TAGENIGMA LLC

Remote Desktop

By default, Remote Desktop is disabled on Vista Home Premium. [This hack] will enable the feature. Without the hack, there’s no way with the GUIs available to enable the feature. It’s actually better to have Vista Home Premium with the hack versus Vista Ultimate because Home Premium (hacked) allows multiple user log ins.

Squid or Calamari

A couple days ago one leg that feeds power to our house went out. So yesterday, PUD came out to fix it and accidentally killed my Comcast Internet with a backhoe. So now I’m using dial-up AOL until Sunday when Comcast might come out to fix the Internet cables. Originally, the problem traces back to the water pipeline guys who nicked the power and my Internet cables the first time.

Now that I’m on dial-up, I want to share the Internet connection with our computers. In the past I used [Squid] as a network proxy. [ACME] provides windows binaries in the [related downloads] section. Squid seems to be better than [Internet Connection Sharing] because each time AOL connects it recreates the network connections. So this means you lose your Internet sharing settings. In this respect Squid is better. However, Squid by default only supports http, https, and ftp.

Firefox Add-on

[developer.mozilla.org] – build your own Firefox add-on

[ted.mielczarek.org] – Firefox extension wizard

[developer.mozilla.org] – setup your development environment

[xulplanet.com] – firefox add-ons have access to the XULDocument

[developer.mozilla.org] – how to modify the DOM with XUL

[XULPlanet] – XULPlanet Forums

[developer.mozilla.org] – tips on accessing document.body from your firefox plugin

[irc://irc.mozilla.org#extdev] – Firefox extension channel

[developer.mozilla.org] – embedded dialog API

[developer.mozilla.org] – regular expressions

Notes:
(xp) Extensions should be placed in C:/Documents and Settings/username/Application Data/Mozilla/Firefox/Profiles/quyeu39o.default/extensions

Burnout: Paradise City

[Burnout Paradise City] has one of the worst user interface designs for the PC that I’ve seen in a long time. It’s not obvious how to quit the game either. You have to hit ESC and then F1 a few times to get to any recognizable options.

ZBrush and Modo

[ZBrush] and [Modo] have teamed up on a [GoZ] feature so you can quickly move your geometry and materials between GoZ apps like Maya, Modo, and ZBrush.

Ubuntu 9.04

[Ubuntu] was much easier to get the network working this time around. I ended up using NDIS to install the windows drivers for my [Netgear WN121T] using the driver links in this [post]. Painless.

I had to stop the x-server to install the [NVIDIA] drivers with “sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop” [source].

[Mania Drive] is a great way to test if 3D is working after installing the video drivers.

To install [VMWare] download the bundle and then follow [these community steps].

ISO Recorder

[ISO Recorder] is a free tool to burn ISO images to CD and DVD, rather than having to pay for Nero or CD Creator.

2.5D Painting

I’ve been doing a lot of 2.5D painting with Modo and I want to know how to set the camera defaults. Since every time I open an object for painting, I need to setup an orthographic camera aimed at (-45, 135, 0).

Forum: [post]

It would also be nice to make the uv process smarter about the painted area. If we scale the uvs, we just need to [bake] another texture.

Forum: [post]

Photofocus

I found two pod casts that I’ve started to listen to. 1) This Week in Photography and 2) [PhotoFocus]. I just search on iTunes to find them (which is not easy or quick).

Northwest Forest Pass

You can get a Northwest Forest Pass for $5 online at the [US Forest Service] in the passes and permits section which allows parking at trail heads in Snohomish County. In my case I wanted the [Annual Northwest Forest Pass] which you can buy online and get by mail.

Canon PowerShot SX200 IS

Linae picked up a [Canon PowerShot SX200 IS]. The camera doesn’t look too popular, but it could just be a new camera model.

Graphics Burnout

The NVIDIA 8600 GTS (s) in my [Quad-core] just burned out again for the 3rd time. I need to find a more reliable graphics card that I can leave on all the time. I’ve changed the motherboard to a [P5N-D].

I’m going to replace the power supply with a [Thermaltake W0106RU 700W Complies with ATX 12V 2.2 & EPS 12V version SLI Certified 80 PLUS Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply – Retail] and replace the graphics cards with [EVGA 512-P3-N973-TR GeForce 9800 GT 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card – Retail ].

[SpeedFan] is apparently an application that can read your computer’s fan temperatures.

Forum: [post]

Meetup iMingle for the iPod Touch

[Meetup] lets you manage groups and RSVP to your group events. They have an [api] so that applications like [iMingle] can manage events, comments, and RSVPs. The API does not provide access to [private groups] if you don’t belong to them. Location data may not be available which cripples the app, so you may have to submit location data to [Skyhook Wireless] which provides location data for the iPhone.

3d in a Web Browser

[DrawLogic reviews Silverlight 3 – Beta] is planned to have shader model 2.0 support, but it is not GPU hardware accelerated. Suggested alternatives are: [Papervision3d], [Away3d], and [Sandy].

[Papervision] – performance is [too slow] to be ideal. PapervisionX due out later is based on the Flash 10 APIs aims to have better performance. [API]

[Away3d] – boosts good performance with a 100k [cached] triangle scene. [API] [examples]

[Sandy] – does not offer hardware acceleration [API] [examples]

[Torque3d] – [api] [blog] [forums] [videos] [videos] [albumbs] [videos] [wiki]

Gimp Saves Window Positions

[Gimp] has a preference accessed by (edit->preferences) that allows you to save your window layout. That way each time you open Gimp, everything is laid out how you want. This is especially useful if you have multiple monitors.