My post from yesterday didn’t link to it, so here it is: my list of freeaware applications I install with every computer I use. This list covers video viewing, audio editing, codecs, internet browsing, text editing, archive viewing, and antivirus. It’s a short yet necessary list, though some applications - such as InfraRecorder - didn’t make it on there because I don’t install them, I just use a portable version. That list is coming, but it’s going to be long!

Usually I end up relying purely on Avast! or AVG as a virus scanner, but recently I’ve been giving ThreatFire a try. ThreatFire is a lightweight free security solution designed to work alongside regular antivirus software. Unlike most virus / malware / rootkit scanners ThreatFire doesn’t just check a signature database to find malicious programs; instead it watches what processes are doing. As a result it notifies you if that program you just downloaded is trying to change IE settings, if something just deleted itself, or if that exe extractor is installing a Trojan while it works. This last situation happened to me and ClamWin (my current antivirus, though I’ve found Avast! better) didn’t notice.

For the low price of free ThreatFire uses only 2 MB of memory to protect your Windows computer from viruses and malware that may not even appear on you virus scanner’s database - while it doesn’t replace the traditional scanner it is an excellent addition. It received a 4.5 on PC Magazine and appeared on their list of 11 Critical Security Security Apps. False positives are low and successful identifications are high, making it an easy choice to install. While my own testing has been much more limited than PC Mag’s I’ve still found it to be successful and it’s on my list of must-install applications, which can be seen here.

Aside from testing ThreatFire I’ve been trying a game called Combat Arms. It’s another free-to-play Nexon title, meaning you’re sure to see people who’ve paid for customization; however no gameplay-modifying items are cash payment only, so at least there’s no trouble there. While the game seems to have a lot more camping than I’ve seen in CS:S I’d still say to give it a shot, especially if you have some friends with mics (though you’ll need Skype or another VOIP client). At time of writing I’m still only at Private rank but I’m slowly working my way up. I’ve also written a scraper script that can get info from the Nexon profile pages - I’m planning on making it store info in a database and generate graphs, of KDR statistics for example.

This is one issue that one poorly written Techcrunch article in particular brought up - people seem to think that Wolfram Alpha is made to compete with web search engines like Google. In reality, this kind of comparison is like saying that Wikipedia is trying to shut down Google - it just doesn’t make sense! Wolfram Alpha does focus more on a search bar than most wiki sites, but it’s not made for finding web pages - it simple uses curated data to answer questions, plain and simple.

Wolfram Alpha Homepage

I can see how the whole Google-killer title developed - Wolfram Alpha’s homepage even looks like Google in design. Google’s brand new charts for a few types of information (released during the Wolfram Alpha webcast, no less) also are bordering it’s functionality. However, the people who have tried the product (or at least watched the webcast) agree that it has a wide range of factual data and is capable of making computations based on this data. This is a functionality different from any keyword-based searching and something unseen so far (most notable attempt being Cyc and OpenCyc); as a result we have no baseline to compare it to or a service to be one-upped.

One thing that would really clear up these arguments, though, would be a proper demo from Wolfram - not a long webcast or a leaked screenshot, but a proper 2-3 minute video just demoing its capabilities. Because of the academic presentation of Wolfram Alpha so far, its descriptive hasn’t reached that wide an audience - a more accessible video would make much more of an impact. The point is mute, of course, since they’re opening it for public use in the next month; all the same it would be nice to get one proper preview.

With that, I rest my case. I’m sure that, if it lives up to its claims, it will be an amazing academic resource and completely irrelevant to general Googling. I think that it’s got a good chance of fulfilling its claims too, considering that it’s the same team (and mind) that created Mathematica - even with a 15-day trial it’s clear the software’s over my head in complexity. So if any team can pull it off, it’s likely Wolfram’s.

As a primer to working with SDL I ended up making pong - naturally with some differences to the original, but pong nonetheless. It was definitely a “tutorial” game - heck, the font used is from Lazy Foo’ Production’s tutorials, as is some of the code - but an excellent way to get to programming without a pre-made engine.

Download SDL Pong

Controls: WASD for left player, arrow keys for right player, R resets.

Features:

• Paddles can move in all directions
• No score limit - play as long as you like!
• Hitting the ball while moving forward/back changes its speed - use this to do power shots or deaden it so you can aim better.
• Paddle size & speed changes for both players based on how they’re performing.
• Ball speeds up the longer you play

While it was good to make this, I’m most likely to end up using OpenGL for graphics next game - SDL is too limited for most (gaming) applications. It will still be there, mostly for keyboard and mouse events, but little else. I still want to revive Xonic (pronounced ex-zonic, though that’s no longer its official name), whether for iPhone or for free - it’s one of the few remaining games I can think of that work really well with multiple people on the same system and makes for some frantic battles!

Or more accurately, iPod Touch madness - in the past two weeks of owning it I’ve spent $64 CAD (plus tax) on apps, most good, some not. I’ve compiled a list here, but some of these apps deserve a more in depth review:

AppSniper: Buy

Because of this $0.99 application I’ve saved money on apps I want and tried out on-sale apps I would never have heard of otherwise; if you buy apps frequently, you need AppSniper. While there are some other applications that show a list of on-sale apps (PandoraBox comes to mind), AppSniper is the only one that gives you price history and a “snipes” list that will watch for price changes on specific applications.

There’s not much more that needs to be said - it lets you see a lot more of what the iPhone has to offer and save money. I’d recommend turning off syncing on startup and setting up your genre filters (eg. I never buy books from the app store, nor do I need medical applications).

Convertbot: Buy

Recently bumped back up from $0.99 to $1.99, Convertbot is still worth it being the fastest and best-looking of all the unit conversion applications - it’s obvious that time was put into designing this specificall for the iPhone. From the start it’s easy to operate - you spin to choose your units, the center button swaps the two units you’re converting (eg. CAD -> USD to USD -> CAD); tap either unit to change it or the screen to enter the number. In practice it makes it quick and easy while still visually impressive.

In addition to these features, the application has a wide variety of units - including measures of radioactivity and typography! The currency units are also kept up to date, updating every 15 minutes. Convertbot remains one of the limited list of utilities I would buy again if necessary.

These are just two applications I can cover right now; there’s several more that I suggest getting, including the Google Mobile App, Dictionary.com’s app, Wikipanion, and Stanza - all 4 are free.

Pirate Ship Wars 2 has gone official. The site is http://pirateshipwars.com and the blog is at http://blog.pirateshipwars.com. Being one of the developers (it’s co-programmed and co-developed by me and Termy), I’m managing the site and am responsible for various portions of the code. I also made the front page image

Progress has been slow, especially since my main (and in all reality only gaming-ready) computer is in repair for 3 weeks. It’s the only computer I have set up to run anything related to programming, so that puts things back a bit on my side. Plus we need to reassemble the ship piece models and do many other things under the hood - I’ve no doubt we will pull it off though

Aside from PSW, research has been keeping me occupied. Not academic but tablet pc research! I’m looking at getting a tablet pc and, Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve got the videos up for part 2 & 3 of my “Spore, An Early View” series:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhafzQ4Jgww
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vggua-_cHzM

It’s been going well and I’m happy with how it’s turning out.

My gamemodes, on the other hand, haven’t been seeing much attention. As a result, still no progress report.

Well, after a demanding day of school (first day back, grade 11) I got home to find that my spore download was done! So, I’ve played through cell and creature phases and decided to make a video series about them.

Here’s part one, hosted on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkuLk0qDkrs

It covers the cell stage of the game and my review of that section. I’m planning on releasing one of these a day, the last coming out when spore does on the 7th - that being the space age one. So, if you have some time come take a look!