Tag Archive: software


Noticebar, a jQuery plugin

Filed Under: Computing
May.09, 2010


Noticebar

What?

Noticebar is jQuery plugin that adds, well, a noticebar to the top of any page. Much like the one that will have shown up right about now.

Why?

A while back I wanted to drive traffic from one  of my older sites to a successor site. Inspired by the IE security alert page  I whipped up a very ugly, static solution, a purely html lime green bar across the top of the page. Before that I had searched for a javascript solution but came up empty handed.  Since then I’ve been meaning to create Noticebar for a while.

Features

It uses minimal markup and accepts several options.

  • Use of text and HTML markup
  • Custom CSS to change the appearance.
  • Optionally have the bar slide into view, like I have done here.
  • With animation on you can have the bar’s arrival delayed, again like done on this page.
  • A close button
  • Prepend the Noticebar to any div by specifying the target argument.

Example code

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.2/jquery.min.js”></script>
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”jquery.noticebar.js”></script>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
jQuery.fn.noticebar({html:  “your text or html here”,  close : false,});
</script>

To use the above code copy and paste it inside your websites head tag.  By this I mean between the “<head>” and the “</head>” part.

Options

A list of accept settings with their defaults:

jQuery.fn.noticebar({

html :  “Notice is credit to team!”, //Your message which can use html
animate  : true , //true means that the noticebar will ’slide’ down after the delay
delay  : 0 , //A delay in milliseconds, 1000 would be one second
css  : “”,  //Used to customize CSS styling
close  : true, //Whether the close button appears
target  : “body”, //Use “#id” you have the noticebar appear on an element with said id, .class for classes

})

Download jquery.noticebar.js |  Preview An example page

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Program to playback mic live

Filed Under: Computing
Apr.27, 2010

Long story short my mother needed t0 playback a microphone through the speakers. Should be simple and on Windows Xp it is. But for some strange reason vista does not have the option, some drivers do but not the default Microsoft audio driver. Of course doing this should be simple so I spent at least a good hour finding a solution, it would appear that none exist. I tried googling everything “Force mic loop”, “Force mic feedback”, “vista mic live playback”, “play mic through speakers vista”, “program to playback mic” and yes I did just put that list there in the hopes that Google will get a clue.

Turns out there is no program that does it. So I’ve created my own. It is done in flash and has some minor latency due to the use of flash, but any solution will have a bit of latency and hopefully for your needs it will be good enough.

To run it you have to give it permission to use the mic, it will automatically show you the permission dialog and will start working as soon as you close the dialog.

You can download the file and run it locally should you need to. To do so right click on the following link and select “Save file as”

Download: Warll’s Microphone playback’r

Embedded below:

View Full Article »

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First impressions of Drupal

Filed Under: Computing
Apr.12, 2010

I’ve spent the last week or so exploring Drupal and I must say that it is impressive.

Things I like:

  • Backend dosn’t hide options behind menus or other pages
  • Strictly enforced coding style
  • Theme markup encourages presentation to be removed from data manipulation
  • A block system that effectively gives users a ton of widget panels, and everything is placed like a WP widget would be
  • A form api that takes care of mundane and verbose html input markup
  • A ton of plugins that are rather generic yet well integrated with Drupal allowing for easy adoption and extension.
  • A focus on security even if at the cost of higher minimum skill set for usage.

What I dislike:

  • code style enforces the use of spaces instead of tab chars, which is positively insane.

In the end I like Drupal and am currently working on a port of the default Wordpress Theme.

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afterRead, a wordpress plugin

Filed Under: Computing
Jan.11, 2010

afterRead

Download afterRead | zip

What do you show the reader after they have read your content? Do you show them an empty comment box? A small unrelated block of automated text?
Instead use afterRead to present an active post footer driving visitors back into the site, don’t waste a prime opportunity.  Presently afterRead’s options are focused on driving visitors back into other related articles, but afterRead is capable of much more so expect to see new innovative Suggestions.

Features;
* Add Previous and Next post links to the bottom of posts.  These links can potentially be to any post, to only posts in the same category, or even only to posts with a matching tag. By default there are three styles to choose from, these styles integrate well with most themes.
* Suggestions can be anything from a donate button to a subscribe button to anything you can imagine.
* afterRead is modular and made of two primary parts, the afterRead core, and afterRead suggestions.
This allows for updates that do not revert changes and for easy custom extension of functionality.
* You can easily add new suggestions by simply pasting code into a text box in the afterRead settings page

== Installation ==

1. Upload `afterread’ folder to the `/wp-content/plugins/` directory
1. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
1. Navigate to the afterRead settings page found under the “Settings” menu
1. Select a different suggestion or use the default

== Frequently Asked Questions ==

= What is a Suggestion? =

A Suggestion is anything you want to encourage the reader to do once they have finished reading, commonly a link to other posts. A Suggestion file is a php file which afterRead core uses to generate a Suggestion.

= Do I need PHP or HTML knowledge to use afterRead? =

No, I have attempted to make afterRead extremely usable for anyone with limited knowledge or no knowledge of HTML and PHP. If there is a feature you’re confused about just tell me so that I can improve the documentation.

= I have an idea for a new Suggestion =

Perfect, the more Suggestions the better. If you get me an image of what you would like it to look like then I can see about coding it, I can’t promise I will be able to add it but I will certainly consider it.

= When using tag based Suggestions the links seem random =

This is quite confusing to see, but it’s actually logical. To illustrate this say we have a post, this post was made on the 20th and has a ‘cooking’ tag. Say there is then another post made on the 18th that had the ‘cooking’ tag and a ‘book’ tag, this will cause the 20th’s post to link to the 18th’s, now pretend that there was a post made on the 19th that only had the book tag, this will cause the 18th’s post to link to the 19th’s post and not the post made on the 20th.

= When using category based Suggestions the links seem random =

The same thing can happen for categories as happens with tags in the above question, it is less common because it is rather rare to add a post in two categories.

== Screenshots ==

1. Dynamic style 1 in a number of different styles displaying the Suggestion’s versatility

2. The backend as of 0.7.1.

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3GB Enabler 1.2

Filed Under: Computing, Video Games
Dec.29, 2009

Three years ago  the Sid Meier’s Railroads community over at Hooked on Railroads found that the 3GB enabler fixed crashing to desktop for Sid Meier’s Railroads.  Apparently we were not alone and a number of games from that era, ~2006, suffered and so far I have seen versions of the 3GB enabler edited for Supreme commander, Stalker, Battlefield 2142 and Oblivion. Recently I edited the 3Gb enabler to work with Sid Meier’s Railroads, before this Sid Meier’s Railroads players had to do weird things like renaming the “.exe”

No more! Now any the 3GB Enabler will work with any program. In fact it is not even limited to “.exe”s. With that said I have no clue what will happen if you edit a none exe. Read on for the readme and the download.

README:

Later Edited by Warll.Dressler to add arbitrary program selection, changed many minor portions of text to clarify and improve readibility
Editted by Chimera for Oblivian
Originally by unknown source for S.T.A.L.K.E.R CTD issues.

****** VERY IMPORTANT: IF YOU ARE USING AN x64 OPERATING SYSTEM:
****** SKIP THE “DIRECTIONS” SECTION.

Introduction:

This is for intermediate to advanced Windows users.
Follow the instructions carefully…the risk is minimal, as long as you backup a copy of your original executable, aka “program” aka file ending in “.exe”.

This will enable an executable, aka “program” aka file ending in .exe, to use over 2GB of memory in the application space.
It uses conventional tools using a batch file so everyone can see nothing suspicious goes on.
This tool will automatically set the header in said .exe so that it can address more than 2GB memory.
Normally XP will only address up to 2GB memory for applications and 2Gb for the kernel.
If we add a boot.ini switch /3GB, then XP is allowed to address up to 3GB for applications.
But unfortunately only applications that are enabled with “IMAGE_FILE_LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE” header can utilize more than 2GB of the space.

I highly recommend you look at some official information here at microsoft:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/PAE/PAEmem.mspx

______________________________________________

Directions:

First you need to tell XP/Vista that it can use more than 2GB of RAM for applications.
Manually edit your boot.ini file by adding ” /3GB /Userva=2900″ to your boot.ini (no quotes).
Your boot.ini is normally read only and you will need to change that temporarily while you edit it.
To do this, right-click the file and untick “Read Only”. After editing the file, restore the Read-only status.
To Edit it manually you can find it on the root of your system drive or
go to system properties/advanced tab, settings under ’startup and recovery’ section, then hit edit.

Mine looks like:  multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS=”Windows XP Professional” /FASTDETECT /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN /3GB /Userva=2900

Yours maybe different, the only thing you should change is add ” /3GB /Userva=2900″.

______________________________________________

Instructions for using the 3GB Enabler tool:

*** Important: First make a backup of the original “.exe”. there are any number of ways to do this, the simpliest is to make a copy of the “.exe” and store said copy some place safe or to keep a copy in the same folder under a diferent name. ***
*** Without a backup of the original “.exe” you might have troubles updating the program in the future due to copy protection schemes ***

The tool will add the “LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE” header for you to your executable.
Make sure a copy of the program is located in the same folder that the batch file is going to be ran from.
Doubleclick startme.bat then the menu walks you through.
1) Type the full name of the program including the “.exe” portion
2) Press Enter
3) Hit the A key to add the large address header.
4) Press any key to continue.
5) When back at main menu hit ‘V’ to output the headers in text so you can see the values.
6) Now you can check to see if it is enabled.  Scroll to the top and look for section “FILE HEADER VALUES”. Look for a line in that section that says “Application can handle large (>2GB) addresses”.  It’s the tenth line down in that section.  If you see that line then the executable is now enabled for >2GB, you are done.
7) Copy the enabled “.exe” back to the correct folder.
8) To avoid any strange issues with future patches, I suggest you rename your 3GB capable “.exe” to something else like “Fubar3GB.exe”, then make a shortcut to it on your desktop.  In the meanwhile, keep the original where it belongs and you will avoid any possible patching or online issues.

At anytime if you want to remove the large address header then you can restore you original backed up exe or use the app and use the Remove function and it will remove the header.  Once you run (R) to remove the header you have the original exe back, the MD5 hashes will match.

No strange side effects have been witnessed, but gladly I can play some big games now.

DOWNLOAD:

3GB_Enabler_1.2.zip

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Japanese on the desktop, literaly

Filed Under: Japanese
Nov.14, 2009

Chances are you have a picture on desktop as a background. Maybe even a picture related to japan and Japanese.  I admit that it might look good, but you paid good money for that monitor space, don’t waste it.   Look at this:

Jpanese right on the desktop, text everywhere

What is it you ask?

Well it is only the best use of desktop space there is,

Three RSS feeds from three major Japanese newspapers, http://mainichi.jp http://www.hokkaido-np.co.jp and http://www.asahi.com/

Two gaming related RSS feeds from http://www.kotaku.jp/ and http://www.famitsu.com/

A timer for time boxing, my email plus the AJATT twitter feed.

Oh and a clock and computer resource monitor.

 

The benefit is simple, rather than staring that the same image I’ve seen hundreds of times I get the latest real world and gaming news plus Japanese practice all without changing any of my habits.  Even if you cannot read it all simply having it there will mean that you will have yet another place in your environment where immersion is inevitable.

 

Oh and the best part was how easy it was easy to do it by using the open source and pure awesome windows program RainMeter. It shouldn’t take more than an hour to set everything up. Of course if you have time to get lost in it Rainmeter also has a ton of potential for customisation.  Either way http://www.customize.org/rainmeter/skins is the perfect place to start once you have basic Rainmeter installed.

Ugh, this reads way too much like a peice of marketing, msut go to show how awesome the program is right?

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Changing Language Windows XP/Vista and Linux

Filed Under: Computing, Japanese
Aug.20, 2009
Using an OS in Japanese is a very big part of creating an all encompassing environment, even more so if you spend most of your day on the computer in which case the transition is vital. Typically I would expect that you will have memorized how to do the things you commonly do. You should know by heart how to launch Firefox or whatever web browser you use without reading the icon’s label. There will be more complex things that do require your attention. For these it helps to be able to switch between English and Japanese, for instance while I may be able to expand a partition by memory that’s not necessary something I would want the average user to do by feel. Actually changing the language for many will be an obstacle even though the process itself is trivial.
 
Changing OS language – Linux
If you are a user of Linux then lady luck is on your side, provided there is an actual Japanese version of your distro, you will be able to get away without reinstalling in most cases. For instance Ubuntu user’s can follow these instructions to changing the primary language. You are on your own as to finding solutions for other distros.
 
Changing OS language – Windows
Microsoft loves segmenting the market as such changing languages on Windows is a lot more obstacle prone.
 
For Windows XP it is possible to change language but only if you have access to a Windows XP MUI(Multilingual User Interface). The problem you run into is that Microsoft only sells the MUI packs to OEM, companies such as HP, Dell and Gateway who build and sell computers. Chances that your computer maker bought a Japanese MUI and then bothered to bundle it with your English computer is so slim any reasonable person would round the odd down to zero. This leaves you with really only three options, buy a Japanese copy of Windows XP, commit civil violation of Microsoft’s copyright, or a third option I will cover later in this article.
 
Windows Vista changes this for the better, translations are not only much easier to come by but are also are more complete. If you are one of the few people who shelled out for Windows Vista Ultimate or Windows Vista Business then your in luck, MUI packs can be gotten directly from Microsoft and switching between English and Japanese is a piece of cake. To switch languages on Windows Vista Ultimate or Windows Vista Business all you have to do is go to Windows Update and select Japanese, boom your done. Don’t have Windows Vista Ultimate or Windows Vista Business? Luckily there is a hack to get MUIs for other Windows Vista versions such as Home Premium, this article walks you through it. Prefer not to resort to a hack or violating copyright laws? Well in that case this should help you:
 
The Third Option
One of the most likely users of Linux are students, especially geeky students. Microsoft knows this and has not let this fact go unchecked. Microsoft’s Dreamspark program gives away copies of many otherwise expensive Microsoft program for free to anyone with a International Student ID card. One of these programs is Windows Server 2008, Server 2008 is much like Vista and is able to use drivers made for Vista as well as working with any Vista compatible program. This option is not without its downsides not least of which is that many programmers use checks in program installers and will refuse to install on an “unsupported” OS, it will also require a reinstalltion of your OS. I suggest that if you do plan to go this route that you do so first in a dual booting environment so that if it does turn out that one of your programs does not like Windows Server 2008 then you can always go back. For more information on Using Windows Server 2008 as a desktop operating system see this very helpful website .
 
 

 

 

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Review: The Promise of Haruhi Suzumiya

Filed Under: Japanese, Review, Video Games
Jul.15, 2009
The promise of Suzumiya Haruhi the video game

The promise of Suzumiya Haruhi the video game

The Promise of Haruhi Suzumiya (涼宮ハルヒの約束, Suzumiya Haruhi no Yakusoku) was the first Suzumiya Haruhi video game released for the PSP in December 2007. It is a fully voiced visual novel with exact Japanese subtitles. Like most visual novels the story does not require much interaction on the players part, it might as well be an anime in that regard. What really sets it apart from its anime counterpart is the easy at which one can study from it. When pressed the L shoulder button will bring up a history of everything said. Not only can you reread the text but you game will also repeat the audio.  This audio repeat can be done by pressing triangle from within the main game or by pressing the circle from the text history.

Altogether an excellent game for studying and enjoyment, mind you the level of Japanese required is not trivial, the subtitles do though open the possibility for using a dictionary.

Offical Website: http://b.bngi-channel.jp/psp-haruhi/

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Useful program for Windows Vista #1

Filed Under: Computing, Review
Jul.01, 2009

Make Windows transparent for free with Glass2K.

So why would you want to make windows transparent, well put simply productivity.  It works expecally well when viewing an image, be that photos or video, since the colours are less likely to blend with what you are doing on top.  With text it becomes a little harder although it is trivial to decrease the transparency which allows you to easily to which peice of text is on top.  Surprisingly this program is actually compatible with Windows Vista even though it was programmed for Windows 2000 and Windows XP .  Performance wise it runs well although this is to be expected since it was written with much weaker computers in find vesus what we have today. In fact it stays at around three percent of my AMD 940 and uses 1.6MB of RAM.  All together the productivity gains are comparable to getting a second monitor, if not a bit nicer since everything is kept in one field of view and Glass2K is free to boot!

chime.tv/products/glass2k

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Cities XL crack, hack, torrent or leak, just not possible.

Filed Under: Cities XL, Video Games
Jun.23, 2009

Big news! A crack is out and  it works!  Thanks to Nob Ody for alerting me to it. You can get it on isohunt here are the instructions:

  1. Install game.
  2. Edit the Updater.bat file so that each line points towards your game’s installation directory
  3. Launch Updater.bat
  4. Close the launcher once updates complete
  5. Your game is now up to date to the latest version
  6. Copy the crack to the game’s install folder
  7. Launch game using CitiesXL.exe, select language, and enter any random login credential
  8. Enjoy

I can tested it and it is virus free and works perfectly, the author has even included all the current patches.[Older update]

JDMans over at the Pirate Bay posted instructions on how to use the torrent with the Cities XL trial

There is like no way anyone is going to crack this because the security is just to hard, but if you downloaded this already you can make a 7 day trial account for it and play online for the time.

1. Go to citiesxl.com and click on the sign up button in the menu. it should bring you to a registration screen.

Ignore the cd key button and just fill in all the information for your online account and click the send registration button.

On the next screen it will ask for a cd key but just scroll down and there is something that says activate 7 day trial.

There, now you have a user name to log in with for the next 7 days and you have access to all the multiplayer stuff. Until someone gets a better idea il be playing for the next 7 days :D
[/update]

[Older update:] Forget it. There will not be a crack for Cities XL. There simply is no reason for crackers to go to the effort. The protection used effectively turns even the single player version of the game into an MMO as far as crackablity is concerned.  If you have a Cities XL torrent running at the moment, cancel it. You can either buy a legal copy or move on, yes yes I know “civil piracy is not illegal”, what else would you have me call it? I would suggest moving on, there is not much in regards to re-playability to Cities Xl as it is now, maybe they’ll revamp much of it, doubt it. Right now Monte Cristo has let their dreams of MMOhood get in the way of making what they should have, a fun and challenging city builder. Instead you get a giant ad for the “planet offer” also known as Xbox live style “online services”, really all it is good for is the global chat and trading “goods” . Oh I guess you also get a pretty map which is a bit exciting, until you realize that it is no more than a picture and has no effect on game play. Weep a bit and then move on and do something more productive, like say learning Japanese, or exploring the other side of the world. [/update]

I know that when I had troubles finding a key I check out the The Pirate Bay and Google to see if Cities XL had been cracked and released, that did me no good since there is no Cities XL crack even still I really wanted to play it.  Well looking at the web searches that lead people to this site I can see that there are some other unfortunate souls willing to hit the torrents just to play Cities XL.  Well I have some news for you, its not going to happen until a street release at least and liekly never for the planet offer. The current Cities XL requires not only net access to login but also a constant internet connection to play online. There is no offline so no hope of getting past the beta key requirement.  If you do want to play the game I would suggest downloading the client while you are searching for beta keys. That way you are ready to go when you do get a beta key and you can also check out the in-game music which is stored in “Monte Cristo\Cities XL\Data\Sound\Music\XL”, I know this because before I got my key I searched the game’s files and found the music.  So yeah stop searching for a cities xl crack, hack or leak and get back to looking for a beta key.  Oh and any Cities XL Torrent you happen to run across will either be a repost of the same client you can already get from Monte Cristo or it will contain spyware/malware.

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Cities XL the future of the city builder genre

Filed Under: Cities XL
Jun.11, 2009

The history of city builders is dominated by one name Will Wright, he and his studio Maxis made the staples of the city building genre, Sim city, Sim city 2000, Sim city 3000 and Sim city 4 something happened though and there is has been a true sequel to the series yet.  What happened was Spore, a monster sized game which took up Maxis’s time and resources until its release in 2008.   Along comes Monte Cristo and their attempt at a city builder, City Life, they experimented with “classes” and “races” making it a bit more of a society manager unfortunately this was not the dirrention fans wanted the game to go in and City life replace Sim city 4 at the top of the city builder genre.  Meanwhile EA still owned the Sim City trademark and they were not about to let it depreciate so used another studio,  Tilted Wind Mills, to create “Sim City”: Societies.  Societies was aimed at the casual market and played very much like City life, it too did not topple Sim City 4.  In case Sim city 4’s popularity is in doubt I’ll just make one point, the torrent “SimCity 4 Deluxe w/ Crack & Serial” is still even after two years, in the top one hundred active torrents of the popular torrent tracker The Pirate Bay.org.

All this makes the city builder genre very ripe, even a  ten year old player that started on Sim City 4 when it came out in 2003 will be nearly 17 once Cities XL hits the streets.  The age ranges just go up from there meaning that Monte Cristo has the potential to capture a mature  market without any competition.  This financial incentive is what the genre need since without it we would never see a city builder of the scale the genre demands.  Cities XL is set to be the giant game the fans are asking for and dreaming about.  The engine is full 3d, you can play online in a sort of MMO environment, the buildings can be placed at angles and bridges can be built at arbitrary locations.  The fact that it will be MMO means that Monte Cristo can and will continue to develop the game over time.

In short Cities XL is going to be the standard of the city builder genre for quite a while.

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Sid Meier’s Railroads!: Intercontinental, it’s done.

Filed Under: About Warll, Sid Meier's Railroads!
Jun.08, 2009

About two years ago I was an active member of the Sid Meier’s Railroads!(SMR) modding community.   I have never been much of a programmer, or any programmer at that.  My one attempt at a map failed hard.  The thing is though we had no shortage of maps. What we did have though was a mess and an initiative lead by snoopy to get multiple maps working at a time.

This mess was, in my opinion a result of out first attempts at maps.   You see when Sid Meier’s Railroads was first released there was no SDK, that didn’t stop us and as such Dwax was the first to made a map based soley off of reverse enginering the games files.  Ok so saying that makes it sound harder then it was, after all the game used primarly XML and hightmaps.  The fact that the game shared an engine with Sid Meier’s cizilization and Oblivion also meant that there were a number of tools we could use for the models.

The problems mostly came from the conflicts between the XMLs. This was only compounded by the fact that Sid Meier’s Railroads istelf before the patches was bugy and had a nasty tendency to crash to desktop(CTD).   Making it very hard to tell apart a mappers error or “normal” gmae crash.  With that said thanks to efforts to standardize our use of the XMLs we were able to make maps work together some of the time.

By this point we had a wealth of maps but many of them would not work together, a big stumbling block for new users.  This lead me to suggest Sid Meier’s Railroads!: Intercontinental(SMRI) with the goal of making a all in one map pack.  All a user would need to do was install and play.  I am actually surprised that Sid Meier’s Railroads Intercontinental got off the ground, really all the thanks goes to Atani and Snoopy who put work into the installer and maps and managed to get ~20 maps together.   In the end we got it out in time for Sid Meier’s Railroads one year anniversary.

After that we got one minor patch out before we left it all alone.  At the time it was my intenention to make a sequel.  That just never happened though and now its nearly two years later and I say for sure that it will not, well atleast not by my hands anyway.

I guess I should these two bits of knowledge, there are two known bugs from what I can rememeber.

  1. Sid Meier’s Railroads must have been luanched at least once before you go to install Sid Meier’s Railroads!: Intercontinental. It works this way because Sid Meier’s Railroads!: Intercontinental must be installed to the “my games” Sid Meier’s Railroads directory which is only created once the game is luanched.  This might create some conflict for users with none defualt home directories.  To get around this simply copy the Sid Meier’s Railroads “my games” folder to where it would be in a defualt configuration, you should then be able to copy and overwrite the folder back to where Sid Meier’s Railroads expects it.
  2. The Egypt map has a bug that will cause you to crash to desktop. If I remember right and I likely don’t, this has to do with the XML for one of the goods.

So in closing I will make these points.  That Sid Meier’s Railroads!: Intercontinental is still the easyiest way for a new player to get new maps that I know of.  As well if anyone is interested in reusing the Sid Meier’s Railroads!: Intercontinental name for anything Sid Meier’s Railroads related they are welcome to it, just contact me for the Moddb profile and Atani for the website. You must though be serious about this, I still do have an afinity for SMRI.

Anyway thank you everyone who has played Sid Meier’s Railroads!: Intercontinental, thank you all the mappers who made this possible and thank you Atani and Snoopy.  I really love the time I spent with you all on the forums, maybe I’ll see you guys again.

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Windows Vista for free legally.

Filed Under: Computing
Jun.06, 2009

One thing that seems to have pasted a lot of people by is the fact that Microsoft gives copies of Vista away, for free.  No I’m not talking about MSDN.  Microsoft will give anyone how can provide a  International Student Identity Card (ISIC) number a copy of Windows Server 2008 Standard and Windows Server 2003 under their DreamSpark program.  Windows 2008 is with few exceptions everything like Windows Vista Ultimate.  You can use Vista drivers, change the language and can use RDP without a hack.  The only problem you might run into is  the fact that a number of moronically programed installers will check to see if you are on a “supported” version of windows and will complain when they see Server 2008.  Microsoft’s Zune software is included in this group although you can get around it by extracting the needed files from the installer. Windows 2003 on the other hand while being like XP does not share the same base which means you would be much better off with 2008.

Getting a ISIC isn’t even all that hard although it might cost a few bucks, in my case I was out $16CDN. The ISIC homepage has more information if you are interested.Microsoft also gives other programs away under the same program such as Visual Studio PRO although they do not give any of the office suite products away.

So why should you use this method vs just grabbing a torrent? After all its not like this supports the development of windows in any way. Well its simple really, no need to use your precious bandwidth since Microsoft provides a direct download. It is also faster, the Microsoft servers can saturate your connection. You also do not have to worry about WGA or its ilk.

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