Shiny Hacks

New Project: PCGamingWiki

2012-02-17T06:39:00.003Z

I've been working very hard lately on a new project, which is PCGamingWiki.

It's a wiki designed to fix PC gaming and stop forum rage.

Our goal is to fix every single PC game, with a single page for all information about:

Performance issues and fixes

Optimisations, cfgs and hacks

Save game locations and syncing

Bugs, workarounds and community patches

Alt-tab and fullscreen windowed mode

Cutscene and video skipping

Getting the most out of PC gaming

We are not interested in:

Synopsis of a game

Game content or reviews

Illegally acquiring DLC or bypassing DRM

Sample of articles with strong relevancy:

I hope to see some of my readers there!

How To Make Your Own Automatic Baby Rocker From A Baby Bjorn Bouncer And A Maxi-Cosi Car Seat

2012-01-22T10:56:00.000Z

There are no decent automatic baby rockers on the market. For example, the Robopax Baby Rocker that we tried out is functional in principle, but in practice, did not deliver enough of a rocking motion to soothe our 2-month old baby Benjamin.

The Baby Bjorn Balance Bouncer was sold to us as a way for a baby to self soothe themselves. It requires tiny amounts of force to create a large bouncing motion which babies love. However, young babies tend not to be able to propel themselves and so young baby Benjamin always seems to need an extra push. Unfortunately for me, it's meant that for many sleepless nights, I've been reduced to a glorified baby rocker, gently nudging the Baby Bjorn Bouncer and rocking him at all hours of the night whilst slowly losing my sanity. (Other sleep depriving attachment parenting techniques include holding him in a sling and sleeping on my tummy).

Guide to making your own automatic baby rocker

Variable speed (VSR) drill
The most important thing is to have a drill that can be run at variable speeds. This is because you'll want the speed to be run at the slowest. In the video I use a Black and Decker Variable Speed Corded Hammer Drill. However, the advertised 'lock on' function only works at maximum speed.

Battery powered cordless drills are good because the battery packs weigh the tool down and act as a counterweight to the bouncing. However, beware of battery powered cordless drills that only draw power from the battery. It means that if your battery deteriorates the entire drill will be non-functional and you might as well buy a new drill.

Velcro
A strip of velcro around the trigger is required for keeping the speed of the drill locked in at the lowest setting. Never have the drill speed on anything than on the lowest setting. Once this is attached (so that it activates the lowest speed setting) you can switch the drill on and off by: 1) knocking in the safety bit, or 2) switching the power switch on or off from the socket.

A bent piece of metal
In my video used a GRUNDTAL S-hook from Ikea, which you can get for £1.99 for a 5-pack. Alternatively you can pick up many kinds of S hooks from Amazon. Just bend the metal using pliers so that it fits inside the chuck of the drill.

A wide piece of wide, strong fabric (for the Baby Bjorn)
I have used an Ikea blue bag handle strap. Any kind of wide strap or fabric works, like a bag strap. Also worth considering something slightly elastic as well to provide a little 'give' and provide a smoother motion. A firm waistband could be used in this situation.

A bulldog clip (for the Baby Bjorn)
Used to attach the fabric from the drill bit to the Baby Bjorn Bouncer.

Maxi-Cosi car seat
Also works with any Maxi-Cosi car seat which have the small strip of belt fabric in the front, as shown in the video. It could probably be hacked to work with by attaching the fabric from the handle bar to the drill bit (in a similar vein to the "Linux Baby Rocker").

Disclaimer

This automatic rocking technique that I devised allows the baby to be rocked whilst freeing your hands for interacting with the baby. It's definitely a hack, and should not be used as a substitute for love, affection and comforting. Any advice taken on this website is wholly the responsibility of the reader, and I cannot be held responsible whatsoever for any damages or harm that may occur from following this advice. Never leave your baby alone and unattended. Always keep your baby's safety and happiness your number one priority. Information on shaken baby syndrome should always be consulted by parents.

Blogger Mobile Theme and IntenseDebate Integration

2012-01-11T13:46:00.000Z

The new Blogger mobile theme does a much better job formatting content onto mobile devices

Can IntenseDebate be integrated with Blogger mobile theme? In a word, no.

In 2011, Blogger implemented a fantastic new mobile theme template. However, this new theme does not provide support for third party comment systems. Blogger's own native commenting system is really poor as it does not allow very basic comment features such as threading or Facebook login. Most serious Blogger users will turn to the two most popular third party comment systems, Disqus and IntenseDebate, for these additional features. However, under the default Blogger mobile theme setting, the mobile theme will not display the Disqus or IntenseDebate; only native comments will show up.

A hack which I found for successfully integrating Disqus into the mobile theme can be found on the unico-lab blog published 03/01/12, which forces the Disqus widget to render in the mobile theme by adding the mobile='yes' tag the widget tag in the HTML template editor for Blogger. This is the fix recommended for all widgets in Google's Blogger Blog in the post: http://code.blogger.com/2011/11/introducing-custom-mobile-templates.html.

I attempted to apply this fix to IntenseDebate, but this does not unpack the widget in the mobile theme. I contacted the IntenseDebate support team to see how this could work.

My email to the IntenseDebate:

> Hi I am trying to make IntenseDebate appear in the mobile Blogger
> template. I have activated this on my page. When I view the mobile
> version,
> (http://www.shinyhacks.com/2010/08/north-london-dim-sum-interactive-map.html?m=1)
> old Blogger comments appear. Desktop version shows IntenseDebate
> (http://www.shinyhacks.com/2010/08/north-london-dim-sum-interactive-map.html).
>
> According to Google's Blogger Blog, using the mobile='yes' tag should
> force a widget to appear in the mobile version
> (http://code.blogger.com/2011/11/introducing-custom-mobile-templates.html).
> I have attempted it using a fix described here:
> (http://unico-lab.blogspot.com/2012/01/how-to-make-blogger-mobile-working-with.html)
> but it isn't displaying.
>
> Are there any ways of making this work?

I received this support message from the Intense Debate support team on 06/01/12:

Hi Andrew,

At the moment Intense Debate can't be used with Blogger's mobile template. It's on our dev list, but there are certain limitations that prevent it from working properly.

I apologize for the inconvenience.

I'll keep this post updated if I hear anything more from their support.

For the time being however, Blogger and IntenseDebate users should disable the mobile theme. This is because comments written in the native comments system will overwrite all IntenseDebate comments for that post.

North London Dim Sum Interactive Map And Reviews

2011-12-15T12:51:00.000Z

View North London Dim Sum in a larger map

The aim of the follow list is to create a comprehensive list of dim sum restaurants in the north London area, between zone 2 and Hemel Hempstead.

North London Dim Sum Restaurants listed in alphabetical order

Alisan

Location: Near to Wembley Stadium.
Parking: Excellent road next to the restaurant with lots of free parking.
Public transport: Approximately 12 minute walk from Wembley Park tube station on the Metropolitan and Jubilee line in zone 4.
Accessibility: Two floors. Need to check whether they have lift access.
Food: Average 2/5: My family felt that the quality and portion sizes of the food here was not good. Cheap decor, no tablecloths, 'cafe' type feel.

Dim Sum House

Dragon City

Location: Dragon City is on the first floor of the Chinese supermarket Loon Fung, Alperton.
Parking: Excellent retail park size car park.
Public transport: Approximately 5 minutes walk from the Alperton tube station on the Picadilly line in zone 4.
Accessibility: Has two entrances via steep stairs only. No lift.
Service: Good 4/5: Waiters helpful with accommodating families and children, not too rushed.
Food: Average 4/5: Most notable is that prices for noodle and rice dishes are astronomical! Almost £10 for a crispy seafood noodle dish and was very gloopy. It was almost £10 for char siu roast duck rice, which was extremely small. However, dim sum menu is small but the prices are average and the quality is good for London.
Notes: Loon Fung, Alperton is an excellent supermarket, with great deals on fresh meat. No fresh bakery. The only place I've seen that not only sells A&W root beer, but also its diet variety.
Update 02/01/12: Since 2012, all dim sum prices have risen by approximately 20p per dish, although this is still in the average £10-£12 per head category for dim sum.

Golden Palace

Green Cottage

Local Friends

Hoo Hing

Location: First floor of Hoo Hing supermarket.
Service: Good 5/5: Staff here are really excellent, and made us feel very welcome.
Food: Average 3/5 - Frozen but cheap: A self service cafe rather than a dim sum restaurant. No dim sum is prepared here, it is prepared from frozen. However, food is pretty much the cheapest possible, for siu mai or har gao are £1.70, whereas most dim sum restaurants would charge around £2.60. Rice and noodle dishes are prepared freshly, and dishes such as won ton noodle soup is £2.75, and the portion sizes are very good. I would treat this place like the Ikea restaurant; a great value meal but not the main reason for visiting this place. The Hoo Hing supermarket is fantastic and has a very large variety of food compared to other Chinese supermarkets.
Notes:

Download a menu from the Hoo Hing website.
Very good supermarket.

Imperial China, Watford

Old Tree Bakery

Location: Ground floor on the end of a quiet high street. Across the street from a well-stocked small Korean supermarket.
Public transport: Approximately 8 minutes walk from Golders Green tube station on the Northern Line zone 3.
Accessibility: Only one mixed sex toilet which is shared with disabled users. Not very good!
Service: Good 2/5: Waiters kept trying to clear away plates which still had food on it.
Food: Average 3/5: A good approximation of Taiwanese fare, although not as good as Leong's Legend and more considerably more expensive. Decor reminds me of a typical cafe in Taipei, all dark wood, no tablecloths. Lots of choices for bubble tea, but mine was made far too sweet and with the boba slightly undercooked.
Notes: Bakery items look absolutely exquisite. However the two buns that we bought were very stale and very overpriced.

Royal China, Harrow-on-the-Hill

Wing Tai

Location: Ground floor next to the Wing Yip supermarket, as well as a number of other Chinese shops.
Parking: Small number of spaces directly outside the restaurant, and a medium sized underground carpark. A lift from the carpark to the restaurant is available. Parking is heavily oversubscribed - arrive before 1pm on a Sunday to get a space.
Public transport: Approximately 20 minutes walk from Cricklewood Rail, which is 15 mins train from King's Cross. Walk involves going past a high street and a busy main road.
Accessibility: Good accessibility in general, but can get very crowded during peak periods.
Service: Average 3/5: Service is prompt and efficient. However, we have had the bill over-calculated on a number of occassions. Always check your bill before leaving. Also numerous occasions where orders have been missed completely due to how busy they are.
Food: Average 4/5: Dim sum quality is good and portion sizes are good, and the food is good value.
Notes:

Wing Tai is the largest restaurant on this list and definitely the most popular. However, arriving late at to this restaurant for Dim Sum on the weekend will usually mean queueing for up to 1hr. When you walk in, watch out for the raffle ticket lady, who will call out your number when a table for your party is free.
Bakery is available from the Reindeer Cafe who also sell good value arge plates of rice and noodle dishes, and offer bespoke cakes with 4 hours notice. One summer, their restaurant had a large number of flies buzzing around even in their bakery covers, but their hygiene has improved lately (as of 2011). During busy periods they will enforce table sharing.
Wing Yip is the largest Chinese supermarket chain in the UK. Other services in this retail complex are available nearby, such as a hairdressers, etc. which I have not tried.
The entire inside of Wing Tai and Wing Yip has very poor mobile phone reception.

Yum Cha Silk and Spice

Location: Ground floor, near to northern exit of Camden Town Market.
Public transport: Approximately 10 mins walk from Camden Town tube on the Norther line in zone 2.
Food: Average 2/5: From what I remember, the dim sum experience is quite disappointing, even considering the large discounts available Monday-Wednesday. Standard prices are quite expensive, and the quality of the food does not match it.
Notes:

Monday-Wednesday 50% off dim sum (as of December 2011).
Delivery is available after 6pm for dim sum, but not for steamed items like cheung fun.

Best Dim Sum next to a Chinese Supermarket
A typical family Sunday day out for a Chinese family will involve coming out for a dim sum meal followed by doing some Chinese grocery shopping. Here are my top 3 picks for north London:

Dragon City - above Loon Fung, Alperton

A good balance of serving good quality dim sum and not being too busy.

Wing Tai - next to Wing Yip, Cricklewood

I would definitely avoid during peak times, but when it's not crowded or when you can get there early, it's definitely worth coming here for the good dim sum and other amenities nearby.

Hoo Hing - above Hoog Hing, Park Royal

Not a 'real' dim sum restaurant, but an excellent place to come for great value and great service.

Play HD MKV 720p Smoothly on iPhone and iPad (iOS) Natively Using XBMC

2011-10-12T08:26:00.000+01:00

Playing high quality video on your iPhone/iPad like MKVs in 720p format has never been possible using standard App Store apps. This is because Apple have not allowed App Store apps to access hardware acceleration on their devices unless the video being played is in an MP4 format. This is despite the fact that most MKV files these days simply contain muxed MP4 files. Apps with decent performance like AVPlayer can only produce a slideshow with desynced audio, something I've written about in a previous article.

However, the fact remains that high quality videos are most commonly shared through the internet in the MKV format, especially high definition video. However, a solution has come through Jailbreaking the iPhone/iPad, which allows video playing applications like XBMC to access hardware acceleration. XBMC on the iPhone/iPad plays high bit-rate MKVs in 720p perfectly smoothly. Not only this, but there is an elegant solution to load files onto the iPhone/iPad through iTunes which does NOT require the fiddly operation of OpenSSH.

Video is of an iPad 1 running 720p MKV files on both AVPlayerHD and XBMC.

Jailbreak is required for this hack, here is a a way of searching for the latest guide to Jailbreaking.

Guide on how to install XBMC on an iPhone/iPad:

1. Enter the Cydia app.

2. Go to Manage -> Sources -> Edit -> Add (Sources -> Edit -> Add on iPad)

3. Type in "http://mirrors.xbmc.org/apt/ios/" (Without the quotation marks)

4. Tap on the teamXBMC source.

5. Tap on the XBMC-iOS icon.

6. Tap install, then confirm.

A full guide is listed here:
http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=HOW-TO:Install_XBMC_on_iPad/iPhone/iPod_touch

How to load files into XBMC through iTunes:

1) Install a video playing app from the App Store that allows files to be added through iTunes, for example, AVPlayerHD. This program is great because it gives the option of loading files through iTunes or through the webserver over WiFi.

A guide to using AVPlayer is available in a previous Shiny Hacks post.

2) Install iFunbox. This program allows you to view the file structure of you iOS device. It works best when iTunes is closed.

3) Once iFunbox is installed, connect your iPhone or iPad to your computer and click on your device on the left.

4) Find the AVPlayerHD and rightclick on the icon, and select 'Copy To PC'. Ctrl+V into a notepad and hold onto this address.

The 'Copy To PC' puts the data folder address into your clipboard.

The location for AVPlayerHD for iPad should be: /var/mobile/Applications/

A7399C49-DA47-4782-A1D6-D7137A11CA9B – however, this location can change amongst different versions of the app.

5) Open XBMC, Videos -> Files -> Add Videos... -> Browse -> Home folder -> Applications -> Find the folder (A7399C49-DA47-4782-A1D6-D7137A11CA9B).

5a) Because the current build of XBMC is mouse driven, the way to scroll down through the folders is by swiping down rather than up.

5b) Alternatively, you can 'Add' the folder location by typing in the /var/mobile/Applications/

A7399C49-DA47-4782-A1D6-D7137A11CA9B/ location.

6) Go to the subfolder Library/Caches/Documents/ folder, which is where your AVPlayerHD videos are kept. Now XBMC will be able to see files that exist within the AVPlayerHD media folder (and also anything added via iTunes). Click video files in here to play them.

7) Add files to your iPhone/iPad by opening your device in iTunes and navigating to the 'App' tab.

Tips:

Files will only appear in Library/Caches/Documents/ once the media folder has been viewed on AVPlayerHD (a quirk of the app).

Once you use this hack, from your desktop it will also look like there are no files within the app tab of your iPhone/iPad, even though you can add more files. The files are still kept within the Library/Caches/Documents/ folder, and you can manage them using AVPlayerHD.

Putting Windows 7 Aero Snap In Your Office's Windows XP Machine Without Administrator Privileges

2011-08-08T09:57:00.005+01:00

Working with two screen side by side on a single screen improves efficiency.

Aero snap is definitely my favourite feature in Windows 7. By dragging your window to the left or right-most part of the screen, the window automatically snaps to take up 50% of that screen. It allows you to quickly align two windows side-by-side vertically, so that you can do things like refer to one document whilst writing an email.

Unfortunately, most offices are still equipped with Windows XP, which still has pretty poor window management. Arranging windows into the right sizes is time-consuming and fiddly. A great free application which will provide the Windows 7 Aero Snap feature in Windows XP is called Aqua Snap. The version that will be needed can be downloaded from their site as the 'Portable Version'. This allows installation of the application to a personal folder without administrator privileges.

Most likely, your system administrator will not allow you to install your own software on your machine. Installing unauthorised software can bring many unforeseen problems, so use this guide at your own risk.

Make sure to download the 'Portable Version' and install the program to a personal folder.

Once you have downloaded the 'Portable Version', you will need to extract it to a personal folder (somewhere where you have permission to write files).

Most machines will have software to allow extract .zip files installed.

Run this file to star the program and begin using Aero Snap features.

Configuration for the program is very robust but not a necessity by any means. These can be accessed in the 'AquaSnap.Configurator' located in the same folder.

Aqua Snap has some complex configuration, but the basic mode is sufficent.

Conveniently, Aqua Snap portable even includes an option to start with Windows.

How To Share Google Calendar on iPhone, Blackberry and Android

2011-04-14T13:24:00.010+01:00

Smartphones offer hyperaccessibility to shared information - they are as powerful as computers, they always-on our persons and they are always connected to a data network. With the right settings, we can instantly share huge amounts of information automatically thereby making communication powerful and seamless.

My wife often asks me to pick up something from the shops before I get home from work. She has a few options to communicate this information with me whilst I am away:

A) She can call/text SMS/email the shopping list. This would efficiently deliver the information to me. However, if she wanted to add or remove items from the shopping list, she would have to send another call/text SMS/email with the additions or changes, resulting in multiple and fragmented copies of the same shopping list information.

B) She can add the shopping list as a task in her Google Calendar (which is shared with my calendar). This will instantly show up as a notification in my own calendar on my smartphone. Furthermore, she can edit the task to add or remove items from the shopping, and this information will be instantly updated on my smartphone.

Sharing Your Google Calendar
1) You and your OH must have seperate Google Accounts.
2) Login to your Google Account, and then go into Calendar -> Settings -> Calendar -> Click on Sharing.
3) Enter the OH Google Account's email address in the sharing setting, and make sure that they can 'Make changes to events'
Result: You now have the ability to edit each other's calendar events and schedules
Tip: Colour code your calendars to clearly see who created each entry.

iPhone
1) Login to your Google Account, and then go into Calendar -> Settings -> Calendar -> Click on [Your Name Calendar] -> Calendar Address: ICAL
2) Copy the address of the ICS file down - the format should look like: [https://www.google.com/calendar/dav/YOUREMAIL@DOMAIN.COM/user]
3) Go to your iPhone -> Settings -> Mail, Contacts, Calendars -> Add Account... -> Other -> Calendars: Add CalDAV Account
4) Add the address of your CalDAV Account (from Step 2) and also enter your Google Account username and password
Result: You and your OH can now edit each other's Google Calendar from your iPhones
Pro Tip: You should avoid syncing calendars using the Exchange account protocol. This is because:
1) The iPhone only supports one Exchange account, which may be required for a work account.
2) The iPhone randomly designates colours to your Exchange account calendars (which may conflict with what you are used to seeing on your Google Calendar view from your desktop). You can work around this by adding multiple copies of the same CalDAV account, and deleting the undesireable colours.

BlackBerry
1) Visit m.google.com/sync on your BlackBerry's official browser
2) Download and install the Google Sync app
3) Go to Google Sync -> Calendars -> Click Options and then select calendars to sync
Result: You and your OH can now edit each other's Google Calendar from your BlackBerries

Android
Google Calendar syncing is a native part of the operating system. Once you've made sure that your Google calendars are shared, and on your Android device, enter your Google Account details in the system settings.

Change What Programs Are Loaded When Your Computer Starts Up

2011-02-14T19:12:00.001Z

It's a common misconception that a computer will work less and less well and get slower and slower the older it is. The reality is that most computer slowness is software is due to what programs are being loaded when you start your computer. Applications that people install on their computers spawn smaller applications that load when Windows starts. For example, if you installed iTunes on your Windows PC, then you have also allowed it to install the 'iTunes helper' which loads up every time you boot your computer. All this program does is open up iTunes when an iOS device is connected, and it occupies approximately 50mb of a computer's RAM. Lots of these kinds of programs are loaded up on your computer. By going through the following guide, you can disable the loading of these programs and make your PC boot much faster.

Step 1) Press Win + R.

This allows a command box to be run in administrator mode.

Step 2) In the box, type in 'msconfig' and press 'OK'.

Step 3) Select the 'Startup' tab.

Step 4) Uncheck every single item that looks like it's something that you don't necessarily need to be booted up everytime you switch on the computer. Generally speaking, this means everything that is not an antivirus program.

All clear! This should allow your computer to boot and run much faster without lots of programs bloating your system. Remember to check this whenever you install a new program, as it's likely new programs will install a new entry here, making your computer boot a little slower every time you switch it on.

iPhone and iPad Review Of AVPlayer - The Native iOS MKV Solution

2011-02-11T11:23:00.009Z

Ever since I made a switch to the iPhone, I've been looking for a solution that would allow me to play the video content that I viewed the most on my device. The iPhone only natively supports MP4 videos encoded to a specific resolution. If I wanted to view any other common third party format, for example, AVI, DIVX or MKV, I would have to convert videos to iPhone MP4 - a time consuming process that often results in errors and audio sync issues.

Up until a few months ago, there were no real solutions to watching an unconverted MKV on your iOS device. The recently released VLC for iOS (now withdrawn from iTunes due to licensing issues) could open a large number of video formats, but was like a slideshow when playing higher bitrate MKV videos. Thankfully, AVPlayer, available for iPhone/iPod Touch and in an HD version for iPad, has much better performance when it comes to playback of MKVs and high bitrate videos as of version 1.3.

The performance of MKVs is much smoother on AVPlayer than on VLC:

Formats that can be played by AVPlayer on iOS:
XVID/DIVX (including AC3) AVI,WMV,RMVB,ASF,H264,MKV… most of all movie file formats.
SMI, SRT Subtitles.

Notable features:
Rotation Lock / Aspect ratio:auto/16:9/4:3/1:1/Full screen
Folder Management:Pass code/Move/Rename/Create
USB/WiFi transfer

File Transfer
For AVPlayer, file transfers come in two flavours: USB and WiFi. The USB transfer (aka File Sharing) works the same way it does through many other apps in iTunes as introduced in iTunes 9.1. Simply navigate to the iPhone -> Apps -> AVPlayer, and then drag and drop files onto the device.

The WiFi transfer very simple to use and does not require installing any additional software on one's desktop. When you open the AVPlayer app and select WiFi transfer, it opens a window with the local IP address opened at port 8080. Just navigate to the address shown and you'll be presented with a basic menu where you can navigate through folders and upload files. The process itself is secure because as soon as you navigate away from the WiFi transfer option on the iPhone, the web access is shut off. This also means that if you want to push large amounts of data through WiFi, then you won't be able to do anything else with the phone until the upload is complete.

The WiFi transfer is also one of the few ways to bypass USB transfer's artificial limit of 2gb of data per application on the iPhone and iPod Touch. However, no such restriction is placed on the iPad version, which can comfortably handle filling the app full to the brim with videos through USB transfer.

Folder Management
AVPlayer has very robust folder management. It's very easy to move around large numbers of videos into folders, subfolders, etc. When tapping the configuration spanner in the top right, checkboxes are made available next to video files and also an option to 'select all'. From this stage you can move these files to any folder or subfolder, and rename or delete. There is also an option to set a PIN for a specific folder.

Other Features:
Gestures
The gestures in this app are very useful and customisable. For example, I have my AVPlayer setup so that a triple touch fast forwards 30 seconds, and a double touch rewinds 10 seconds. This is handy for skipping through videos (like intro sequences) without fiddling with the small seeking bar.

Speed Control
I'm not sure about how useful this feature, but the way that it is implemented by default is unintuitive and leaves a lot to be desired. Default controls put speed control as single touch gestures (which means that you will accidentally tap to speed up or slow down playback all the time). Also speeding up makes the playback of the video much more inconsistent (presumably because it has to process many more frames at a time).

Post Processing
This feature allows you to grayscale an image or improve the colour. Surprisingly not necessarily a junk feature (especially if you enjoy viewing 'camcorder' videos), as you can change the colour of a badly optimised video into something more viewable. Also it is surprising that this feature doesn't seem to impact the playback of video a great deal.

Conclusion
AVPlayer is definitely the best solution for playing videos on your iOS device, and probably the only one that can do MKVs and non-MP4 high definition videos to any degree of competence. I suspect that future iterations of the software (or faster processors being released by Apple) will eventually allow for higher bitrate non-MP4 videos to be playable as well.

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm MMO Gaming Mouse SteelSeries Review and Tips

2011-02-10T09:24:00.021Z

I recently acquired a WoW: Cataclysm Mouse, the 14 button monster of a human interface device. My impressions of it have been hugely positive for World of Warcraft, and it's a must have for end-game type playing (which requires the use of upwards of 30 abilities to play effectively).

Not Booting Up

I had an initial issue with the mouse out of the box, where Windows 7 was not recognizing the mouse on boot (although a subsequent cycle of the USB would fix this issue). This was due to the fact that the mouse was operating on an older firmware. There is no option later within the driver settings to install new firmware. When you install the drivers you have to make sure that the mouse is plugged in at that point, otherwise it won't detect and update the firmware. Once I uninstalled and reinstalled the drivers and the firmware was updated, the mouse was recognised on bootup without any issues after that.

There are 10 profiles to store on the mouse, but I think it's best to use the WoW in-game native configuration.

Best Method Of Mousebinding

There are a lot of options for mousebinding with the mouse. Personally, I do not recommend using SteelSeries' driver software to do your mousebindings. Working within the WoW interface is much faster for setting up and testing bindings.

I'm a fan of smart selfcasting within the game, and also using mouseover macros in order to direct abilities without changing target. The AddOn Clique allows abilities to be set at 'Hovercast binding' but not 'Global binding' at the same time. This means that if you set 'Hovercast binding' but do not have a target under the mouse, the button won't perform any action. However, it's still possible to create mouseover macros that self-cast under certain conditions using Clique custom macros and 'Global binding'.

For example, I use this macro for my Flash Heal:

#Flash Heal
/cast [target=mouseover,help,player][] Flash Heal

This allows a 'priority' for targets to be targeted, firstly the mouseover [mouseover], then a friendly [help], then yourself [player]. Therefore when I am targeting an opponent, I can easily self heal or target others whilst also doing damage to my target. For this macro to work properly, the custom macro itself needs to be set as 'Global binding' in order to activate.

Does It Work With Other Applications?

The WoW: Cataclysm Mouse is very large, and is not necessarily ideal for other types of applications, particularly if you have smaller hands. Although you might think that there is a huge application for all these buttons, many of the buttons don't function except as a kind of keyboard emulation (as under the SteelSeries drivers). In World of Warcraft, there is an option to activate the rest of the buttons in the default configuration. However under Windows 7, the mouse is only recognised as having 5 inputs (despite there being 14) and only left click, right click, middle mouse and two thumb buttons are active by default. Therefore outside of the World of Warcraft, the extra functionality is limited to just 5 buttons. The SteelSeries drivers seem to only allow macros that input into World of Warcraft, although it is possible to create custom macros. However, this seems to be a very roundabout way to bind keys and is not really ideal.

One thing I did like about this mouse is that it doesn't use hardmapped CPI switches (in other words, DPI or sensitivity), and it's possible to bind any key to switch to a custom CPI. This has some uses in FPS games where you might switch sensitivities depending on what weapon you are using.

Closing

The WoW: Cataclysm Mouse is a must have for those who have reached the end-game and want a solution that allows you to play without having to reach all over the keyboard in order to activate abilities. For me it's been a godsend for streamlining endgame healing and PvP.

Stream The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and South Park From Anywhere In The World

2011-01-17T15:11:00.002Z

Current and up to date episodes of The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and South Park are available for flash video streaming for those living in the US. However, these shows are restricted for people outside of the US. With this method I'm about to go through, current episodes can be watched from anywhere in the world.

The method has worked since January 2010. It does not require the use of a proxy service and it works by changing the user agent in one's Firefox browser.

Step 1) Open Firefox and install the Add-on from this address: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/967/.

Step 2) Restart Firefox, and then click Tools -> Modify Headers.

Step 3) Enter 'X-Forwarded-For' in the first box and in the second box enter '12.13.14.15' as in the diagram below. Click 'Add' to add it to the the list of actions.

Step 4) Click on the 'Options' tab, and check the box 'Always On'.

Step 5) Watch anything from http://www.colbertnation.com/, http://www.thedailyshow.com/ and http://www.southparkstudios.com/. Enjoy!

Source: ReaverXai - http://www.reddit.com/r/entertainment/comments/9sfen/colbert_skewers_beck_for_constant_tears/c0e8jfp

Tips
I have found that using this change may effect other websites, for example, Steampowered.com will display US prices instead of whatever local prices you have. You can use this to your advantage if you have a valid US address.

If you do not have administrator priviliges and you do not have Firefox installed, you can use FirefoxPortable to install Firefox on any machine. You can also install the Flash plugin using my guide here.

Pleco OCR Review: A Chinese Real Time Dictionary

2010-12-09T21:56:00.004Z

Pleco is a well crafted Chinese to English and English to Chinese dictionary for iOS devices. The basic free app performs the function of a Chinese dictionary very well. However, the software is unique on the App Store because it is very customisable and allows the purchase of 'Add-ons' to add more features to the dictionary and the sheer number of these in-app purchases that are available is extremely impressive. The most interesting and unique of these features is the Pleco OCR, which allows the use of the iPhone camera to recognise Chinese characters and find related dictionary terms instantly and in real-time.

The OCR module can be found in the 'Add-ons' section of the Pleco app. The module itself costs £8.99 (or £7.99 with the opt-in educational discount) or for $14.99/£12.99.

The OCR (object character recognition) software works by recognising shapes and lines from the camera feed of the iPhone, interpreting Chinese characters from these shapes and then matching this data to the dictionary in Pleco. The performance of Pleco OCR is extremely impressive. The time taken from loading the OCR app to translating a word can take seconds. With other Chinese dictionary applications, it would take considerably longer to input the Chinese character into the software to find the definition. With an application like Pleco OCR, entire strings of characters can be translated on the fly, and the time saving is very considerable.

Tests were performed using an iPhone 3GS. According to Michael Love, the developer, iOS devices without autofocus (even the most recent iPod Touch 4th generation) won't be able to deliver a clear enough image for the software to interpret. This means that currently the only devices that it supports are the iPhone 3GS and the iPhone 4. It's clear that autofocus is really key to using the software, as the OCR relies on having a clear image of the text that one is trying to recognise. As the iPhone is a handheld device, autofocus is constantly being engaged because as the distance between the iPhone camera and the characters constantly changes, causing the image to go out of focus. The OCR provides a large button to autofocus, but the camera seems to autofocus automatically as well. All-in-all, the OCR works quickly, although it can take some time to keep the camera steady enough for the OCR to function.

The 'span lines' function allows the software to recognise a character at the end of one line, and then continue capturing at the beginning f the next line. There is also a history function which allows reviewing of recognised characters. The real-time capture can be fairly hectic when trying to translate full sentences, and this feature allows one to review the words that one has scanned.

When using the software, one must make sure that the green bounding box at the centre of the OCR feed was the correct size and that it was translating what one wanted it to translate. By making the box larger than the target character, the OCR would try to interpret the edges of other characters as full characters. Making the box too small would give inaccurate readings. If the box spanned a large number of characters, it would only translate the first character, or a set of characters if it matched a dictionary term. For example, in the above video, I was impressed that it could interpret multi-character phrases such as "來不及".

However, the software has a problem understanding where a word starts and where a word ends. In English, words are clearly differentiated from each other by the spaces between clusters of letters. In Chinese however, a word can be made up of multiple characters and one can only really know a word is separate (and therefore take up a separate entry in the dictionary) by its meaning. When using the green bounding box, one may sometimes miss out a character that makes up the beginning or end part of a word, and therefore miss out on understanding that entire sentence.

Fortunately, this is less a problem with the software itself and is more of a problem with the way the Chinese language is structured as a whole. In truth, Pleco OCR is not best suited for translating full sentences, but performs admirably at being an aid at translating characters in strings of one to three or four characters at a time. The 'history' function is an excellent way of keeping track of large numbers of words. Pleco OCR can be a great aid to quickly translating words as long as one understands the advantages and disadvantages of using it as a main translation device.

Chinese dictionaries as a whole are extremely confusing and time consuming because there are so many different systems for organising the order of characters from the brush stroke count to the character radical. With the advent of touch screen dictionaries such as apps available on the iPhone, this process has become vastly simpler because one is able to input the Chinese character directly into the dictionary. However, this is still a very time consuming process, especially for beginners of the Chinese language who may find difficulty getting accurate results with touch input. Pleco OCR manages to bypass all of these concerns and provides a feature rich, reliable and extremely fast way to translate words. All in all, £8.99 is a very small amount to pay for such a unique, well designed product, and would be an extremely helpful too for anyone interested in learning the Chinese language and wants an extremely quick way to input Chinese characters that they might find in the real world.

How To Rip DVDs To USB From Any Computer In Under 10 Minutes

2010-11-10T00:23:00.002Z

This guide allows you to copy a full two hour DVD to a USB flash drive in under 10 minutes without installing any software or making any permanent changes to any computer. It means that instead of borrowing a DVD from a friend, you can choose to do a very quick copy of it straight to USB flash drive. This guide works with any CD and DVD, and the method can bypass all copy protections and region restrictions. Virtually any computer can be used, even if it is a school, library, office or university computer without any risk. This is because the programs do not attempt to make system changes. The only real requirement is that the computer allows executing programs from a USB flash drive.

What Are Portable Applications?

Portable Applications are Windows programs that don't make changes to the computer being used. They are free programs adapted to be used on removable storage such as USB flash drives, and they don't write any changes to the main Windows system. They don't require installing, administrator privileges or anything except Windows and a USB port. PortableApps.com has a well moderated repository of free portable, portable software. Of this, we will be using two pieces of software, VLCPortable, and InfraRecorderPortable.

Things You Will Need

1. USB flash drive (or hard drive) at least 8gb in size. A drive like the mini Corsair Flash Voyagers are perfect because of their size and capacity. They easily fit onto a key chain because the USB contact is retractable.

2. A computer running Windows that can play a DVD.

Step 1) Make sure the USB flash drive is formatted with NTFS. This is because we will be writing files that are over 4gb which FAT32 formatting does not support. To change this, go to your USB flash drive, right click and press 'format'. You will need to change the 'File System' from FAT32 to NTFS. Warning: formatting any drive will wipe all of the data on it - always backup your data.

Your USB flash drive needs to be NTFS rather than FAT32.

Step 2) Download the programs, VLCPortable, and InfraRecorderPortable, and 'install' them to the USB drive.

Step 3) Go to the target Windows computer and insert the DVD that needs copying and the USB flash drive.

Step 4) From the USB flash drive, run InfraRecorderPortable.exe. Select 'Read Disc' (the bottom right hand icon). If at this stage there are any errors, skip to the section What If I Have An Error Using InfraRecorderPortable? below.

Click the bottom right hand icon, 'Read Disc'.

Step 5) Now you need to specify where the DVD file is going to be saved. Click on the '...' to choose a location on your USB stick. Once you press 'OK', it will start a process of copying the image of the entire DVD which should take at the very most 10 minutes.

You can name the file anything you want.

Step 6) Once the copying is completed, you can open the 'DVD.iso' folder using the program VLCPortable. All parts of the DVD should be preserved, including menus, chapters and subtitles. Enjoy!

You can open the 'DVD.iso' file from within VLCPortable, or by dragging the file onto the open VLCPortable window.

What If I Have An Error Using InfraRecorderPortable?

On some computers without administrator priviliges, 'Open Disc' on InfraRecorderPortable will throw up an error because your administrator has blocked access to SPTI. An alternative but slower method is to use VLCPortable to directly transcode the DVD stream. This will work as long as you are able to watch the DVD using VLCPortable. This process usually takes about 20 minutes, but will be faster or slower depending on the speed of your computer. Using VLCPortable has its advantages and disadvantages - on the one hand the file will be compressed, on the other hand, it won't preserve the menu and chapter structure of the DVD, and the process of copying will take longer.

Using VLCPortable To Copy A DVD

Step 1) Open VLCPortable and select Media > Open Disc (Ctrl+D). Select the 'Disc' tab, and then press 'Play' at the bottom.

Step 2) Navigate through the menu of the DVD and play the part that you want copied. You should make a note of which Audio, Video and Subtitle track numbers you prefer.

Select the correct Audio, Video and Subtitle tracks.

Step 3) Press Media > Convert / Save, select the 'Disc' tab again. Input the numbers corresponding to the correct track.

Make sure you have selected the tracks that you want.

Step 4) Select the destination of the video file you are creating, and place it on your USB flash drive. Don't worry about the file extension, VLCPortable will be able to play the file regardless of what the extension is.

Step 5) Select the profile 'Video - H.264 + AAC (MP4) (you can select a different file if you want a higher rate of compression). At the bottom this time will be a 'Convert / Save' button.

Step 6) VLCPortable will start streaming. Don't touch anything! It will affect the playback of the resultant video file.

Step 7) Once you are done, you'll be able to open the video file using VLCPortable. Enjoy!

Use A Fruit Peeler As Cheap Cheese Slicer

2010-11-06T15:48:00.004Z

Using a standard fruit peeler is an easy way to cut thin slices of cheese quickly and conveniently from a larger block. Simple as that!

But why?

1) No need for an expensive, specialized tool.
2) Easy to wash up and clean.
3) No need to take the cheese out of the packaging fully.
4) Keeping cheese in blocks minimizes surface area exposed to air and prevents the cheese drying out.

Any type of fruit peeler will do!

Buying cheese in blocks tends to be a fair amount cheaper than buying pre-sliced. This article from The Guardian explores the kinds of markups that supermarkets add onto 'fruit packs' (which can be sold for £1.40, but could be made with a little effort for 28p). Don't let yourself get conned into buying food like fruit packs or sliced and grated cheese, because they require minimal amounts of time and effort to prepare.

Lovely!

Essential Windows Tools For Seamlessly Migrating To A Solid State Drive

2010-11-03T17:27:00.002Z

Switch from a standard platter drive to a solid state drive can have a drastic reduction on loading speed. It is definitely the preferable options for loading large complex applications or loading data intensive games. However, with the prices of SSDs being so high compared to HDDs, it's not possible to find solid state drives with storage sizes like1tb without spending a fortune. The best option is to consider a hybrid approach and to place your most and critical applications on the SSD, and to keep a high capacity HDD for use for storing and backing up media and data.

In the past, the only real way to do this without reinstalling your operating system was to clone the older HDD and then restore the image onto the new SDD. This would require reducing the size of the original drive to fit onto the smaller SDD, and to engage in a fairly lengthy and complicated process of cloning and restoring. However, there are some free tools that you can use in Windows which will allow seamless moves of data from one drive to another, without ever having to reformat, clone or image your drives. The tools listed in this guide can also be used to migrate or upgrade to any other drive, be they larger or smaller than the origin drive.

Paragon Migrate OS to SSD

Paragon Migrate OS to SSD allows migration of any folder, including system folders.

This piece of software allows Windows users to seamlessly upgrade their systems by putting the most important and most commonly used piece of software (the operating system) on the faster drive. You can select literally any directory to move over to your SSD, and Paragon Migrate OS will copy the selected directories, reboot, and you will have a system that operates exactly as it did before except that the selected directories are on a different drive.

PARAGON Software Group are currently offering an Early Adopter Program, which basically means that you can use their software for free. If you are interested, you should sign on as quickly as you can before they start charging a premium for their quality product.

Link: Paragon Migrate OS to SSD

Steam Mover

Junctions can be made for Steam games as well as any applications.

This is a utility with a specific purpose (splitting and moving a Steam installation to different drives). This is necessary because Steam keeps every downloaded game in a single unified directory. There is no interface for splitting a Steam installation amongst two different drives, which you may want to do if you want to benefit from the speed of a SSD whilst also keeping other less played Steam games on a HDD.

The exact way that Steam Mover achieves this is through junction links. These types of links allow for Steam to think that data is in a unified directory when it could actually be in multiple places. This means that you could move a game like Team Fortress 2 to a SSD whilst keeping a very large RPG like Dragon Age on a HDD. Steam Mover's unique selling point is that in addition to creating junction links, it will simultaneously move the data to the location that you want, cutting out some of the difficulty in creating junction links.

As shown on this Lifehacker article, Steam Mover can also be used for moving applications.

Link: Steam Mover

5 Reasons Why Casuals Should Return To World of Warcraft: Cataclysm

2010-11-01T20:46:00.011Z

World of Warcraft is a mess. Blizzard themselves admitted that 70% of players never even get past level 10. How many people quit the game upon reaching level 40 quit because they didn't have 100g for the mount riding skill? And how about raiding? How can sane people get anything done at maximum level without spending 6 straight hours in some raid dungeon hoping that a piece of loot drops from a boss that you don't have to fight 4 other people in the same class for? It's easy to get burned out from World of Warcraft because it can seem to require a huge commitment of time an energy to make any progress within the game.

It's not so bad anymore. Blizzard have listened to the player feedback and have improved everything for the better, and the game is now much more casual player friendly. With the coming release of Cataclysm in December 7th 2010, there has never been a better time for the casual player to be drawn back into the game, and here are the 5 reasons why:

1) Instant Dungeons and Battlegrounds

In the past, finding a group for an instance or queueing for a battleground could take hours of waiting around for a trusted tank or healer to log in. However with the introduction of the 'Random Dungeon' and the 'Random Battleground', it means with just a single click, automatic matchmaking within a battlegroup cluster (a collection of 6-10 servers) is virtually instantaneous. Also, expect queues for matchmaking to get shorter as plans for a merger of all battlegroups within a region is taking place. This would mean that a queue will draw from an entire region of players (either EU or US) rather than individual servers, making queues even shorter.

What does this mean for casuals? It means being able to play instantaneously and get straight into content, and to do the most rewarding content in short bursts lasting at most, 30 minutes at a time.

2) New Raid Lockout System

Separate raid lockouts for 10-man and 25-man versions of raids meant that hardcore raiders within a single weekly lockout would finish the 25-man raid, and then split into two smaller teams and complete 10-man content. Obviously this was completely optional, but hardcore raiders took it upon themselves to do both versions within the week to get as much loot and as many badges as possible. This meant every week completing a huge raid twice, which is not fun and burnt a lot of hardcore raiders out.

In Cataclysm this will not longer be the case, as the 10-man and 25-man version will share the same lockout. Furthermore, 10-man and 25-man raids will share the same loot table and have the same rewards (although the 25-man raids will have bosses that drop slightly more loot proportionally). Therefore, it's still possible to keep to at a 'competitive' edge as a casual 10-man raiding guild, without feeling left behind by the 25-man raiders who in the past, could have had choice of 25-man and 10-man loot.

Don't have the time to do 10-man raiding either? Then with the new Justice/Valor point system, 5-man heroic dungeon will drop the same loot badges as all raids. In other words, World of Warcraft endgame rewards the casual playstyle by providing the same tier rewards to those who have 5 hours a day to play and those who only have 30 minutes a day to complete a Random Dungeon.

3) Less AddOn Maintenance

Keeping an excellent user interface (UI) augmented by third-party AddOns and mods used to be a requirement for playing the game 'properly'. However, anyone who has played World of Warcraft knows that maintaining AddOns is difficult because Blizzard patches will invariably break the functionality complex AddOns.

Over the years however, Blizzard has slowly been baking in excellent UI additions to the game, making the maintenance of third-party AddOns completely optional. Over 2010, we've had major UI overhauls such as:

Map markers locating quest objectives in the map (never need to alt-tab to Wowhead/Thottbot to check where you are supposed to be for a quest). Also, the quest interface now contains a button to whatever doodad you need to 'use' for a particular quest.

A mod notifying when to use certain spells and abilities, for example, when an enemy falls below 20% health, your button for Hammer of Wrath will flash up (this is a zero configuration version of Power Auras Classic).

Blizzard has introduced new UI features to remind you to cast certain spells (like this Death Coil reminder). Lucky Charms health bars sold separately!

New raid unit frames, which provide raid information much more clearly.

New maps for dungeons and raids, showing loot tables and a basic list of abilities. This means not having to alt-tab to Wowhead just to get through a boss. Blizzard gives you all the basic information about encounters within the game itself.
A new launcher allows you to login to World of Warcraft whilst you are downloading the patch. Once a minimum patch size is downloaded, the rest can be loaded in the background whilst you play.

Even the hugest patches are much more manageable since they can be played halfway through downloading them.

The new interface options means it's easier to run World of Warcraft without any AddOns at all and not be at a disadvantage. However, if you still want to use AddOns, Curse (the de-facto AddOn repository) has a fantastic client which automatically detects and updates AddOns for you automatically. Also check here for a guide: Auto Sync And Backup World of Warcraft Interface Settings To Cloud Storage For Free.

4) Noob Friendly Talents

Talent trees have been vastly simplified. Instead of 71 points at level 80 to spend, there will only be 41. Upon reaching level 10, choosing a talent tree now results in the 'signature abilities' of that class. For instance, a combat specced rogue no longer has to wait until level 60 to gain Blade Flurry, this is now given at level 10. Mandatory and cookie cutter specs are minimalised and there are much fewer talent points to spend. This makes it impossible to 'gimp' a character since the most important abilities of a spec are given up front.

Specialization defining abilities are now given at level 10.

5) Brand New Leveling Game

Essentially, World of Warcraft is being relaunched with completely redesigned level 1-60 content to make it simpler for casual players with limited play-time. In the old world, the quest design was hectic and objectives often had a lot of 'dead' time wandering around aimlessly, not knowing where to go. Now content is much more directed and focused. The user interface puts quest markers directly on your map. It's easier to get places because mounts are available much cheaper and at level 20. Dual specialization can be bought for 100g. New technologies like phasing have been implemented to allow players to experience the effect that they have on the world. Great quality cinematics have been developed for important in-game quests. What is arguably the best part of World of Warcraft, the leveling experience, has been substantially improved for the brand new and returning player.

Epic!

There has never been a better time to get back into World of Warcraft, whether you are a lapsed subscriber burned out from the game, or a completely new player looking for the best MMO there is out there right now.

Turn Any Old PC, Laptop Or Netbook Into A Flexible Media Centre

2010-10-18T10:56:00.007+01:00

More and more people are experiencing streaming video as the primary source of video entertainment. For example, most students at college or university rely on their laptop for their source of (usually illegal) video content such as movies and television shows. However, with legitimate services like Lovefilm, Hulu, YouTube, BBC iPlayer and 4OD, a truly immense catalogue is available at one's fingertips (not to mention PPStream, a very impressive video streaming client). The problem is that most people are still consuming online video via their PCs at their desks. Video content like movies and television shows should be enjoyed as they were designed to be viewed; to be watched in the living room and shared with friends and family on the big TV screen.

Creating a media centre is very simple and often requires very modest investment of time and money. Most of us have an old PC or laptop lying around gathering dust. Maybe the PC has been replaced by an upgrade and the old PC has not yet been sold or thrown away. Maybe the laptop has a broken screen and is out of warranty. Even the first sub-£100 netbooks have the processing power to throw out streaming video. No matter what the situation, almost all computers from the last 10 years have the capacity to serve as a media centre that can play all modern video including YouTube, iPlayer, etc.

Other streaming solutions such as Apple TV, Roku, Boxee, etc. all cut exclusive deals with content providers, meaning that each product only has access to a fraction of all available content. Content providers like Hulu, ABC, etc. limit their support to competitor devices all except for one: the PC. By using the PC as a hub for entertainment, you will never have to worry about compatibility issues or being locked out. And this setup requires very little additional hardware for most people, and can be done for less than £5 in most cases.

Step 1) Video Cable

This is what the back of TVs made from around 2003 looks like.

The correct video cables really depend on what kind of TV you own. 99% of the time it will be fine to use a standard VGA cable (the same kind that hooks your monitor to your PC). For example, this VGA Cable should suit almost every set up. Using Windows operating system, you can simply plug in the cable to your device and it will automatically 'clone' the whatever is displayed on the computer onto the TV.

In the event that you own a TV that was made before 2003, you may only be equipped with an S-video port. This kind of port does not allow high resolution video to show up clearly, so I wouldn't recommend using the TV as a display in this situation. You can make it work by using adapters, but the resulting picture will be very blurry and in my experience, you are better off sticking with a standard PC monitor.

Step 2) Audio Cable

Every computer made since the late 90s use integrated sound cards, and therefore also use 3.5mm stereo jacks to output sound (the same as most headphones). 99% of TVs accept this audio format, so you can just pick up a male/male 3.5mm Jack Stereo Cable which will be able to carry through your sound from your computer to your TV's speakers. Depending on your TV model, you may have to enable sound to be input from this port, but on most TVs this is automatic.

Almost every TV and PC is compatible with the 3.5mm Stereo Jack.

In the event that you don't have a 3.5mm port in your TV, you can use a 3.5mm Jack to x2 RCA (Red White) Cable, which is definitely supported by all TVs since the early 90s.

Tips

This guide is really for adapting old computers and not for those with HDMI ports. If you have an HDMI port in both your PC and your TV, you can just plug a cable between them and it will carry through high definition video and audio automatically.

Check out my article on DAVE for the best laptop/keyboard couch desk: Review: DAVE From Ikea, An In-Depth Look At The Best Couch Desk / Laptop Table.

Also you can check out my guide to: Do PC Gaming On Your Couch Or Sofa.

Inverted Y-Axis Option And A List Of Games Without Y-Axis Support

2010-10-14T11:28:00.003+01:00

'Normal' mapping is the case where moving the joystick/mouse/analogue stick 'up', results in the game point of view shifts 'up'. The y-axis inversion control scheme is basically the inverse of this. 'Up' points the camera 'down', and 'down' points the camera 'up'. Y-axis inversion is the way that I've learned to play any game that requires change one's point of view.

Inversion of the y-axis was never really a choice me. Like many, I learned to play like this because the first games I played were flight simulators or space combat games like Wing Commander. In real-life, airplane joystick controls by default are 'inverted'. When I transitioned to first-person shooters, the mentality of the flight simulator stuck with me through the first-person view point (as well as third-person view point games).

The way that I see it, y-axis is a valid way of thinking about pointing a camera. If you imagine your virtual character as a puppet facing away from you with a pole sticking out of its head horizontally, you can make the puppet look up by tugging the pole down, and vice versa. And a similar logic applies to the flaps of an airplane, where one pulls the joystick downwards in order to 'pull up' the plane.

Inverting the y-axis doesn't really offer an advantage or disadvantage. Rather, it's just a way that some people expect controls to work in a game. And developers know this: almost every single game that has come out in the last 10 years supports y-axis inversion. However, there are a select few titles which do not, and this is why I've created the list. I hope this is a useful resource for you. Inverted gamers unite!

List Of Shame:

Beyond Good & Evil
Inversion option inverts both y-axis and x-axis, no individual toggle. Therefore if you choose to invert y-axis, it will also invert the x-axis (which is not flexible enough for most of us y-axis players). Luckily there is a 'HD' re-release to this game being brought out soon for XBLA and PSN, and will hopefully patch in inverted y-axis control option. I am glad that Ubisoft are releasing this game again because Beyond Good & Evil was one of the most critically acclaimed games to come out in 2003, and I never got a chance to really experience it because of the dizzying control scheme.

Modern Combat 2: Black Pegasus
Gameloft are appalling at updating their games properly with y-axis inversion. Their FPS released last year called NOVA for iOS took months to patch in y-axis inversion. It's shocking to see that their implementation is also extremely flawed on release. Y-axis inversion works for camera controls, however as soon as you start to fire your weapon and want to adjust, the controls will not be inverted. This is a very unprofessional and inconsistent approach to controls.

I created a thread about this on Touch Arcade here.

Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones
Like Beyond Good & Evil, another Ubisoft title and a console port that does not support y-axis inversion correctly. Reports state that whilst the y-axis inversion option exists in the settings, the implementation is bugged and has no functionality within the game.

Silent Hill: Homecoming
This game does not have an inverted y-axis option. I've not had the misfortune to try this, but there is a good account of one inverted gamer's experience with it here.

Spore
In its second stage (the 'tribal' stage), the world view changes from a flat 2D plane to a 3D globe. At this stage, you control your creature from a third person perspective, however you cannot adjust the y-axis inversion of the camera control. This makes it completely unplayable for me at this stage, and is just another reason (on top of many) why Spore was not a well-received game. I also find it very hard to believe that a developer as big as Maxis published by the behemoth Electronic Arts didn't have the QA department to realize that there would be a serious usability issue for y-axis inverted players. And for a game that has a strong online component, I am surprised they have not patched this in, especially after all the clamoring in their forums.

Ultimate List Of Steam Serial Keys From Retail

2010-10-05T17:36:00.011+01:00

Steam always sells games at higher prices than in the retail stores. However, many retail copies of games contain serial keys that can be registered on Steam. By comparing Steam Store prices with retail prices, it is possible to find a Steam serial key that costs much less than buying directly from the Steam Store. For example, Order of War is available from the Steam Store for £29.99, but can be bought on Amazon for £2.60 including delivery. This retail copy can be registered and played on Steam without ever using the disc.

The following page is a list of every possible retail Steam key with a Metacritic rating over 60 that can be bought from retail. Each game title contains a link to its Steam Store page. My list includes a price from Amazon which is generated dynamically, as well as a link to Camelcamelcamel, a site which generates graphs of Amazon prices to track the decrease in price of a game over time. An explanation of how the graphs work is available in a previous article: Buy New Games For Less Using Graphs. The source of games that this article is based on is from Steam Support which lists the serial key formats of the games.

Last Updated: 18th January 2011.
Please comment if there are any new additions that I have missed.

(All versions linked are for Steam PC versions of games, even if the correct box art is not displayed).

Alien Vs Predator

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK - Amazon US

Audiosurf

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK - Amazon US

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK - Amazon US

Call of Duty: Black Ops

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK - Amazon US

Civilization V

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK - Amazon US

Commander: Conquest of the Americas

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK - Amazon US

Dark Messiah Might and Magic

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK - Amazon US
Dark Messiah CD Keys may also have been printed incorrectly, please see the Dark Messiah article.

Darksiders

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK - Amazon US

Dawn of War II: Gold

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK - Amazon US

Defense Grid

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK - Amazon US

Empire: Total War

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK - Amazon US

Fallout: New Vegas

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK - Amazon US

FEAR 2: Project Origin

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK - Amazon US

Football Manager 2010

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK

Football Manager 2011

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK

Front Mission Evolved

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK - Amazon US

Global Agenda

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK - Amazon US
Keys purchased directly from the Global Agenda website cannot be registered on Steam.

GTR Evolution

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK - Amazon US

Half-Life 2: Orange Box

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK - Amazon US

Just Cause 2

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK - Amazon US
Please input all O's and 0's as Q's for Just Cause 2.

Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK - Amazon US

Killing Floor

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK - Amazon US

King Arthur

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK - Amazon US

The Last Remnant

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK - Amazon US

Left 4 Dead

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK - Amazon US

Left 4 Dead 2

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK - Amazon US

Lost Planet: Extreme Condition

Lost Planet: Colonies Edition CD Keys are not accepted on Steam
Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK - Amazon US

Metro 2033

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK - Amazon US

Mount & Blade

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK - Amazon US

Mount & Blade: Warband

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK - Amazon US

NBA 2K9 (no Steam Store UK link)

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK - Amazon US

Empire & Napoleon Total War GOTY Edition

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK

Order of War

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK - Amazon US

Prey (no Steam Store UK link)

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK - Amazon US

R.U.S.E.

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK - Amazon US

Race 07: The Official WTCC Game

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK - Amazon US

Rag Doll Kung Fu
This game is not readily available via retail, and any retail copies left are more expensive than from Steam Store.

Railworks

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK

Red Orchestra

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK - Amazon US

Saints Row 2

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK - Amazon US

Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK - Amazon US

Shattered Horizon

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK - Amazon US

The Ship

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK - Amazon US

Silent Hill Homecoming

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK

Sniper: Ghost Warrior

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK - Amazon US

Speedball 2 - Tournament (no Steam Store UK link)

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK - Amazon US

Supreme Commander 2

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK - Amazon US

Torchlight

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK - Amazon US
Note: Only keys purchased directly from Runic Games or Perfect World prior to May 19th, 2010 can be registered on Steam.

Unreal Tournament III

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK - Amazon US

X3 Gold Edition

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK - Amazon US

Zeno Clash

Camelcamelcamel - Amazon UK - Amazon US

Watch PPStream In English On Windows

2010-09-28T22:41:00.004+01:00

PPStream is a streaming video player popular with users in mainland China. The technology PPStream uses is a combination of YouTube and BitTorrent. Users can stream video instantly, storing the data on their computers, and then upstream this data to other users.

What is unique about PPStream is how centralised and organised this content is made available to users. The range is phenomenal - it includes DVDs, camcorders of current films in cinemas, Asian dramas (from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea and Japan), and most importantly, a gigantic range of American and British movies and TV shows. Almost all of the content is moderated with care, and most sources include subtitles in Chinese (Simplified). For example, the entirety of Lost seasons 1-6 can be streamed, as can Battlestar Galactica (dual subtitled in English and Chinese), Mad Men, True Blood, The Simpsons, Firefly, as well as more obscure things like British snooker games, pro StarCraft II matches, Little Britain, Australian Top Gear, The IT Crowd, the British rebooted Sherlock Holmes series, etc.

For this reason, I believe that PPStream is the most ridiculously, blatant and well organised wholesale infringement of copyright that has ever occurred on the internet. The content streams are very fast, the software and website is centralised and user friendly, and the breadth and range of content is staggering.

This thing has a hell of a lot of Western content.

The downsides for the average video watcher from the West are twofold. Firstly, the type of streams are not exactly high definition, but appear to be medium-quality .rmvb compressed files. There are no 'HD' rips to speak of, the quality itself is less than your average 700mb movie rip (around BBC iPlayer quality). Secondly, to access this software you will have to sign up to an account and use a client that is written for the Chinese market only, which makes it slightly challenging for the English speaker. This guide will address the second concern, and show you how to navigate the software, create an account and to make the service usable on English operating systems.

Step 1) Unless you want to make the software look like gibberish like the above picture, you will have to change your Windows location settings to Chinese for the software to install properly. Go to Control Panel, and then go to Region and Language, select the Administrative tab, and then select Change system locale to Chinese (Simplified, PRC).

Advanced Technique
Changing your locale will not change the language of your operating system, but may change the language in certain programs such as iTunes and Deluge. To avoid this, you should use AppLocale from Microsoft which allows an app to run in a specific locale in a specific instance. To make this work you have to run the AppLocale installer and subsequent program as an administrator (the easiest way to do this is by running the applocal.msi installer through WIN+R, and then run the file through a cmd box). Once you have everything setup, you can create a shortcut for PPStream to run through AppLocale with the Chinese (Simplified) locale every time you boot it up.

Step 2) Download and install PPStream using this link. There are also mirrors to be found on their download page here. Run the installer. The option for 'next' is the one higlight with the pointer '>'.

Select the drive with the largest space. I would advise unchecking all options.

Uncheck all the options.

No need to install Chinese Google Toolbar.

Step 3) Register a new account by visiting this page.

You can follow these options precisely if you like, except add your own USERNAME, NICKNAME and EMAIL@ADDRESS. There is also a CAPCHA style code that you have to enter twice (it will change once you enter the first 4 digits).

The account itself does not require verifying one's email address. You have to login for all the videos with a small green person icon (all of the Western TV shows).

Step 4) Run PPStream, and then find the folder for Western TV in the left hand bar. Click on it to expand the file list.

Double click the first episode of a show and then start watching immediately. Enjoy!

Tips For Using PPStream

The service is invaluable for anyone who understands Chinese, because it has a library of virtually every Chinese drama that has ever existed. If content is offered in a 'foreign' language, it is often subtitled or dubbed into Chinese.

It's perfect for students of Chinese looking to osmosis some Chinese (simplified) written language whilst they watch their favourite shows in English.

The numbers that are on the right appear to be the number of 'seeders'. However, I have not really seen a correlation between the numbers and the speed, as even videos with numbers in the single digits seem to stream very quickly.

You can also do a search in the top left corner of the software. However it seems to be buggy when typing in English search terms. For example, if I typed in 'battlestar' it would not turn up any results, however Battlestar Galactica exists in the Western TV shows folder.

If anyone has any more tips please leave them in the comments. I would particularly appreciate help with anything that makes the software easier and simpler to use. I would try to translate more of the user interface, but my Chinese is not good enough.

Make World of Warcraft Load Faster Using Solid State Drives

2010-09-27T00:59:00.005+01:00

Solid State Drives are in their infancy in terms of mainstream adoption in the PC market. Barring the cheap SSDs found in notebooks, finding an SSD that offers good performance can be very expensive. The price to storage ratio is of an SSD very poor when compared with traditional hard drives. For example, a 128gb SSD will cost around £213.99 whilst a 7200rpm 250gb HDD will cost around £28.71.

With huge cost and tiny storage spaces, SSDs are not really meant to be used for replacing your 500gb of storage of movies or even for your games collection. However, in a game like World of Warcraft, SSDs make a huge difference in terms of speed increase in loading times. Any loading speed boost has a multiplicative effect on the entire game experience. This is because logging into a character, taking a ship between continents, dying in a dungeon and entering an instance or a battleground will take a long time if you are running from a slow hard drive, whilst a SSD will make your loading speed up to 60% faster.

I personally use the 80gb Intel X25-M which is considered a good value SSD (even though it is priced much higher than a comparable HDD. A better value SSD may be the Intel X25-V which can be bought at this moment for under £100.

In this (very unscientific) benchmark I am comparing a Seagate SATA 7200rpm 750gb drive against the Intel X25-M. What I did was for each benchmark was to cold boot and then measure the amount of time it took to go from character selection screen to the end of the loading bar.

Elywnn Forest
33.8 seconds - Seagate
19.7 seconds - X25-M

42% speed increase

Dalaran
64.0 seconds - Seagate
28.4 seconds - X25-M

66% speed increase

As we can see, there are considerable speed increases with the use of the SSD. We can see there is a much greater benefit to using an SSD in the more graphically intensive zone Dalaran. This is because Elwynn Forest and other 'old world' zones have considerably less texture and geometry to load from the hard drive, as not all the art assets have been designed to be viewed from all angles. This will change once the Cataclysm expansion arrives and makes the 'old world' accessible to flying mount, as well as increasing the amount of textures that are required to load.

For best results, you will want to keep your operating system installation on the SSD to improve your booting and application speed. However if you choose to go the 40gb route, you might be advised not to install your operating system there as well. This is because World of Warcraft is a constantly growing game. There was a time when World of Warcraft could be run from an 8gb flash drive and now, pre-Cataclysm, the game weighs in at just under 20gb. This size will keep growing with subsequent expansions and patches.

For most World of Warcraft players with a chunk of change spare, I would definitely recommend using a SSD to hold the World of Warcraft installation. The amount of time saved is not just with the initial loading of the game, but with switching between characters, loading AddOns, etc. and this can have a dramatic effect on the total amount of time spent staring at a loading screen in any one session.

Fixing Lord Of The Rings Online Borderless Windowed Fullscreen

2010-09-24T14:38:00.005+01:00

Update 20 March 20120: please refer to this page on PCGamingWiki for further updates on borderless fullscreen windowed mode for any game.

I've been trying to figure out a way to fix the windowed border issue present in games such as Lord Of The Rings Online (LOTRO) in Windows. Usually when trying to run a game in borderless windowed fullscreen, I would set the resolution to the monitor native resolution and use the program ShiftWindow to coordinate the screen so that the borders would not be visible (guide). However, games like LOTRO forcefully resize the window so that the border is always visible, no matter how you try to manipulate it. So I thought about some other solutions, and hopefully some more intelligent person will help me to figure it out, and in turn, help to fix the same issue in lots of other games too.

So the I've tried a number of methods to try and reduce the border so that the window can be rendered in borderless windowed fullscreen mode. The most common suggestion on the forums is as activating options in the UserPreferences.ini in the \Documents\The Lord of the Rings Online\ folder which no longer works. This option (AllowFakeFullScreen=True, ForceFakeFullScreen=True, FullScreen=True) seems to have worked at one point but was patched out.

I started thinking that there must be a way of manipulating the border on the window through some other method. Themes must have a way of setting the border of the window styling so that the border is not shown. Certain options can be changed so that the borders are less noticeable. By going into Control Panel -> Change window colors and metrics, there are a few options.

The Active Title Bar, Active Window Border and Border Padding all play a role in how much of the window is viewable.

This is the default Windows 7 styling.

This is with some small adjustments.

Themes in Windows 7 allow the window border to be customised but the Active Window Border cannot be reduced below '1' in this interface. If may be possible for a custom theme to completely remove the border and the title bar. If this could be done then all we would have to do is activate a theme to get a borderless windowed fullscreen LOTRO.

However editing the 'metrics' in Windows 7 themes is quite a complicated task. It requires the editing of the theme, which is something I don't know much about. There are some more details from Microsoft regarding theme editing.

If anyone can make this work please let me know!

Civilization V And Borderless Windowed Fullscreen

2010-09-23T15:16:00.003+01:00

Update 20 March 20120: please refer to this page on PCGamingWiki for further updates on borderless fullscreen windowed mode for any game.

I've been trying to make Civilization V work using my normal method of windowing the game, and then using the program ShiftWindow to push the game to fullscreen (guide). However, it hasn't been working as well as I had hoped. Firstly, the windowed border refuses to stretch to the correct aspect ratio of the screen, so that it always leaves a border either at the top or the bottom. Secondly, the mouse is not bound within the window, so mouse edge scrolling is disabled (mouse scrolling is an important part of any game involving large amounts of units and terrain).

However it's not all bad because Civilization V has very robust alt-tab and multi-display compliance. In fullscreen, alt-tabbing is fairly quick and seamless with only a 2-3 second delay. With a second monitor, the mouse is not bound whichever side that monitor is even in fullscreen. However, clicking outside the Civilization V area does not result in minimizing the main game (as most games do), but allows the full interaction with another window simultaneously. This means that you could be playing a video file or browsing the web whilst you move in and out of the game seamlessly. However, for those with only one display, the alt-tabbing still works well (and certainly works better than it did in Civilization IV).

Buy New Games For Less Using Graphs

2010-09-23T13:11:00.036+01:00

Buying games is an expensive hobby. The key to saving money is to resist the urge to impulse buy on the day of release. However, game companies are making it harder and harder to wait for prices to go down as they pile on tempting preorder bonuses and collector's editions for games that you may have been waiting for years to be released. However, the key is knowing how long to wait, and how to get the best deal.

Camelcamelcamel
There is a new service is available called camelcamelcamel uk which is an Amazon price tracker which is what I have been using to produce these graphs. It started tracking prices in March 2010, so it's a perfect tool to see how much prices of new games can drop within 6 months.

For demonstration I've take a look at the price fluctuation of Just Cause 2. Just Cause 2 was released on PC on March 26th 2010. This was retailing at an RRP of £34.99. This game began retailing in most establishments at £29.99, including Steam. Incindentally, Just Cause 2 is one of the few games whose serial key within the box will allow a Steam activation. A handy list of other such games is available on Steam Support. As of 23rd September it is available at the price of £29.99 on Steam. However on the retail side of things, Just Cause 2's price has dropped much further than that.

Data involving 'used sales' has been removed leaving only Amazon stock price (green) as well as the 3rd party new price (blue). The lowest price is available from a reputable 3rd party store called 'gzoop' which offers Just Cause 2 for £9.87 + £1.99 shipping which totals £11.86. This is a 61.5% drop in price from the original retail price of £29.99 after just 6 months, between March 26th and September 23rd 2010.

You can also check the current price of Just Cause 2 here: http://uk.camelcamelcamel.com/product/B002ZRQ3U.

The lesson here is to be patient, because games often fall in price much faster than you think!

Review: DAVE From Ikea, An In-Depth Look At The Best Couch Desk / Laptop Table

2010-09-21T19:46:00.011+01:00

As a response to my previous article (How To: Do PC Gaming On Your Couch Or Sofa) I've been asked to give a more in-depth look at the Ikea DAVE.

The Ikea DAVE is marketed as a "laptop table", but really for the rest of us it is the ultimate adjustable couch desk for the keyboard and mouse. It allows the keyboard to be stable at exactly the right height and to give plenty of level space to use the mouse. This single purchase has is the single most important part of the PC couch gaming setup and has completely changed the way I use my PC. It is more comfortable than using craning over on a coffee table to use a keyboard, or having the keyboard on your lap. And the mouse is much more accurate on a hard and firm surface instead of on a couch arm.

The cost of most "laptop tables" are priced ridiculously. This one is £75.12, and this one is £51.08. DAVE is available from any Ikea internationally for the price of £14.99 and $17.99.

Also makes a great laptop table (this is a tiny 8.9" laptop).

There are some downsides to the DAVE, however, since it does not stray from being a typical Ikea product, made with materials that feel fairly cheap. The topside of the table is made of a thick hardened plastic susceptible to being marked by heat or that cup of freshly brewed hot chocolate. And you will want to eat and drink off this table because it is exactly the right kind of height for it when you are sitting or lying on the couch.

Slight susceptible to marking from heat.

The table itself can be extended fairly high up. At its maximum height it is less stable, and you will feel a lot of wobble if you try to use it like this.

Not tall enough or stable enough to use whilst standing (I'm 180cm tall).

However, DAVE's greatest feature is not having 4 legs, or being a tripod. Instead, it has a single leg with a Y-shaped foot. This makes it ideal for slotting in as close as possible to the couch, whilst also not adding any bulk when walking around it. It's easy to push out when you want to stand up, and it's very stable in its medium and lowest positions.

Perfect.

Easily the best and cheapest part of my PC gaming setup.

Overall for the price, this table is a great addition to any gaming or HTPC setup and is highly recommended.