Ryan – Page 32 – Ryan Schulze

Useful Software for MSI Wind

December 24, 2008Ryan7 Commentsfirmware, msi wind, software

So I’ve had my Wind for a few weeks now. I think I’ll share some stuff I’ve stumbled upon (or searched).

The latest Firmware – A little tip, it will only update your BIOS if you have AC power plugged in (and it will give you a error message that has nothing to do with the power source if you don’t). The “hassle” of upgrading the firmware is defiantly worth it, built in overclocking (if something goes wacky and your keyboard doesn’t respond anymore. don’t fret, just unplug ac and battery for 30 sec.).

eeeRotate – Software to rotate your screen & touch pad. Now you can read eEbooks with the screen turned 90°. Defiantly a must for anyone who reads lots of documents on the go.

BTProx This little application can automatically lock your PC if it looses connection to a bluetooth device (e.g. your cell phone), useful in case you forget to manually lock your PC when you rush out of the room.

Alternate Microsoft Bluetooth stack – An alternative to your built in Bluetooth drivers. Theese are from Microsoft and work (for me) a whole lot better with applications.

Download Statusbar A download addon for Firefox, puts the downloads in the statusbar. Less clutter, better overview.

iFox Graphite Theme that uses less space. I turn off the bookmark toolbar and put the addressbar up in the same row as the menu, saves space (and don’t the magic F11 key for fullscreen browsing ;-))

Gaming & Tech

December 16, 2008RyanGaming, gta4, l4d, runes of magic, Server, steam, valve

Yeah I know, I haven’t posted in quite a while. Have been pretty busy with all kinds of stuff lately. so here is a short update on the more technical stuff I’ve been up to in the last few weeks:

– I moved most of the services from my old server to my new server (actually to one of my vmware guests on my new server, si-ka.net is still missing, and I need to forward dopefish.de to www.dopefish.de)
– I set up a gameserver host on a separate vmware guest. While this may not be the best solution performance-wise, it is defiantly the best solution security wise since gameservers require all kinds of strange library crap. And because it is easy, I also set up a Left 4 Dead dedicated server and assigned it to the -si.ka- steam group.

I also started playing a few new games. I got talked into getting “Left 4 Dead”, which is fun in coop and multi-player (solo kind of lacks smart bots on your own team). Then I got GTA4, but haven’t had time to play it yet. And yesterday I had a look at “Runes of Magic” a free MMORPG. It is currently in open-beta, and large parts of it still require translation (in the starting areas, most of the quests are a mix of German/English, if you get in some seldom visited areas, quests and NPC are sometimes in Asian lettering).

Climbing has been coming a bit short lately, I’ll try to get back to that more regularly.

Another flash game

November 30, 2008RyanFlash, Game, online game, web

Ok, here is another cool flash game: “Auditorium”. It is a puzzle game with a twist, divert a flow of particle around the playing area with different tools trying to reach goals. It’s hard to describe, have a look for yourself: http://www.playauditorium.com/

Retro Text Adventure

November 20, 2008RyanFlash, Game, online game, web

I stumbled across a cool text adventure today (it was mentioned on a mailing list a work). Even if you have never played a text adventure before, you should really have a look at it. It’s really good, kind of mind bending at times.

http://nomediakings.org/games/everybody_dies_takes_bronze_at_ifcomp.html

vmware is odd

November 1, 2008Ryan1 Commentlinux, vmware

I installed the final release of vmware server 2.0 on a server today. Not much has changed since the RC version I had been using. I found some quick fixes and tips in this blog: http://digital.blogsite.org/index.php/2008/10/04/review-vmware-sever-2
The authorization.xml problem was a REAL pain, so I was grateful to find a fix for that. And the tip about the VI Client laying around on the server was priceless (duh, the least they could have done could have been a link in the webinterface). Using the client to access the vmware host is finally not painful anymore. The webinterface is still Ok if I’m not at a computer of mine, or am under linux.

There are still some oddities about vmware that bug me, like the missing option to turn off the DHCP server if you set up networking to use a virtual switch (HostOnly). The VI Client allows me to do some stuff that isn’t possible with the webinterface (like priority for RAM and CPU, or CPU affinity), but it doesn’t allow me to ad virtual machines that are on the server ?!?

The Software is free, so I’m not complaining here. But theese would be a real pain in the rear end if I was using the software in a production environment.