Portal: Prelude
Posted by Boris in Video Games on December 1, 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 27, 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 5, 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 29, 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 5, 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 .
Shredder – Mozilla Thunderbird 3
Posted by Boris in Software and Development on July 13, 2008
Hi there.
Early this morning, I found mistakes on a french website. No ones cares (even those who did it, maybe), but it was the reason why I decided to get Thunderbird 3 Alpha. Actually, the french dictionary was only available for Thunderbird 3, and I needed it to correct those mistakes, since I have a Qwerty keyboard, and since I’m too lazy to use an International Qwerty Layout. Maybe I’ll get a Dvorak Us Keyboard soon, but it’s not currently the matter.
So, I installed Thunderbird 3 Alpha pre. I didn’t notice any differences with the 2.0 at the first look, excepted about addons. Indeed, not any did work, but adblock plus. Great thing, but I needed at least the “MinimizeToSystray” addon, in order to let Thunderbird to check my mails regularly. And the MinimizeToSystray addon, on the mozilla addons repository, was available for Thuderbird 2 and previous versions only. So, I tried to find how to tell to Thunderbird 3 to accept it. It’s in install.rdf in the xpi archive. The only thing you have to do is to seek for <em:targetApplication> <!-- Mozilla Thunderbird --> and then replace the <em:maxVersion>2</em:maxVersion> in the <Description> section by <em:maxVersion>3.0a2pre</em:maxVersion>. So the package is there, and it works almost perfectly for me (where “almost” means “since you don’t try to run the old Thunderbird”).
Update : I found a bug in the minimize to tray plugin: when you call thunderbird, it’s started twice, and you have to close one instance.
Update #2 : The new version is out, so I updated the xpi in order to get things working.
Update #3 : As requested by Jimmy (see comments), here is the FF3 minimize to tray plugin.
Update #4: As of today, a new version of TB is released, the new unofficial minimize to tray plugin has been, as well.
Update #5: Minimize to tray for Shredder 3.0b3pre.
Final Update: Since I now use a linux distribution, I won’t upload (nor modify) any version of this plugin here.
DeviantArt
Posted by Boris in Miscanelous on July 9, 2008
I created my deviantart account years ago, to be precise, in the very first part of 2004. Since this time, I hadn’t paid attention to this account, for various reasons. But about two weeks ago, I suddenly realized that this account could be used to show up my work.
And, yeah, that’s enough on me, let’s talk about the website now. The reasons why I though that this website were interesting were the following:
- This website exists since a very long time, and is world wide famous. So, some very interesting advices and tips can be decently expected.
- A lot of great artists are there, at least to improve traffic on their personal website, and the “favorite” feature allow any registered user to easily keep up to date a list of his/her favorites works among the whole community.
- Ajax integration, with a well done design, gives to users a nice experience (even if some bugs still remain), and this, since a long time ago (since Ajax were “explicitly described”, about 2 or 3 years ago).
This website, although it’s not perfect, is very nice, and gathers great artists.
But, despite of this all, and after a short while on deviantART, I observed some behaviors I didn’t like at all. First, users are subjects of a sort of “ladder”, and so, most of them try to reach the best “place” they can. All the exchanges between users I saw were about “the favs”. When you like something, you can “add it to your favorites”, or “fav-it”. And then, the “most-faved” work get the first place, and is of the front page of the site. So people try to get the top of this ranking at any price. It’s really difficult to exchange something, even to have a little chat with another user.
And so, I’ve decided to move my photos on flickr™, because I think that flickr™ is more “sober”, contain less ads, and that I don’t need comments on my photographs, since photography is just a hobby to me. I’ll keep my desktops and all that stuff on DeviantART, just to keep photographs/screen shots separated.
Finally, I saw the new design two days ago: DeviantART v6. I greatly prefered the previous one. And some of the qualities of D/A I mentionned above have disappeared. I’ve not cancelled my account, because I will use it for things like “screenshots” and “Desktops”, and also because It allows me to keep a “fav-list” of what I like on the website. But regadless of this, I’m mostly disappointed about D/A.
Hellgate London: nice effort, but still not addictive.
Posted by Boris in Video Games on May 22, 2008
The first thing I though when I stop wondering, the first time I ever played Hellgate: London, was “Oh shit!”. purchase. The main reason was: 60 bucks is fairly expensive for a Release Candidate, or maybe even a Beta. And though, this game is nice. I
But even if the game don’t still deserve the critics it had at its release, it still suffers a lot of “average” features which are not “great”. Like hardness, level design, repetitive play, the game is still unbalanced, and more. These are the reasons why this game is definitely not addictive. It’s too “work in progress” to be, anyway.
Vista. Round trip.
Posted by Boris in Software and Development on May 22, 2008
The less I could do by buying (and using) Vista Professional was to write a post on it. That’s what I intend to do now. Vista is amazing, hem, great, …, functional. No, I’m nor jokin’ neither sarcastic. It really is functional. But, that’s probably all the good I would write on it. And before to go any further, I’ll explain what I mean.
By “functional”, I mean “It can run, with no problems.” Seriously. It can. But, not on all cases. It will run with no problems if you ignore incomplete boots (always followed by a reboot to solve them, sometimes twice). Although these “turn it off and on again” problems, you’d prefer not to install any third party driver. I assure, you’d prefer. Especially these kind of sound card drivers. No, you probably won’t get a BSOD. But you won’t be able to boot, I mean, to reach login step, since they ‘ll be removed.
But, this OS is beautiful. And, on a E6750 Intel Proc, with 4GB ram and a Leadtek 8800 GTX inside, and all this stuff on an Asus Striker Motherboard, it is fairly smooth. And, It can run Dx10 native, since its release, and without any others problems than Vista ones (Heh, anyway, I’m not totally sure about this).
If you ask me why I’m still running’ it, I’ll probably answer “I wonder. But it’s a bit addictive. And beautiful too. And runs all the softs I need. Excepted Digital Audio Software. That’s why I still have XP.” And, also, it is not very great saving system resources. That’s why I’ll manage to boot if from HD though VmWare by a Linux (Archlinux as example), to start it only when I want to play (actually, not. Just because visualization won’t support graphical acceleration, it’s useless). But I’m not sure I’ll proceed exactly like that, I’m still thinkin’ about all that stuff. For now, anyway, I’ll focus on programming, no matter which OS I have.
Now, I come to the “Round trip” mention in the post’s title. The reason why it’s here, is because SP1 for Vista was released. At last. ’cause all I wrote
So, if you are considering buying a computer, I’ll say to you: “Wait another one SP for Vista, or maybe two of them, before doing such a regrettable thing”. It’s for the moment a lot too expensive for what it is.
Supporting
