After the opening speakers the music got started. Literally everything was if not the best at least enjoyable to listen to! In particular performances by Louise Kent, Andrew Ascenzo, and Molly Johnson stood out. Louise performed a single song, Some Days, which was uplifting and convinced me to buy her album (a rare thing as I usually only buy songs individually). Andrew was a part of the Victor Cheng jazz trio - I didn’t expect a particularily memorable piece  as jazz is not one of my favourite genres, but the songs here had the amazing quality of constantly moving between classical and jazz genres, along with a great piano accompaniment. Finally, Molly Johnson brought the night to a close with some jazz tunes but more importantly plenty of character - the way most events should end. I fully expect a 2010 Music for Change and will gladly attend.

While it’s a lot less important or amazing, I do have a few other topics I’ve been waiting to post about. First is a small Windows game called Infiniminer, made by Zachtronics Industries. It’s available for free and while the servers seem to have quieted down the past few days I still recommend everyone gives it a try. I’ve been making a lot of changes and submitting them to my Git branch; this being the first time I’ve used Git, I’ve found it very useful but not at all user friendly. Anyway, Infiniminer is a 3D mining game whereby a couple teams compete to try to dig down, retrieve loot, and return to the surface. there are four classes specializing in digging, building, exploring, and just blowing stuff up. More interesting than the main game is the sandbox mode, whereby you have unlimited resources and can build hold underground cities and roads and such. I once saw a server that had the entire underground carved out (the server was set to have no lava, which is a very dangerous problem otherwise) so that they could have mid-air walkways and flying temples - crazy stuff. While the game has its rough edges, which I’ve slowly tried to fix with my repository (seriously, it’s got a lot of fixes and features that improve gameplay), I still say that everyone should give it a try, especially if you have any LAN parties or similar events.

The final comment I want to make is something that has struck me as odd for a while - in Windows 7 the Notepad++ find window doesn’t close properly and instead obscures the window, half-transparent and unresponsive. For anyone else having this problem, I just found a solution by this blog post; just disable transparency or set it to “always on”! I didn’t even know Notepad++ had the ability to make the find window transparent when it uses focus! Excellent fix.

Just before I do, a quick reminded; Wolfram Alpha is having a preview this Friday @ 7:00 PM CDT. I’d recommend checking it out. For those unaware, Wolfram Alpha is a knowledge search engine that can also perform calculations and display relative information. It can display graphs of population, retrieve information like the GDP of France, show molecular information for chemical compounds, etc. Unfortunately there haven’t been any more off-the-wall searches publicized but I’m sure they’ll be brought up this Friday.

Without further ado, the list:

Must-have

• Adblock Plus
  • By and large the most important of all my addons, after browsing ad-free its hard to go back. Adblock Plus works extremely well at its core functionality without much tweaking, making it possible to go months without seeing a single banner ad on any websites. In addition it makes it easy to add new entries and use wildcards to make them always work, even once the ads change. Not much more explanation needed, aside from a big thumbs up.
• Greasemonkey
  • One of the hardest addons to explain, Greasemonkey lets you install javascript files that then further modify your browser but without the bloat of more addons. I’ll list some scripts at the bottom of the post as I’ve got several installed and examples are the best way to show what this addon does.
• Download Statusbar
  • Similar to (and predating) Chrome’s download bar, this prevents popups when starting downloads and instead shows a convenient bar containing all your downloads’ progress, speed, and estimated completion time.
• LastTab
  • Falling under the “should be the default” category, at its core LastTab does one thing: it makes Ctrl-Tab move through tabs in order of most recently used instead of left-to-right. A few other features here and there but that’s the gist of it.
• OpenDownload
  • Another “should be the default” addon, this makes it so that every download has an “open with OS’s default program” option.
• PDF Download
  • Not a necessity if you have something like Foxit Reader but convenient nonetheless. Whenever you browse to a pdf file instead of immediately embedding Adobe Reader this lets you choose to download, view as html, cancel, or embed.

Still a Good Idea

• FaviconizeTab
  • Mostly convenient for always-open sites (like gmail or google reader) and an excellent companion for Greasemonkey, it lets you delay closing a tab without taking up so much room.
• Ubiquity
  • Like Greasemonkey, Ubiquity lets user-created javascript files enrich the browsing experience. Unlike Greasemonkey, Ubiquity focuses on a Spotlight-style functionality whereby you can call it up instantly whenever you need it. It’s useful for mashups like embedding maps in email messages or translating page content, but the best way to figure it out is to give it a try.

Mostly for Tablets

• FireGestures
  • If only for one gesture FireGestures makes tablet browsing a lot better - the link down gesture. With a single right-click swipe from a link to the page below it it will open in a new tab. This one requires some experimentation as documentation is thin but important gestures include DR (close tab), UR (next tab), UL (prev tab), LR (new tab), and RL (undo close tab). All of the gestures are fully customizable too.
• Gesso
  • Mainly a fix, it makes the windows TIP properly appear on text fields. It’s still a bit buggy with password fields unfortunately.
• Grab and Drag
  • By mimicking Adobe Reader drag-to-scroll, this makes browsing websites on a tablet pc a lot easier.

That’s the core list. Finally, onto Greasemonkey scripts:

• HTTP-to-HTTPS redirector
  • Makes sure that you never use google services on an unsecure protocol.
• TinyURL Decoder
  • With the advent of twitter this is a requirement, as it automatically replaces shortened links with their full equivalents. I’ve made one main modification to this script, line 112 though that’s probably 2 off: “_node.innerHTML = ‘*’ + finalUrl + ‘ (’ + _node.href + ‘)*’;” - makes it more obvious which links are expanded
• Gmail FavIcon Alerts 3
  • Goes nicely with FaviconTab by making the gmail icon show unread message counts.
• GReader FavIcon Alerts
  • Shows unread item count in the Google Reader icon.

I think I’ve been posting too many lists recently, though it’s for a very simple reason: to get the software I use out into the world. These packs of addons, utilities, etc. have taken years of experimentation to finalize. I’m just hoping this information helps someone else save time in making browsing easier or fixing computer problems.

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.

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!

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.

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, shockingly, the market is practically empty. Each main manufacturer (HP, Dell, Toshiba, Lenovo, Fujitsu, etc.) have about 1 tablet pc. Just one. I think that if it was marketed right tablets could really take off, especially with Windows 7 using multitouch, but the companies are still focusing on their other computer lines. Since I’ve been looking for a tablet that is under $2000.00 CAN, has a good 12″ + screen with both passive and active digitizers, weighs under 5 lbs, and has a battery life of over 3 hours, choices have been limited; the hp tx2500 line and Toshiba’s M700 look like particularly strong contenders though. Anyone have suggestions?

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.

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!