tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26799749778378634372024-02-08T00:39:44.309+00:00Tough to FindA blog where I try to put details of Google results that would otherwise be difficult to find.
Now with ads! And also a more general remit, where if I think of something interesting that I want to share with the world, and which I want to find but doesn't seem to exist ... then I'll post it.Marvhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287712053243891946noreply@blogger.comBlogger31125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679974977837863437.post-39414517311802672382012-08-02T12:49:00.000+01:002012-08-03T11:28:30.859+01:00Crystal Palace Funpark - until 12th August 2012I saw a poster for a local funfair (or is it fun fair?) while I was out-and-about yesterday. I thought I remembered enough key details to let me find it online. Alas, I could not find it! If this blog post gets indexed by Google quickly enough, maybe it will help other people find the information they need.<br />
<br />
I found another poster this morning and took a photograph of it...<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghWu5A1_5i0j6w4E9yU_3msGmuDNb1AwRXmaVr4y6tu5-LddYYJYlwUGR1Bu05e4kHcwT_374vV2l0O_jFLlloZQrjQUqegJ3T8ZC84NrxX8lCQsamtHlbpCVyo53b_mV7G3bR0xkIHps/s1600/CrystalPalaceFunParkPoster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghWu5A1_5i0j6w4E9yU_3msGmuDNb1AwRXmaVr4y6tu5-LddYYJYlwUGR1Bu05e4kHcwT_374vV2l0O_jFLlloZQrjQUqegJ3T8ZC84NrxX8lCQsamtHlbpCVyo53b_mV7G3bR0xkIHps/s640/CrystalPalaceFunParkPoster.jpg" width="480" /></a></div>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
Poster for Crystal Palace FunPark</h3>
<br />
And here are some key details:-<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Apparently, it's "Europe's largest mobile theme park" (and by that, I'm assuming it means theme park that moves around, and not a theme park based around phones)</li>
<li>It's at Crystal Palace Parade, Top Terrace, Crystal Palace, London, <a href="https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=SE19+1UD">SE19 1UD</a> (I'm guessing they mean in the park).</li>
<li>It's there from Wednesday 1st August 2012 to Sunday 12th August 2012, and is open every day from 1pm to 9pm, but it looks like in two sessions.</li>
</ul>
<br />
<br />
Sessions? Yep, it's a theme park / funfair / fun fair / fairground / fair ground (all words I was trying to use to find the darn thing) where you pay an entrance fee of <b>£6.99</b>, and then get unlimited rides. However, your wristbands only last for <b>a maximum of a 4 hour</b> session - either 1pm to 5pm or 5pm - 9pm - so time your trip carefully!<br />
<br />
No booze/alcohol/drugs allowed.<br />
<br />
There's limited information on the rides they have - "Davis's Earth Shaker", "Ghost Train", "Rockrage", "Family Funhouse", "Apple Coaster".<br />
Update: Walked past the fair last night and it looks like they have some good thrill rides. Am definitely going to head in at some point!<br />
<br />
Maybe see you there!<br />
<br />
Update: This similar poster highlights more rides at a different incarnation of the Fun Park, but there are no guarantees that any or all of them will be at the Crystal Palace version<br />
<a href="http://www.explorethanet.co.uk/component/content/article/9-news/newsflash/122-europes-largest-mobile-theme-park-dreamland-29th-15th-may">http://www.explorethanet.co.uk/component/content/article/9-news/newsflash/122-europes-largest-mobile-theme-park-dreamland-29th-15th-may</a>Marvhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287712053243891946noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679974977837863437.post-83987457954232598482011-02-09T19:47:00.004+00:002011-02-12T07:43:02.273+00:00Should I get laser eye surgery? (3 months on)When I wrote my <a href="http://tough-to-find.blogspot.com/2010/11/should-i-get-my-eyes-lasered.html">last blog post about laser surgery</a>, I was one month into recovery, and on the fence about whether or not it was worth it. Now I'm over three months in, and have had a further follow-up appointment, plus a boozy Christmas, birthday, New Years, Stag Weekend, and trip to Vegas to see some very good friends get married!<br /><br />First, the scientific details. I found out at my most recent follow-up (the 3 month one) that the -0.25 prescription in my left eye has now disappeared. This is great news for me, since it means that I don't have to worry about future treatments (at least right now), nor about whether I can see properly! I still have times where one eye is better than the other, but I think that maybe everyone does, and I'm just more aware of it at the moment. I think a lot of it comes down to rubbing eyes (either when awake or asleep), dry eyes, and eye strain. These are all things that are likely to happen more after surgery, and should happen less over time.<br /><br />So at the stage I'm at now, I can see pretty well. In both eyes, I can see 2 lines lower than the 20-20 line on the optician charts, which is the lowest they had at the check-up. My night-vision doesn't involve haloes so much any more. Some lights seem too big, but I'm still not sure whether they would for non-laser-surgery-patients too. I've now driven at night-time (as well as during the day) and it seems pretty-much OK!<br /><br />The redness on the whites of my eyes around my pupils is almost 100% gone now. If I look really hard, I can maybe see ever so slight colour variations where the flap was made, but I do have to look very carefully.<br /><br />I still get dryness, which manifests itself as discomfort or blurry vision. For that, I use eye drops around 3 times a day when required. Ultralase are trying to wean me off them, partly using a night-time gel. This seems to be helping (although if you're going on long flights, or staying in Las Vegas, I'd recommend just using the drops as your eyes will get dry anyway!).<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Extreme activities</span><br />About a month after the first surgery, I went to a funfair and went on a centrifuge-type ride. It was fun, but I was worried that something bad might happen to my eyes. The "flaps" might open up or something. I've no idea if that's true, and I've since been on roller-coasters and other rides, but it's still something I'm aware of.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><u>Benefits</u></span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Confidence</span><br />I seem to be more confident now in my interactions with people. I'm pretty sure this is at least partly psychosomatic, but I think that it's also partly directly due to not wearing glasses. For people who wear contact lenses most of the time, they probably already get this.<br />I think that part of it is better peripheral vision; being able to see when people are trying to catch my eye, etc. Partly, it's good that my eyes are more visible, as they form an integral part of non-verbal communication. There's also the fact that maybe I have to deal more directly with the world; not through the "screen" that glasses provides.<br />I guess maybe it's also a two-way thing in that people who communicate with me are more confident about talking to someone without glasses.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Convenience</span><br />It's really great not to have to wear or carry around glasses and contact lens paraphernalia the whole time. At the moment, I'm carrying around eye drops, but that's not too bad.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Vision</span><br />My vision is pretty good now! Key moments of wow-ness have generally been while looking at views while on holiday. I recently went to the Stratosphere tower in Las Vegas, and the views while Sky-Jumping and going on the other rides were fantastic, even at night time. I don't think I would have had the same views with glasses (maybe with contacts, I guess?).<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">What else should you think about?</span><br />I think I would rather have done more research into things like halo-ing and starbursts - see <a href="http://www.usaeyes.org/lasik/faq/lasik-pupil-size.htm">this (rather technical) page</a> before the consultation/surgery.<br />I'd also like to have asked more questions about the recovery process and what I should expect in terms of consistency of vision over the first few months.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Am I glad I had it done?</span><br />On balance, yes!Marvhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287712053243891946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679974977837863437.post-60280322890217315112010-11-19T17:34:00.006+00:002011-02-09T20:07:47.368+00:00Should I get my eyes lasered?<span style="font-style: italic;">Please see also the follow-up post <a href="http://tough-to-find.blogspot.com/2011/02/should-i-get-laser-eye-surgery-3-months.html">here</a>.</span><br /><br />I recently had laser surgery to correct short-sightedness and astigmatism. It's now been exactly a month, and since I've had a few people ask me about it, I thought I'd write a blog post!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">My prescription</span> wasn't that bad:-<br />Right eye: -0.75 (sph), -0.5 (cyl), x130 (axis)<br />Left eye: -0.50 (sph), -1.50 (cyl), x64 (prism)<br /><br />However, I did need to wear my glasses most of the time (partly because my more-astigmatic left-eye was tending to become lazy otherwise).<br /><br />I decided to go to <a href="http://www.ultralase.com/">Ultralase</a>, since I have many friends who had great experiences with them (I think I know 7 people who have used them!). I went to the Tottenham Court Road centre, partly because it's convenient to get to from home/work. 2 other friends had it done there with great success, and 5 friends went to Guildford (also with the success).<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The initial consultation</span> was free. They check your prescription, ask you a series of questions about your health, etc, and also measure the surface of your eye to find out which kind of surgery would be best. There are 2 main distinctions - <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LASIK">LASIK </a>and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LASEK">LASEK</a>.<br />(I might put more detail here later, for the moment, I leave the reader to look at the differences).<br />I was able to have both LASIK or LASEK. Although LASIK is more expensive, I opted for it as the healing process seemed easier.<br />There's then the choice (as I write this) of Ultra, Ultra-Plus and Ultra-Elite. Basically, the more expensive options have a higher "success" rate. I chose the most expensive, as it's my eyes and I didn't want to regret the choice later!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Cost</span><br />Normally, Ultra-elite with LASIK on both eyes would have cost £4,795, but because I had many friends who had recommended me, and because they had kept me waiting 3o minutes for my initial consultation, they gave me a 10% discount to £4,400 approx. You can choose to pay this under interest-free credit up to 3 years, which is what I went for (so £120 a month).<br />Also, in theory, for any future eye-condition other than reading-glasses, you should get re-treatment for free as long as your corneas are thick enough.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The process</span> itself involves a local anaesthetic being used on the eyes which means you can't feel any of the actual laser cutting or reshaping. However, there is discomfort when they use pressure/suction to keep your eye still. This lasts approx 40 seconds per eye, although it can feel like longer! The whole process is over in less than 20 minutes. There's then a 20 minute rest and you go on your way. After another 20 minutes, the anaesthetic starts to wear off and your eyes do get quite painful. This can last a few hours, and is the only real pain you feel in the whole process! I'd been warned about it, so I'd stayed up late the night before, and then when I got home, I took a strong painkiller and went to sleep. By the time I woke up, I felt fine!<br /><br />For the first 2 weeks, there are a series of eye drops (not too difficult to apply, but annoying), and you have to tape eye-protectors over your eyes when you sleep. There's a bunch of stuff you can't do for certain periods of time, but the most annoying thing for me was not being able to wash my hair properly (you have to mess around getting your head at the correct angle, with a wash-cloth and eye protectors over your eyes!).<br /><br />Anyway - your eye sight should be quite a lot better from pretty-much the next day. I was able to get on with most things fairly easily. My eyes did have a tendency to get tired after a while, and you're encouraged to rest them.<br />You'll have a check-up the next day, then at 1 week, 1 month, 3 months (sometimes, I think), 6 months, and then only if you require it.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><u>The results...</u></span><br />Initially, I was pretty pleased in general! My night vision wasn't great, but that's been getting better. Right now, bright-lights at night time still have a halo; I think that may or may not get better with time. The vision in my right eye is pretty good! My left eye wasn't so good to start off with and I was quite concerned. At my 1 week check-up, they said it was probably dryness and encouraged me to use the artificial-tear eye-drops more. I did that, and my left-eye improved a lot.<br />At the 1 month check-up, my right eye is fine, but it seems my left eye still has a prescription of -0.25, which is quite disappointing. I expect it may get better with time, and will find out (I guess) at my 3 month check-up.<br />My eyes are also still bloodshot, although each person reacts differently and I think I just take a while to heal! I'm not concerned - it looks kind-of cool, and I know it will get better.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">So ... would I recommend it?</span> Hmm, I'm not sure. It's definitely great to not have to wear glasses or contact lenses, but I'm disappointed that my vision isn't "perfect" (even if, technically, I have 20:20 vision). The jury is still out, and I guess I might update this blog-post with my future thoughts...<br />I would say that there is nothing wrong with going for the initial consultation. Ultralase were very friendly, and will answer any queries or concerns you may have.<br /><br />If you have any questions, please post them as a comment, and I'll try to answer them when I get around to them.Marvhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287712053243891946noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679974977837863437.post-39378871761390315392009-04-09T18:00:00.004+01:002010-03-20T22:06:20.309+00:00Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) crashes on intranet web-sites (Outlook too)I've recently installed Internet Explorer 8 on both my home and work PC, and find it to be much better than IE7 in the main. However, I do find that IE8 crashes whenever it tries to load a web-site on our work internal network (some of these sites are Sharepoint sites, some are blogs, and some are web-services).<br />I found a couple of forums where people are reporting <a href="http://www.vistaheads.com/forums/microsoft-public-internetexplorer-general/348167-ie8-crashes-urlmon-dll.html">similar issues</a> that kind-of hint at the problem being to do with security zones. When I asked the error message for more info, it did say that the fault comes from Urlmon.dll.<br />I also found that Outlook 2003 crashes when trying to display an email that contains one of the URLs! It's not trying to load anything from a website (as far as I know), just display a link inside an email. I suspect that there's a problem with it trying to figure out whether the URL is "trusted" or not.<br /><br />Anyway, I realised that some URLs on a particular sub-domain seemed to be causing the problem, but not all. Contrary to the advice in the link above, I found that the URLs that were crashing were the ones that were <span style="font-style: italic;">not</span> included in a trusted zone. URLs that I had set to be within the local intranet loaded fine. So, I experimented and found that any URL I add to the Local intranet zone no longer crashes IE8 - nor Outlook!<br />My theory is that some code inside the Urlmon DLL (possibly in CheckMappings, if it's the same as the link above) attempts to verify the URL, but bugs out when it tries to use the current Windows Credentials (since the issue does not appear for external sites). This is something that Microsoft should ideally fix, and I expect we'll see a hotfix for it in due course.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Workaround Fix</span><br />Be very careful here - you should not add sites to the Local intranet zone unless you are sure they are within your company intranet. These sites get an elevated level of trust and you would be exposing yourself to security risks if you accidentally whitelisted an external site.<br /><ul><li>In IE8, go to Tools -> Internet Options -> Security tab.</li><li>Select Local intranet</li><li>Click Sites</li><li>Click Advanced</li><li>Add the offending URL (e.g. <span style="font-style: italic;">http://something.internal.sub.domain.net/</span> ) - or whole domains (e.g. <span style="font-style: italic;">*://*.internal.sub.domain.net</span> - as per <a href="http://support.microsoft.com/kb/184456">Microsoft's instructions</a>)</li><li>Click Close, OK, OK.</li><li>Restart Outlook (IE should be fine)</li></ul>If you are on a company network, I imagine this can be rolled out by applying policies.<br /><br />I hope this helps someone!<br /><br />[Please note: I have turned off comments on this post because I keep getting link spam]Marvhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287712053243891946noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679974977837863437.post-58886633887721294872009-03-18T17:47:00.004+00:002009-03-18T18:20:26.333+00:00Resident Evil 5 - screen tearing fix (Xbox 360)Like many others, I've been looking forward to Resident Evil 5 since being introduced to Resident Evil 4 on the Gamecube! I bought it last Friday (the 13th - ooh, scary!) and have been enjoying it ever since.<br />The graphics are, in the main, great, but there's one big thing that spoils it for me. Screen tearing. And judging by the number of results when I google for it, it's bothering quite a few other people too!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">What is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_tearing">screen tearing</a>?</span><br />It's what you get when your TV is trying to display two frames at the same time, overlapping each other. It manifests itself as a jagged line, which stretches across the whole screen and is most noticeable in fast-moving action.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">When does it happen?</span><br />For me, it only happens in Resident Evil 5, and only when displaying in 1080p (on either 50 or 60Hz). It's most noticeable in some of the (frequent) cut scenes, but also while playing the game. It only seems to happen in the Xbox 360 version of the game.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">How can I fix it?</span><br />You can't fix it per se, at least not unless Capcom release a patch, but what you can do is implement a work-around. In the Xbox Settings, under video, you can set your console to output at 1080i or 720p (assuming your TV/monitor supports this). This results in a minor decrease in graphical quality, but not a noticeable one (at least for me), and removes the tearing completely!<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Further background...</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Does this happen on the PS3?</span><br />No - the PS3 uses a technique called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_tearing#V-sync">V-sync</a> (vertical synchronisation) to stop the issue at the expense of showing fewer frames per second. Personally, I would love the option to turn this on on the Xbox - even just to try it out!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Has this problem been around for long?</span><br />Well, some people noticed it in the demo (myself included), but put it down to the fact that it was pre-release code. So it's been around for a while.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Is 1080i better or 720P?</span><br />Well, its down to preference. 720P is better for faster moving games. 1080i has fewer updates per second, but is at a higher resolution, so looks nicer for still objects.<br />I have read that the Xbox 360 mainly outputs in 720P anyway and scales-up to other resolutions, but haven't been able to verify that.<br />It could well depend on your display - my TV has 1920 x 1080 pixels, so at 1080i there's a 1-1 mapping, which means it looks great. At 720P, it would be scaling some of the pixels so it might not look so fantastic. Your display might be different.<br />Personally, I haven't decided yet! I'd advise to try both<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">What other games does this happen in?</span><br />I haven't noticed tearing on any of the other games I've played on the Xbox 360. I've heard that Dead Rising had it (another Capcom game), and maybe Ghost Recon Advanced Warfare (GRAW). I have GRAW, and haven't noticed it, but that may be because it doesn't display at 1080p, or maybe it's just more noticeable in RE5.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Why does this happen in RE5?</span><br />Well ... lazy programming/product quality. The console is being pushed past its limits in terms of how much graphical information to process, and as a result has not finished processing one frame before another comes along. However, other games have comparable graphics in 1080p without screen tearing.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Is it still worth buying Resident Evil 5?</span><br />Hell yeah. Look around for the cheapest price though. It was available for £29.99 (UK) but now the cheapest is £32.99.Marvhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287712053243891946noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679974977837863437.post-10593302836654346392009-03-07T15:52:00.002+00:002009-03-07T16:06:47.264+00:00Taskbar shows in full screen applicationsI have a few applications that show the Windows <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">taskbar</span> when they are supposed to be running in full-screen. A couple of these applications are <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">VLC</span> media player, and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Hauppauge</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">WinTV</span>.<br /><br />I'm running Windows Vista (Home Premium), and have found a couple of workarounds, like auto-hiding the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">taskbar</span>, or running the programs in a compatibility mode, but these solutions are not ideal, as they either compromise other functionality, or I have to switch them off again afterwards.<br /><br />The under-lying problem seems to be a bug with Windows (possibly just Vista, possibly other versions too) where if you are running in Large Fonts mode (i.e. DPI-scaling is set to a non-standard value), then the call that gets by certain programs to put the application in full-screen mode does not hook into the functionality to hide the taskbar.<br />I can "prove this" by setting my DPI-scaling to standard (96DPI), rebooting (changing the DPI-scaling requires a reboot annoyingly) and then observing that full-screen mode (e.g. for WinTV) hides the taskbar ... and then changing it back to 120DPI (large) and doing the same - the taskbar is not hidden.<br /><br />I did look briefly into how to file a bug report with Windows, but 10 minutes of Googling left me without many options (install Microsoft OneCare or pay $35 to report the issue over the phone - no thanks!).<br /><br />One interesting thing is that although some applications display this behaviour, not all do. So Media Player Classic displays in full-screen correctly, where VLC does not. I can watch full-screen television in Windows Media Center without the taskbar, but not in WinTV.<br /><br />I may look further into it later. Perhaps I can use the SysInternals Process Monitor to figure out which Windows API call is being used and figure out a way to patch it. Then I can try to badger someone at Microsoft to listen. Most likely I'll keep using the work-arounds and being mildly annoyed about it every time that I have to...Marvhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287712053243891946noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679974977837863437.post-54445911652070088562009-03-07T14:04:00.003+00:002009-03-07T16:07:43.865+00:00How do you check the cost of a BT call?(For anyone reading this outside the United Kingdom, this doesn't really apply - it's only for UK telephone users on a British Telecom line!).<br /><br />I recently had to make a call to an 0844 number to renew some insurance. I looked it up on <a href="http://www.saynoto0870.com/">SayNoTo0870</a> and obtained the equivalent national prefix number (0292 something), but wasn't sure which would be cheaper.<br />I found <a href="http://www.productsandservices.bt.com/consumerProducts/displayTopic.do?topicId=25502">this tariff guide</a> on the BT website, which mentions that 0845 and 0870 numbers are free for me at weekends. 0844 numbers are generally cheaper than 0870 numbers, so I thought that the 0844 number might be best.<br /><br />Well, it turns out I was wrong, and I was charged 47 pence for a 10 minute call (grr!). I found this out not by waiting for my bill, but by using a technique I found on <a href="http://www.faqs.org/faqs/uk-telecom/network-services/">this page</a>.<br /><br />Basically, by entering a special code into the phone before the number you're calling, the call is made and you are immediately called back by the telephone exchange with the duration of the call and the cost.<br />The code is: <span style="font-family:courier new;">*40*<span style="color: rgb(51, 204, 0); font-weight: bold;">number</span>#<br /></span>(where <span style="color: rgb(51, 204, 0); font-weight: bold;font-family:courier new;" >number</span> is the actual number you are calling - e.g. 084400000000).<br /><br />This service appears to be free. There are a number of other "access codes" for BT exchanges listed on that page, most of which cost money. I guess there's a chance that even this service costs money, since the list is over 10 years old!Marvhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287712053243891946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679974977837863437.post-56073416426123940142008-11-28T19:36:00.010+00:002009-03-07T16:07:18.479+00:00Where can I buy the Medion Akoya P7300 PC?<span style="font-weight: bold;">Short answer:</span> you can't!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Long answer:</span><br />I'm in the market for a new base unit. I'll be attaching it to my LCD TV, so I don't need a monitor, but I do need HDMI. I'll be using it for multimedia and a bit of programming, which might extend to some 3D stuff if I get around to it. So I've started to look around to gauge prices. I found a deal on HotUKDeals that looked perfect:- <a href="http://www.hotukdeals.com/item/280532/medion-akoya-p7300-d-base-station-4/">The Medion Akoya P7300 from Aldi</a> at £499 - then reduced even further to £487 in line with the recent VAT cut in the UK.<br /><br />As noted in the comments on HotUKDeals, it's a very good deal. In terms of a pre-built PC with a 3-year warranty, the next nearest competitor is about £100 - £150 more! For me, it ticked the boxes on 4GB memory, 1TB hard disk, built-in TV card, reasonable (although not fantastic) graphics card, 64-bit Windows option, and the quad-core processor could come in handy for experimenting with writing parallel-programs. The full specs are <a href="http://www.medion.com/ms/aldi/md8838/uk/flash.html">here</a>.<br /><br />However - the problem is that this PC is only available in one place (Aldi stores) and they sold out of all stock in less than a day. In fact, because of people crafty enough to start queuing at 7:30am, some stores didn't even have enough stock to supply everyone in the queue so they had effectively sold out before they opened!<br /><br />One of the HotUKDeals forum members, exile, wrote to Medion to ask if they would be selling the PC from the Medion online shop (or if any other retailers would be selling that model) and received <a href="http://www.hotukdeals.com/item/280532/medion-akoya-p7300-d-base-station-4/showthread.php?p=3596664#post3596664">this disappointing response</a>:<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:courier new;">"Dear Medion Customer,</span><br /><span style="font-family:courier new;"> Thank you for your message.</span><br /><span style="font-family:courier new;"> Unfortunately the P7300D is exclusive to Aldi and therefore won't be stocked by our webshop I'm afraid.</span><br /><span style="font-family:courier new;"> We will have a similar spec PC out mid-end of January, but I don't know exactly when or at what price.</span><br /><span style="font-family:courier new;"> I can only suggest that you keep checking back on the webshop for this PC becoming available. </span><br /><span style="font-family:courier new;"> Please accept my apologies for any inconvenience caused.</span><br /><span style="font-family:courier new;"> Kind regards </span><br /><span style="font-family:courier new;"> Vicki"</span></span><br /><br />There <span style="font-weight: bold;">is </span>another Medion PC <a href="http://www.hotukdeals.com/item/273176/medion-q6600-3gb-1tb-pc-base-unit-w/">available for a similar price</a> from Tesco, which has the advantage of a Blu-ray drive, but falls down on the graphics card, memory, and slightly on the processor. It may or may not come with a 3 year warranty. I'll probably give that a miss for now.<br /><br />So, I'm going to keep my eyes and ears open, especially in the post-Christmas sales and see what comes up ... and I will use the specs of the Medion Akoya P7300 to compare the prices of any deals that do come up. I'll keep an eye on HotUKDeals and also <a href="http://www.avforums.com/forums/computer-systems/">AVForums</a>, where I found a lot of useful links to companies that build and customise desktop PCs.<br /><br />Failing that, I may attempt to build my own PC, but I just know I'll buy the wrong PSU, wrong case or break one of the components!<br /><br />Good luck!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Update:</span><br />Medion have now released two similarly-specced PCs, the Medion Akoya <a href="https://www.medionshop.co.uk/?areaID=482BE0C4FB8633C0E10000000A00007F&productID=482BE0C4FB8633C0E10000000A00007F49186AF76F531CD3E10000000A00005C&partnerID=100625574">P7316D</a> at £499 (plus £4.99 shipping) and the Medion Akoya <a href="https://www.medionshop.co.uk/?areaID=482BE0C4FB8633C0E10000000A00007F&productID=482BE0C4FB8633C0E10000000A00007F493ECD312D0468F0E10000000A00004B&partnerID=100625574">P7321D</a> at £529 (plus £7.99 shipping).<br />Here's a comparison of the three models (as of 5th March 2009) ...<br /><br /><br /><table width="70%"><tbody><tr><th><br /></th><th>P7300</th><th>P7316D</th><th>P7321D</th></tr><tr><th>Availability</th><td>None</td><td>Through Medion Shop</td><td>Through Medion Shop</td></tr><tr><th>Price</th><td>£487</td><td>£503 shipped</td><td>£537 shipped</td></tr><tr><th>Processor</th><td>Intel Q8200</td><td>Intel Q8200</td><td>Intel Q8300</td></tr><tr><th>Processor Speed</th><td>Quad 2.33Ghz</td><td>Quad 2.33Ghz</td><td>Quad 2.5Ghz</td></tr><tr><th>Memory</th><td>4GB DDR2-SDRAM</td><td>4GB DDR2-SDRAM</td><td>4GB DDR2-SDRAM</td></tr><tr><th>Hard Disk</th><td>1TB</td><td>1TB</td><td>1TB</td></tr><tr><th>Graphics Card</th><td>NVIDIA® GeForce® 9600 GT 512Mb</td><td>NVIDIA® GeForce® GT120 1024Mb</td><td>NVIDIA® GeForce® 9500 GT (256/512Mb?)</td></tr><tr><th>Optical drive</th><td>DVD Rewriter</td><td>DVD Rewriter</td><td>DVD Rewriter</td></tr><tr><th>Windows</th><td>Vista Home Premium</td><td>Vista Home Premium</td><td>Vista Home Premium</td></tr><tr><th>Warranty</th><td>36 months</td><td>12 months</td><td>12 months</td></tr><tr><th>Other</th><td>Digital/Analogue TV tuner</td><td><br /></td><td>Possibly no HDMI port</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><br />The bundled software seems the same, as does the number of USB ports, audio ports, etc, etc.<br /><br />In my opinion, the original deal is still the best of the 3!Marvhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287712053243891946noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679974977837863437.post-80490343886213489992008-10-23T18:16:00.009+01:002009-08-27T17:53:34.727+01:00Why is everyone so excited about the new Microsoft Patch (23rd October 2008)?This afternoon, techy web-sites like <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/23/windows_emergency_update/">The Register</a> started reporting about a new Microsoft Patch to be released outside the normal patch cycle. It was to be released at 10am PST, which is 6pm British Summer Time (7pm European Standard Time).<br /><br />This is very unusual, and has only happened a couple of times in the past few years. Some people reported that their companies had been phoned by Microsoft and warned to apply the patch! So what is the vulnerability that this patch addresses, and why is it a big deal?<br /><br />That's reported here in <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS08-067.mspx">Microsoft Security Bulletin MS08-067</a> (Vulnerability in Server Service Could Allow Remote Code Execution (958644)).<br /><br />The detail says that a malicious user could create a specially crafted RPC* request which can allow remote code execution. It lists the versions of Windows affected - and it's pretty much all of them (Windows 2000 and above, right up to Vista).<br /><br />So how does this affect you? Well, it means that someone could <span style="font-weight: bold;">take over your PC</span> entirely <span style="font-weight: bold;">without you knowing anything about it</span>.<br /><br />Most vulnerabilities rely on users doing something - clicking on a link, downloading something, etc. This one is different - far, far scarier - because the user does not have to do anything - the attacker can get access undetected.<br />A very real possibility is that someone will write a worm (like a virus, but nastier) that will use this vulnerability to spread. So even if someone doesn't attack your machine directly, a worm from any number of infected machines can infect your machine - and you are then in trouble!<br /><br />They could capture your internet banking details, they could email all of your contacts, they could use your machine to try to hack into a government network (all of these are real attacks that have happened in the past).<br /><br />So, where possible, I suggest you patch your machine immediately!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Update:</span> I notice that some sites are reporting that the <a href="http://www.frsirt.com/english/advisories/2008/2902">vulnerability is being exploited</a> in the wild. They do not say in what way, but it does mean that you are even more likely to be attacked.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">*RPC means Remote Procedure Call and is a technology that underlies Windows' networking capability.<br /></span>Marvhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287712053243891946noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679974977837863437.post-62018514669942686742008-08-20T11:24:00.002+01:002008-08-20T11:26:09.435+01:00Why are people searching for "vn b m gn mbnmncbm xbc bcv 0 vfkmjirhtfnkj nb b x bmnx bv"?I have no idea. But Microsoft's AdCenter seems to think it's an excellent phrase to advertise against!<br />(According to <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theregister.co.uk%2F2008%2F08%2F20%2Fmicrosoft_adcenter_keywords%2F&ei=3fCrSIzFMYm00gSTrZG1Dw&usg=AFQjCNFgLDjnS_G8KJBT9hb8aA3zhq6K2Q&sig2=MrFgKXm_zcY6ucBg68WOHw">The Register</a>)Marvhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287712053243891946noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679974977837863437.post-16769443420775623532008-08-05T21:19:00.003+01:002010-07-28T18:28:29.470+01:00Mario Kart Wii - how do you get 3 stars? (part 4)Update: <a href="http://tough-to-find.blogspot.com/2008/06/mario-kart-wii-how-do-you-get-3-stars.html">Part 1</a>, <a href="http://tough-to-find.blogspot.com/2008/06/mario-kart-wii-how-do-you-get-3-stars_23.html">Part 2</a>, <a href="http://tough-to-find.blogspot.com/2008/07/mario-kart-wii-how-do-you-get-3-stars.html">Part 3</a><br /><br />I'm actually running out of advice now! Please bear with me if you already know any of the advice in the tips below. I hope I still have some surprises up my sleeve!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Marv's 14th tip</span> - you can sometimes avoid a blue shell<br />Don't get too excited by this one, but it is possible to occasionally avoid a blue shell. However, in 99% of cases, you are screwed.<br />The main method of avoiding the blue shell is to be going through a cannon, which obviously only works on those courses with a cannon/"big jump" (DK's Jungle Parkway [I think], DK Mountain, DK Summit, Maple Treeway, etc). This is difficult to plan - by the time you hear the dreaded blue shell warning siren, if you're not about to go into the cannon anyway, you'll be hit! It's nice when it happens though.<br />You can also avoid a blue shell by jumping off the track into space or deep water on those levels that have them. This generally wastes more time than it saves, so is only really worth it if you're playing against a friend and want to deny them the satisfaction of actually hitting you!<br />There is a way to avoid a blue shell on-demand, but you have to have at least one boost mushroom. Since I'm assuming you'll be in 1st place for most of each race, getting a boost mushroom is tricky. I guess if you find yourself further back in the pack and get a mushroom, it might be worth holding onto it for a while.<br />Assuming you manage to get a mushroom, the idea is to use it as soon as the blue shell stops moving around your vehicle and starts to dive down. There are various videos on Youtube, including <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9jIGPwLY2M">this one</a>. Apparently, the time-frame for using your mushroom is longer than in Mario Kart DS. I tried this method once, accidentally using two mushrooms instead of one, and did manage to escape unharmed. Good luck!<br />(You can also avoid a blue shell if you have an invincibility star, I believe - and possibly a bullet-bill. I have a feeling that a mega-mushroom won't help. All of these are power-ups you are unlikely to have in 1st place!)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Marv's 15th tip</span> - hang back slightly on the first course<br />The further back you are in the pack (i.e. the worse your position), the better power-ups you will get. This isn't much use when your aim is to get to 1st place and stay as far in the lead as possible. However, there's one occasion in each Grand Prix where you can't help being further back - when you start your first race.<br />So, rather than trying your best to get to the front of the pack, you can fight your way forward, but only to something like 6th - 2nd. Stay back until you go through the first set of question-mark blocks. As soon as you are past, start playing harder to get to first place. With any luck, you'll have picked up a better power-up than if you'd been in first place when you collected the question-mark block.<br />There are some courses where this works better than others. For example, there are courses where the question mark blocks are quite close to the starting line, and it's difficult to get to the front anyway. Those courses are good candidates for this tip. However, there are other courses where you have to drive for a fair stretch before you get a power-up, and still others where there is a good opportunity for over-taking and getting a good lead. On those courses, this tip isn't so useful.<br />You can also use this to your advantage if you are hit by a particularly nasty set of items and end up in 2nd-or-worse place. Hang back just slightly to get, hopefully, something like a star or 3 mushrooms to help you back into 1st with a decent lead! Be wary, though. Sometimes you'll get something like 3 green shells, which isn't really worth hanging back for!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Marv's 16th tip</span> - use drafting<br />Like some of the other tips I've written, this is one from the instructions manual, but one that many people aren't aware of.<br />Not to be confused with drifting, drafting is a technique you can use where if you are driving (closely enough) behind another character you will see wisps of smoke/steam/who-knows from your vehicle; you will also get slightly faster. If you manage to stay directly behind that vehicle for long enough, you will see a sort-of white tunnel of air wisps, which gives you a further speed boost, and normally means you can knock the car in front out of the way!<br />This is mostly useful at the beginning of the first race, if you do want to take the lead quickly. Also if you happen to fall behind. It's probably worth knocking the vehicle in front if you can - any extra distance you are in front helps!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Marv's 17th tip</span> - stay on the main part of the track<br />Again, this might be obvious, but it might not be! There are many places where you can take short-cuts, some of which may look very inviting. In general, however, any short-cut that means you'll be driving off the main part of the track may well slow you down enough that you will lose more time than you gain.<br />For example, in Delfino Square, there's a little alley you can take after the small bridge and before the big rainbow lifting bridge. But if you take this short-cut, unless you have amazing power-slide turbo skills you get slowed down massively by the mud.<br />You can take these short-cuts if you manage to snag a mushroom (or a star if you're very lucky!), as long as you aren't planning on saving it to battle a blue shell.<br />Other short-cuts may be less drastic, but still slow you down - driving over grass, sand and water is generally slower.<br />There are shortcuts, however, which do save time - like on Wario's Gold Mine. The difference there is that the road surface does not slow you down (in fact, there are boosts) and so, as long as you don't hit anything, you can shave valuable seconds off your time!<br />If you want to know which shortcuts are good, I would recommend downloading the world champion records for each lap (ignoring any shortcuts that use mushrooms) or hitYouTube and look for good times! Do bear in mind that some vehicle/character combinations will be better at some shortcuts than others.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Marv's 18th tip</span> - be lucky! Or patient...<br />No matter how good a driver you are, sometimes you just will not be able to win. I recently played through the Special Cup and was hit by no less than 6 blue shells onBowser's Castle Wii . And that was on 50CC! While I managed to grab 1st place, the amount of time I had spent catching up meant that I didn't get a 3 star rating.<br />So ... accept that sometimes you will be unlucky, and sometimes you will be lucky. If the same thing happened every time you played a GP, it would be boring anyway!<br />If I have a bad race in the middle of a GP, I normally tend to continue, reasoning that getting practise in the remaining races is no bad thing. However, if my first race goes badly, I do occasionally throw in the towel and start again!<br />Remember - the important thing is to <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">have fun</span>.<br /><br />Well, that's me done for now. As you may have noticed, I'm running out of information that I can pass on, so this might be my last post. Thank you for reading, and thank you for your comments! If you guys 'n' gals do have any other questions or comments, please feel free to add them, and if I get enough stuff together, I might do another post. There's also a chance I might scour the web for more information to put here!<br />I did contemplate doing a breakdown of how to play each race, but that would be quite time-consuming, and I'm not sure how useful it would be! Again, if any of you are stuck on a particular track or GP, let me know and I can create a sample breakdown or two.<br />Good luck, and enjoy yourselves. Hope to meet some of you on WiFi at some point!Marvhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287712053243891946noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679974977837863437.post-36022466684838383652008-07-17T14:24:00.006+01:002009-04-17T12:43:59.233+01:00Firefox 3.0.1 breaks window.open() widthI've just noticed that the application I'm working on has started behaving strangely in Firefox. There's a pop-up window, where we specify the width to be 800, but Firefox is displaying that pop-up at a width of 600. The call looks like this (URLs changed to protect the innocent):-<br /><span style=";font-family:courier new;font-size:85%;" ><br /><a href="#" onclick="window.open('http://www.google.com', 'Test', 'width=800, height=800'); return false;">Example - broken in Firefox 3.0.1</a><br /></span><br /><br /><a href="http://www.google.com/" onclick="window.open('http://www.google.com', 'Test', 'width=800, height=800'); return false;">Example - broken in Firefox 3.0.1</a><br /><br />This was working fine this morning, so I'm assuming that it's a problem with the 3.0.1 patch release of Firefox, which I installed at lunch time.<br /><br />This is annoying, and I expect it to be fixed by the Firefox developers soon, but in the mean-time an easy patch is to also set the outerwidth property in the window.open features (according to this <a href="http://javascript.about.com/library/blpopup10.htm">Popup Window Reference</a>, that's Firefox-specific so should be safe):-<br /><span style=";font-family:courier new;font-size:85%;" ><br /><a href="#" onclick="window.open('http://www.google.com', 'Test', 'width=800, height=800, outerwidth=800'); return false;">Example - works in Firefox 3.0.1</a><br /></span><br /><a href="http://www.google.com/" onclick="window.open('http://www.google.com', 'Test', 'width=800, height=800, outerwidth=800'); return false;">Example - works in Firefox 3.0.1</a><br /><br />I hope this helps anyone else hitting the same issue!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Update</span>: This bug may not be related specifically to Firefox 3.0.1. A colleague has tried both links and both links work (the window is opened with a width of 800). When I played around with my window size in Firefox 3.0.1, I found that sometimes the first link works, and sometimes it does not.<br />Firefox 2.0.0.14 seems to be fine, even when you play with the window size. Perhaps it's something to do with the myriad Add-ons I have installed!Marvhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287712053243891946noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679974977837863437.post-78394579585313750392008-07-14T21:42:00.001+01:002010-07-28T18:28:15.342+01:00Mario Kart Wii - how do you get 3 stars? (part 3)Update: <a href="http://tough-to-find.blogspot.com/2008/06/mario-kart-wii-how-do-you-get-3-stars.html">Part 1</a>, <a href="http://tough-to-find.blogspot.com/2008/06/mario-kart-wii-how-do-you-get-3-stars_23.html">Part 2</a>, <a href="http://tough-to-find.blogspot.com/2008/08/mario-kart-wii-how-do-you-get-3-stars.html">Part 4</a><br /><br />Welcome to the 3rd exciting installment of my guide to getting 3 stars in Mario Kart Wii. Sorry it's been a while since I last posted, but work and Smash Bros have side-tracked me!<br />By the way, if you want an easy(ish) way to keep up with my latest posts, you can subscribe to the RSS feed - either using <a href="http://tough-to-find.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default">your own</a> RSS reader, or <a href="http://www.google.com/ig/add?feedurl=http%3A//tough-to-find.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default">using Google reader</a> (my favourite!).<br /><br />Without further ado, here is my next set of tips. This time, they all relate to various techniques for getting speed boosts. These <span style="font-style: italic;">can</span> help you go much faster, but be warned that occasionally you may find they push you too far in the wrong direction, and you can hit a wall, fall off the track or hit an obstacle! If in doubt, don't use the turbo unless you are sure you can control it.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Marv's Ninth Tip:</span> turbo at start and on corners<br />Well, this is kind-of two tips in one, but the first one is so obvious that I'm just putting it down for the sake of completeness and in case any of you have missed it!<br />You can get a turbo every time you start a race. Simply wait until the number 2 starts to disappear, and hold down the accelerator. When you start, you should get little flames behind your vehicle and zoom off much faster than you ordinarily would. Be careful though; press the accelerator too early and you will "spin out" - that is, your car will twisting from side to side and you won't go anywhere (if that happens, let go of the accelerator until you stop twisting ... then go!). The exact timing is difficult, and you may need to practise.<br />In fact, the closer you get to the spin-out time, without actually spinning out, the faster your turbo will be. You'll see this if you start playing against your own ghosts on Time Trials - sometimes your character will move further ahead, even using the same vehicle!<br />I would recommend learning how to get the turbo by ear as well as by looking at the screen. If you can do both, then it won't matter if someone walks in front of the screen, or you are playing on a small TV, or if someone starts talking to you, or forces you to play with your television muted!<br /><br />The other main time you will want to turbo is when you are going around corners. Be aware though, that this will only work when you are in Manual mode (more below). You can ignore the rest of this tip if you use Automatic!<br />These turbos (mini turbos) work differently between cars and bikes, but the basic idea is that you keep the accelerator held down, but also hold the brake at the same time (this is the B button when using the wheel). Don't worry - pressing the brake won't slow you down as long as you have the accelerator pressed at the same time!<br />You will need to be steering into the corner (you don't have to steer much, but be careful not to steer the wrong way). When you press the brake, you will do a little hop and start "power-sliding". You can adjust your turn slightly by steering, but don't let go of the brake or accelerator!<br />Eventually, you will see blue sparks, and if you are on a bike or are in a kart and have run out of corner, this is when your turbo is ready. Try to point your vehicle in roughly the right direction, and let go of the break - you should have a little turbo! If you are on a bike, you can do a wheelie soon after the turbo to try to keep the high speed up.<br />If you are in a kart and the corner is long enough, you can hold the power-slide until you get orange sparks. This means that you'll get an even longer turbo, so it's worth holding out if you can! Again, don't wait for an orange turbo if it means you are going to end up going in the wrong direction or hitting something - stick with the blue sparks in these cases.<br />Occasionally, you will run out of corner before you even get the blue sparks - in that case, just straighten up and let go of the brake - it's better to stay on the track than risk a turbo which pushes you off!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Marv's Tenth Tip:</span> go manual<br />Picking automatic means that your vehicle power-slides through corners automatically, which means you don't lose speed when cornering. However, picking manual means that you get turbos when you power-slide through a corner, which can make a massive difference!<br />This is, perhaps, controversial. I myself played through a lot of the Grand Prix on automatic originally, and found it a lot easier. I have seen comments from other people saying similar things. However, I now play through on Manual. The pros and cons of each break down like this:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Speed - turning</span><br />With Manual, if you don't power-slide while turning, you lose speed. his includes every time you adjust your direction, so you'll probably find yourself hopping about occasionally to face in the right direction. However, with Automatic, whenever you turn, or corner, power-sliding is automatically done for you, so you never lose speed.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Speed - straights</span><br />Unlike in Mario Kart DS, "snaking" (which is doing lots of little mini turbos in a straight line) is not a big factor here, so there is no difference.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Speed - recovery</span><br />There are many, many occasions where you have been hit by an item and want to get your speed back up. Using power-slides to turbo around a corner are a great way of doing this!<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Turbos on corners</span><br />Here is the big advantage of the manual option - you can get at least one turbo on many corners. Often more than one!<br />When automatically power-sliding, you don't get blue sparks on the corners, so no turbos for you.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Overall speed</span><br />It's no coincidence that all of the records you see for time trials are done using manual steering; used effectively, those turbos make a big difference!<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">CPU difficulty</span><br />I have seen it mentioned on the internet that the computer "goes easy on you" if you choose the Automatic option. I haven't verified this yet, but it could be possible. The thing is, that you will hopefully be playing against real people at some point, and they definitely won't go easy on you!<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Kudos</span><br />Because manual is widely regarded as the "true way" to play Mario Kart, you will get more kudos if you play this way!<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Difficulty to learn</span><br />It is definitely easier to pick up automatic steering. When you first try to switch back to manual, you will be tempted to quit almost immediately. Stick with it, though, and you will soon get the hang of it.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">With the wheel</span><br />Because the wheel is that bit more imprecise, using automatic makes a big difference here. Personally, I think that Nintendo were almost-forced to put the automatic option in, because otherwise beginners would struggle to cope with playing with the wheel.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Verdict</span><br />You will end up playing on Manual eventually anyway, so it's not worth taking the false sense of security of using automatic - not if you want to properly earn those 3 stars and to defend them on-line! Stick with manual! <span style="font-weight: bold;">Marv's Eleventh tip:</span> use tricks<br />If you haven't read the manual that came with Mario Kart, go ahead and read it now! Read it? Good! Tricks, along with bikes and the wheel, are one of the new additions to Mario Kart that have come in with the Wii version. There must be a reason they're there, and there is...<br />Whenever you take a jump from a ramp (that is - for every jump that's not just you hitting the power-slide button), you can perform your trick action (either flicking the wiimote or wheel, or pressing the appropriate button - read that manual!) and then when you land, you will get a speed boost. This comes in handy more on some courses than others, but probably on at least half of them!<br />It applies to ramps with or without speed boosts, and even in some strange places - like in Bowser's Castle (Wii), where there's the wobbly floor; keep trying tricks there and you'll get at least one, possibly two boosts. You can also get boosts from the edges of the lava geysers close to the finish line. On Coconut Mall, you can get trickable jumps from many of the obstacles (water fountains, tree bases, etc).<br />There are courses with half-pipes - you can do tricks here, but be aware that some of them are too far from the racing line for it to be worth it. When you do do a trick from a half-pipe, try to make it as shallow an angle as possible. Don't do what I sometimes do, which is end up facing backwards!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Marv's Twelth Tip:</span> turbo when you fall off<br />Just a short one, this one, but not very well known. When you fall, or are knocked off the track (into deep water, lava or space), you can get a turbo when you are placed back on the track by helpful Lakitu. If you press the accelerator at the very instance your wheels touch the track, you should get a turbo. It seems to me that the timing on this is much less forgiving than for other things (like the turbo from the start line, and for tricks), but it's worth practising!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Marv's bonus Thirtheenth Tip:</span> Avoiding POW blocks<br />This one was going to wait until next time, but some of you were anxious for it, and <span style="font-weight: bold;">kadjius </span>has posted the technique <a href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=2679974977837863437&postID=7904079316530100097">in the comments</a> anyway!<br />When the POW block appears on screen, it thumps or bangs three times.<br />Carry out your trick action (shake the wheel or wiimote, for example) when the third thump hits. You will lose your item, and spin around, but if you have timed it right, you will lose no speed and will carry on as normal! It does take practise, but is very worth it. The only annoyance is if you are in the middle of taking a corner or have a power up you were waiting to use!<br />The one other time you can avoid POW blocks is if you are in mid-air - either from a jump on a ramp, or through a cannon.<br /><br />Well, that's the end of the tips for this time. Well done if you made it all the way through them, because it was a long read this time! There are still some tips to give out, so stay tuned and I'll post again soon. Please feel free to post any questions, or even your own tips in the comments!Marvhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287712053243891946noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679974977837863437.post-79040793165301000972008-06-23T13:44:00.008+01:002010-07-28T18:27:57.629+01:00Mario Kart Wii - how do you get 3 stars? (part 2)Update: <a href="http://tough-to-find.blogspot.com/2008/06/mario-kart-wii-how-do-you-get-3-stars.html">Part 1</a>, <a href="http://tough-to-find.blogspot.com/2008/07/mario-kart-wii-how-do-you-get-3-stars.html">Part 3</a>, <a href="http://tough-to-find.blogspot.com/2008/08/mario-kart-wii-how-do-you-get-3-stars.html">Part 4</a><br /><br />Well, here is the second part of my thrilling breakdown on how you can get those elusive 3 star rankings in all the Mario Kart Wii GPs.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Marv's Fifth Tip:</span> what counts as a 3 star race?<br />I realised that I haven't exactly specified what criteria are used to judge your performance and decide what ranking to give you! Well, that's partly because no-one exactly knows! There are a few theories out there about not being hit by items and staying mostly in 1st place, which makes sense, but it seems to me that the overriding factor is how fast you complete each race. Things like not falling off, not hitting walls and avoiding hitting banana peels and shells all help - but only in as much as they help you to stay at your top speed as much as possible.<br />I think it's probably true that you have to get 1st place in each of the four races within a GP, but if you haven't got 1st place, you probably weren't quick enough anyway!<br />This matches well with my experience of Mario Kart on the Nintendo DS, where I managed to get 3 stars in all GPs primarily though shaving second after second from my times. In both Mario Kart DS and Wii, I have managed to get a 3 star ranking after hitting a wall, hitting items, and using a lot of items - but only when getting good times in all courses.<br />Perhaps in time, we will see a table of times-needed-for-3-stars for each GP, but I haven't found one yet. Mario Kart Wii does not give you a total time (I think Mario Kart DS did), so it makes the compilation of such a table tricky!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Marv's Sixth tip:</span> give up on the wheel<br />This is perhaps controversial, because the wheel is part of what makes the Wii edition of Mario Kart so much fun. I have found that even after many hours of practise, my performance with the wheel just doesn't match my performance with the Wiimote-plus-nunchuk. I have seen similar comments in forums and message boards. There's not much in it, but on the occasional corner, I will try to turn slightly one way and the wheel will interpret it as the other way, so I lose a second or two correcting myself.<br />The Wiimote-plus-nunchuk is my favourite combination, but many people swear by the Gamecube controller (or the wireless version - the Wavebird). The classic controller is probably good too.<br />Having said that, if you stop using the wheel, you run the risk of losing out on getting a golden wheel for online play! You only get the golden wheel if you predominantly use the wheel (it seems to be that you have to use it more than 50% of the time - you can check your usage from the License screen). Additionally, if your friends are anything like mine, they will ridicule you if you use the Wiimote and nunchuk, saying it lacks honour compared to using the wheel. So, personally, I attempt each GP with the wheel, trying to get up to a 2 star rating, and only then will I allow myself to switch back to the Wiimote plus nunchuk. From then on, I will alternate control methods until I get 3 stars (I was very proud to get a 3 star ranking on one of the 50cc GPs using the wheel last weekend!).<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Marv's Seventh Tip:</span> learn from others<br />If you find that you are really struggling to get a good time on a GP (you should aim to be quite far ahead of all the other racers by the end of each race), you can get some tips quite easily by downloading the ghost data for the world champion of each track within that GP. Watch through them, and even race against them (but don't feel disheartened if you can't even remotely keep up - these are world champions after all!). I used this technique a lot when I was working my way through the Time Trials and it worked well. Obviously the game dynamics are a bit different in the Grand Prixs, but it can give you an idea of how to take corners and shortcuts when you aren't being whacked in the back of the head by a blue shell!<br />You can also take a look on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=3+stars+mario+kart+wii+cup&search_type=&aq=f">Youtube</a> - there are quite a few 3 star videos now, which can not only give you tips, but also show you that it's really possible to get those 3 stars!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Marv's Eighth tip: </span>trailing items to defeat red shells<br />When you are in 1st place, there are quite a few items that the computer-controlled players can hit you with. Blue shells, I can't help with. Pow blocks are a later tip! You should hopefully be far enough ahead to avoid the middle-of-the-field power ups (stars and bullet bills). You will hopefully be able to avoid most banana peels and fake question-mark blocks! Green shells can be tricky, as they can come in at an angle unexpectedly.<br />This tip is about red shells. You might avoid blue shells for a couple of races, but you will often be plagued by red shells. Fear not ... there is a way to avoid them! When you are in first place, you are very likely to get the following 5 items: green shell, banana peel, multiple-banana-peels, red shell and fake question-mark-blocks. Dump fake question mark blocks as soon as you can, because they are no good! The rest of the items can be used as a shield to stop red shells from hitting you from behind.<br />The multiple-banana-peels can be used easily - when you hit the fire button, they trail behind you automatically. The rest of the items take (slightly) more effort, but can also be used. The "how" depends on your control scheme, but basically involves holding down the fire button while you drive. For the Wii Wheel on manual, you hold left or right on the control pad. You can either keep fire held down the whole time you have the item, or you can wait until you hear the red shell warning sound and see the icon at the bottom of the screen - you normally have plenty of time to arm your shields!<br /><br />That concludes part two of my guide to getting 3 stars in Mario Kart GP. More to follow in a few days!Marvhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287712053243891946noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679974977837863437.post-51033304717778785642008-06-23T13:24:00.004+01:002010-07-28T18:26:50.724+01:00Mario Kart Wii - how do you get 3 stars? (part 1)Update: <a href="http://tough-to-find.blogspot.com/2008/06/mario-kart-wii-how-do-you-get-3-stars_23.html">Part 2</a>, <a href="http://tough-to-find.blogspot.com/2008/07/mario-kart-wii-how-do-you-get-3-stars.html">Part 3</a>, <a href="http://tough-to-find.blogspot.com/2008/08/mario-kart-wii-how-do-you-get-3-stars.html">Part 4</a><br /><br />I've spent quite a lot of time playing Mario Kart over its many incarnations (from the Super Nintendo "Super Mario Kart" up to "Mario Kart DS"), and have been playing Mario Kart Wii for the past few months.<br />It took me a while, but I now have every character and kart unlocked, and the one remaining item is to get a 3 star rating on every Grand Prix. When you have a 3 star rating and play online, it shows up next to your name, so everyone can be in awe of you!<br /><br />I've had a look around on the internet, and while there seem to be plenty of pages pointing out that you need to get 3 stars on every GP to get that ranking, there's very little information about how to actually do it. So, I'm hoping to put up a number of blog posts which will give you tips on how to go about it.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Marv's First Tip</span>: practise.<br />As with many other games, you will get better and better as time goes on and you have played the same level over and over again.<br />If you have played through enough to win a gold cup in every Grand Prix, the chances are that you'll have a few one-star ratings (and perhaps the occasional two or three-star!). Now you need to build on those skills and keep playing the same tracks until you are fast enough to win every time. Make sure you are taking advantage of every shortcut (where appropriate - if it's off-road for too long, it might not be worth it) and using mini turbos at every opportunity. Use a lot of tricks, but only where you don't have to go too far out of your way to do them, or where you end up in the air for a long time unneccessarily.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Marv's Second Tip</span>: choose a character and vehicle and stick with it<br />Find a character and kart (or bike) combination you like and stick with it for a while. The characters and karts are all different and mostly have advantages and disadvantages, but if you keep switching you may find it difficult to pull of that tricky-shortcut because you aren't used to the handling.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Marv's Third Tip</span>: bikes are better<br />Bikes are probably going to make it easier to get 3 stars, because even though they are generally lighter and more easily knocked around, they can get a speed boost on dead straights, which karts cannot. My own character/kart combination is my Mii (medium-weight - roughly the ame as Mario) and the Mach Bike. This gives me a fairly low top speed, but it's pretty good off-road, and the acceleration is nice. It also has a good turning circle.<br />Ideally, acceleration shouldn't be an issue, but when you are playing a GP, as opposed to a Time Trial, you know that you will occasionally be hit by blue shells, red shells, Pow blocks, lightnings and so on - no matter how far ahead you get!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Marv's Fourth tip</span>: turbo after spin out<br />This is of use mainly to those whose characters have low acceleration ratings. When you are spun out, or hit something and stop completely, you can get a turbo start. Hold the brake (/powerslide) button at the same time as the accelerator for a couple of seconds until you see the blue sparks; now let go of the brake and you'll turbo off at full speed!<br />If your vehicle has good acceleration anyway, you won't need to do this, and the one-or-two second delay will actually slow you down more (especially if you get spun out again while you are waiting). I find that with my combination (above), I do use it, but only occasionally.<br /><br />More tips to follow soon...Marvhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287712053243891946noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679974977837863437.post-3376176180120070382008-06-18T23:50:00.005+01:002008-06-19T10:12:11.017+01:00Opera Ctrl-Click to open in new page / tab - updatedWell, it has been a while now since I <a href="http://tough-to-find.blogspot.com/2007/09/heres-something-that-people-may-find.html">originally posted</a> about wanting to use Ctrl Click as my shortcut for opening pages in a new tab (or a new page as Opera calls it!).<br /><br />I had a couple of comments from people who said they had managed it, but no matter what I tried, I had no luck (perhaps it works differently on different operating systems). I even posted about it in the <a href="http://dev.opera.com/forums/topic/236098">Opera Dev forums</a> (not sure whether that was the right place!), but no joy there.<br /><br />However, while searching for more information, I stumbled across a piece of Opera User JavaScript in the My Opera community forums - <a href="http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=208071">from shoust here</a>.<br /><br />If you want to implement it, you'll need to set up your User JavaScript folder, as described on <a href="http://www.opera.com/support/tutorials/userjs/using/#writingscripts">this page</a>. Then follow the link to <a href="http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=208071">shoust</a>'s post and save "allinbackground.js" to the folder you set up (you can ignore the bit about the "button"). <s>Restart Opera (not sure if you have to, but I did) and</s> you're all set up!<br />[Edit: You don't even need to restart! Opera gets better and better]<br /><br />One further change might be to enable User JavaScript <a href="http://www.opera.com/support/tutorials/userjs/using/#securepages">on HTTPS sites</a> - but do so only at your own risk!<br /><br />I hadn't realised that Opera had a flexible JavaScript engine out of the box; I'd only recently started using the Firefox Greasemonkey extension and enjoying it, so I should be able to port my scripts straight over!Marvhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287712053243891946noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679974977837863437.post-11793407157823493442008-06-02T19:49:00.004+01:002008-06-02T19:57:21.991+01:00Google - why so shy?! allintext rulesAh, finally! While searching for a link to information about the "allinanchor" page, I found <a href="http://www.googleguide.com/advanced_operators.html">this wonderful list</a> of hidden (not documented by Google) features!<br />Now -<br /><a href="http://www.google.co.uk/search?num=100&hl=en&safe=off&q=allintext%3Aie+8+%22beta+2%22&btnG=Search&meta=">allintext:ie 8 "beta 2"</a><br />- works as I want it to! I think now I'll edit all of my Firefox keyword searches and Internet Explorer searches to include that directive by default. Happy days!<br />There are a couple of other options I might play with on that page too. I'm intrigued by <b>phonebook</b> and <b>rphonebook</b> and the <b>intitle</b> image search could be useful too...Marvhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287712053243891946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679974977837863437.post-70784831241980556562008-06-02T19:11:00.004+01:002008-06-02T19:56:59.431+01:00Google - please search for what I ask forI do a fair few Google searches over the course of my day, and I've begun to notice a worrying trend. Google is beginning to give me less control over what I search for. Instead of returning pages that contain all of the items in my search query, it will return pages that contain some of the items, and that are linked to with text that contains the rest. This is annoying.<br />An example is this search:<br /><a href="http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=ie+8+%22beta+2%22&hl=en&safe=active">ie 8 "beta 2"</a><br />Currently, the top result for this page is a link to the Internet Explorer page for Beta 1 ... but that's not what I want! If I go through to Google's cache of the page, I see <a href="http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:Haa8tE9koqwJ:www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/default.mspx+ie+8+%22beta+2%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=uk">this</a>. Note the text in the Google frame that says "These terms only appear in links pointing to this page: <b>beta 2</b>".<br /><br />OK ... so I can understand that for many users, this feature could be useful and could give more meaningful results on some queries - but as a sophisticated user, I would expect that I could turn it off and search purely for pages that contain my terms! Google's <a href="http://www.google.com/help/operators.html">advanced pages</a> do not (currently) have this option (which would be something like <b>inpage:</b> and <b>allinpage:</b>).<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">There is however, a semi-hidden "</span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">allinanchor:</span><span style="font-style: italic;">" directive!</span><br /><br />That was the second query I had trouble with today (the first was <a href="http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:82t5W-YN7uwJ:sqlzoo.net/howto/source/z.dir/tip550066/sqlserver+add+unique+column+sql+server&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=uk">this one</a>). Yahoo was giving me better results earlier, but seems to be following Google's behaviour now.<br /><br />I don't know whether this has changed recently. I have noticed searches coming up with similar issues in the past, but not for a while. It could be that Google are tweaking the weighting of keywords-in-page to keywords-in-inbound-links, and this is an unfortunate side-effect.<br />It may also cause (or be the result of?) link-spammers - I think I've seen cases where link-spammers have taken advantage or weighting based upon keywords-in-inbound-links already...<br /><br />The phenomenon appears to have been noted on other pages like <a href="http://www.searchengineshowdown.com/features/google/inconsistent.shtml">this one</a>, <a href="http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum30/30304.htm">this one</a>... I also read earlier someone suggesting surrounding each term with quotes, but that clearly doesn't work in some cases ("beta 2" above is already in quotes), and is a pain-in-the-behind to have to do for every search!<br /><br />Please Google, smarten up and realise that some of your users are smarter than you think :o)Marvhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287712053243891946noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679974977837863437.post-36083413285130116792008-04-02T22:51:00.003+01:002008-04-15T20:36:18.245+01:00Testing .asmx Web Services in Visual Studio 2008I was trying to test an asmx-style web-service with Visual Studio 2008. Using the "wizard way" created me a TestMethod that looks like this:-<br /><pre><br /> [TestMethod()]<br /> [HostType("ASP.NET")]<br /> [UrlToTest("http://localhost/Website/Services/")]<br /> public void GetMainArticlesTest()<br /> {<br /> Articles target = new Articles();<br /> XmlDocument actual;<br /> actual = target.GetMainArticles();<br /> //Test goes here<br /> Assert.IsNotNull(actual);<br /> }<br /></pre><br />This looks fine, but when I try to run it, I get 403 Forbidden errors. I spent some time trying to rectify this, but didn't get anywhere. There are hints on the web that this method of running tests does not work with some methods of authentication...<br />(We also had problems debugging tests like the above - I think it runs in a brand new process each time which is not connected to automatically.)<br /><br />I then tried removing the HostType and UrlToTest attributes. This appears to work, but in fact the Test Runner is just creating a copy of the Articles service class directly, without going through the .asmx page, and things like HttpServer do not exist, which causes problems (in my case, the necessary XSLT files are not available).<br /><br />So going back to first principles, I added a Web Reference for the Articles.asmx to my Test Project (tried Web Service Reference - doesn't seem to want to work), and then created a new TestMethod like so...<br /><pre><br /> [TestMethod()]<br /> public void GetMainArticlesTest()<br /> {<br /> ArticlesService.Articles service = new ArticlesService.Articles();<br /> XmlNode results = service.GetMainArticles();<br /> //Test goes here<br /> Assert.IsNotNull(results);<br /> }<br /></pre><br />This is much happier now. It works and I can debug the test directly (debugging the web service itself requires attaching to w3wp).Marvhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287712053243891946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679974977837863437.post-38048965597592258242008-03-02T18:14:00.002+00:002008-04-02T23:19:49.016+01:00How long does it take to get a replacement "Super Paper Mario"?This blog is now turning into a list of my bug-bears, which is a shame, but it's a way to get things off my chest!<br /><br /><a href="http://www.wiiwii.tv/2007/09/19/nintendo-warn-of-super-paper-mario-bug-offer-replacement-discs/">There is a bug</a> with the European (PAL) version of Super Paper Mario for the Wii. At a certain point in the game, if you fail to perform steps in a certain way, the game crashes and you lose any unsaved progress.<br /><br />Nintendo <a href="http://www.nintendo.co.uk/NOE/en_GB/news/2007/super_paper_mario_announcement_6497.html">announced a disk replacement scheme</a>.<br />I emailed the address given, and received a reply from "Mike Rawlings" asking for me to send my copy back and "we will attempt to replace your copy as soon as possible and within 15 working days if stock levels allow". I queried that I would be out of pocket for the postage costs and they sent me a postage-paid label.<br /><br />I sent my disc off on December 18th. It was received and signed for on December 19th. I was concerned I hadn't heard anything a month later, so emailed them again on January 18th. They said they had received my disk and were awaiting stock.<br /><br />I have since emailed twice, asking for an update, but have had no reply. So far, I've been without my copy of the game for about 9 weeks - 45 working days. I would be happy with a refund at this stage.<br /><br />Poor show, Nintendo, poor show.<br /><br />Update: Super Paper Mario turned up about 3 days after this blog post. No note of apology, no free gift, nothing. I'm still not pleased with Nintendo.<br />Guitar Hero 3 (PAL) owners were treated to better customer service when they had to return buggy discs and were given free faceplates!Marvhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287712053243891946noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679974977837863437.post-17731615260633999912008-02-17T17:31:00.002+00:002009-03-17T21:31:22.330+00:00Noir Consulting - a review of my experienceHi,<br /><br />I've been telephoned by the Managing Director of Noir Consulting/Wigs3 and asked to take this blog post down. With legal action being mentioned, and because I have no firm evidence to back up some of the claims made here, I'm taking the content of the post down for the time being. I'll revisit this decision in the next 6 months, when more information should be available.<br /><br />In the mean-time, if you have had problems with Noir Consulting, please contact them via the email addresses on their web-site; the Managing Director has said that they will respond to complaints.<br />(To be removed from their databases, use the email address on their <a href="http://www.noirconsulting.co.uk/info/privacy.aspx">privacy page</a>. For other issues, please use the details on their <a href="http://www.noirconsulting.co.uk/contact/">contact page</a>).<br /><br />I have also been asked to take down all of the comments posted here, which I have done. I apologise to everyone who taken the time to post them. I still have copies, and can re-post them if appropriate in the future.<br /><br />This was not an easy decision, but Noir consulting have all of my personal details, including my current employer (who do not use Noir).<br /><br />Thank you all for your time,<br /><br />MarvMarvhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287712053243891946noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679974977837863437.post-82757428195261369682008-02-09T18:06:00.000+00:002008-02-17T17:31:27.549+00:00How long is Varekai (from Cirque du Soleil)?I'm going to see a Cirque du Soleil production, Varekai, at the Royal Albert Hall next week. I wanted to find out how long it was, but Google was being particularly unhelpful. Searching for <i>Varekai "Cirque du Soleil" length</i> led me to pages which Google informed me (via the Google Cache frame) only contained some of my search terms in pages linking to the page it showed me.<br />I can see how that can sometimes be useful, but please, Google, allow me to turn the behaviour off! If I ask for a page containing the word "length", show me pages containing that word!<br /><br />By the way, I eventually found a rough answer in a review from when the show was staged in the United States - it is about 2 and a half hours without intermission.<br /><br />Edit: OK, I went along and it was about 2-and-a-half hours, but there was a 20 minute interval. We were very glad for the 20 minute break, as we were in standing seats and our feet were killing us!<br />It was good, but if you've seen similar circus-type-shows, then you might find that the most impressive things are the costumes and special effects.Marvhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287712053243891946noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679974977837863437.post-86355862149980972622007-12-19T10:22:00.001+00:002008-05-08T13:23:54.271+01:00Luigi's Purple Coins - a mapI've been playing Super Mario Galaxy on the Wii for the last few weeks now, and enjoying it immensely. I now have just over three quarters of the stars and have hit a level called "Luigi's Purple Coins". It seems to be extremely difficult!<br /><br />The idea is to collect 100 (purple) coins out of a possible 150. This level is all 2D, so it should be easy, right? Wrong. Apart from the big gaps you have to jump to avoid falling into space, and apart from the big sections of sticky goo which swallow you up and kill you, the rest of the platforms either disappear after you've stepped on them, or start rotating (about a horizontal axis).<br /><br />Partly for my own benefit, I've created a map of this level, so that I can plan my route through it to get enough coins. Here is that map:-<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8H1YGNl9RNjX6jiNep-iH26FzD-dCEORtHNX8b1PVdh0JOikE4ZiJN7Cu3ISdHIooQpABZAkNgJ3mbVHwPeT2gcdiU93m6hTq0zXvUKVsgTmYdmTAZafDQBsebWKwsal69Kfq94HcQ58/s1600-h/Luigi'sPurpleCoinsMap.png"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8H1YGNl9RNjX6jiNep-iH26FzD-dCEORtHNX8b1PVdh0JOikE4ZiJN7Cu3ISdHIooQpABZAkNgJ3mbVHwPeT2gcdiU93m6hTq0zXvUKVsgTmYdmTAZafDQBsebWKwsal69Kfq94HcQ58/s400/Luigi'sPurpleCoinsMap.png" alt="Luigi's Purple Coins map" title="Luigi's Purple Coins map" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5145628538004187554" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Luigi's Purple Coins Map</span><br /></div><br />You start off on the brown square the bottom left corner. The white bits are empty space (as in fall to your death), the blue bits are sticky goo (you drown). Green are disappearing squares, and yellow are the rotating ones.<br />It may look familiar! It's designed to be similar to (but not the same as) Luigi's jumping sprite from the original Super Mario Brothers.<br /><br />I've also submitted this map to GameFAQs, so it may end up appearing there, but I've never submitted anything before, so I haven't a clue if it will.<br /><br />Here are some tips that I found by searching various forums:-<br />If you do collect 100 coins, the star will appear back where you first started, so make sure you have a path to get back there.<br />The main techniques here are the "long jump" (particularly to get over the gaps where coins are hanging in the air or over goo) and the "spin jump", where you can get a boost in height and change in direction at the end of a jump if you mess it up or need to get that bit further, etc.<br />Have a look on YouTube, etc., for videos of people playing this level. As unbelievable as it may sound, there are people out there who have grabbed all 150 coins, instead of just 100.<br /><br />Good luck! I haven't beaten it yet ... will try again soon.Marvhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287712053243891946noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679974977837863437.post-71270342817166079682007-11-05T20:30:00.002+00:002008-04-15T20:37:10.689+01:00Browsing for multiple files in a file upload boxIf you've used Flickr, you may well have seen their funky uploading tool that lets you pick multiple files to upload and then shows you the status of each as it uploads.<br /><br />It's very cool, and you may want to copy it on your site. So, how would you do it?<br /><br />Well, you can't. At least not with the standard tools of the web - HTML and JavaScript. It's a limitation of the <span style="font-family:courier new;">input type="file"</span> HTML control that it only allows you to pick a single file. JavaScript can't help because JavaScript code cannot have access to your file-system. So with any standard web-server language (Java, ASP, ASPX, PHP, etc), the user will always have to pick their files one at a time (even if you can spruce things up slightly by capturing all of the files in a single list once they've been chosen).<br /><br />Well ... actually you can, but you have to rely on something happening at the user's end.<br /><ul><li>You can force the user to zip up all of the files and upload a single archive (which you can then manipulate and unzip using the standard library functionality of your chosen language).</li><li>You can use a Java Applet, since Java can access files on your machine if you allow it to. This means that the user will have to install the Java runtimes if they don't have them already. You may also need to look into security-signing your applet.</li><li>You can use an ActiveX control. This has the severe limitation that it will only work on Windows systems. Also, you'll probably need to security-sign it to stop dire warnings from appearing when users visit your site, and it probably won't work in Firefox.</li><li>You could use a client application. This gives you lots of control, but breaks the web paradigm slightly and you'll have to think about which platforms you want to code for and support.</li><li>Ah, so how do Flickr do it? They use Flash. It's very nifty, and you might not even notice that it's a Flash application. Uploading multiple files was added in Flash 8 and seems to work well.</li></ul>Flash could be expensive, if you don't already have it. There's a third-party control available which uses Flash, but I'm not going to link to it just yet as we're still evaluating whether it's any good and how good the "Free" version is.<br /><br />Update: 2nd April 2008. We started to look at how this is possible using Flex, and it looks doable using the free version of the tool (if a little painful).<br />Oh, and we looked at how YouTube does it - they use Java. Interesting.<br />Meanwhile, Microsoft are pushing Silverlight harder and harder. You can't view some of their webcasts without installing it, and every time you download something you are told you'll get a better experience with it. Perhaps it will reach the tipping point after all?Marvhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287712053243891946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2679974977837863437.post-33761703794993831622007-11-05T20:18:00.001+00:002007-12-19T14:48:15.954+00:00New College Logo(Hurrah! Google is finally picking up my site. Right, time to add some content.)<br /><br />I'm currently making a t-shirt related to my old college (New College, Oxford, England) and wanted to add the New College logo. Legalities aside, I couldn't find a decent copy anywhere. The best I found was a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:New_college_crest.gif">100 x 120 pixel version</a> on Wikipedia I (I've since found some more examples at a <a href="http://www.varsityshop.co.uk/acatalog/New_College.html">random Varsity shop</a>, but nothing very clear).<br /><br />So - I made my own! It took me a little while, but once I figured out how useful layers are in Paint.NET, I ended up with something that works quite well (with the help of a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Tudor_Rose.jpg">Tudor Rose</a> from Wikipedia again!). Tada:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT4pOyUz86BtjWSQaxgIcruXKAju1aoUzKKMlhOkSc6RGyHrL7vW9LipvrY6a4vEYaOQA3rybsRvBUjG18GKzIIcrO8H8vNlZ7zvxyXKhFrU5aoVy8pL37GgMmQxe8z54X7cRM4ssGvqc/s1600-h/New+College+Logo.png"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT4pOyUz86BtjWSQaxgIcruXKAju1aoUzKKMlhOkSc6RGyHrL7vW9LipvrY6a4vEYaOQA3rybsRvBUjG18GKzIIcrO8H8vNlZ7zvxyXKhFrU5aoVy8pL37GgMmQxe8z54X7cRM4ssGvqc/s400/New+College+Logo.png" alt="New College Oxford logo" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5129455153621002898" border="0" /></a>Marvhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08287712053243891946noreply@blogger.com0