Recent Posts

5151

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup

« Last post by Deozaan on July 04, 2011, 04:54 PM »

I just noticed this. Why does Bvckup install into my User directory? What's wrong with C:\Program Files\ ? Or why not put it somewhere like AppData or something?

5152

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup

« Last post by Deozaan on July 04, 2011, 04:50 PM »

Location needs to be * and the Name should be *.bak, like so:

Or do you have it set up like this and it is not working?

-apankrat (July 04, 2011, 04:39 PM)

I can't remember how I had it set up. My HDD had some problems and I recently reinstalled Windows and haven't gotten around to getting Bvckup back on here. But I think the problem was that I was leaving Location blank.

Thanks for the help. Now that I have a solution to this I won't be so unwilling to start getting Bvckup set up again.

5153

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup

« Last post by Deozaan on July 04, 2011, 12:29 PM »

Am I the only one who can't ever get it to exclude the files I want it to?

For example, I'm backing up some files, but the program that creates the files automatically makes it's own backups filename.bak, so I want to exclude all *.bak files from all directories and subdirectories. But for some reason it keeps copying over the *.bak files.

5154

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Game Review: Defense Grid: The Awakening

« Last post by Deozaan on July 04, 2011, 01:19 AM »

Also, today's the daily deal for Defense Grid. 75% off which means you can buy it for $2.50 and if you don't want to worry about doing those ticket thingies then you can buy all 4 map packs for $1.

5155

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Game Review: Defense Grid: The Awakening

« Last post by Deozaan on July 02, 2011, 05:15 PM »

If you own Defense Grid on Steam but haven't purchased the 4 Resurgence Map packs, here's your chance to get them for free:

http://store.steampo...mmersale/prizebooth/

You just need 3 tickets to redeem for the Resurgence Map packs. And you can get them easily by doing any 3 the following:

1. Join the official Summer Camp Steam Group: http://steamcommunit...com/games/summercamp
2. Link your Steam profile to your Facebook account. (from your profile page)
3. Make a comment on the profile of somebody on your friends list.
4. Write a review of a game (such as Defense Grid!)
5. Post a screenshot of a game.
6. Play a free game demo.

Those are probably the easiest way to get 3 tickets, but there are more ways than that and more to redeem the tickets for than the Defense Grid map packs.

And if you don't want to bother with the tickets then you can buy all 4 map packs for about $2 since they're on sale.

5156

Living Room / Re: nearby lightning strike kills neighbours computers (and mine)

« Last post by Deozaan on July 02, 2011, 02:50 AM »

also something to consider -- if all this damage occured due to a lightning skrike, imagine what would happen if you actually had a lightning strike.

-mouser (July 01, 2011, 09:30 PM)

Now if that isn't the pot calling the kettle black I don't know what is.

5157

N.A.N.Y. 2012 / Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Kyrathaba's Hangman

« Last post by Deozaan on July 02, 2011, 02:47 AM »

I'm using HelpNDoc to generate my PDF help file.  Do you guys prefer PDF as the help file format, or would CHM be preferable?

Because CHM compresses the internal HTML, its file size is smaller than the corresponding PDF, but I wondered if CHM is natively supported by all versions of Windows, whereas I know that PDF support is nearly ubiquitous.  Can't remember the last time I found a system that didn't have some sort of PDF reader software installed.

-kyrathaba (July 01, 2011, 04:56 PM)

I don't believe I've ever had a problem opening a CHM file, and I've never had to actively search out a plugin or software to open it. This is opposite to my experience with PDF. I personally don't like PDF, but that's just one person's opinion.

5158

Living Room / Re: Cat and Owl are Friends

« Last post by Deozaan on July 01, 2011, 05:26 PM »

That cat is like how I feel sometimes: "Shut up bird(s)! I'm trying to sleep!"

5159

Developer's Corner / Re: Game Engines and Apps

« Last post by Deozaan on July 01, 2011, 04:06 PM »

I've had a tab open for a few days on a link I wanted to check out. It's been long enough that I forgot where I got the link from (probably from Twitter) or what it was about, but I finally looked at it today and was amazed:

Unity 3D Training Video Series is the most complete, step-by-step, training material for Unity 3…for free.

In keeping with Unity’s theme of ‘free’, there are over 300 HD videos consuming more than 45 hours of viewing time. And with Unity’s increasing influence in the world of interactive digital media, it’s time you pull up a seat and see what all the excitement is about.

-http://www.walkerboystudio.com/html/unity_training___free__.html

So if you wanted to get started in Unity but weren't sure where to start, the Unity 3D Training Video Series looks like a great resource.

5160

N.A.N.Y. 2012 / Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Kyrathaba's Hangman

« Last post by Deozaan on July 01, 2011, 03:12 PM »

That stickman is wearing a mighty fine top hat to his execution. I guess he knows how to go out in style

5161

General Software Discussion / Re: Google's WDYL (What Do You Love?) -- I think I like it

« Last post by Deozaan on July 01, 2011, 03:10 PM »

Surely a TV comedian has to mine this for material.

-zridling (July 01, 2011, 03:32 AM)

Yeah, in 5 years when they first hear about it. . .

5162

General Software Discussion / Re: Google+

« Last post by Deozaan on July 01, 2011, 02:48 PM »

Challenge: Make a post with more "G+" in it!

-Jibz (July 01, 2011, 12:09 PM)

Challenge Accepted!!!

So far I think G+ is superior to Facebook in every way with one exception: Facebook has an advantage over G+ because you still need to get an invite to G+ before you can join.

G+ pretty much also replaces Twitter, in my opinion, since you can follow people on G+ and they don't even have to acknowledge that you exist, much less confirm or "add you back." All you need to know to follow someone is the link to their G+ profile and you can add them to your conveniently already created for you Following circle.

At first I didn't really know what to do with G+. But since JavaJones raved about it I looked into it a bit more. Also in that time I had a few friends who were able to accept my invitation to join so there are actually people I know for me to interact with on G+ now. I just wish I had more invitations to give out so more people I know and interact with using other social networking sites (or just IRL) could join G+.

5163

General Software Discussion / Re: Google+

« Last post by Deozaan on July 01, 2011, 11:39 AM »

Anyone else notice that all of Google's sites got the Google+ black bar today?

-zridling (July 01, 2011, 06:19 AM)

I've been seeing the black bar for a few days now, even before I got into G+. But now that I have G+ it now shows more G+ related stuff.

Weird thing was that the G+ bar in Gmail didn't show up until about a day after I was accepted into G+.

And for anyone interested, here's a link to my G+ profile.

5164

DC Gamer Club / Re: RIFT - MMORPG Beta Invite

« Last post by Deozaan on June 30, 2011, 10:30 AM »

Now it's $5 or $10 for the Collector's edition:

https://www.riftgame...ts/trial-upgrade.php

5165

General Software Discussion / Re: Google+

« Last post by Deozaan on June 30, 2011, 05:52 AM »

Really nice review, JavaJones! Thanks for taking the time to explore it and explain it.

The one thing some have said is odd is that it's not integrated with Gmail like Facebook's new "messaging center" email thingy. I don't think that just because FB is doing it Google should too, but I do note a distinct lack of a real "private message", "direct message", or similar type feature (as far as I can tell). Your G+ contacts are your Gmail contacts though I think (haven't tested whether adding someone through G+ adds them to my Gmail contacts though), so theoretically you can just jump over to gmail to email them if you want. There's also direct chat and Hangouts. Still I see this as something that needs addressing somehow. Many a mini embedded Gmail interface or something.

-JavaJones (June 30, 2011, 02:10 AM)

I think they do have built in direct messages/PM. It's called Chat. I believe if you send a chat to someone who is offline it will show up when they sign in. Possibly it will even go to their inbox.

Alternatively, you can make a post or Stream or whatever it's called to a single individual or even multiple specific individuals. It doesn't have to go to an entire circle.

5166

General Software Discussion / Re: Google+

« Last post by Deozaan on June 29, 2011, 08:27 PM »

For anyone interested, I got an invite from a friend, so I'm in. It appears that I can send out as many invites as I want, but I'm not sure yet if they are sent out immediately or not.

So some of you folks who are already in my address book for one reason or another may be getting an invite from me. Anyone else who is interested can give me their e-mail address and I'll add you to my DonationCoder circle and send out an invite.

EDIT: I'm not sure exactly what's going on, but before when I added people to my circle(s) it automatically prompted me to send invites out. Now it no longer does that and if I attempt to send out an invite it says that e-mail invites will be enabled soon. So I'm not sure if Google temporarily disabled invites or if they're still being sent out automatically, but just to reiterate what I said originally: I'm not sure if they are sent out immediately or not.

5167

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Bvckup 2

« Last post by Deozaan on June 29, 2011, 11:51 AM »

I dunno. I kinda like it. It doesn't really seem Apple/Mac to me as much as it seems the kind of clean and simple design of Web 2.0 or HTML5 if Web 2.0 seems too outdated a term.

For a teaser site, I think it's good. Though if that was the final product website (when it was released) then I might find it lacking in content.

Though I am left wondering why you don't just put the "More" link in the same place as the "Info" link. Right in the center, so the user's mouse is already hovering over it when they click the first time. That seems logical to me.

If you're like me, and don't normally run the browser full screen, but still have it fairly large, then the More link is still really far off to the side. See my screenshot here: http://i.imgur.com/AQEe9.jpg

5168

Living Room / Re: Halp! BSOD during boot up.

« Last post by Deozaan on June 29, 2011, 11:43 AM »

Well the CD burner might have worked, but I had to remove the Ubuntu Live CD to put in a blank CD, and that messed everything up. So then I tried rebooting back into the Live CD and for some reason it wouldn't do it.

Then I remembered I had a spare drive sitting around so I swapped out the bad drive with the spare and installed Windows on it. Once Windows was reinstalled, I attempted to plug in the old bad drive to try to chkdsk or whatever but my PC wouldn't boot when that drive was plugged in. In fact, after I decided it was toast and unplugged it, I even had to repair the good drive's boot stuff.

So I guess that drive is toast. I'm back up with Windows on the spare drive, I lost a little bit of data that was stored in my User directory (AppData). Most of that isn't important but I would have liked to have kept some of it (my Minecraft saves, for instance).

So anyway, thanks for the help. I guess I've got it sorted as well as it's going to be sorted now.

5169

Living Room / Re: Dropbox Left User Accounts Unlocked for 4 Hours Sunday

« Last post by Deozaan on June 29, 2011, 09:24 AM »

Using your dropbox to host a Truecrypt container is a pretty smart idea. But I'm happy enough with SpiderOak myself.

-Eóin (June 29, 2011, 09:07 AM)

I heard somewhere that it's possible for others to to find out your data in Dropbox even when using Truecrypt because of the way it does delta copying or something. I'm not a security expert, so I might be wrong on some or all of the details, but I was under the impression that even Truecrypt wasn't safe on Dropbox.

5170

Living Room / Re: Halp! BSOD during boot up.

« Last post by Deozaan on June 29, 2011, 05:06 AM »

Thanks. I hope my CD burner works from within this Ubuntu Live CD.

5171

Living Room / Re: Halp! BSOD during boot up.

« Last post by Deozaan on June 29, 2011, 04:57 AM »

Thanks for responding. 

Basically I think you need something to scan the disk and recover the partition table and then do a full "chkdsk /r" from safe mode.

-Carol Haynes (June 29, 2011, 04:48 AM)

I can't boot to safe mode. It also BSODs when I try to boot into Safe Mode.

My personal approach to hard drive problems is very straightforward:
1. Get any important data backed up from the pc first.
2. If possible, image the drive -- even if this means removing the hd, attaching it to another pc in an external dock.

-mouser (June 29, 2011, 04:49 AM)

I can't seem to do #1 because I can't mount the drive in Linux due to the corrupt NTFS table (or whatever is wrong with it). And I can't do #2 because I can't attach it to another PC (my other PC is not compatible with SATA) and I don't have a dock/enclosure.

5172

Living Room / Re: Dropbox Left User Accounts Unlocked for 4 Hours Sunday

« Last post by Deozaan on June 29, 2011, 04:25 AM »

For encrypting stuff onto Dropbox, there was also SecretSync.

But having just looked at BoxCryptor, that one might be more user-friendly than SecretSync.

5173

Living Room / RESOLVED: Halp! BSOD during boot up.

« Last post by Deozaan on June 29, 2011, 04:22 AM »

EDIT: This issue has been resolved.

I had a power outage today and when I restarted my PC it had a BSOD during the boot up process and then restarted itself. It restarts itself before I even have a chance to read a single thing on the BSOD.

It then defaults to repair my PC, but when I select that option it takes about 20 minutes to display a background image and my mouse cursor and then nothing else seems to happen.

I also tried booting from the Windows 7 installation disk and selecting "Repair" but when it brings up the dialog for me to select which Windows 7 Installation to repair it shows a little dialog saying "Searching for Windows 7 Installations" and it does that for a really long time until there's a graphical glitch and nothing responds, with the exception of me being able to move the mouse cursor around the screen (but clicking on stuff doesn't do anything).

I tried booting into a Parted Magic Live CD but it tells me it can't do anything to the disk and that I need to run chkdsk /f in Windows. But I can't get to the command prompt for Windows. I then tried Safe Mode with Command Prompt but it also BSODs during the boot up process.

Now I'm in an Ubuntu Live CD and I ran Disk Utility and did the "Check Filesystem" option for this drive and it instantly tells me that the filesystem is clean and all is good. But if I try to mount the volume it also tells me there's a problem with the NTFS filesystem and I need to run chkdsk /f from Windows. Here's the exact message:

Error mounting: mount exited with exit code 13: ntfs_attr_pread_i: ntfs_pread failed: Input/output error
Failed to read NTFS $Bitmap: Input/output error
NTFS is either inconsistent, or there is a hardware fault, or it's a
SoftRAID/FakeRAID hardware. In the first case run chkdsk /f on Windows
then reboot into Windows twice. The usage of the /f parameter is very
important! If the device is a SoftRAID/FakeRAID then first activate
it and mount a different device under the /dev/mapper/ directory, (e.g.
/dev/mapper/nvidia_eahaabcc1). Please see the 'dmraid' documentation
for more details.

A few things of note: I'm not using it in a RAID. During the Windows 7 Repair thingy, when it lists the drive it says the partition size is 0 MB. I can't just pop it into another computer here for two reasons:

• This is the only PC that has (had?) Windows on it.
• This is a SATA drive and only this PC is compatible with SATA drives. I don't have a drive dock or (working) external enclosure.

The only tools I have to work with (software-wise) are Windows 7 boot CD, and Live CDs of Parted Magic or Ubuntu (10.04 and 10.10).

Any suggestions on how I can get this fixed with what I have?

5174

Living Room / Re: Lulzsec hackers outed by "anonymous" user

« Last post by Deozaan on June 29, 2011, 12:47 AM »

First rule of street combat: Hit hard, hit fast, hit decisively - and end it.

Because if you don't completely take down your opponent with your first blow, there's a very good chance you won't get a second punch in.

-40hz (June 28, 2011, 02:27 PM)

Too true:

5175

General Software Discussion / Re: Google+

« Last post by Deozaan on June 29, 2011, 12:14 AM »

I didn't really understand Sparks, so I watched the video on it.

Huh?

You are friends with people because they are the people who don't mind when you talk to them about things that don't interest them? They are the people that let you talk about stuff that only interests you? Subjects that are not common interests?

What a weird (read: selfish) definition of a friend.