Fighting the borg with a lightsaber. It works, but it doesn't fit.

Geek Stuff | Philosophy

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...that damn slave go?

My Insignificant Life | Purely Idiotic Stuff

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The 2006 version of Pwop Productions Inc's website has officially been launched. Take a look at what Pwop (in my, and others, opinion, THE place to go for making podcasts) has to offer at http://www.pwop.com

The new Pwop website was created by us in record time (something under 2 hours - from pixels to code, everything!).

Geek Stuff

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Vista keeps getting better! Sure, there are still many bugs and improvements to be done, but this is a very stable work, and we're doing all our WPF experiments in Vista now.

Setup still managed to erase my Windows XP from the bootloader, and had to do the same thing as with the previous CTP. But other than the experience has been very good.

There are some neat new graphics - especially the Aero cursors now on by default!

I also noticed that the performance of WPF applications is much better on this build. There is a small glitch with ExprID and Vista, tho. Unless I disabled Desktop Composition, the menus dont show or rather don't draw.

I highly recommend trying out this build!

Windows Vista | WPF

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Didn't you read the title?

Purely Idiotic Stuff

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Parvez Ansari, the new Chief Software Architect of Nukeation Studios, is being shown the world of Nukeation.

For those of you who don't know (seriously!?) the guy with the guitar is Carl Franklin.

Purely Idiotic Stuff

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Just missed him. What? No ... that's the title of his blog!

I should've blogged this days ago, but an accident (broken leg) had kept me away from the computer for some time.

Anyways, I would like to take credit (until I am served a notice) for pushing Andy to start his own blog, which was also *ahem* designed by yours truly. I seriously advise you to subscribe to his blog. Andy is kind of a guru to me (I don't call him Andy-Wan for nothing) and he will (supposedly) be posting pearls of wisdom on his blog soon.

http://blog.andyeick.com

And don't forget to check out the new gallery of cool photos (the GALLERY tab on top of the blog)!

My Insignificant Life | Photography

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Really, big, big, big things. Seriously, if you knew about it, your eyes and mouth would water. Your fingers would twitch.

I can't remember when I last knew something this important and mind boggling.

Do you want to know?

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Do you REALLY want to know?

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Do you REALLY REALLY want to know?

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Really?

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Can't tell you, sorry. NDA. What can I say?

Purely Idiotic Stuff

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Windows Vista build 5456 is just plain cool! I love the new animations and graphics, as well as all the little updates and the stability. But when I installed 5456 last night (the media wasn't corrupt, thankfully), it installed in about 40+ minutes (on a 2GB RAM / P4-HT 3GHz) and I was presented with a black blank screen with a little screwed up strip of garbled pixels at the bottom. Y'know, the kind you get if you yank the VGA cord out of the display card's port. Anyways, if I wait a minute or two, it loads ok - something with the display drivers, I guess.

So, everything is ok, but when I went to reboot into my old WinXP, I saw only one "Microsoft Windows" entry in the dual-boot window. And that led to Vista.

I panicked for 5 minutes, experimented for 20, and went online for help after that. All the info I needed was found here.

The problem is that good ol' boot.ini has been replaced by the new bootloader that ships with Vista. It controls which OS loads, and stays even if you rip out Vista.

Here's what you do. Load Vista, go to START | Programs | Accessories, right-click Command Prompt, and click RUN AS ADMINISTRATOR. Then punch in the following command lines, one by one. The italics lines are my comments.

BCDEDIT /create {legacy} /d "Windows XP SP2"

The /d is just the description, and can be anything you want. I suspect Vista overwrites your description regardless. You may also  get some message about {legacy} already existing. Ignore that, and go with the following.

BCDEDIT /set {legacy} device boot

BCDEDIT /set {legacy} path \ntldr

BCDEDIT /displayorder {legacy} /addlast

Each command should return a "operation completed successfully".

Reboot, and you will see the Legacy Windows in the boot list. You can log on to Vista, go to Control Panel | SYSTEM | Advanced Settings | Startup and Recovery, and select the legacy item as the default loader. Or enter the following in the command line as before:

BCDEDIT /default {legacy}

It wasn't too much trouble, but the boot thingie in Vista does have its problems.

Windows Vista

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Power failure. Gradual, yet instantenous power loss, caused the backup power to not hold up. System rebooted. Possible corruption of ISO of 5456. 538MB left. Integrity failure will require a re-download of the ISO. 5 gigs of bandwidth down the drain. Sithspit.

Windows Vista

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Microsoft is committed to splurging my bandwidth. ~3 hours to Vista build 5456.

Windows Vista

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With a few hundred novels and comics, the Star Wars EU (Expanded Universe) is a mess at the moment. The mess is that two-thirds of these were written before the prequel trilogy was finished. And this creates some massive gaps and inconsistencies.

The past of the Jedi being the biggest of those, and Imperial past (post-RotS, pre-ANH) as well. As a Star Wars loyalist (aka freak), it just rips me apart when I think of the whole Callista and White Current and Luke's supposed mother.

Inconsistent lines include:

• The past of the Jedi ("Children of the Jedi", for example)
• The White Current deal ("Black Fleet Crisis", I think)
• Creation of the Empire, Palpatine's rise to power
• How lightsabers work (eg, in some stories they work underwater, but not in others - "Splinter of the Mind's Eye")
• Missing Planets (Where the heck is Naboo in the new generation?)

In the more high profile works of Zahn, Denning, and Stackpole, some inconsistencies have been ironed out.

There are also many minor inconsistencies because these books are not published in a linear timeline, but more like all over the place.

As a programmer, when you're dealing with legacy code you have usually two options: Create a go-between app that acts as a liason between the old and new code, or rewrite the old stuff with new tech.

I think the latter is the answer for Star Wars books. Not EVERYTHING has to be rewritten. For example, in Star Wars X-Wing: Solo Command, there is a line: "I couldn't prevent Senator Palpatine's rise to power..." could be changed to "I couldn't preven Chancellor Palpatine's rise to power..."

Some good stuff can be rewritten if the author wishes and can, which would just give them pure new sales for a book that people like me bought. It would be much better than the mix and match efforts they are trying to put up with right now.

At the time of writing, I have read 192 novels (24+ re-read more than 3 times), and over 380 comics.

Star Wars

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In the thick of things, I have about 4 to 8 different applications running on both my monitors and quickly opening various folders and launching applications or command lines is a pain. Using Start | Run has a peculiar problem - you can't enter too many things - the history is limited. And I hate running Start | Run everytime, its too inefficient.

So, today, while working, I quickly cobbled together a quick solution  QuickNuke. I linked to one of the MM keys on the keyboard. It sits in the systray, and does not load automatically on startup. Hit the launch key and you get this window. It's explorer powered. Drag any shortcut (or an item while holding ALT) into this window and it will make a shortcut!

Double-click the shotcut, and you're done. Hit escape to hide the window.

This is very crude at the moment, but I will whip it up into shape soon.

This application is released under the IDGAC (I-dont-give-a-crap) license, so feel free to download it from http://shrinkster.com/gbk. Suggestions and feedback are welcome.

Downloads | Geek Stuff

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