrated with Visual Studio 2010 when I installed GNAT. It might be possible to install the GNAT integration into the Visual Studio 2010 Shell (Integrated) Redistributable Package if you don’t have a full up VS2010 install. My understanding is that VS2010 Shell can be used to support languages like F# and Python.

Anyways, after I installed GNAT GPL for dotnet I was able to open the raptor.sln in Visual Studio and start tracking down dependencies (missing dlls, files, x64 issues, etc.).

Java Decompiler project

noreply@blogger.com (Mark E. DeYoung) — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 15:39:00 +0000

I wanted to check out some compiled Java byte code from a .class file. Unfortunately, the tool I historically used (JAD via the DJ Java Decompiler) didn’t handle Java version 5 byte code. Luckily for me a project by Emmanuel Dupuy has released a similar tool called JD-GUI.

MySQL convert time zone from local to UTC

noreply@blogger.com (Mark E. DeYoung) — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 01:01:00 +0000

Had to convert a slew of times form local time to UTC time in an MySQL database on a Windows box. I had pushed a large number of Windows event logs into a MySQL database with LogParser.

While the event log files have the time in UTC format I found that LogParser renders the time as system local time of the computer where it is running. The program doesn’t have any way to know the time zone of the computer where the event log files originated. I should have originally used TO_UTCTIME in the LogParser queries.

So… on to using MySQL CONVERT_TZ. Unfortunately, my Windows install of MySQL did not include time zone information needed by the CONVERT_TZ function. I had to download and install the Time zone description tables for the function to work correctly.

The CONVERT_TZ function works with POSIX defined time zone names To avoid the ambiguity of common Time zone abbreviations. For example I used

UPDATE table_x SET TimeGenerated=CONVERT_TZ(TimeGenerated, ‘America/Chicago’,’UCT’);

To convert a US Central time to UCT/Zulu time.

UPDATE table_x SET TimeGenerated=CONVERT_TZ(TimeGenerated, ‘America/New_York’,’UCT’);

To convert a US Eastern time to UCT/Zulu time.

Now back to event correlation.

Exchange Server Setup Progress.log time is in system local time

noreply@blogger.com (Mark E. DeYoung) — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 01:55:00 +0000

I need to know what time was recorded in the “Exchange Server Setup Progress.log” by Exchange 2003 setup. This is one of those little factoids that Google failed me on….

So I set up a Windows 2003 server in VMWare and ran the Exchange 2003 setup. It turns out that the log times are recorded in system local time (not Zulu time).

Here’s a couple of slightly related links that talk about the log file and events recorded by the setup program for Exchange 2003:

Tips on Troubleshooting Using the Exchange Server Setup Progress Log

Post-Installation Steps for Exchange Server 2003

Play FLAC with Windows Media Player

noreply@blogger.com (Mark E. DeYoung) — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 11:35:00 +0000

Just tried out the xiph.org DirectShow plugin to play some FLAC in Windows Media Player. Seemed to work for playback but I’m not sure how to do tag editing yet.

Windows MultiPoint Mouse SDK

noreply@blogger.com (Mark E. DeYoung) — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 12:27:00 +0000

While I’m not a huge fan of thin client type solutions like the MultiPoint server the Windows MultiPoint Mouse SDK seems like it has some possibilities. The tic-tac-toe sample in the SDK is pretty fun. Would probably add some fun to other simple desktop games if they supported multiple mice.

You can also get the SDK as a Visual Studio 2010 Extension.

Log Parser Charts on 64-bit Windows Boxes

noreply@blogger.com (Mark E. DeYoung) — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 02:08:00 +0000

I need to generate some charts from Windows Event Log files on a couple of 64-bit Win2008 and Win7 boxes and got the following error from Log Parser:

LogParser.exe : Error creating output format "CHART": This output format requires a licensed Microsoft Office Chart Web Component to be installed on the local machine

A quick web search revealed that Log Parser requires a copy Microsoft Office Web Components (OWC) to generate charts. I downloaded a copy, installed, and Log Parser started producing charts.

The OWC install includes some programming references that can be located with the help of KB319793. The documentation is in “C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\microsoft shared\Web Components\10\1033” on my Win7 x64 box. Or you can check out the ChartSpace Object Model documentation on MSDN.

After spelunking the LogParser and OWC docs it appears OWC supports GIF, JPG and PNG output. Unfortunately, LogParser only supports GIF and JPG charts. I’d really prefer a scalable vector format.

HDMI CEC interface for PC

noreply@blogger.com (Mark E. DeYoung) — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 18:14:00 +0000

The state of HDMI Consumer Electronics Control (CEC) interfaces for PCs seems pretty dismal. Neither ATI or nVidia currently have CEC support built into their graphics devices with HDMI interfaces. So you can’t directly send or receive CEC data over the CEC-line (pin 13/17).

One bright spot is the RainShadow HDMI-CEC to USB bridge/converter. Supposedly it’s also been hacked into a regular video card.

Classic DOS and Windows games…

noreply@blogger.com (Mark E. DeYoung) — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 20:34:00 +0000

Well if you’re pining for the glory days of DOS games go get D-Fend Reloaded (a great DOSBox front-end). Then head over to RGB Classic Games.

Or you could check out GOG.com for some classic DOS and Windows games at a reasonable price.

Convert Apple Disk Image (.dmg) to ISO Image (.iso)

noreply@blogger.com (Mark E. DeYoung) — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 20:20:00 +0000

Found a couple of ways to turn a Apple Disk Image (.dmg) into an ISO Image (.iso). First was dmg2img, second was DMGExtractor. I ended up using DMGExtractor probably because the author posted the source at SourceForge.

I wanted to use the GUI interface so I added the –gui flag to the Windows Batch file in the bin directory.

@echo off
setlocal
set DMGX_CP="%~dp0..\lib\dmgextractor.jar"
java -cp %DMGX_CP% org.catacombae.dmgextractor.DMGExtractor -startupcommand dmgx -gui %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9
endlocal

Create 32-bit ODBC DSN on 64-bit Windows

noreply@blogger.com (Mark E. DeYoung) — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 15:28:00 +0000

Needed to create a 32-bit compatible ODBC DSN to output Log Parser results from a 64-bit version of Windows to a MySQL instance.
Log Parser gave me an architecture mismatch error:

Error connecting to ODBC Server
SQL State: IM014
Native Error: 0
Error Message: [Microsoft][ODBC Driver Manager] The specified DSN contains
an architecture mismatch between the Driver and Application

NOTE: Log Parser did not work well with the more modern 32-bit version 5.1 ODBC Connector so I had to use the 32-bit version 3.51 ODBC Connector.
Then used the [WindowsDir]\SysWOW64\odbcad32.exe to create a 32-bit System DSN. (See the MS KB942976 for more detail.)
And finally, started pushing event logs into the MySQL database with the DSN created above. (Where X is the server name and XXX is the DSN name.)

LogParser “SELECT * INTO Events FROM *.evtx” –server:X –i:EVT –o:SQL –dsn:XXX –fixColNames:ON –maxStrFieldLen:2048

Or if you prefer from PowerShell. (Where X is the server name and XXX is the DSN name.)

dir *.evtx | foreach-object {LogParser “SELECT * INTO Events FROM ‘$_.’” –server:X –i:EVT –o:SQL –dsn:XXX –fixColNames:ON –maxStrFieldLen:2048}

I used the PowerShell option because the event logs were rather large (~500K events each) so the connector kept running out of RAM with the *.evtx source. Also, I needed a specific timeframe from the event logs so I added a where clause to get:

dir *.evtx | foreach-object {LogParser “SELECT * INTO Events FROM '$_.' WHERE TimeGenerated > TIMESTAMP('2010-07-05 00:00:00','yyyy-MM-dd hh:mm:ss') AND TimeGenerated < TIMESTAMP('2010-07-21 00:00:00','yyyy-MM-dd hh:mm:ss')” –server:X –i:EVT –o:SQL –dsn:XXX –fixColNames:ON –maxStrFieldLen:2048}

Ogawa’s Software Evolution Storylines

noreply@blogger.com (Mark E. DeYoung) — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 11:26:00 +0000

Nice software visualization experiment from Michael Ogawa.

Windows 7 Activation Error 0x8007232B

noreply@blogger.com (Mark E. DeYoung) — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 20:50:00 +0000

If you get the error 0x8007232B when you try to activate Windows 7 installed from volume licensed media you can run the following from an elevated powershell window:

slmgr.vbs –ipk [product key]
slmgr.vbs –ato

I installed the Elevation PowerToys for Windows Vista to simplify getting an elevated powershell window. Unfortunately, the powertoys didn't seem to work with Win7 so I had to start the powershell by ctrl-clicking the link and selecting run as Administrator.

Offline spelunking of Active Directory - setup

noreply@blogger.com (Mark E. DeYoung) — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 00:23:00 +0000

Needed to extract some historical information from Active Directory (AD) backups stored in NTBackup BKF files. First challenge was extracting the NTDS.DIT from the BKF. How do I get that snapshot loaded up so I can query the backup? I didn’t find a way to directly query for results from the NTDS.DIT without loading it into a running Domain Controller (DC) instance.

My approach is loosely modeled on the technique outlined at technet to “mount” a snapshot in VMWare Workstation on a server configured as a DC that closely models the forest structure of the targeted AD backup. I’d prefer to use a clone or image from the actual DCs but I can not disturb the online production environment.

I set up a VMWare team consisting of a Win 2008 R2 x64 server configured as a DC and a Vista x86 32-bit Workstation with Windows Server 2008 Remote Server Administration Tools; Active Directory Explorer and some custom/hand built ADSI based tools. I’ll be pushing tests of the custom tools from Visual Studio on the host to the virtualized Vista box in the team because I don’t want to directly mess with the virtualized DC. Now to get the directory backup loaded so I can do some offline spelunking.

Lightweight Portable Security – access .mil portal from public computer

noreply@blogger.com (Mark E. DeYoung) — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 00:19:00 +0000

SPI has put out a bootable live Linux ISO with CAC support. It’s called “Lightweight Portable Security”. Very nice (in my opinion) if you need to get onto a .mil portal like the AF Portal from a public computer. Downloading it now to setup in a virtual machine and USB CAC reader. Hopefully it works out.

General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP) Laboratory

noreply@blogger.com (Mark E. DeYoung) — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 22:29:00 +0000

Recommend surfing the very cool robotics research from the GRASP lab.

MP3 tagging - foobar2000

noreply@blogger.com (Mark E. DeYoung) — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 22:13:00 +0000

Just noticed how jacked up my MP3 tags were when I copied some mp3s over to my phone. Lifehacker had some recommendations for MP3 tagging for Windows boxes. I ended up going with foobar2000.

Install MySQL Connector/J for use from Eclipse

noreply@blogger.com (Mark E. DeYoung) — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 20:42:00 +0000

I already had a JDK, Eclipse, and MySQL installed but I needed to install the MySQL Connector/J so I could use it with the Eclipse SQL Explorer plugin to access the database with JDBC instead of the JDCB-ODBC bridge. There are many ways to get the job done. Here is what I did:

First I downloaded MySQL Connector/J; created a directory “C:\Devel\Java\JRE\ext”; extracted the binary jar for the driver from the download and copied the mysql-connector-java-3.1.14-bin file into “C:\Devel\Java\JRE\ext”.

Started Eclipse; in the preferences dialog edited the settings for the Installed JREs.

Specifically, I used the “Add External JARs…” to add the MySQL connector I put in C:\Devel\Java\JRE\ext.

First select the installed JRE you want to edit.

Next “Add External JARS…”

Then you should see the driver show up in the “JRE system libraries” list.

Now I have a working MySQL Connector/J JDBC driver ready for use with Eclipse projects. Yay!

Clear resume state from a paused VMWare VM

noreply@blogger.com (Mark E. DeYoung) — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 23:36:00 +0000

Had a team that I copied from another location with saved resume state that was not compatible with the new host workstation. As mentioned here I deleted the *.vmem and *.vmss files while VMWare was off then resumed the team on the new host.

bkfjtools hack and slash for english

noreply@blogger.com (Mark E. DeYoung) — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 10:51:00 +0000

I needed a quick way to extract some files out of an NTbackup “BKF” file and didn’t have time to go buy a tool. A couple seconds of googling revealed the bkfjtools program. Unfortunately, I don’t read Japanese that well. So I did a quick hack and slash conversion to English using google translate on the strings for the bkfexp tool. Source is here. Probably should clean it up for real language support and commit back. Probably won’t happen due to time constraints.

Should have googled more than two seconds….Another technique to use NTBackup on Win Vista/7 is described here. But what’s the fun in that?

Google Code Blog: Google Relaunches Instantiations Developer Tools -...

noreply@blogger.com (Mark E. DeYoung) — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 06:46:00 +0000

This looks like a good add on for Eclipse:

Google Code Blog: Google Relaunches Instantiations Developer Tools -...: "(Cross-posted from the Google Web Toolkit blog) In early August, Google acquired Instantiations, a company known for its focus on Eclipse J..."