DerekReynoldsDotCom

David Breyer and I have been for awhile talking about consolidating our daily tech postings to our personal blogs to create a better tech centric website. So today we bring you www.yellinglizard.com.

This blog (www.derekreynolds.com) will continue to serve just my personal blogging.

Pat Collins today sent me an email talking about an open source Lotus SameTime project called Meanwhile.

The heart of the Meanwhile Project is the Meanwhile library, providing the basic Lotus Sametime session functionality along with the core services; Presence Awareness, Instant Messaging, Multi-user Conferencing, Preferences Storage, Identity Resolution, and File Transfer. This extensible client interface allows additional services to be added to a session at runtime, allowing for simple integration of future service handlers such as the user directory and whiteboard and screen-sharing.

This morning Pat Collins sent me a URL: http://www.flickr.com/groups/74918957@N00/ which took me to a Flickr photo album displaying London Bomb blast coverage. I see better coverage here then I do on CNN…

Change Log:

- Fixed in issue that caused the Multiplayer Browser to become unresponsive.

- Fixed an issue where some game controls were not available to be rebound within the Options menu.

- Fixed an issue with increasing performance degradation on servers.

- Fixed a problem with shader caching on client/host : after the first map in a rotation, shaders would be loaded on the fly during gameplay.

- Fixed a crash with rebinding LMB

- Fixed a problem that caused environment mapping to not appear on reflective surfaces.

- Fixed a crash that happened when a client picks up a kit that doesn’t exist anymore.

- Fixed a problem with AI when the game was paused for a long time: bots would become unresponsive and also shoot more accurately.

- LOD distances tweaked on certain objects.

Official:

ftp://largedownloads.ea.com/pub/pat…patch_v_101.exe
http://www.fileplanet.com/154949/15…d-2-Patch-v1.01
http://dlx.gamespot.com/pc/battlefi…fo_6128592.html

Mirrors:
http://files.42delta.com/bf2/bf2patch_v_101.exe
http://209.172.44.79/e107_files%5cd…patch_v_101.exe
http://205.209.146.140/patch/1-bf2patch_v_101.exe
http://205.209.146.140/patch/2-bf2patch_v_101.exe
http://205.209.146.140/patch/3-bf2patch_v_101.exe
http://205.209.146.140/patch/4-bf2patch_v_101.exe
http://205.209.146.140/patch/5-bf2patch_v_101.exe
http://www.m-e-tech.com/files/bf2patch_v_101.exe

Vard the psychopath DJ sent me this today. One of the most freaky things I’ve ever seen.

The video begins with a doctor reassuring a visibly disturbed baby named Johnny, who seems to be asking for his mommy. When he gets violent, the doctor is forced to inject him with a calming sedative. The film then flips to the familiar Drukqs introduction and then proceeds to go crazy with Johnny dancing in his wheelchair, doing wheelies and tricks for the amusement of his dog, and transforming into a variety of nightmarish shapes, like a someone tipping a wheelbarrow full of butcher’s shop scrapings, entrails and brains onto a window.

The film is stunning, harrowing and disturbing in equal measure. The visuals match the frantic pace of the music and the experience is quite exhausting, leaving you breathless by the end.

See the movie for yourself here..

Edit: SecureMart just emailed me stating the video card wouldn’t be in stock until 08/25/2005… Like I believe that BS.

After weeks of procastination I finally bit the bullit and bought a new video card. I really wanted to use my older ATI 9800 Pro but my new Dell 8400 PC only supports a PCI-E BUS so I was bound to get a new video card.

After doing some research I ended up buying a MSI nVidia Geforce 6800GT 256mb PCI-E. SecureMart.com had it extreamly cheap at only $268 bucks. NewEgg, it’s next cheapest competitor was selling it for $100 dollars more.

Now I can finally play Battlefield 2 with ultrahigh settings with a resolution higher then 800×600.

Some Reviews:
HardOCP
PCStats

Ever had to create a sequential numbering system and the requirements defined a prefix of 0’s? (00003433).

Below is a function I wrote to automate the number generation:

Function AddLeadingZeros(OriginalNum As String, TotalLength As Integer)
AddLeadingZeros = String(TotalLength - Len(OriginalNum),"0") & OriginalNum
End Function

The first parameter is the number you wish to use as the base before the prefix of 0’s. The second parameter is the total length you wish the number structure to be.

Eg.
MyNumber = AddLeadingZeros("55",10)

Will return 0000000055

These guys on IRC today were raving about this mp3 tagging program called MusicBrainz. So after hearing all the good things said about this versitle app I decided to give it a try. After you download the free application you’re required to sign up with a simple username/pass and an optional email address that is apparently required if you’re going to make use of the full functionality. In any case, Once you load the app you’ll be fronted with a very simple interface with a few options to either add mp3s or add a folder containing MP3s. I decided to try a test folder containing a variant of 6 mp3s ranging from very popular to extreamly rare. To my surprise it picked up 5 of them, recognizing them as available to tag mp3s. WOW!!! When you double click on the recognized mp3 it will bring up a listing of what it guesses is its origin, be it a compilation or artist CD. You can then confirm that’s where it belongs or if you’re sure that that it doesn’t belong you have the option to submit changes to the main MusicBrainz database; thats where your email address is required.

I strongly suggest anyone with a large digital audio collection that is in dire need of tagging (adding m3u and standard file names) to their collection give this a try.

Download the MusicBrainz Tagger! [Windows]
Download iEatBrainz! More info… [Mac OS X 10.3]

MusicBrainz is a user-maintained community music metadatabase. Music metadata is information such as the ArtistName, the AlbumTitle, and the list of tracks that appear on an album. MusicBrainz collects this information about music and makes it available to the public so that music players can retrieve information about the music that is playing. For instance, most audio CDs do not contain the name of the artist, album, or a listing of the tracks. A music player can use the digital characteristics of an audio CD to look up the correct metadata and show it to the user during playback.

It appears the Empire Series Media Center PC from Expansion Solution has redfined HTPC. With a 1000 Watt built in amplifier, integrated 7.1 playback and 110 db signal to noise ratio you’ll be hard pressed not to be satisfied with this audiophile grade HTPC system.

There is a nice review of it here