Monthly archives for May, 2009

How to take a screenshot in Free Realms

May21
2009 Leave a Comment Written by Stuart Clark

To take an in-game screenshot whilst playing Free Realms you can press the F12 key, if you want to remove the interface it can be toggled on and off using the F10 key.

You can find the screenshots you have taken in the following folders:

  • Windows XP: C:\Program Files\Sony Online Entertainment\Installed Games\Free Realms\ImageCaptureOutput
  • Windows Vista: C:\Users\<username>\AppData\LocalLow\Sony Online Entertainment\Installed Games\Free Realms\ImageCaptureOutput

Replace <username> with your Windows user name.

Posted in Video Games - Tagged , ,

Style testing on multiple browsers

May19
2009 Leave a Comment Written by Stuart Clark

One of the trickest parts of web development is ensuring your code is backwards compatible, there are a variety of utilities that can be utilised in order to assist with this, below I’ve listed the most useful ones that I have found.

Internet Explorer Application Compatibility VPC Image

The most useful of these utilities is provided by Microsoft, realising that a lot of people were still using older versions of Internet Explorer they release Virtual PC (external link) images containing versions of Internet Explorer from version 6 onwards. The images expire after a few months but Microsoft are constantly updating them to include the latest Windows updates.

Download the Internet Explorer Application Compatibility VPC Images (external link) from Microsoft’s site.
BrowserShots Logo 

Browsershots (external link) is a open source web farm running multiple versions of operating system and browsers which can be used to check rendering of a single web page. As it is free it can sometimes fail to render your page on certain selections and can also take a long time to render but it is very helpful to see what it will look like on more obscure operating system and browser combinations.
Litmus Logo 

Litmus (external link) is a website that offers paid for and free versions to show you how your web pages and emails render in various browsers and/or email readers. It is more reliable than Browsershots but the free version’s list of browsers is limited.
Posted in CSS

Streaming media to the Wii

May19
2009 Leave a Comment Written by Stuart Clark

Even though the Wii does not come with built-in media streaming capabilities, unlike the Playstation 3 or Xbox 360, you can use a piece of freely available software to do it yourself.

You will need the following:

  • A PC running Windows XP or newer
  • A Wii running on the same network as the PC
  • The Internet Channel installed on the Wii

Step-by-step instructions:

  • Download and run the TVersity software available at http://tversity.com/download/ (external link), leave all of the options set to their default settings to ensure the software is started on each boot. You do not need to install the Ask.com search bar in order for the software to function correctly. Completing the installation will load the TVersity interface, load the TVersity service and begin indexing the content on the PC.
  • You now need to find the PC’s IP address so that we can connect to it from the Wii. The simplest method is to open the Windows Start menu and choose Run. Type “cmd” into the box and click OK. This will bring up a command prompt; type in “ipconfig /all” and hit Enter. Look for your default network connection, usually called “Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection” and take note of the IPv4 address, it should look like this: “192.168.0.2″.
  • Load up your Wii and open the Internet Channel, on the start page click Web Address and in the box type in the following, replacing the X’s with the IP address of the PC retrieved earlier: “http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:41952/flashlib”.
  • You should now see a menu containing Audio, Photos and Videos listed, if no files are listed from the PC it may take some time for the TVersity software to completely index the folders on the PC. Selecting a file will re-encode that file on the PC on the fly so that it can be displayed on your Wii.
  • Remember to bookmark the address you entered by clicking the star icon on the Internet Channel’s menu bar.
Posted in Wii

Fix Windows Update error code 80240025

May18
2009 1 Comment Written by Stuart Clark

Disclaimer: Use the information in this document at your own risk. I disavow any potential liability for the contents of this document. Use of the concepts, examples, and/or other content of this document is entirely at your own risk.

Please note that this fix was tested on Windows Vista but should work on other versions of Windows.

Recently I was experiencing some issues with a Windows Vista machine not updating from Windows Update correctly, eventually it was tracked down to a single registry key in the following location:

HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-18\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\WindowsUpdate

If you set the DisableWindowsUpdateAccess flag to 0 then it should now work, if you do not want to do this manually you can also download a fix below:

Windows Update Error - Code 80240025 Fix
Posted in Windows - Tagged

Watchmen by Alan Moore

May18
2009 Leave a Comment Written by Stuart Clark
The Watchmen comic book was created by writer Alan Moore, artist Dave Gibbons and colourist John Higgens, and is billed as one of the all time great comic book series. With the release of the new Watchmen film imminent and the surrounding buzz I decided to read it and see what I thought, according to research I did the original comic release was interesting due to various differences between it and its fellow comics, but sadly it has not aged well at all. I found the story confusing to follow, especially the multiple threads going on at once, in particular the comic-with-a-comic of Tales of the Black Freighter added only more to my confusion. Once I had grasped the various threads I did find the story to be enjoyable if slow, but overall a good read that has been surpassed by its more modern brethren.
Posted in Books - Tagged ,
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