There are a couple new, little apps on my VB Apps page. One is a data rate calculator so you can see how long it will take to transfer things over different mediums. The other is a convertor for decimal numbers to any base from 2 to 36, plus it shows the work. Screenies:
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About a week ago, Danky was talking about his uptime being twenty-some days and then I was like “I bet I could make an app to display uptime in like 10 minutes.” 10 minutes turned into an hour and then into a whole week. This will eventually be the world’s most complex/feature-full uptime clock. I still have some things I’m working on with it, but a fully functional version is already available from my VB Apps Page. Give it a try.
I also did a really short Column just now that details a useful multitool glitch in Deus Ex Invisible War. It’s rather interesting. See it here.
I might update the css color scheme now. It’s starting to bother me.
Except the mail script I mentioned a few posts ago…I broke that unfortunately. I was trying to add multiple mailto addresses and, like a ret, overwrote the working script testing the new one. I’ll fix it one of these days.
Newegg and Fedex are just amazing. In just two days, I received my new stick of RAM–during the holiday season no less. It installed perfectly 
. I’m doing Dual-Channel now with an obvious speed boost . Rise of Nations is down from a couple minutes to unload to like 15 seconds 8) . That’s mostly to do with the fact that I doubled my RAM amount to 512. The system feels so smooth now…so relieved. It’s like taking one of those huge shits that just plops right out 😛 . Screenage:
The RoN Script Maker is coming along nicely. Actually, I only just started back working on it today. I completed one of the more daunting tasks, though, and with relative ease. I programmed RSM to read the unitrules.xml file for all the default unit settings so I’ll have some default values to work with in the unit stat script functions. I was actually surprised at how well Microsoft implements and supports XML. It also seems rather proliferated–should be good for older OSes. Tomorrow, I suspect I’ll write an editor for the unit stats and then saving and compiling routines. Here’s an alpha build screenshot:
I should be working on school shit, but I feel it’s time for an update to the site status: Everything is groovy, bitches.
Some time ago I started work on a Column to showcase all the VB apps I’ve made. It’s not nearly done, yet, and I’ll probably have to finish it during Christmas break, but you can still see it here. By the way, it uses my new background effect, grid transparency: You make a 2x2pix image and make the opposite corner pixels either a solid color or transparent (as in the GIF spec), and this creates an opacity effect of 50%. Very neat, albeit it doesn’t work in some browsers and is CPU intensive. Oh well.
Also, I updated the Flash nav to the left finally. I changed the Columns around, cut a staff listing, and changed the link for Downloads. And, if I hadn’t mentioned it before, I changed the site background–simple effect, reminds me of a cross between the Halo 17 album art and Matrix cover art, yet shrouded in blue. It’s actually an amalgamation of a picture of Beckie and one of Rachael.
I had a vision a few days ago of a mail redirection script, so I made that today. Obviously, there are bots that scan web pages in search of E-mail addresses (the @ and .com, .net, etc. are dead give-aways), so this script makes it impossible to phish any of the email addresses here. That is, once I’ve implimented it throughout the site. Most of the links to mail me are done, already, though. The greatest part about this script is its simplicity and mobility. There are only about 15 lines of code involved and if you change email addresses, you only need to change the script and you will still get email from whatever pages you listed the email on. It’s also easy to impliment the script. Just point to the script URL and add ?u=Username&s=Subject. This script is so awesome, I should submit it somewhere like The CGI Resource Index.
I’ve also been working on VB apps, of course. You can follow the story behind my Rise of Nations Script Maker at RoN Heaven. Then, I’ve made major improvements to the MX510 application-specific buttons tool since the last post about it. It now uses two apps, one to monitor the foreground window in order to notify the Logitech software and another to work with schemes for different apps. Development of this app is slowed because it has problems with starting communications with EM_EXEC.EXE and crashing in new builds. Last night, I spent hours decompiling and trying to reverse engineer EVENTEX.DLL–must have crashed WDSM and VB6 like 20 fucking times. Thought I found the weak spot and changed some assembly code at about hmm…Offset 100206BD (see, it’s burned into my memory, now). Alas, I only succeeded in making the mother fucker delete my Current User registery HKey 😕 . Luckily, I installed DX9.01c the other day and that made a System Restore Point. Microsoft saved my ass that time. Really, though…they should make it impossible to delete an entire registry root key. Anyways, my program is perfectly safe and available at www.snakebytestudios.com/download.php?id=7.
I also fixed the MBM Interval Log upload. Didn’t know the host IP changed.
Later, dudes.
I’m back at VB and currently working on three programs; one of them being my old ShellMPX frontend for SCMPX. I never tire of its simplicity and exceptional audio quality, but over the course of using my shell, I have come up with a few improvements. But then of course, nobody uses SCMPX. I bet even S. Chiba, the author of SCMPX, uses Winamp or some mainstream crap. Anyways, the second app I have put a lot of time into programming. It’s a utility for creating game scripts for use in Rise of Nations. It’s nearing final release status, but it’s been getting slow. More info can be found in my thread over at RON Heaven.
My latest project is even more practical than the last. After purchasing a Logitech MX510 mouse to replace my first replacement (an MS Intellimouse Explorer 4.0) for my much-loved MS Intellimouse Explorer 3.0, I found it to be superior in many aspects. The only thing that is lacking in the MX510 is the Logitech software to support it. Unlike the MS mouse software, Logitech doesn’t include application specific button settings. This creates a great conflict when switching between playing games and doing work in Windows. There was a fix mentioned around the web to make two registry files for the two differing tasks so that you can run them and then open the mouse control panel briefly for the settings to take affect. I found this to be a clumsy and annoying workaround, especially since being pampered by Microsoft’s application specific settings for a year. I examined the way the Logitech software made use of the registry, and without a second thought, begin writing a program that will appropriately load button settings according to what application has focus. After around 16 hours of programming on two occasions, I have come up with a program that will load button settings from a configuration file in the aforementioned way. I had even tested it in Thief3 and concluded it to work well already. In the game, I bound the keystrokes that were assigned to the cruise buttons to zoom in and out. Immediately after quiting to desktop, I then used the cruise buttons in their normal manner. The only thing left now is to make a pretty GUI, include the rest of the button functions supported by Logitech’s software, and hunt for bugs. For the savvy users that googled their way to this page, you can download this highly alpha version now at http://www.snakebytestudios.com/download.php?id=7. You have to edit the butsets.ini (hehe…that sounds like butt sex 😀 ) file and the only functions available are the ones already listed. Keystrokes settings function and appear exactly the same as in the Logitech software. The [Default] profile is what the program loads when there is no specific profile for an application. App-specific profiles are listed exactly as they do in the GUI, thus [iexplore.exe] would be the heading for Internet Explore settings. Hopefully, I will get some time soon to finish all these programs.
I couldn’t think of a title that wasn’t trite, so enjoy the quote from Beavis. On to business…
I’ve been playing a lot of CS: Condition Zero lately. I flip flop between the botmatches and “Deleted Scenes”, but of course the botmatches are the most fun. The old models suck, though, so I replaced them with some of my better downloaded ones. Just my luck, they didn’t work right. I spent the last two weeks figuring out how to fix them, though. In the course, I devised two methods of upgrading the models to CZ standard, one of which I wrote a program for in VB. As I believe other CZ players will have this problem, I wrote a guide to upgrading CS models. It can be found here.
Other than that, there have been no other updates. Some Columns are still in limbo currently. Given the end of the semester for college and the end of my relationship with Beckie as well as my lack of acquiring a job, I’ll unfortunately have a lot of free time, now 😕 . At least the site will get some upgrades, perhaps even a new graphics set soon. Although, in the gloom of my current love life, the bloody walls are strangely tranquil. Which reminds me: Gandalf and I have recently blogged on our mixed pool of emotions and thoughts. Enjoy.
Peace. Fuck you. Whatever.
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