TTC Streetcar Papercraft

Here’s a papercraft of a TTC streetcar (tram) that was given when visiting the TTC bus garage during Doors Open Toronto. Now the instructions are really vague… I had a hard time building this. For example, the trolley pull just says ‘Join parts B and C‘: Does the slit face the front or the rear? Which way do I angle the trolley pole? I ended up using a little tape to keep it from falling in either direction.

Anyway it looks alright. I want to make some others, like these cool Team Fortress 2 ones. Maybe one day I’ll design my own.

It was too big to scan… but also the design is a bit lame anyway.

kn00tcn – Saturday Stroll

Description: A Light chilled somewhat jazzy beat, just for the weekend
or a lazy day. Similar to ‘Sunday Stroll‘.
Started: November 2006
Completed: April 2008

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

http://www.mediafire.com/?znnzmyxtkgx

(1 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...

kn00tcn – Do It

Description: Scratched up vocal samples scatter throughout this laid back
track, reminiscent of 90s hip-hop.
Started: September 2008
Completed: September 2008, 30 minutes start to finish.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

http://www.mediafire.com/?kyykmrjnwjg

(3 votes, average: 3.67 out of 5)

 Loading ...

kn00tcn – Sunday Stroll

Description: A Light chilled beat, perfect for the weekend or a lazy day. The mastering and arrangement was done well after the idea.
Started: July 2006
Completed: February 2009

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

http://www.mediafire.com/?ydnyimdnq1y

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

kn00tcn – Hide & Seek

Hmm, posts have been idle for too long, let’s get things rolling with some music.

Description: Here’s a head-nodding synthy hip-hop roller with perky drums and a playful melody that captures the children’s game.
Started: January 2008
Completed: January 2008

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

http://www.mediafire.com/?vmmmtiwmnoy

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Opening WordPress Comment Author URLs In A New Window

Here’s a short tip on how to add target=”_blank” to the HTML code generated by WordPress’s comment_author_link(). I can’t seem to get it to work as a filter inside comments.php, but I found a forum post that does what’s needed as a WP plugin. Apparently it needs WP2.5 and up. The simplest way would be modifying the core WP files, but that’s a bad idea due to any updates overwriting your changes, making you do them over again.

<?php
/*
Plugin Name: Edit Comment Author
Version: 0.1
Description: Automatically adds target="_blank" to comment author links
Author: Jay Gilford
Author URI: http://www.jaygilford.com/
Plugin URI: http://www.jaygilford.com/
*/
global $wp_version;
$exit_message = 'This plugin requires Wordpress 2.5 or newer. <a href="http://codex.wordpress.org/Upgrading_WordPress">Please Update!</a>';
if(version_compare($wp_version, '2.5', '<')) {
	exit($exit_message);
}
 
add_filter('get_comment_author_link', 'comment_author_link_edit');
function comment_author_link_edit($content) {
    $content = str_replace('<a ', '<a target="_blank"', $content);
    return $content;
}
?>

Source

Save it as a PHP file, then upload to your WP plugins directory and enable the ‘Edit Comment Author’ plugin.

BFBC2 Map Loading Times

UPDATE2: You can just put atidxx32.dll into your game folder if you don’t want to install the whole 10.5HF package. Expand it from the installer or use the one I have posted here. Here’s my test again with 10.5WHQL, then placing the dll into the game’s folder.

10.5 – 29s
10.5 – 26s

HF dll – 10s
HF dll – 11s

HF dll – 12s (vsync)
HF dll – 11s (vsync)

OLD UPDATE: Apparently they aren’t in the WHQL 10.5s, no wonder.

ATI Catalyst 10.5 was supposed to fix the loading times for Battlefield Bad Company 2 when using 4800 series cards. I’m a 4870×2, but I didn’t really notice much difference. Maybe my 3.6ghz Q9550 or crossfire made it less noticeable. Oh well, at least it’s not the horror stories of 1 minute or more. I’ll have to check some single 4870 or 4850 user stories to compare, but here are my own results:

Panama Canal empty map and vsync with D3DOverrider, since the game’s option does not work. I load it once from a fresh start of the game, exit to the main menu, then load once more. The total time is from the fade to black on the server browser to the fade to black on the map loading screen. (This second time is from the first fade until the fps goes really high and hard drive usage relaxes.)

10.4 – 36s (25s)
10.4 – 34s (25s)

10.5 – 36s (25s)
10.5 – 34s (24s)
10.5 – 28s (23s) – Decided to close D3DOverrider so that the fps is unlocked, relaunched the game… seems that took off about ~6-8 seconds on the first time load.

I should have tested without vsync on 10.4, but still it’s just a few seconds difference. I wonder when they finally fix the in-game option if it will be any different.

VERY Powerful Batch Rename Application

Here’s a real time-saver. If you ever needed to rename or enumerate a bunch of files, and have been manually doing it up till now, then this is the program just for you. Ant Renamer is full of common actions you might have run into when dealing with larger amounts of files, such as photos of a vacation or frames of an animation.

You can add characters, search and replace strings, use the file date for its name, use EXIF information, or even run a regular expression on your file list. It displays what the output will look like at the bottom as a preview. Finally, there’s an Undo button if you make a mistake.

Check it out next time you have some heavy renaming to do. It’s freeware and even includes source code or translation files if you’re inclined to start modifying it.

Making Unreal Engine 3 Games Their Smoothest

UPDATE: On some newer UE3 games, enabling vsync either in-game or from the .ini files causes severe stuttering, particularly in crossfire. If you run into such a game, you need to use D3DOverrider to force triple buffering. I can confirm this on a 4870×2 in UDK, Tribes Ascend, Blacklight, Monday Night Combat, probably some others. Otherwise, no problems with something older like Borderlands.

Quick tip for Unreal Engine: Fix the awful defaults. Mainly, set the smooth framerate option to match your refresh, enable vsync, and disable mouse smoothing.

Any movement or animation on any monitor screen is visually smoothest when it’s synchronized to the screen’s output, or refresh, rate. Vsync does just that. The Aero theme of Vista/7 looks nice and smooth when things are moving because it always has vsync enabled. Similarly, games should also have it enabled whenever possible. This even applies if you’re getting lower fps that’s not completely aligned to your refresh. For example in Crysis, I’ve seen it go around 35-45 fps, but looking really jerky until vsync is enabled.

Watch out for increased input lag, however. This is when you push a button or move your mouse, the action that should appear on screen gets delayed. Different engines handle this side effect better than others. Source engine appears to get almost unplayable with vsync enabled, unless you cap the game with fps_max (removed in Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2, so it’s a little more annoying). Unreal seems to be quite nice with vsync, especially since the engine can be set to render only up to your refresh to avoid the input lag seen in Left 4 Dead. Unreal also appears to have triple buffering built in, helping if your system cannot render as fast as your refresh: It won’t just jump straight down to half fps, but render as fast as it can with light ticking stutters.

Anyway, on with the Unreal tweaks. You’ll need the *Engine.ini and *Input.ini files for the game you’re adjusting. You’ll have to figure out where they’re located, but it’s usually either in MyDocuments or AppData. Here are a few:

Under the Engine.ini, find the smooth framerate parameters. When set to false, I noticed lots of stuttering in Mirror’s Edge, so I always keep it on just as it is by default. I just put the min at 0. More importantly, fix the max since it’s always at 62 at default (why!), make it 60 or whatever your refresh rate is:

bSmoothFrameRate=TRUE
MinSmoothedFrameRate=0
MaxSmoothedFrameRate=60

Also find the vsync toggle if there is none in your in-game options, might as well do it now since you’re in the Engine.ini:

UseVsync=True (note the message at the top of this page)

Now go to the Input.ini. It seems that in Unreal Engine, when you’re fps starts dropping with mouse smoothing enabled (which is usually default), the mouse movement starts accelerating! This completely throws your aiming way off. Turn smoothing off and your movements should be the same on screen whether you’re 60, 40, 20, or any fps:

bEnableMouseSmoothing=false

Now your Unreal Engine based game is as smooth as it can be! Unless of course your system isn’t powerful enough to sustain 60/refresh framerates, but it’s still less jerky than if the image was tearing or your mouse control was changing speeds. Have fun!

Of course, this is all separate from any actual in-game options that raise or lower details. Even if you can’t stay at a constant 60 (or whatever your refresh is), these tweaks still apply to make it smoothest even at lower fps.

Disable Network Thumbs.db Generation

When I got Vista, I noticed something ‘annoying’ when I was browsing some folders over the network/lan. A thumbs.db file was generated into any folder that included images inside, either from hovering over one with the mouse, or browsing it. This totally messes up your folder list if you need to arrange by the modified date instead of by name, and your folders are weeks/months/years old. This will be a ‘brute force’ method, blocking both network and local thumbs.db generation, without gpedit.msc or any reg keys. Windows 7 probably might work too.

Go here: C:\Users\YOURNAME\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows (you can also paste %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Windows into your explorer address bar)

Go to Organize>Folder and Search Options>View (or Tools>Folder Options>View in the address bar, push Alt if your address bar is hidden)

(If you are hiding any files, enable the ‘Show hidden files and folders‘ option AND turn OFF ‘Hide protected operating system files‘.)

Enable ‘Always show icons, never thumbnails‘ for now. This will be so you can delete the existing local thumbs.db files. Go into the Explorer folder (so you’re in ‘…\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer‘). Delete everything in here, which should be a bunch of thumbs.db files pertaining to different pixel sizes.

Open the Properties of this Explorer folder and go to Security>Advanced>Permissions>Edit. Turn off ‘Include inheritable permissions from this object’s parent‘, then ‘Remove‘ on the dialogue that comes up. It should say that there are no groups or users with access to this object. Hit Apply/OK and keep OK’ing till you’re done with the properties of the Explorer folder.

Now you can re-enable your thumbnails by unticking ‘Always show icons, never thumbnails’ and go back to your preferred hidden files options as well.

That’s it. Thumbs.db is permanently blocked from being generated anywhere. The OS is blocked from generating them on each folder of a network share that you’re browsing, and also from taking up local space. According to a reply in this thread, they had some ‘save/save as’ issues in Word 2003, but I’m not seeing any issue on Word 2007 or any other application. If you have an issue, post a comment here, and we could probably adjust the permissions to work around that while still blocking thumbs.db generation.