Andrew the Hopeless Techie – Page 10 – A techie lost in the mesh of reality

Twitter Updates for 2010-08-11

August 11, 2010 1 Comment

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Starcraft 2 – World of Warcraft – RealID

August 7, 2010 0 Comments

Starcraft 2

Well I recently got a chance to play this game in single player mode, I must say this game is truly amazing. While the Multi-Player looks very similar to the way the old SC did the single player game play is very very different.

The key elements are there, you build a base, gather resources, deploy forces. Where the game differs is in how the cut scenes look and the overall game play in between missions. You are usually in a room where you can navigate to different sections and do things like upgrade units, research new technology and so on.

The video below shows some of the new game play mechanics. That video is a bit dated and a few things have changed, for example the Thor is smaller and made at the factory and no longer built in the field as it was in this video

[youtube XGoEEjs42uE]

For example if you find enough Protoss research points you can easily buy an upgrade that lets your Vespian Gas refinery automatically harvest without needing a SCV to do it, this leaves them for more important things like building supply depots and harvesting minerals. Another cool one on the Zerg research side is the ability to have your buildings and metal units (Thor, Vulture and so on) heal themselves SLOWLY over time.

There is a small spurt in the game where you can play as the Protoss for a short time but I am not going to say just where so it is not spoiled for you 🙂

World of Warcraft and RealID

Recently a few major patches back Blizzard introduced a feature called RealID which until recently surved no real purpose other then to prepare for Starcract 2 (it also supports it). Now you can add a user using their RealID and you can then talk to them from ethier game and also from Diablo3 when it is released.

I tested this feature out and it proves to be a very reliable feature, there are a few issues for example if someone sends you a message right before you trigger a cut scene in SC2 then it stays up on the screen the entire Cut Scene unless it is one of the few cut scenes that require separate loading. You can not chat during a cut scene so there is no way to get rid of it.

This of course can work in reverse with people you meet on SC2 being able to talk o them inside WoW, I am assuming this will have similar function in Diablo 3

Games, Starcraft & Starcraft 2, World of Warcraft

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Category5 – Talks about an open Source program the GIMP touching on basic image enhancement

July 25, 2010 2 Comments

The GIMP – Basic image enhancement

I am a regular viewer of Category5.tv and recently (last Tuesday) he went over some basic tips on how to edit images to make them look a little better. I thought this was particularly useful and given the tool he used GIMP which is open source i thought i might just briefly touch on it here as well as embed the video for you to watch.

Ok so normally I do not post about shows I watch on-line or otherwise but this particular show I found somewhat useful. To give a quick synopsis he shows you how to lighten pictures and crop it in a way that does not kill the image, In the words of Robbie however “Always make a backup! Never edit your master images”

Some other points he touches on in this episode are

  • Reinstall Linux with a just a  full backup of your home folder – He specifically mentions Ubuntu here since that is his distro but you could use his strategy for any distro Including Fedora with a few minor tweaks that are Distro specific.
  • How do you share iTunes music to Linux?

He covers these points with regards to GIMP

  • Adjusting the levels in a photograph using the GiMP.
  • Zooming in and out of images in the GiMP.
  • Removing blemishes from a photo using the GiMP.
  • Resizing an image in the GiMP.
  • Cropping an image in the GiMP.
  • Resizing a marquee in the GiMP.
  • Saving your image in the GiMP.
  • Preparing images to be shared by email or on a web site or blog.

Now as I said this is mostly a post to show others in the Fedora and other Linux community  that might read this, that editing of images can be done fairly easily and that videos such as the one below do exist to show you how. While there may be videos out there that dive more into the workings of GIMP this one stays pretty simple so anyone can use it to achieve what they want.

I should note that the video is embedded from his video host blip.tv and it has about a 30 second ad prior to the video starting, I have no control over this and as such I do not necessarily condone any of the content that the ad may demo as it changes over time. As it stands when i posted it the ad was about Windows 7, but by the time you watch it the ad could be different.

[bliptv ga4Fge_TEQI]

If you liked the video please make sure you check out Robbie””s site he put a lot of effort into this show. If not then thanks for taking the time to read this post. I will not be making a habit of posting about his show but this one seemed worthy of passing along via the fedora channels and the like.

Again he uses Ubuntu so pardon all the Ubuntu centric stuff most of what he mentions can just as easily be done via Fedora or even a different distro.

Host of the show: Robbie Ferguson

Show notes: http://www.category5.tv/show_notes/episode_148.php

Category5, Linux, Non-Specific, Shows

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-07-25

July 25, 2010 0 Comments

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