• Category Archives Technology
  • Offline Travel Apps?!?

    Ok, time for another rant.

    On the plane over I wanted to set up our itinerary on my phone.

    On my PalmPilot I used an application called WorldMate. Awesome little thing. Had a small database of the most common airports and whatnot included as well as a few useful utilities and pieces of info such as clothes-size conversions etc.  Absolutely brilliant.

    So before I left I installed that on my Android phone, as well as TripCase which seemed to be similar.

    Well guess what. Both of these apps require internet access for just about everything. Most importantly, to create and edit a trip.  What bollocks – just when you are least likely to have internet access (ie, while travelling abroad), apps which manage your trip require it.

    While it is very nice to have these apps pre-populate input fields using online data, this  should always be optional and the user should always be able to edit things offline.

    So a huge thumbs-down from me for both WorldMate and TripCase on Android.


  • luksClose fails, device busy

    Ok, so I recently put my backup system back into my server only to find an issue with my mount/unmount scripts.

    Namely: on unmount, luksClose fails with the device showing as busy. Which is funny because nothing should have been accessing it.

    There’s plenty of posts/bugs/etc online of people having the same issue, but either no solutions are posted, or the solutions didn’t apply in my case.  Well, I finally tracked it down: noflushd.

    noflushd is a daemon which spins down idle disks.  It probably wasn’t running on my old server which is why I didn’t have any problems before.

    Long story short, shutting down noflushd finally let me close my encrypted backup disk and shut it down. Yayy.


  • EyeToy camera (for PS2) under Windows 7

    Somehow I ended up with several EyeToy cameras for the PS2, one of which I use for my Desktop PC as a webcam. Works a treat under Linux, so I decided to try and get it working under Windows 7 64-bit as well.

    There’s an archive containing drivers and a small test program here.  The driver has to be installed manually using the Device Manager (it’s not signed), but seems to work. YMMV.


  • Saitek X45 Flightstick

    Years and years ago I bought a Saitek X45 Flightstick, primarily for playing “X – Beyond the Frontier”. This was all good and fine under Windows 98. Didn’t work properly under Windows XP – the throttle never worked in the game.

    Anyway, the time has come for me to setup a Windows gaming PC again, and I pulled out the joystick and dusted it off. Plugged it in and wonder of wonders, after installed “jstest-gtk” it just worked. No setup, no configuration, no calibration. Mind, this is under Linux Mint 14….

    So reboot into my brand spanking new Windows 7 install, and while the Device Manager detects it, Windows itself doesn’t. So, head over to the Saitek site and download the relevant drivers (link).  Now I don’t know who’s to blame (Windows or Saitek), but basically the driver installer just sits there on a blank page waiting for the joystick to be plugged in (even though it is). Replugging doesn’t help either.

    Finally I manually extract the files (yes, 7zip can extract files from (most) EXE archives) and use the Device Manager to manually install the driver. This works, and Windows sees the joystick.

    Even the Mad Catz (Saitek) Profile Editor now sees the joystick and all appears to be well in the world..

    Unfortunately the latest version of X-BtF (2.2) still doesn’t fix the throttle control 🙁


  • Installing Windows 7

    So the time has come for a re-install of Windows 7.

    Base install took over an hour on reasonable hardware (X2 240, 4GB).  I fail to understand why.  Then there were the 101 updates plus 49 optional updates.  Time for SP2? I think so..

    20140119_WindowsUpdateUPDATE:  So it took nearly 5 hours to install all the updates.  After the obligatory 3 or 4 reboots, there were another 8 or so updates (and 2 reboots) before Windows was finally up-to-date.

    Apart from normal configuration, the following are the software packages which I consider to be essential to make Windows 7 usable and safe:

    Safety:

    • Antivirus Software. The 2013 winner was Avast Antivirus, and one I’ve used a lot in the past. As a bonus Avast now includes Anti-spyware protection.
    • Firewall.  Windows Firewall is ok for incoming threats, but for preventing outgoing connections you need a third-party firewall.  Comodo is good.

    Usability:

    • X-Mouse.  There’s registry tweaks or this simple program.
    • Alt-Drag to drag and resize windows.
    • Multiple Desktops.  Dexpot is the best I’ve found recently.
    • Console Replacement. ConEmu is quite good.
    • Notepad Replacement. I like Notepad++.

    Essential Software:

    • Archive Manager.  7zip is my choice.
    • SSH Client.  PuTTY is really the only option. A 64-bit version is here.
    • CCleaner is a quicker uninstaller and easily manages autostartup programs as well as various other system utilities.
    • PDF Reader.  I like Foxit as a lightweight alternative to Adobe Reader, although Nitro is quite good too.
    • I like to run the following Gadgets to keep an eye on system performance:

    Applications:

     


  • Game Overview: Assassin’s Creed 4 Black Flag

    So I’ve been a bit quiet recently.  This is largely due to Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag.  Yes, I’m addicted.

    The game itself is, supposedly, in the same vein as the other Assassin’s Creed games. I don’t know because I haven’t played, or even seen, them yet.

    Generally the game is open-world, allowing you to explore the world, perform side-quests, or just live a piratical lifestyle until you decide to continue with the main quest.  The main quest varies in style (on-foot or on the ship, various types of sub-mission such as follow, eavesdrop, locate, assassinate, etc) although it’s usually quite linear within a given environment.  If you stray too far from the quest area or if you fail a primary quest objective it resets the quest.  There are usually secondary objectives as well.

    The world is quite beautifully rendered.  The humans less so – especially in some cut-scenes.  IMHO they suffer from the Uncanny Valley effect with wooden movements and unrealistic white glaring eyes being especially noticeable.  During game action this is not really noticeable though, and the main character is quite nicely animated as he performs a wide range of actions.

    Gameplay wise it’s quite varied – from parkour-style running exploration, captaining a sailing ship across the seas, pick-pocketing, sword-fighting, and even underwater diving exploration of shipwrecks.  The main character performs all actions with aplomb and the controls are reasonably simple with the character choosing the correct action depending on environment.  Unfortunately this means that sometimes he’ll try to climb a pole which is in the way rather than running around it…

    But niggles are so far few and far between, the only other one of note is that occasionally the camera won’t rotate properly.  This is most annoying when sailing as the camera controls are instrumental in selecting the ships’ weaponry during a naval battle.

    There’s also an odd “future-day” style sub-game, which pops up occasionally. Without spoiling it for others, I’d just like to mention that I personally did not find it particularly intrusive or annoying and it does add a twist, which, again, may be present in the earlier Assassin’s Creed games as well so may not be anything new for fans of the series.

    All up I think this is a great game.

     

    Pros:

    • Nice graphics and animation.
    • Open-world gameplay (when not in a main-mission) with lots of variety.
    • Interesting main storyline.
    • Uses plenty of historical data to make world seem believable.

    Cons:

    • Cannot choose style of character (ie, “nice” or “evil”).
    • In-game actions do not influence the storyline (story is “on rails”).
    • Some cut-scenes are constantly repeated and get “old”.
    • Character sometimes chooses poor actions, especially in complicated situations.

    Bugs:

    • Camera-control sometimes buggy.
    • Occasional “frozen” enemies which can’t be interacted with.

    Difficulty:

    • Easy – Medium

    Personal Score:

    • 9/10

  • UPlay Rubbish

    Hey and welcome to my first blogged rant!
    So I’ve been playing Assassins Creed 4 for the last 2 days (great game so far, I’ll do a separate  writeup another time) but what is really starting to annoy me is UPlay. It’s a Ubisoft thing and in AC4 it prompts you to sign in. Twice. EVERY TIME YOU START THE GAME! Just bleep off and let me enjoy the game. Nobody wants it so just take the hint and stop bothering me.

    UPDATE: So I finally caved in and registered a UPlay account and Passport.  To Ubisoft’s credit, this is now free (despite the text still saying to purchase it), but frankly, I shouldn’t have to just to avoid 2 annoying prompts.


  • Game Completed: Killzone 2

    So I finally played through Killzone 2, figured I should have some background before embarking on Killzone Shadowfall.

    On the whole quite enjoyed it, playing through on standard difficulty, except for the end boss. Despite reading tactics I ended up wussing out and completing the last fight on easy.  Which is weird – everybody said -getting- to him was the difficult bit, actually taking him out isn’t that bad. For me it was the other way around, getting through his minions was doable, but one-on-one (Rico is worse than useless) proved impossible for me. Just have no idea how one is supposed to take down an invisible teleporting dude with a super machinegun and one-hit-kill if he gets too close to you, which he keeps doing because he teleports behind you.  On easy it was tough but doable – requiring significantly fewer hits.

    An FPS-maniac I, clearly, am not.