Windows Clipboard viewer…
Posted by Boris in Software and Development on May 6th, 2009
Today I found a nice software into windows, which is very useful and handy: the Clipboard viewer. It’s located in %SystemRoot%\System32\clipbrd.exe. This great software doesn’t only allow to view, but also to erase, save and load clipboard content.
My soul is lost
Posted by Boris in Miscanelous on April 30th, 2009
This morning I suddenly realized by waking up that I do “nested” dreams, and, in English, on the top of that! What I mean by “nested” is that I “pause” dreams when I encounter a impossible/illogical thing/task/etc., and start a new dream from this point, in order to resolve the parent one’s issue.
I say, my soul is lost!
Regedit trick to getting rid of “Use the Web service to find the appropriate program”
Posted by Boris in Software and Development on April 27th, 2009
In HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer, create a new DWORD value named NoInternetOpenWith and set it to 1. Done. And, yes, it’s mostly a note for myself.
April news
Posted by Boris in Software and Development on April 4th, 2009
Exactly what I would like to do every time I see such a parked car…
From xkcd 
Edit: As I write a post today, I also post a direct link to latest Nvidia drivers for Geforce 6, 7 ,8 ,9 and 200 series for windows XP 32 bit; since the download button doesn’t seems to appear on firefox. Note that downloading this file makes you accept the NVIDIA Software License Agreement.
Portal: Prelude
Posted by Boris in Video Games on December 1st, 2008
As some of you have certainly heard: a prequel to the famous game “Portal” has been released, by a little mod-makers community. This “mod” might have been a nice one, and the idea of a “more difficult Portal” which happens “before” the actual one was good. Nevertheless, this mod is a TOTAL FAILURE. Since Portal is not an action game but a brain teaser, a prequel should have had the same kind of gameplay: one based on thinking. Instead of that, Portal: Prelude is an action game, with a reflex-based gameplay. Actually, levels are pretty simple, considering the puzzle, but insanely difficult considering timing and placement. That means, for example, that you understand the way out in few seconds, and then, waste half an hour struggling to reach the exit.
And, the reason why I labeled the game a “total failure” in bold caps, is the following: many things are well done in this mod, and, the ambiance is nice. But all this isn’t significant at all regarding gameplay. In fact, so grave are the gameplay issues that playing this mod becomes HIGHLY FRUSTRATING. This really prevent the player to have fun in any situation, and on the top of all, has driven me so crazy that I uninstalled the mod before finishing the ninth level, even through I was really interested and motivated.
So, if you ask me, I’d recommend you to not try this mod 
Actionscript 3 stage origin.
Posted by Boris in Software and Development on September 27th, 2008
Hi there, it’s been a while.
So, what’s about AS3 stage origin? Well, I tried to use the stage with this.stage.scaleMode = flash.display.StageScaleMode.NO_SCALE; associated with this.stage.stageWidth; and this.stage.stageHeight; to work with a non-scaled, just-in-time dimensioned stage; but I had a nasty problem: when I used this.stage.stageWidth; and this.stage.stageHeight; to get the stage dimentions, and set them to my objects (movieclips, sprites, layouts, etc.), with X = 0 and Y = 0 coordinates; they were stuck at some given coordinates, but not in the top left of the browser viewport.
Actually, the 800×600 stage was centered. It’s quite simple, you just have to set this.stage.align = flash.display.StageAlign.TOP + flash.display.StageAlign.LEFT; but if you don’t know that; you could waste a lot of time wondering why the stage origin is not in the top left.
The end of time
The Large Hadron Collider is not gonna kill us all. At least for now and the next weeks. The last night was the very first time of my life I seriously considered the possibility of a sudden collapse of our world. And I have to say that it’s a bit disturbing. But today’s experiment was nothing more than a little warming round. The real threat (if it exists) will be in the next weeks.
Indeed, I do not know enough about physics and science to correctly estimate the risks with this experiment; but nevertheless, I think that a problem could be possible, since even if it is not the very first experiment of this kind, it’s the first one which will be that important, with that-near-to-light-speed speeds.
By the way, if Swiss aren’t so dangerous, we will stay alive longer. And there is some nice photographs of the LHC on the official website. And, if you like jokes, I found a nice music clip about the LHC. 
Google Chrome
Posted by Boris in Software and Development on September 5th, 2008
Yeah, It was obvious that sooner or later, I’d come to speak about the attempt from Google to do a browser. Actually, I just tried Chrome. And after a short time of use, I know that this browser is not yet for me: ok it’s fast. But, it has too many lacks. Even if it could be skinned easily by replacing a dll file, it doesn’t support extensions, and has many missing features. I found a related google project, but the code is hosted there. If you want to compile it yourself, here are instructions.
Finally there are two bills on the subject, one by Lennart Regebro, and the other from “the independent”.
Note: for those who want to change the theme, just rename the file default.dll. I saw a theme changer on a forum, but it seems to be done in vb6, so you’d better get away from it if you don’t want to screw your Chrome up.
Giant Bomb
Posted by Boris in Video Games on August 29th, 2008
Giant Bomb is one of these websites on which you get used to spend time and time as days pass. Although this project is quite recent, it’s active and improved regularly. The main goal of Giant Bomb is to create a wide database about video games, using a kind of wiki software, a bit more specific to video games than usual ones. Now, let speak about the main thing: the systsem.
The system
So, the system is simple: anyone can create an account, and then log in. Once you are logged, you can start to edit pages. Actually, you can start to submit changes, because all changes are moderated, unless you have 1000 points. And that’s the point. You get points by editing articles, creating new pages, and adding images. But you don’t get those points easily, and most of users don’t have many. Indeed, you must follow guidelines to for your submissions to be accepted. So, a lot of pages are now created, and a lot still need to be done/completed. Even if there is nothing more to gain by having more points than to be able to edit (and then, after 5000 points, to create) pages without moderation, the concept of a specific wiki-site about video games is interesting; and it’s possible that one day, giant bomb may become the video-game-wikipedia.
Note: The site is kinda recent, so, it’s still buggy sometimes, and moderation is not always perfect.
LaTeX
Posted by Boris in Software and Development on August 5th, 2008
… Well, no. That’s not exactly what you are thinking of. Except if you are a nerd. I won’t talk about S&M stuff here. Not in this blog, and even less right now. is an awesome programming language, designed for document creation. Actually, that’s not a “real” programming language, I mean, not like C or Python. A document is composed by two distinct parts, each one merged with the other. On the first hand, you have text. Text you want to type, the real content of the document. On the second hand, there are “structural” parts, which allows to describe the document and its content, to specify font, font-size, etc. But these structural parts are not just about “global” structure, it also exists for local usage, like when you want to Italicize some given text. So, you are able to perfectly control what you do with text. But because of this feature, it’s not natively WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get). And if I have to choose between perfect control and WYSIWYG, my choice is already done: I keep the control. Nothing’s more annoying than a document which “do what it wants”. People who have experienced problems with (especially old versions of) Microsoft Word would see what I mean.
Anyway, the syntax of this language is very well done, it allows complex evolutions: a consistent amount of other document-conception-oriented languages are derived from . But speaking of is a language abuse, because the real stuff behind it is 
. is a language more “primitive” than + (mostly called ). In fact, is more like a layer upon . The compiler is using specification, and just allows a more intuitive approach of it.
Finally, I would recommend / to those who want to have a reusable, precise, way to create and maintain clean documents. But if you just want to redact some crappy documents and if you don’t care about paying software a huge price (or if you are a student ), just buy Word 2007, it’s great, as long as you don’t compare it with .