Archive for March, 2007

I have a couple of kitten pictures of Iris and Bilbo that show how a fourteen year old and (at the time) a 14 week old kitten can co-exist.

 This is a pretty common way for Bilbo and Iris to curl up together.  Bilbo basically flattens Iris…for her part, Iris purrs and licks Bilbo. 

And this is Bilbo and Iris on Irene’s lap.  In this case, Bilbo was there first- Iris came and wormed herself in, and the both started purring. 

It’s worth noting that, the first few days Iris was in the house, she arched her back and hissed at nearly all the cats in the house.  It took a few days for them to settle in, and Bilbo was very kind to her throughout the process of adjustment.  Within a week, the kind of behaviour you see here was normal.

… and no, this post isn’t an excuse to put the word “pussy” on my website

I played a great game of “Make the Game work with Vista” earlier this week.  It was fun!  I give it an 8 out of 10.  How is the game itself?  I’ll tell you in a few days…

The game in question here is Gothic 3 by Aspyr.  I collected answers to most of the problems I encountered in the game publisher’s community technical forums (see link below).  In an effort to help out folks who might be wanting to install and play this game on Windows Vista (64 bit version in my case), I’ve collected here the things I found necessary/important to make it work:

• Install the Vista version of the tages copy protection tool:  Gothic 3 uses a copy protection scheme called TAGES.  Unfortunately, the drivers for this included with the DVD do not work with Vista (they fail to install).  This means when you try to play the game, you’ll get a dialog saying to “insert the game DVD” even though it is already in your drive.  The fix: go to the TAGES site and download/install the updated Vista compatible drivers.   You can read about the problem here, and get the drivers directly from TAGES here. 
• Update to the current/latest version of Gothic 3: Although this might not strictly be necessary (the American version of the game already includes most of the critical patches), it is higly recommended.  The current version (as of March 7, 2007) is Version 1.12, and is available on the Gothic 3 website. 
• Delete/rename the Gothic3 font (Gothic3.ttf):  This is critical, it seems, at least with ATI video cards.  If you leave this font file (found at [game install dir]/Gothic3.ttf; C:\Program Files (x86)\Aspyr\Gothic III in my default case), the game will play at about one frame per second.  That is, it will be totally unplayable.  You can read about the problem here.  Note that, contrary to what the link says, it isn’t necessary to overwrite/replace the file- you can rename it or delete it, and Gothic 3 will use a default font.    Yes, I find it very odd that a font can reduce framerate to one frame per second, but…it did for me, and others as well it seems

I found the publisher’s (JoWooD) Gothic 3 technical support  forums to be very helpful.  I’d recommend browsing the rest of their Gothic 3 forums for gameplay hints and tips and the like as well.  A good post to start with is the collection of hints and tips links from the Gameplay forum. 

As for the game (Gothic 3) itself: it’s an open-ended single player RPG.  If you liked Oblivion, you will probably find things to like in Gothic 3.  The graphics aren’t quite as rich, but this far I’d say the gameplay is comparably enjoyable.  I might right a more complete review later…

I have been spending some time playing Sigil’s Vanguard lately. It is important to note that I’ve only played my character to about 15th level (and three characters during final beta to about 10th level). A well-rounded review of the game would, in my opinion, require playing at least two or three different classes to mid-levels, and at least one character to nearly maximum level. Since I will likely never do either of these things, I am not going to give an in-depth review here. Instead, these are just some preliminary opinions based on a couple dozen hours of play time.

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Irene went in to the hospital today for her second hip replacement surgery (left hip this time).  Everything seems to have gone well: she was in pre-op at 8:00 am, entered the surgical ward around 9:30, surgery around 10:00 am done by about noon, out of post op by around 2:00 pm. 

I wasn’t able to see her at all from 9:30 am until about 2:00 pm, and her surgeon wasn’t around to talk to me.  However, Irene seems fine, although basically she was sleeping the whole time I was with her.  I got home about 30 minutes ago.  I felt kind of bad leaving, but the cats need to be fed.  And stupid as it sounds, I was starting to feel pretty zonked by about 4:00 pm- I was becoming jeleaous of Irene’s comfy bed and her snores

I’ll be going back to the hospital tomorrow to visit.  Irene should be home by Thursday, assuming things go as per plan.  Thanks to everyone for all the kind thoughts you have relayed!

If you have no idea what tags are, or if you have never used WordPress, chances are you have no idea what Ultimate Tag Warrior (UTW) is.   You can probably skip this post, but in case you are curious: tags are like keywords to help categorize posts.  UTW is a plugin for WordPress by Christine Davis to help posters manage tags within their blog.  

If you have WordPress and know at least a bit about tags…get UTW.  Don’t hesitate- it really is that good.  Basically, it is totally invisible to me- it just works, and that to me is a sign of true elegance.  ’nuff said about that.

I use UTW here, and like it.  All of my posts are tagged, and I have a tag cloud in the right navigation bar.  I realized it was getting cluttered, with a couple hundred tags showing.  I wanted to just show the top 50 or so tags, at least for now…but it’s been months since I last did anything with UTW, so I forgot how.

A quick Google search led me to a great resource: Lorelle VanFossen’s Ultimate Tag Warrior for Dummies.  It had the answer to my question, and many other useful pieces of guidance.   Thanks, Lorelle!

In the “my God, I can’t believe he took pictures of that…” department, I give you…pictures of my office cleanup!

For the protection of the squeamish, I’ve put the pictures behind a break.  Click “Read the rest…” to see them…if you dare!

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How about this for timing….on February 27th, I upgraded my version of Wordpress from 2.0.4 to 2.1.1.  It was quite some time since my last upgrade, and there were several security fixes that I needed to get installed.  I was briefly proud of myself for getting my site sort of up to date.

Then yesterday there was this announcement.  To save you from having to click the link, here’s the important excerpt:

Long story short: If you downloaded WordPress 2.1.1 within the past 3-4 days, your files may include a security exploit that was added by a cracker, and you should upgrade all of your files to 2.1.2 immediately.

So…I picked the three or four days in the entire history of WordPress, which has been one of the most stable and secure blogging platforms around, to upgrade.  How’s that for amazing timing?

Don’t worry, I’ve (just finished) upgrading to the secured version.  And to be clear to my non-techy visitors: none of this has *anything* to do with the security of my visitors.   If you have your own WordPress blog (and obviously aren’t “non-techy”), upgrade now- this is not an optional upgrade!

Someone has been submitting about five “Viagra!” news items to one of my websites every day now for about six months.   Such news items are moderated, and never appear on the site since I delete them.  That’s dumb.

But that’s not the dumbest spam I’ve ever seen.  This is…

From: %CUSTOM_FROMS

Subject: Your approval is waiting! 

Dear %CUSTOM_HOMEOWNER%CUSTOM_7. %CUSTOM_8

You can receive %CUSTOM_3 for
%CUSTOM_4 per month.

Please respond %MTG_TODAY.
http://someURL.com

Bert Gipson
%CUSTOM_FROMS

%QUOTES

I received this email in my inbox a couple of days ago.  Apparently, this genious acquired a mailing list, installed some sort of automatic spam generator, then forgot to actually enter any of the configuration settings that would have given their message …well, a message. 

If any significant percentage of spammers are this dumb, I have hope…

I mentioned a couple of days ago that I’m cleaning up my office.  Stage 2 was supposed to be “re-do the wiring”, but that became “stage 3″ when I decided I needed to add a new filing cabinet and a few other things to help organize. 

Stage 3 took place today: this site was down for a while as a result.  Rewiring always causes mixed feeling for me.  On the one hand, I derive some satisfaction from turning a gordian knot of cables into some sort of organized, hopefully neat configuration.  On the other hand is the near-certainty that, within mere days of making everything organized, I’ll have to fix something and tear apart the cable routing in frustration.

One “happy surprise” of this cable re-structuring was coming up with a new/safer way to situate my network router.  For years now, both the router and my ADSL modem have been attached to the second desk in my room.  But that was becoming a problem, primarily since the area behind the second desk had become a favorite play area for the kittens.   What happened was this…

• I wanted to replace an aging (plastic) file cabinet with a sturdier metal one.  The cabinet I bought on sale had a funky little “shelf” on top, ostensibly to put your printer on, and under which you could then store paper.  Since my printer is happy where it is I had no real intent of using this stand.  But I thought perhaps my router and modem could go under it….but I like having that gear “bolted down” to prevent certain felines from deciding it looks better on the floor.  So, I set that idea aside and continued reorganizing
• wanted to remove the computer shelf on my desk, which has been irritating me for years since it inhibits access to my computer.  Instead, I would put my computer on a wheeled computer stand
• The computer shelf thus removed left me with two large laminated “chunks” of particle board.  I had no idea what to use this for…wait a sec.  That one chunk looks sorta the same size as the funky shelf on the cabinet…would it slide underneath?  Yes!  Perfectly, with less than a millimetre on either side.  Of course, it is nearly inconceivable that the router and ADSL modem would bolt onto the board and slide underneath the shelf…
• Good gravy, it fits!

I have to assume that this nearly miraculous series of events is a re-balancing of my techno-karma after my recent series of Vista problems.  Either that, or it is a sign of the impending apocalypse.  Either way, my network is back up and running, and my cabling looks elegant for the moment.