Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Age of Empires Online GUI Bug

In Age of Empires Online there is a bug where you can't close the equipment tab. To make this happen there are certain steps.

1. Open inventory
2. Open equipment
3. Click on chat bar as if you were going to type something
4. Try to close the equipment tab

When doing this you should be unable to close the equipment tab. To fix it simply close your inventory and then close the equipment. Hope the developers will get time and fix this bug. Can be a annoying from time to time.

Blogger's New Layout

Blogger has recently changed their layout! Its nice that it happened today because I was going to change the tags of my posts and sort everything but I couldn't do it efficiently with the old layout. With this new layout I can do it efficiently and I have! Every post is neat and tidy and the tags are on the side ------> 


Anyway this new layout reminds me of the Google+ layout. It's clean and easy to use and I feel that I can do things more efficiently. Like I said earlier I am able to change the tags of posts with just a couple clicks. Some noticeable changes are the post editor, and the new overview. 

The post editor is now larger and gives you more work space to work with. Notice the clean interface, on the right is the sidebar with post settings. These settings include labels, schedule, location, and more options.



The new overview makes it easier for you to track your views and stats about your viewers. With the clean layout it gives you all the stats you would need. Including comments awaiting moderation, published comments, page-views today, posts, followers, and more.


To me these are great improvements, it will surely make it easier for me. Leave a comment with your thoughts or share!

Monday, August 29, 2011

Programming languages and web technology cheat sheets

Recently found some handy cheat sheets for programming languages and web technologies at AddedBytes. Here's a link to them.

Here's a list:

Python
Subversion
Regular Expressions
mod_rewrite
PHP
CSS
SQL Server
HTML
Microformats
World of Warcraft
Ruby on Rails
ASP / VBScript
HTML Character Entities
JavaScript
MySQL
RGB Hex Colour Chart

Source: http://www.addedbytes.com/cheat-sheets/

How to Get 500+ Twitter followers in 3 Days

Today I am going to show you a little trick to get Twitter followers. Getting Twitter followers can be a tedious task unless you know how to do it. Basically you want to follow people in your niche thus giving it a better chance that they will follow back. A great tool to follow people is Tweinds, allows you to select interests that you want and shows you people that share the same interests on Twitter. Remember you can only add apox 1000 people a day. Now you may be thinking to yourself "What do I do with the people who don't follow me?". You may get the idea you will have to slowly unfollow all those people. Luckily there is a tool that does this for you. Managefilter connects with your Twitter and displays stats. These include people who aren't following you, people with no profile image, inactive people, talkative people, and quiet people. The first thing you want to do is unfollow all inactive people. After you have no more inactive people you want to unfollow people that don't follow you. Remember to give them 24-48 hours before unfollowing so they have the chance to follow you. With these tools you can rinse and repeat.

Extra Tips

To increase the chances of people following you you should customize your profile. Fill your bio explaining what you enjoy to do (your interests) and other content. Also you should give yourself a profile picture to make yourself unique and look to be active. Lastly you want to tweet often, you don't want your followers to think your inactive. Make sure to tweet 1-2 days.

Anyway that is all I have to show you, thanks for reading! Feel free to share this and comment!

Hiya!

Hey,
You know when Tristan is always talking about that player that he plays games with? Well, that's me. When I took an interest in blogging, he told me, "Why not use mine?". Being an extremely lazy person, and not wanting to set up my own, I accepted. What I'll mostly be doing here is something I love: Talking about video games. I LOVE Video games, and I'm here to write reviews for them (For the foreseeable future). Got a favourite game that you absolutely LOOOVE? Post it in the comments, and I'll see what I can do. For now, though, I'll be doing games that I already have, such as R.U.S.E., Age Of Empires Online, Crysis 2, H.A.W.X. 2, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, etc. So, that's all for now, folks!

~As written by
~Jake

Sunday, August 28, 2011

Learning what Deception is through Technology and Magic

I recently came across this amazing video! Marco Tempest teaches you what deception is through technology and magic. What amazed me was the way he used technology to create magic and teach the meaning of deception. I found it entertaining and enjoyed learning as well. Check it out for yourself!



One Level to Short

My apology for my earlier post about how the Age of Empires Campaign was short. It turns out I was missing a mission and it triggered Cyrpus, a brand new island full of missions. I was glad to see this! So to change my other post I will say I enjoy the campaign because it was enjoyable and filled with surprises.

Here are the requirements to start Cyprus:

Accessible by: All
Required Booster Pack: None
Required Level: 29
Required Quests: The Defense of Arsinoe





Hope that helps you too.

Saturday, August 27, 2011

Google Charged $500 Million by US Government

Google was recently charged $500 million by the U.S. government. This happened because Google accepted millions of ads from online pharmacies that broke U.S. laws. Apparently some weren't in the U.S. either. I was very surprised Google would do this, I wouldn't have thought Google would have done this. Makes me trust Google less then I did before. Watch it Google.

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Age of Empires Online Campaign Was Short

In AOEO I found the campaign was very short and easy. I was able to slide right through it with little difficulty. I was hoping for a long enjoyable campaign but that isn't what I got. Mind you the campaign overall was great but it was just short I found. I guess I'm going to have to stick with 1v1 and 2v2 to entertain me. I hope this will because I have another player who I can play 2v2 with. We play R.U.S.E together online to. We rarely loose :P But anyway I hope this will keep me playing the game for a bit longer. I just wish the campaign was longer.

R.U.S.E is Getting Easy

I got RUSE when it first came out and I've noticed recently online 2v2 has gotten easier. I play with my friend online and we rarely loose now. Then again now that I think of it we could just be getting better. It isn't like many people play RUSE. People prefer basic games like shooters which require less strategy. RUSE is a very heavy strategy game, one of the reasons I got it. Strategy is the best game type for me, I enjoy playing it. I like the ability to strategize instead of running round shooting in a shooter. Anyway since there are less people playing the game there is less competition for 2v2. We do however loose every once and awhile but usually we can get huge win streaks. I hope they end up making another game like RUSE. It is and will always be one of my favourite Xbox360 games.

The New Face for Apple

When you hear Apple what comes to mind? Apple products and Steve Jobs. But since he is no longer the CEO people will now have to get used to the new CEO Tim Cook. This change in Apple may make Apple a bit unstable. With this change some people will be upset and some may be happy for the change. Who knows if this will affect Apple as a company. Only time will really tell to be honest. Personally I am not a Apple user, I prefer PC and Linux. So it doesn't affect me what happens to Apple except amusement and news. Anyway those were just my thoughts on the resent events. Thanks for reading.

My Approach Into Affiliate Marketing

Last night I decided I was going to try affiliate marketing. I am currently in the search for a good one to work with. I hope to place banners etc on this blog. I like how you can earn more with affiliate then just plain ads. I've looked into some and I could be earning a lot. I will just need to continue trying to get more traffic so this will be worth its while.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Steve Jobs Resigns As CEO of Apple and Replaced with Tim Cook

Steve Jobs just resigned as the CEO of Apple, he writes:


To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community:
I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.
I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.
As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.
I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.
I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.
Steve

Steve Jobs has now been replaced with Tim Cook as the CEO of Apple. What will the future be for Apple? Good? Bad? We will have to see!

Great Find - Build a Gaming PC for Under $1000

Found this great post on PCWorld and thought I should share it. If your looking into making a gaming rig this might just help you out.

Build a Gaming PC for Under $1000

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Afraid of Technology or just the sign?

This funny video about a British experiment to see if people are afraid of technology. To me its just the sign being quickly rotated that scared the other person. If they put butterfly on the sign they would have had the same reaction. Watch it!



Monday, August 22, 2011

If PHP Were British

Found an entertaining post by AddedBytes today, explains what PHP should be like in the UK. Found it quite funny so make sure to check it out!

If PHP Were British

OS Developing Blog

Today I would like to share a neat OS dev blog. This blog is filled will lots of neat information about the OS. I began following this blog from when it was first made. Currently the blog has covered the basis of hardware components, basics of an OS, and is now leaning into C++. Later on the blog will focus on OS dev as the owner creates his own OS. What I enjoy about this blog is that you can also learn from it too. I enjoy every post it gives and they are very well written. If you are interested in OS development or just want to learn a few things I recommend this blog!

The Developing Blog

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Age of Empires Online Treasure Bug

Recently found a bug in AOEO. Basically you can't claim a treasure after you kill the guardians every once and awhile. This bug has not happened in co-op though. So I try to play as much co-op as I can. It really gets annoying when there are 4 treasures sitting in front of you and you can't take them.  I hope they fix this bug soon, I want to get all my treasure instead of just some.

Saturday, August 20, 2011

New Freeman's Mind: Episode 38!

Freeman's Mind episode 38 is out finally!


Chrome Increasing Popularity

Source: StatCounter Global Stats - Browser Market Share



July 2010 - 2011 statistics show that Chrome is increasing its popularity while Firefox and IE slowly grow less popular. I myself use Chrome simply because I like its clean design and speed. By the looks of it Chrome will end up rising above all browsers.

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Bought Age of Empires Online Greek Civilization

Just bought the Greek civilization pack on AOEO so I get all of the content. Without this I was left with little to nothing. I couldn't get the most out of the game without paying for it. When I was in the beta we were given the full game and I assumed that I would get the same when the game came out. I was mistaken. I gave it a day then I decided I was going to buy the Greek civilization to get the full game. It was only $20 CAD, to me that is a great price because most games nowadays are at least $60 CAD. Anyway I've been playing it and have enjoyed it a lot. I enjoy the AOE series and am glad to have this one too. If you enjoy strategy games or any of the AOE I would suggest you give this game a try and may end up buying it. You don't have to be the Greeks, you can be the Egyptians if you want too.

Php Security - Cookies and Passing Variables

Another two videos are out and I enjoyed them. Hope you enjoy them too.



Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Complete list of PHP Security Videos

This post simply shows all 6 of the videos I've posted so far on this blog. They are the recent security videos from phpacademy and I wanted to share them. Enjoy.

SQL Injection
XSS (Cross-site scripting)
File Includes
File Uploading
Session Hijacking
Null Byte

Age of Empires Online is Out!

AOEO is now out and it looks to be fun. When the beta was out I played it and it was amazing. The first time I looked at it I thought it was going to suck, but once I played it my perspective changed.


I like how they added a more complex trading system, you are able to bid and trade with other live people instead of the basic AI trading. Overall I like how you are playing with other people instead of alone. If you like the AOE series I would recommend this one!

Monday, August 15, 2011

Swarmanoid - Technology Getting Better

Found this really neat video about Swarmanoids. Technology is getting better and it looks awesome! The video shows three types of robots working together to retrieve a book. It amazes me that they can communicate to complete a task.


Php Security - Session Hacking and Null Byte

Two more videos were posted on phpacademies youtube channel. They are about session hacking and null byte. They are great videos and I hope you enjoy them too!

Session Hacking
Null Byte

Php Security - File Includes and File Uploading

Turns out two more security videos were uploaded on youtube and I feel like I should share them. They are easy to understand and simple to learn from. Hope you found them useful like I did.

File Includes
File Uploading

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Php Security - SQL Injection and XSS Attacks

I found two great videos that I wanted to share on my blog. They explain SQL injection and how to prevent it, as well as XSS attacks and how to prevent them too. They are very easy to understand and learn from. Hope you enjoy them too!

XSS Attacks
SQL Injection


Anonymous and Facebook

As days pass I wonder if this will really happen. There are two sides of which I think with this situation.

First, I don't trust Facebook myself. So I would like to see Anonymous do what they are saying. It would be interesting to watch this turn out. I don't know if they can do it but its interesting to hear about it none the less.

Second, I am on Facebook. If they are messing with Facebook I don't like the idea that i'm on it. I make sure not to put any personal data on it but I still worry. I just don't like the idea of my data potentially being taken. This is why i'm transitioning to Google+, I trust Google more then Facebook any day. I've grown trust with Google but I have never with Facebook and probably never will.

I would like yo hear your thoughts on this! Comment, share!

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Patterns and Crazy Eights

The title may make you a little confused but don't worry. This post is just about the patterns in a card game called crazy eights. Basically when you play a card with a jack or a four the player after you skips a turn. For some reason I felt like figuring out the pattern if there were infinite jacks and fours. What I did was assume there were three people playing the game and each played a four of spades. This will simply make the next player miss their turn and move onto the next player. Each player is defined with a letter, A, B, and C. As we start with A, B will miss it's turn and it will be C's turn. Then A will miss it's turn and it will be B's turn. Now I noticed a pattern here shown as the following.

A/C
C/B
B/A
A/C
C/B
B/A

The pattern simply skips the next letter and moves onto the next letter. For some reason I felt the need to find this pattern. Anyway thanks for reading this random post! xD

Software Development Stages

Recently bought an old book for 1 dollar CAD. The reason why it was so cheap was because it's 33 years old! The book is called "8080A-8085 Assembly Language Programming by Lance A. Leventhal". This book focuses on assembly language with the 8080A-8085 microprocessors. Something I definitively don't need to learn in 2011. But I bought it because it was old and unique to me. I thought I might be able to get a basic understanding of assembly from it. Now I was fairly wrong, it was hard to get any information from the book related to assembly. But I was clearly able to get information about software development stages and about compilers etc..
So with this post I am going to post the software development stages and see if you use them when you code.


  1. Problem definition
  2. Program design
  3. Coding
  4. Debugging
  5. Testing
  6. Documentation
  7. Maintenance and re-design
They all look reasonable but do you use these type of stages when coding? I use most of these here, but I don't always use them in this order. For starters I don't usually document my code, I leave comments in my code but not enough to consider it documented. Something I hope to improve over time as I continue to code. Now I usually define the problem when i'm designing the program. I don't do one before the other I do them throughout the design process. I also debug and test at the same time to find the bugs easier because i'm interacting with the program. Re-design is only used if I want to improve my code and I fix my code when i'm debugging.

Now does anyone use those stages exactly how they are laid out or are yours mixed like mine?

Monday, August 8, 2011

Will Anonymous Take Down Facebook November 5th 2011?

Been looking at some news and came across some really interesting news. Anonymous is going to try and take down Facebook November 5th 2011. I think this will be an amazing site to see. I wouldn't be surprised if Facebook actually did sell our personnel information. I'm pretty sure they couldn't make all there money with ads. Here's a video about the plan. What do you plan to do with your Facebook before November 5th 2011?


Sunday, August 7, 2011

Learning AI for Games

Understanding Artificial Intelligence

To understand AI for games you want to have a basic understanding of general AI. This will make it easier to understand and expand on later. Lets dive right into some basic AI!

Introduction to AI

AI, short for Artificial Intelligence is replicating the human thought process with computers. AI alone is a broad topic but luckily we are only focusing on game AI. Now to give a basic example of a simple thought process that's purely logical.

*Sorry for the small text in the diagram

This example is very simple and straight forward. Notice how it doesn't really act like a human necessarily would. It doesn't have any human emotion or feelings.

Lets aim at a more realistic approach instead. I show a more detailed human-realistic diagram below.

*Sorry for the small text in the diagram

With this little add-on we get a bit more complex as you or I would think. This extra decision gives it a better human thought. Now if you wanted to go more in depth you could add feelings. For example if you felt sick you wouldn't eat or if you were tired you would eat to gain energy. 

Now we will move onto AI in games and the types.

AI in Games

There are three general AI types in games. They each are for certain tasks such as following the player. The following three are game AI types.

  • Roaming AI
  • Behavioral AI
  • Strategic AI
Roaming AI

Roaming AI is basically AI that move certain ways. It makes decisions based on whats around it. Types of roaming AI are chasing, evading, and patterned roaming. Each have their own specialties.

Chasing

Chasing is a type of Roaming AI which chases another object. AN example of this is shown.

The square is coded to chase the circle where ever it goes. The circle is going in a circle making it harder for the square to get it. Now how this would work is the square would check the circles position and decide the quickest way to get the circle. In other words the square would check the circles x and y coordinates.  

Evading

Evading is much like chasing but opposite. An object avoids another object and attempts to get away. A quick example is as shown.

The square attempts to get away from the circle. What the square does is looks at the circles position and goes away from it.

Patterned Roaming

Patterned roaming is basically a set pattern of which an object follows. An example would look something like this.

The square is set to go in a figure eight while the circle goes in a circle. This is all that those shapes are coded to do.

That covers all roaming AI, next I will move onto behavioral AI.

Behavioral AI

Behavioral AI is basically roaming AI that`s much more complex. Instead of an object always following the same instructions it has multiple decisions. Here`s a basic example. 

The square has a 50% chance of chasing the circle, 10% to run away, and 40% to move around randomly. This gives a more complex approach offering decisions instead of one rule.

Aggressive and Passive Example

To give a better example I will show two different types of shapes. One being passive and one being aggressive.

The square is the aggressive shape and the circle is passive. Since the square is aggressive it is 50% likely to chase the circle. It still has 45% to wander and 5% to evade. While the circle is 50% to evade from the square and 40% chance of wandering. It also has a 10% chance of staying still. Each of these shapes are very different because one is aggressive and one is passive.

Next I will be moving onto strategic AI which is much more complex.

Strategic AI

Strategic AI is an interesting type of AI. This AI basically must follow rules of a game. This is the AI you would play against in a chess game. A good example is a game called Age of Empires 3. You could play against the AI but they had to play with the same rules you had so the game was fair. A really fun thing I used to do was open up the editor and watch two AI players vs each other. It was very interesting to see how the two AI interacted. Anyway back onto topic, strategic AI is much more complex because it has to play the game at the same level as thew gamer.

Deciding the Right AI

Now since you have an understanding of the types of game AI you may be looking to pick one for your game. Lets break down the types to make it easier to see.

Roaming - objects interacting with other objects by moving

Behavioral - objects with multiple decisions 

Strategic - follows same rules as player

Now it will be a bit easier to figure out which one you need. If none of the types I have talked about look to be what you want, search around the web.

Phew this has been a lot of typing. Hope you enjoyed it.


Understanding the Basics of the BIOS

You may be asking yourself, what is the BIOS? It stands for Basic Input Output System. The BIOS is embedded software which is in the motherboard that is executed when you turn on your PC.

The BIOS does many things such as dealing with RAM, detecting available hard drives, and dealing with the CPU. Once the BIOS had done what it has to do it starts the OS and lets the OS take control.

To access the BIOS turn on your PC and hit DEL, F1, or F2. If these options don't search it up.

In the BIOS you can tweak hardware such as RAM or the CPU. Be careful when doing this because you don't want to hurt your machine. If you start asking yourself questions research it. You then can improve the performance of your PC by overclocking you're hardware. When overclocking you can shorten the life of your hardware. To make things easier research a bit to find out how far your hardware can go! Remember to be careful when tweaking your hardware. Have fun!

Microsoft Windows 8 Thoughts

Recently read a bit about Windows 8 and it seems odd to me. They aren't going to use the traditional layout that they used. Its supposedly like their Windows Phone 7 layout. I myself would prefer the traditional layout, I am used to it and I don't see why they would need to change the entire layout. I guess I will have to see the final product to get a clearer idea.


This is what your screen would look like, to me it looked cluttered with no space. It looks like there may be apps to fill the rectangles you see above. I would be glad to hear your thoughts about Windows 8. Comment!

Saturday, August 6, 2011

Bethesda Suing Mojang

Posted on Notch's blog, explaining that they are getting sued by Bethesda because of their recent game "Scrolls". Notch explains that the name "Scrolls" is the reason they are being sued. Bethesda has a game called "The elder scrolls". It seems the single word "scrolls" is a problem for Bethesda. Full story is on Notch's blog.