Sparkie's Junkyard - www.sparkie.name

Narbacluar Drop

27th October 2007

I had run a little low on inspiration for a new post recently, not through a lack of things going on, but more too much project to do during the day. A quick Wikipedia (can I use that as a verb these days?) of Valve's new Orange Box, and especially Portal, led me to Nuclear Monkey Software and their proof-of-concept game Narbacular Drop. Created when the developers were still at university (DigiPen in Washington State) as their fourth-year coursework, the game introduces the blue and orange portals which people all over the web have been drooling over for the past few weeks. Even this angry little man liked them!

The story is based around Princess No-knees, unfortunately devoid of the ability to jump, who is locked in a mountain by an evil demon. Given the ability to create linked portals she is given the task of escaping the demon's lair by finding ever more ingenious uses of the portals to teleport herself, turtles, boxes and Indiana-Jones style rolling balls of death. For a bit of fun you can bounce things in and out of the two portals (see the torch at the bottom of the page) or send yourself flying through an infinite loop of portals (see left). Although there are only five levels included in the game, there are several community-created maps available from the website if you are keen on the game but too tight to buy Portal for real.

Despite its brevity, the game itself is just so much fun, and it is fully understandable why Valve would want to buy the whole development team and release the game within the Orange Box. This is despite it being completely unrelated to Half-Life and there being a whole host of other development teams churning free Source-engined games out on the Steam which could have been chosen instead. People often complain of computer games being very repeptitive, derivative, conservative or any other 'ive' that you want - it's nice to enjoy something so completely different. I guess the lack of funding - and hence no requirement of guaranteed profits for evil corporation X - lets you experiment a bit.

Comments

Flashblock

15th August 2007

I think I might be running a few too many Firefox extensions at the moment, but one that seems worth it is Flashblock. If you've ever been annoyed by noisy or flashing adverts on a website, or been interrupted while a "Customer Feedback Survey" takes place, worry no more. These are usually due to some Flash, a piece of software that might occasionally be useful (e.g. YouTube) but is also abused a lot for advertising. Disabling it works to shore-up security/privacy holes, but you might want it now and again. Flashblock does exactly what it says on the tin, stopping the flash from being downloaded. Instead it is replaced with a little icon. If you click it then whatever you want to see loads up as usual. You can view the things you want and not the things you don't. Sounds simple, is simple, reduces stress.

Comments

Panorama Software

31st December 2006

I managed to scrounge Arcsoft Panorama Maker from my parent's PC, but it is available as a free 30-day demo or for 3 quid from eBay. Whilst writing a review of it I also stumbled across Autostitch and decided to see which was best.

Use

Panorama Maker holds your hand more through the panorama creation process, requiring several pages of wizard-like arranging and fine-tuning before the final result arrives. At a preview screen you can see any photo edges that are misaligned, and choose three equivalent points on each photo to force the correct matching up. Annoyingly each time this is done the whole image has to render again, which leads to a long time staring at the little bar moving across the screen. Size options are 'Original', 'Medium' and 'Web', with optional cropping and text tools.

Autostitch, as the name suggests, is automatic. This is freeware, and the interface is probably best described as minimal. Simply opening the series of files to include starts the thing going, it arranges the photos and balances the colours before saving the result. There is an options button which you can access after the first, low-resolution pass has been made. Processing a low-res panorama is very quick, only a matter of 10-20 seconds for a complex image. Processing this at full-resolution however takes up to 10 minutes depending on complexity.

Output

Panorama maker outputs the image (using the 'Original' setting anyway) as a TIF file, which you can name and store wherever you like. Windows Picture and Fax Viewer allows you to convert to JPEG quickly and easily. Autostitch saves a JPEG image called "pano" into the source directory, unfortunately overwriting anything with that name already - so be careful about previous attempts.

Quality

For a simple linear panorama both programs match the edges up perfectly. On default quality settings Panorama Maker has a sharper image, but Autostitch balances exposure differences better, blending different sky colours together better for example. On a more complicated image, when the software has to tile in two dimensions instead of a simple line, Autostitch is a clear winner. Despite having no user involvement on choice of matching points, I have found no botched contacts, whereas Panorama Maker required extensive user involvement and messed one contact up so badly that no amount of fine tuning could sort it out.

Result

For producing better results, with a much smaller download (1Mb rather than 25Mb), and being freeware, the winner of this test is Autostitch.

The top image was made in Panorama Maker, the bottom image in Autostitch.

RomNation.net

9th November 2006

Retro gaming is a strange concept. A few years ago, aging consoles were not even worth being used as doorstops. Atari and Co were thrown out with the rubbish, not worth a penny at a jumble sale, as the Playstation generation bounded onto the scene. Now they're all the rage, as the original owners reach maturity (of sorts) and start paying silly money for the obscure useless consoles I got rid of.

Bugger.

To show just how far this craze has spread, Microsoft will now sell you an Xbox360 for £300, and a Live Gold account for £40, then for 'free' you get a pile of re-coded Atari "classics".

Properly free retro gaming lies in the slightly dubious world of emulators. RomNation seem to have a spyware-free operation (as verified by Site Advisor - but don't click on the adverts) and has a huge back-catalogue for whichever pretend piece of silicon your bleeding heart yearns for. Personally I have been procrastinating with the Sega Genesis (Mega Drive) emulator (Gens), and re-living a time when colours came in hundreds, sound came in beeps, and 10 games could fit onto a postage stamp.

Recommended: Sensible Soccer; Micro Machines
Not Recommended: Normy's Beach Babe-o-Rama

VLC media player

25th September 2006

Having aquired the large screen, and already being in posession of a set of 5.1 speakers, I really needed a decent piece of DVD playing software to make the most of them. Windows Media Player and WinDVD were already installed on my system, but neither of these had 5.1 support, insisting that I paid silly amounts of money in return for using all of my speakers. After a triallinga few players, I came across VLC Media Player.

This is open-source software famous for being able to read almost every type of file. I have managed to play RealAudio, Quicktime videos, Windows Media audio and video, as well as the usual suspects of DVD, mp3 etc etc. In fact the list of supported file types includes lots of things i have never heard of. If you find something you cannot play on other programs, it is more than likely that they will play on this. Software is minimal, there is no performance-hitting media library or tacky user interface to fight with, it just does what it was made for - playing pretty much everything you throw at it.

One of the most useful aspects is its DVD playback. 5.1 output is standard (obviously) and quality is as good as any other. The best part however is that it sticks two fingers up at Hollywood with regards to compulsory trailer viewing. I don't appreciate spending considerable sums of money on films only to be forced to watch 5 minutes of trailers and legal notices that can't even be fast-forwarded. Also, why do I have to be bombarded with notices about DVD piracy, I've just bought the flaming thing! Surely the piracy messages should be broadcast elsewhere? BitTorrent sites (yeah right) for example? VLC cuts through this charade by skipping straight to the main menu upon loading a DVD, which in my opinion is a good enough reason on its own for installation.

SiteAdvisor

24th May 2006

SiteAdvisor, recently acquired by McAfee, is a Firefox extension that checks the safety of your search results. It is trawling through the web as we speak, visiting as many sites as possible and joining mailing lists. Once visited it assesses the site for dangerous downloads (i.e. spyware / viruses), volume of spam delivered and whether there are links to other dangerous sites. Currently I am unrated, but the vast majority of sites are, which provides a useful aid when determining the safety of a website.

Note, this system is obviously not failsafe, so users are still encouraged to exercise caution online

Image Resizer

29th April 2006

Continuing a trend of recommending Microsoft products (go on, gasp, I dare you) their Powertoys tend to be very useful. Of particular merit when emailing multimegapixel images or creating a desktop background is Image Resizer. This will quickly (and probably not too cleverly) make a copy of the selected photo and produce a version with the dimensions that you require, thus reducing filesizes to reasonable levels. It also comes in handy for resizing photos for my lovely gallery!

Windows Defender

23rd March 2006

Windows Defender is the latest incarnation of the Microsoft AntiSpyware development. It seems to be very user-friendly, especially with the autoscanning options. Unlike the traditional spyware programs, Ad-aware and Spybot, this one will scan in the background like a virus scanner. I'm not in the mood for filling my PC with spyware just to test it out, so we will have to see how effective it is at catching things. Nice to see that Microsoft's recent security push is yielding some useful results.

Mozilla Thunderbird

11th February 2006

Thunderbird is a free standalone email client from the Mozilla Foundation, a group that emerged from the ashes of Netscape. As an email client Thunderbird contains pretty much all the features of Outlook, but with optional "extensions" that can add features that you want, for example buttons to control your media player, a calendar or mouse gestures. Thunderbird works particularly well in parallel with the Hermes Webmail service for Cambridge students. The option to save all attachments at once can save a lot of time when photos are being emailed around. Using the imap protocol means that your inbox is synchronised between the two. You can read email on either, and anything deleted from one is automatically deleted from the other. Add to this teh advantages of a proper email client over a web based interface and I can safely recommend it to anyone. To use Thunderbird to collect Hermes mail just follow these simple instructions:

1. Download and run the installer
2. Choose standard options
3. Once installed choose to run Thunderbird
4. Choose to create a new email account
5. Enter your preferred name (I quite like Robert Sparkes) and your email address
6. We will be using an IMAP server because they are much handier than POP. Enter the server name as imap.hermes.cam.ac.uk
7. smtp.hermes.cam.ac.uk is used as the outgoing mail server
8. Enter your crsID as server user name
9. Account name is the name that will appear in Thunderbird. Possibilities include Hermes Mail, your name, Cambridge Account or whatever you like.
10. Click Finish, but we're not quite finished yet
11. On the main page choose Tools -> Account Settings
12. Under "Server Settings" for your newly created mail account, change the port to 993 and the security settings to SSL
13. Under "Outgoing mail settings" (the last option on the left) choose "edit" for your new account
14. Change port to 465 and secure connection to SSL
15. Congratulations, you're all set up. If you have any problems drop me a line.

Flash Renamer

18th January 2006

Flash Renamer is a vital piece of software for anyone with a digital camera. It allows you to apply a million different changes to the filename or extension of any file, but is especially suited to large collections of files (such as photos) where it can change the whole lot at once while applying customised numbers as necessary. This is great if you want to call your pictures something more original than "DSFC1009" before filing / emailing them. The list of features extends far past this; you can change the extension, alter the capitalisation, tidy the filename by cropping from any position or removing spaces / unnecessary characters and probably any other alteration you could ever need to do. The program is available as a fully functional free download with the option to purchase to make it work faster.

World Community Grid

24th December 2005

World Community Grid is a distributed computing project which I like a lot. When you have your computer turned on, most of the time it is just sitting there doing nothing. Even if you are browsing the internet, reading your email and typing a word document, the processor is probably only using 5% of its computational power. The Grid aims to harvest this wasted processing time and put it to good use. When you are running the Grid it sets itself as the lowest priority task, so that it only uses the spare processing power and does not impact noticeable on your system performance. Thus when you are opening a program or doing something complicated, the grid is ignored and your computer works for you. When you are just reading a page or tinkering about, the grid uses the remaining thinking time to conduct experiments aimed at helping humankind in some way. At the moment I am typing away and only using 1% of my processor. In the background the Grid is modelling the behaviour of potential AIDS drugs as they dock with the HIV virus. With enough people on the project they can try enough drugs that some should be suitable to go into production and save lives. I thoroughly recommend this program to anyone, as it does you no harm and could prove to be vitally important. Even though your part in the process is very small, the net effect of harvesting all the wasted computing time is very great. If you do join, feel free to register with a team (such as Cambridge University) so that we can see each others' results clocking up.

N

22nd December 2005

N is a downloadable flash game that is actually difficult in an interesting way as opposed to the standard difficulty of just to quick while still boring. The controls are easy to grasp, but playing it is quite a skill (one which I havent mastered yet it has to be said). The premise is simple, as in most platformers you guide the hero through a maze of enemies and traps until you reach the exit where you progress to a new maze. Pretty standard so far, but there are a good number of levels to attempt, and the learning curve is very well balanced. The first few levels are enemy-less, they're quite easy if you dont fall to your death or run out of time. Soon however there will be big blue electrified blobs (why is it always blobs?!), laser guns, mines and missiles attempting to impede your progress. And that leads to death, lots of death. In a Half-life 2 style system, there is a modicom of physics involved. Upon your termination each of your limbs is treated as a separate object and you are often blown across the map in small pieces, or after a long fall, lie crumpled in the corner. This is a wonderful little extra, especially on the maze made almost entirely of mines, as body parts ping around like pinballs. Definatlely worth a look after a hard day's work, or if you are trying to avoid a hard day's work of course.