Get them while you can

You can get all the Hitman games + Both Deus Ex Games for $17 .Personally if I didn’t already have these games I would have bought them again.

Of the 2 I have to say that if you haven’t played Deus Ex 1 you are missing out on the best conspiracy theory RPG ever , if you haven’t played it then go and get it now.

PS : No I did not go and change the system date , it managed to do this all on its own

While the old UI worked there was so much that could be improved on , in particular the in game overlay and not to mention its built in download manager.

This release fixes these issues and a whole lot more , now i am not going to waste your time so head over to the site and check out the full details.

If you would like to activate this in steam all you need to do is go to , Settings -> Account -> Beta Participation and select UI Update. Finally hit OK and restart steam.

I should warn you that things are likely to change so make the most of the UI while you can. But do beware of weird things that could happen , in my case for some reason my MW2 was rendered useless and needed to be redownloaded.

So please sure you make a back up of your most important games you have been warned. There is nothig worse than having to re-download 30 gigs of games in SA

~stalkerh

One of my favorite programming languages has to be python , even with all its quirks and annoyances I still love using it when ever I can. Sadly though I don’t really get to use it much in windows since everything I can do in python I can do better and faster in C# .

But when it comes to linux mono does offer me the same advantages as .net in the windows environment and so i prefer to use python. After going through 3 server re-installs and loosing a good few scripts in the process i decided to do the safe thing and document some of my work (And put them in repos) and let the general public scrutinize my work as well. BTW thanks to Nighthawk for the post at the time on syncing files between my server reloads.

So at home I have a central server which is used to manage any downloads on the network and as a general file sharing location between the different PC’s in the house. To me this would be the ideal place to store all the wallpapers I need and then make them available to everyone on the network. Why would someone need to do this , besides the fact that I get bored pretty fast with my wallpapers I just wanted to do it because I can :P

Lastly Socwall has become a fav of mine because of the level of awesome wallpapers available on the site. It has a few simple but interesting concepts such as voting wallpapers up and down so that only the best are available when ordering wallpapers by up Votes.

So onto the actual execution , its all quite simple , follow the steps below and you will have a custom wallpaper downloader in no time .

1. Grab their RSS Feed , just take care the most recent feed (hyperlinked) is not filtered i.e. NSFW at times
2. Loop the feed and grab each of the image URLS
3. Create the file on disk
4. Write the data from the link to disk.

Running the code is pretty simple

1. Grab the python script from the repo
2. Use python to execute the script
3. The app will start downloading the wallpapers into the current folder. It will also try to sort the files into the categories they were submitted to.

That’s all for now , any updates will be published to the repo.

Also please feel free to rant on my code as you wish.

~stalkerh

Please let me know if there is some podcast out there that i have to listen to , will add it to the list and check it out.

Using the following steps you can embed it in Visual studio , not only is it a lot faster but a lot more easily customizable.

1. Download the jsLint exe from http://www.javascriptlint.com/download.htm
2. Extract the files to a public folder on your machine , e.g. The Documents Library , this is required since the default download folder will require you to run the app as admin. 9Note this is applicable only to Vista /Win7)
3. In visual studio Add a new External Tool as follows
   1. In the Command Text box enter the complete path to the jsl.exe , in the arguments Text box enter ( -process $(ItemPath)  ).
   2. Click ok to save the new tool , at this point you can add it to any toolbar using the toolbar customize option or can just assign it a shortcut combo

2 Things to note are the following , the app will only check your currently open and selected file using the ItemPath var and finally you can customize what kind of errors you want to be alerted about and the alert format in the .conf file that is included in the zip file.

If you want to do soloution/project wide checking then you will need to create a batchfile that loops through each file checking for errors. Hopefully this will be my next post.

Let me know if I haven’t explained anything clearly enough.

Thanks

~Stalkerh

You can grab them from here .

Games being given out are :

Command And Conquer : Tiberian Sun + Firestorm

Command And Conquer : Tiberian Dawn (The original C&C)

The Original Red Alert

Now granted its been ages since I have played any of these games I just hope I can get the time to replay them a little bit at least.

So starting with the coolest first .I started a new Job at Chase Software which has really been keeping me busy , while it may not seem like a wise idea to change jobs during a recession, the opportunity’s for me to learn were just too great for me to not take up the offer. I am loving it to bits here just wish i could either get a place to stay closer to work or a Bike to make traffic a little easier. But thats a story for another day.

Secondly I decided to finally get started with one of my most anticipated projects , programming a Arduino. Now while its tough to get hold of one of these devices (in SA) I managed to get a locally made version called the Aarduino (Note the double ‘A’ ) its functionally the same as the Arduino diecimila except that it has a mini usb connector instead of the old USB connectors and non standard 9 volt connection (well its not standard for me but might be for others). So now that I finally received all the stuff i need my first project is rewiring my PC’s fan controls through the Aarduino so that i can control the noise and light output at night. Now I do know that there are components you can buy to do this but I have chosen to do it via a Arduino because i can :) .

Lastly google finally released Google maps for SA , now while this may not seem hugely important it is for me , because when I got my magic I gave away my Samsung Omnia which meant I had no real GPS, thankfully I can now use the Google maps on my Magic to get directions anywhere in SA which is a huge relief because one of my biggest fears is getting lost in a place I am not familiar with .

Well thats all for now , there is still a ton of stuff I am working on and just don’t have the time to share , in particular I hope to start a JavaScript tips section since there are some really awesome stuff that i have learnt to do using JavaScript and I think i should really share some of this info.

Also if you are interested in InfoSec the first SA InfoSec conference will be taking place next month get the details from ZaCon.org.za , Really hope to see some of the locals there.

Till next time.

~Stalkerh