Doctor Who games

The Good Game reviewers have spoken:

‘a steaming pile of garbage’. The first real Doctor Who game on the DS isn’t just bad; it’s one of the worst misuses of a license I’ve seen.

…and…

Set a few hundred years after the DS game, Return sees the Doctor and Amy investigating some strange signals coming from the vicinity of Jupiter. They come across the strangely deserted SS Lucy Grey. They then have to fight for their lives against shoddy gameplay mechanics and one of the worst cameras I’ve endured in years.

Sounds like they both pale in comparison with the PC games put out earlier in the year. What a shame.

I hate the Mighty Mouse

Apple Mighty MouseWe’ve got an iMac in the PTUA office which I use on the odd occasion. I’ve gradually got used to the world of MacOS, but one thing I still hate is the Mighty Mouse.

There’s something about the feel of it — the non-buttons, and the scroll wheel in particular. I hate the feel of it. It feels really uncomfortable in my right hand; it leaves my fingers tingling in a most unpleasant way. And it’s not much better in my left hand either.

I don’t recall having this kind of reaction with any other mouse. And I don’t even understand why this one feels so bad to me.

It’s odd. Anybody else had the same sensation?

(Pic credit: Wikipedia)

Yahoo groups spam

On a couple of Yahoo Groups I’m on, we’ve noted spams coming through from long-time members in the last week or two.

The good news is there’s no need to panic. Most probably a spammer out there has worked out that person X posts to list Y, and is forging emails from them from a remote location. Which means it is unlikely that X’s computer has been compromised. (Though of course it’s good practice to have virus protection and regularly do scans.)

If you’re an Admin of a Yahoo Group, you might like to check the Posting settings (group management / Group Settings / Messages / Posting and archives). There is a Spam Filtering option which I believe is switched off by default (it might be a newly added setting).

On the groups I’m on, we had spam coming through, but setting the Filtering on seems to have prevented more of it.

Thanks a lot, Apple

I was using a USB drive to move copy files from a Windows box onto a Mac.

Easy enough; plug it in, copy the files over.

Then I plugged the drive back into a Windows computer. What do I see? Oh, delightful, MacOS added some hidden directories for Trash and Spotlight.

Apple Spotlight directories

Harumph. Annoying, but no biggy I guess.

Wait a sec, what’s inside those directories? A bunch of stuff, it turns out:

How about: .Spotlight-V100 \ Store-V1 \ Stores \ [long hex string] … and inside there, about 2Mb of junk.

Apple Spotlight crap on my USB drive

Now, I could understand that if I’d copied anything from the Mac back onto the USB drive, thus it might have needed all that stuff to do the wonderful Spotlighty things in the future.

But just copying stuff off it? Why make that assumption and dump all this crap on it? Particularly hidden, so many people wouldn’t even spot it.

Oh well, it’s in keeping with the iTunes bloatware philosophy of dumping heaps of software onto your PC that most people don’t need. Ed Bott’s updated his guide to avoiding that with iTunes 10:

Apple still gives its customers a monolithic iTunes setup program with absolutely no options to pick and choose based on your specific needs.

Why is that important? When you run the iTunes setup program, it unpacks six Windows Installer packages and a master setup program, which then installs nearly 300MB of program and support files, a kernel-mode CD/DVD-burning driver, multiple system services, and a bunch of browser plugins. It configures two “helper” programs to start automatically every time you start your PC, giving you no easy way to disable them. It installs a network service that many iTunes users don’t need and that has been associated with security and reliability issues.

And you wonder why I dislike iTunes with a passion that burns like the fire of a thousand suns?

It’s a must-read if you’re installing iTunes on Windows.

How to fix YourTV.com.au’s annoying Sydney default

I quite like the YourTV.com.au web site. The TV guide it displays is quite usable, and can be customised to show your correct channels.

But why does it keep forgetting your region every few weeks, and reset itself to metro Sydney?

Your TV Sydney default

Very irritating. (Well, if you live outside metro Sydney.)

Using your web browser, you can check the cookies. This article describes how, in various browsers.

That’s where the problem is: it looks like the “TvFixGuide” cookie, which seems to hold details of what region you’re in, is only set for a month.

Your TV cookie

It doesn’t look like either browser allows you to extend the time range of the cookie, or otherwise modify it. I suppose there’s legitimate reasons for that.

It is possible to hack it by deleting the cookie, setting your computer’s clock, say, a year into the future, before going back to the site and setting the option.

Yep, it seems to work:

Your TV cookie modified

Don’t forget to set your clock back afterwards.

iTunes not up to date

Downloaded the latest iTunes 9.2.1.

Installed using the less-bloat method (for people like me who just want to use it to manage an iPod):

Extract the components from the iTunes setup EXE…

AppleApplicationSupport.msi /passive
Quicktime.msi /passive
iTunes.msi /passive

All good! All up to date!

I decided to fire up Quicktime and make sure none of its stupid tray icons were configured to run all the time, wasting my memory and CPU. What do I find?

Quicktime out of date

Quicktime is out of date — it tells me. It’s only 7.6.6, and you should be running 7.6.7.

Oh, bravo Apple — can’t even keep their own software up to date.

Donkey Kong on 12 different 80s platforms

Part 1: Atari 2600, Intellivision, Colecovision, NES, Commodore 64, IBM PC (DOS), Apple II

Part 2: Vic 20 (dodgy emulator?), TI-99/4A, Atari 8-bit computers, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, Atari 7800

With adaptions from an arcade original that had a screen that was higher than it was wide, there’s an obvious compromise to be made between the clarity/resolution of the characters, their aspect ratio, and the number of girders to the top — eg compare the Atarisoft Commodore 64 version with the Ocean one. Some versions look very squashed.

Most surprisingly good I reckon was the TI version.

Via Retroist

USA news clips don’t export well

News clips from the USA are often 4:3 – why?  Is it a technologically backward country, or do they only export their news in a universal format?  I see work-arounds to disguise this fact, like framing the whole clip in a themed border, or widening the clip by tacking onto the pillar-box sides a blurred-out duplicate of the clip that’s been zoomed, stretched or clipped.

And while I’m noting this, why is it that the watermark on these clips is almost universally blurred out and overlayed with the local broadcaster’s watermark – can’t they get the raw, unwatermarked footage from the provider?