Shortly after our wedding I asked my wife what she’d like as a wedding gift: a digital SLR or a Nintendo Wii console (this is as romantic as many techies get, after all). To my surprise and eventual delight she chose the Wii. We lucked out by arriving to a Best Buy barely an hour after the shipment arrived and scored a Wii console that someone else had probably been waiting on for weeks.

And so I joined the dark side: Nintendo has long had a negative stigma among gamers for releasing too many “cutesy” games on its under-powered consoles. These moves were deliberate, as Nintendo claimed to be targeting the family market rather than hardcore gamers. To that end, the Wii is no different from the N64 or previous “cutesy” consoles – however the revolutionary controller makes the idea of a family console a reality. Continue »

Summary

This tutorial will demonstrate how to use Hamachi and a special game patch to link two or more computers for multiplayer game play in Age of Empires 3. Since its release, AOE3 has caused many headaches for players due to the game only recognizing an internal IP address (ie 192.168.x.x). This flaw makes Internet gaming impossible, since only computers on an internal LAN can see an internal IP address. Ensemble have offered patches and suggestions to overcome this problem, but they have not worked for all gamers.

Enter Hamachi, a free network application that allows two or more users to organize a Virtual Private Network with Peer to Peer facilities. A special patch for AOE3 (this is NOT a pirate hack) allows the game to select network devices, enabling secure game play over a user’s Hamachi network.
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Product: AVIDemux
Version: 2.4
Platform: Linux, BSD, Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows (reviewed)
Description: Non-Linear Video Editor
License: GNU General Public License
Rating: 80%
URL: http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/

When it comes to video editing -particularly the creation of MPEG-4 files from DVD movies- no program is as indispensable as VirtualDub. The simple non-linear editor has been central to video preparation/encoding as both a standalone application and as a tool called by automated video encoding tools. The attraction is simple: VirtualDub is easy to use, remains extendable for new codecs through its support for VFW (Video for Windows) and boasts a dizzying array of 3rd party plug-ins that perform various tasks, ranging from color correction to image stabilization. That VirtualDub is absolutely free, as are most of its plug-ins, does not hurt either.

Alas, “VDub” has been showing its age over the past couple of years – the original program cannot handle variable bit rates when importing MP3 audio and is generally unreliable at encoding its own audio. Only the AVI container is supported when exporting and MPEG-2 is out of the question. Derivative programs, such as VirtualDubMod and VirtualDubMPEG2, have addressed some of these issues but as of now it is difficult to create an entire movie using VirtualDub alone.

Enter AVIDemux, VirtualDub’s first serious competition in the freeware video editing arena. While the visual similarities between the applications are obvious, AVIDemux aims to be more universal and self-contained. The package comes bundled with video codecs, audio codecs, AVISynth support, support for multiple containers and a generous helping of filters.
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How many times have I written an inauguration post? Far too many to see the merit hyping up yet another opening of this blog. Blink7 has had many false starts, largely because I have tried to make the site into something “bigger” and “better” than what people were happy with in the first place. As such, this blog has appeared as a Wordpress site with custom template, a Joomla site, a Drupal site (twice) and even a b2Evolution site.

Alas, it always comes back to Wordpress, not necessarily because it is the best blogging system (though Wordpress v2.3 sure is narrowing the gap with the dedicated CMS systems) but because WP has all the goods: more templates, more plugins, more documentation and more support. Also throwing up a WP site is dead easy, while the handling of images is seamless.

So enough messing around - time to create some content. For now we’ll work with a basic K2 theme on the premise that it can be later expanded into something grand. Instead of continuing to give Cynics Unlimited traffic, it’s time to go solo once again. Thank you for your patience.