Ubuntu FF7 beta PPA

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/firefox-next
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Obviously when 7.0 comes out officially this firefox-next PPA will be for 8.0

Did I mention that I dislike this new numbering scheme?

Duke Nukem Forever First Thoughts

My Close friends will know that I went to E3 a couple weeks ago. While there I got my first taste of the gameplay for Duke Nukem Forever (DNF), released by 2K Games after an extended development by 3D Realms, Triptych Games, Piranha Games, and finally Gearbox software.

At E3 I really enjoyed the fast paced Capture the Flag...err Babe mode. It is a little odd that the ultimate badass can only cary two weapons but, I chalked that up to the modern style of games that only give you 1/2 slots. Anyway my team won and I killed a good number of gamers and scored with multiple babes.

Recently I was able to get my hands on the DNF demo and played the two levels provided. Both levels were very linear. The first one killing the big alien with rockets was boring as all you need to do was fire and strafe...then pickup the rocket drops. The second level, the required Vehicle section of all games today, felt like driving a remote control car and the scripted Out of Gas was annoying as it doesn't take into considering anything around how you drove.

Now onto the enemies. In this demo we get three enemies. Big ass alien Cyclops (easy), the Pig Cop, and some little alien scuttlers. My main question is, why do the pigmen no longer wear police uniforms? The police uniforms were one of the Duke staples of irreverent silly comedy. Below find pictures to compare

Original Pig Cop	DNF Pig Cop

The other issue is that the pig cops blend into the background of the level since they are grey/yellowish-brown and so is the sand.

Just some first thoughts. 2K will eventually get my money and I will probably enjoy this game but it will feel like a mashup of other better games.

Synergy+ + Synergy = Synergy-FOSS

Synergy is not dead...if you wish to control multiple computers from one keyboard and mouse via a local network Synergy is your friend. Check it out

http://synergy-foss.org/

Where did Synergy+ go?

Synergy+ and Synergy have now merged! We'll still be using the old synergy-plus source code repository and mailing lists (there's no reason to migrate away). A bit of history for the newcomers... Chris Schoeneman created the original version of Synergy, but temporarily stopped development in 2006. Since the demand for updates was so massive, Synergy+ was started by Sorin Sbârnea and Nick Bolton in 2009 to provide support and bug fixes. While maintaining version 1, we are also working on version 2, which will see more stable support for newer operating system versions.

Upgrade Firefox in Ubuntu 10 to Firefox 4

Source: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1712247

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/firefox-stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade or sudo apt-get install firefox ubufox

This repository provides the current mozilla release of firefox, in this case Firefox 4.0.

Bonus: I have seen others complain, and so have I, that the ubuntu language packs get stuck on firefox, are not compatible with 4.0, and are just useless.

To remove these you can remove the langpack directories (using root privileges) from
/usr/lib/firefox-addons/extensions

cd /usr/lib/firefox-addons/extensions
sudo rm -rf *langpack*

Please keep in mind this may be removing more than just the old 3.6 language packs. Please be careful and understand what you are doing before doing this.

Why don't electronics manufactures provide firmware changelogs?

Just a quick editorial. I currently own a Samsung BDP-1590 Blu-ray player, and a Vizio XVT553SV Television. When I boot these devices up, just like all modern home theater electronics with Internet access, they check to ensure I am running the latest firmware. If I am not currently running the latest firmware they will 1) Ask if I would like to upgrade (Samsung) or 2) will upgrade immediately (Vizio) without a choice. While I will 99.999% of the time allow the upgrade I do like Samsung's request to upgrade better than Vizio's. But, this is not the core of my editorial.

Everytime one of these firmware upgrades is done I wonder, "What is being changed?" I work for a major Networking company, and anytime we release a new version of code we also put out release-notes. I wonder where these release-notes/changelogs are with regards to the Samsung's, Vizio's, Sony's, Panasonic's...etc is. It would be nice to know what the upgrade will do, and what if any new features I should test after the upgrade.

Major electronics manufacturers, can we please get a publicly reviewable list of the changes in each firmware? It would be very nice, for those of us who care about out products, to know exactly what bugs should be fixed and what new features are introduced. If we know what was changed we can better understand our products and should be able to get the most out of our investment. This shadowy upgrade process that is currently used does not instill confidence in the products or your company. I for one would hold you in even higher esteme if I could point to these changelog documents and say, yes they found the issue I notice and fixed it...or just to say, hey look a new feature, I wonder what that does.

Just my thoughts as a technical expert in computers and home theater electronics enthusiast.

Vizio Theater 3D

Vizio, a USA based budget friendly TV manufacture, is releasing 3D TVs using what they call "Theater 3D". This is a Passive 3D technology which works in a similar fashion to a theater. Instead of using the bulky, and expensive, active glasses which many other manufacturers are using, the Vizio technique is to do the same light polarization as is done in theaters. The big difference, and problem, is that with the TV you must use half the lines for the right eye, and half for the left eye, thus dropping the verticle resolution of your media from 1080 lines to 540 lines. The resulting softness in the image will be a deal breaker for many...but will the cost reduction and simplicity be enough to curry favor with many?

I think that they will need a fix/workaround by making new LCD pannels which provide 1920x2160 resolutions (double the vertical resolution) and line double for normal (2D content) should look the same to the end user, but use this double vertical resolution so that when we run 3D we keep the same 1080 lines of resolution for both eyes....I am not sure how well this would work...just an idea.

Please note that Vizio has both Active and Passive style 3D TVs so just be sure to evaluate all of your options when deciding on a new TV as Vizio still might provide a TV which will match your desired quality with 3D and your budget.

For now it looks like Active Shutter is still the way to go as it continues to provide crisper images with higher resolution. Just my 2 cents.

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
-----
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".
-----

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?

HalfLife 2 Node graph out of date/ AI disabled

Howdy internet gamer kids. I don't know how many of you are into Half Life 2, I just started to play it again today on my newly installed Windows 7 x64 install and see this note in the upper right hand corner "64-bit mode active", reading this I was kind of excited, woo get to use the 64-bits to full effect, yes.

Anyways, my happiness was quickly replaced with annoyance. Each map start would have a message "Node graph data out of data" and something about recompiling or whatever...I thought fine, recompile I see no slow down or issue.

As I approached the doctors building I then see a statement "AI disabled" which stays on the screen in the lower right quadrant of the screen. Guess what all AI objects stopped working; pigeons sat around, and the swat like guys didn't attack me so that Alyx could come rescue me. Oh boy how can I play the game if the computer has been lobotomized?

I did a quick search for AI disabled what was returned was a console command to disable/re-enable the ai "ai_disable" which seems to be a Boolean variable. Pulling the console down "~" (remember that you must have enabled to console "developer access" in the Advanced keyboard settings) "ai_disable 0" allowed me at times to re-enable the AI and sometimes not.

With the AI re-enabled I was able to proceed past the attack and meet Alyx. Now Alyx calls the elevator to take us down to find the doctor, however, she cannot seem to see that the elevator is there or just doesn't know how to walk into the elevator. My hypothesis is that the rebuilt node graph is inaccurate or not working. With the help of some threads on steampowered forums I was able to add an automatically executed fixer to disable the node graph updates "ai_norebuildgraph "1"" with this in place I have not yet had another issue. I am midway through the lake map and hope that I see no further issues at all.

So in summary
1. Valve, please put someone on fixing the 64-bit build of HL2.
2. For anyone having trouble, I would recommend adding this auto command. or
3. You can also try running in 32-bit mode, add the -32bit launch option, in 32bit mode I had crash issues when at the doctors for teleporting so YMMV *Your Mileage May Vary".

Happy Gaming,
Craig

Wolfenstein 3D, still fun after all these years.

Just finished re-playing Wolfenstein 3D using NewWolf a OpenGL (video) and SDL (audio) rewrite of the engine. A little issue is that after killing each of the Boss's it doesn't end the map but, whatever you know you did it. It's a dead project but, it is the best Wolf3D engine rewrite.

The game is still hard, fun, and can get your blood pumping when you come around a corner and face down the Blue machine-gunner. And who doesn't like killing Nazi's (ah when good and bad was so black and white), except maybe German's. The map (TAB) gives you a little bit of a cheat at finding secrets. Be careful as you might go bleary eyed through some of the maps where the secrets are like impossible to get to all of them.

You'll be amazed by some of the great design and gameplay mechanics that were ahead of the games time, including enemies that patrol, specialized sounds (e.g. things farther away are softer than those that are close up, also things on the left and right are actually setup that way). You might want to search for the original game, not sure if the full version is legal to download, so that you can also revel in the nostalgia inducing game with NewWolf.

Apparently my musical tastes are not in the US iTunes store

Something is either a) horribly wrong with me, or b) horribly right.

MC Chris For the Win

Friday I went out to Cat's Cradle in Carrboro, NC (www.catscradle.com) to see MC Chris Live. It was amazingly fun. I only sat down once in the hour long set by MC Chris. The opening set by Whole Wheat Bread was a lot of fun too.

Anyways, check out MC Chris' Left 4 Dead rant on youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kje_iluojts

240Hz? Why?

So, you might have read one of my previous posts discussing 120Hz, the technologies and what they solve. I recently read that Sony has released a 240Hz model, I am at a lose as to what this solves, it only allows there SmoothMotion, Automotion, whatever interpolation algorithm more chances to change the original picture to something new.

As we know, traditional NTSC broadcasts are 60Hz (30fps), movies are 24Hz (24fps) and Digital broadcast is an amalgam of 24Hz (24fps) and0 60Hz (both 30fps and 60fps for interlaced and progressive). And we also know that these smoothing techniques are interpolation and create images that were never captured by the camera. So bottom line, 120Hz covers the entire spectrum of frame rates and there is no reason for 240Hz.

This is the same argument I had with European countries and the 100Hz LCD panels. In Europe the two primary analog transmission styles were PAL and SECAM both of which where 50Hz (25fps) and films are already modified (read slowed slightly) to be 25Hz (25fps)...so 50Hz covers both segments, 100Hz is unneeded and does not cover 24Hz (24fps)...so what are these companies thinking?

Oh wait, I know they are thinking that they can make a buck off of people who either a) do not understand film/video or b) just want the prestige of owning the latest and greatest gadget.

Anyways, enough of my rant. Please note, this discussion is only for LCD technology flat-panel displays.

Snow in NC?!!!

Check out some pics I took of the snow a few weeks ago.

Click the Image.