Steam, Penumbra: Overture, native in Linux

1. Copy the redist folder from the Steam\steamapps\common\penumbra overture directory anywhere on your linux system.
Default: C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\penumbra overture
The redist folder contains the actual Penumbra binaries and resources that the game uses.

2. Download and run the Penumbra: Overture Linux Patch, pointing the installer to the location where you placed your Penumbra: Overture installation.
http://support.frictionalgames.com/21/
As of this writing patch version is 1.1. This will get you the current Linux libraries to install into the copied redist folder.

3. Download the Linux binary and extract it to the Penumbra: Overture directory where you installed the patch.
http://www.frictionalgames.com/forum/announcement-4.html

Use the penumbra.bin file.

NOTE: If you don't use that binary you will encounter a failure to launch the game where it will ask you for a serial number.


This may also work with the other Penumbra games, however, I haven't downloaded them yet to test.

Command and Counquer originals free and legal.

http://www.commandandconquer.com/classic (No Longer Available from this site)

I may be late to the party but, EA/Westwood have released the original C&C: Tiberian Dawn, Red Alert, and Tiberian Sun for free download. Check it out, these games are still fun even though the graphics may be lacking...

EDIT: Original Location no longer Active.
New Location: http://www.cncworld.org/
On the left hand menu find the C&C/RA/TS Free Links.

Ubuntu: Thunderbird 3.1 PPA

Below is a link to an article about the availability of thunderbird 3.1 PPA for Ubuntu. It was useful to me so I thought it would be good to post.

http://www.webupd8.org/2010/07/thunderbird-31-ubuntu-ppa-repository.html

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ricotz/ppa && sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install thunderbird

UPDATE: I no longer recommend this ppa. I recommend the mozilla team, stable, ppas
Firefox: https://launchpad.net/~mozillateam/+archive/firefox-stable
Thunderbird: https://launchpad.net/~mozillateam/+archive/thunderbird-stable

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/firefox-stable
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/thunderbird-stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install firefox thunderbird

Outlook Users - Please Disable Miscrosofts TNEF format

I am sick and tired of receiving emails with an attachment named winmail.dat when I am expecting a screenshot.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Winmail.dat_attachments
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Disabling TNEF in Outlook

The sender can avoid sending TNEF attachments by by turning off TNEF in Outlook. When Outlook is configured to send e-mail in "Outlook Rich Text Format", it may use TNEF. When it sends in "HTML" or "Plain Text", it uses standard, compatible formats. There are two options for disbling TNEF:

In at least Outlook 2002 (a.k.a. Outlook XP) and Outlook 2003, if it's being used at a business, the following is recommended to ensure compatibility with corporate mail systems:

1. On the "Tools" menu, click "Options", then click the "Mail Format" tab, and then the "Internet Format" button.
2. Set "When sending Outlook Rich Text messages to Internet ..." to either "Convert to HTML format" or "Convert to Plain Text format".


In all versions of Outlook, you can disable TNEF completely:

1. On the "Tools" menu, click "Options", and then click the "Mail Format" tab.
2. In the "Send in this message format" list, click "Plain Text" or "HTML", and then click "OK".
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Thunderbird and Lightning, Control C

It has been annoying me for awhile that when I wanted to copy the Subject of an email via Thunderbird I had to right click and select copy, Ctrl-C wouldn't work. I recently found the bug and it has to do with Lighning

Bug 521003 or 544046 which might be a duplicate.

Just thought since I was happy to find it I'd post it and see if it helps others.

Rock Paper Scissor

Rock crushes scissor

ffdshow

As you may know, since early 2002, the best way to ensure good video play back on a Windows PC was to install the ffdshow codec. FFDshow by Milan Cutka is a Directshow wrapper for a few codecs including libavcodec and ffmpeg, as well as many filters including cropping, resize, subtitles and more. This made ffdshow both a quick and easy way to ensure playback of almost any audio/video file in a Directshow based player...it also makes for amazing control for power users.

Anyways, ffdshow was abandoned by Milan in late 2004 and has since been picked up by another team as the ffdshow-tryouts fork. This fork has been continuing the example of Milan for having both massively simple to use as well as many expert features, woo!...

Recently ffdshow-tryouts have added DXVA support for H264 and VC-1, so now ffdshow-tryouts can use the video card (GPU) to offload processing of some content. Unfortunately the DXVA implementation is not as mature as Media Player Classic - Home Cinema's Video Decoder (MPC-HC). I am sure that the team will work to fix all the issues that I am seeing in build 3200. albain and Tal are great people.

Please do checkout ffdshow-tryouts (http://www.ffdshow.info/) and MPC-HC + Standalone filters (http://mpc-hc.sourceforge.net/).

Here is the issue I am seeing. With some H264 videos there is a jitter, like two frames get out of order. Maybe this is an issue with the ordering from the splitter and/or ffdshow is not picking up the ordering. I would use the MPCVidDec codec and enable to DXVA codes there and disable H264/VC-1 decoding in ffdshow for now.

I hope this helps open some eyes to a wonderful opensource project that is keeping up amazing quality video and audio decoding for Windows PCs.

Windows 7 Start Menu Search doesn;t wiork

I had an issue recently where the start menu would not search properly. I found this site
http://www.troublefixers.com/fix-windows-7-start-menu-search-problem/
Deleting the registry key it said to fixed the issue ([HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderTypes\{EF87B4CB-F2CE-4785-8658-4CA6C63E38C6}]). What the heck?