• Category Archives Technology
  • Windows 7 – RTC using UTC

    Ok, so this is more a note for my future self than anything interesting, but basically, to force Windows to keep the computer’s RTC at UTC (required if dual-booting Linux, and also just in general makes sense), adjust the following registry key:

     

    Key: HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\TimeZoneInformation\RealTimeIsUniversal
    Type: DWORD
    Value: 1 (RTC is in UTC) , 0 (RTC is in local time (default)

    Alternatively, save the following as a registry key file (.reg), and import it into your registry:

    Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
    
    [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\TimeZoneInformation]
    "RealTimeIsUniversal"=dword:00000001

     


  • inFAMOUS (PS3) – completed

    Completed inFAMOUS today on HARD difficulty.

    Enjoyable game with good storyline. Apart from the very last battle, it wasn’t all that difficult. Unfortunately the game saves don’t track played time so not sure how long it took me as it was spread out across about 4 weekends and a couple of evenings.

    Only annoyance is that I didn’t end up with enough points to buy all the upgrades and now with the city pretty much cleaned up there’s no easy way to gain more XP. It is designed to be played multiple times, making different choices each time, but I’m not sure I’ve got the time to go through it again – much rather get started on inFAMOUS 2 now!

    For anybody starting the game, if you want to maximise your trophy collection with only a single playthrough:
    * do lots of fighting and leave some of the side-quests until later; this allows you to gain more XP in the long run. Side-quests can be completed after the main storyline is done.
    * save the game prior to every karma choice, then do each mission both ways.
    * carefully search each city block the first time you get to it and collect all the shards; otherwise searching for the last few shards will be a pain as you will have to comb the entire city for them.


  • Upgrading my Samsung Note II (N7100) to Android 4.4 “KitKat”

    A friend posted to let me know that Android 4.4 “KitKat” had just been released for the N7100.

    Install:

    So I backed up all of my data on the phone (using a combination of Titanium Backup, SMS Backup+, and LifeSaver), and downloaded and flashed the firmware the new firmware using Odin.

    Lo and behold, a (very slow) reboot later, pretty much everything worked.  All my apps and settings are still there, which is nice.

    Tweaks:

    * Reinstall a custom recovery (TWRP)

    * Re-rooted

    * Deleted startup sound (/system/media/audio/ui/PowerOn.ogg)

    Issues:

    ADWLauncherEx is quite laggy; so perhaps it needs updating for the latest Android. For now I’m using the updated TouchWiz (the Samsung launcher), but it’s still limited to a ridiculous 4×4 icons per screen.  Ridiculous, at least, on the Note 2 which has a very nice large display; might make more sense on a smaller phone. Should be configurable though.

    Impressions:

    None yet, really.  Will need to use it for a few days to see whether there’s any real differences..  So far most of the advertised differences aren’t visible, such as the camera button on lock screen, nor does it feel significantly faster than before.


  • svn+ssh on the Windows command-line

    To use svn+ssh:// style svn URLs on the Windows command-line, ensure the %SVN_SSH% environment variable is properly set:

    • It must contain the fully-qualified path to the SSH client (typically plink.exe from the PuTTY suite)
    • The path must be written using forward-slashes instead of the Windows-standard backslash.

    setx SVN_SSH "C:/Program Files (x86)/PuTTY/plink.exe"

    Source: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10598069/svnssh-and-sourceforge


  • Windows – UK International Keyboard

    Windows has an officially supported international keyboard layout for the US with AltGr-initiated dead keys for composing characters. Unfortunately there is no equivalent for the UK; the UK international keyboard layout is completely unusable for programmers as it turns a lot of commonly-used keys into dead keys.

    But there is a decent international layout for the UK available from here:
    http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~johns/kbukint.html