Whether you're whacking your joysticks in the dark corners of your room, or whacking your joysticks with your buddies online... in the dark corners of your room, there's no denying that sometimes you need a little break. Something to break the ice. Hell, I found a weekly newsletter that does that. It doesn't matter what kind of gamer you are - from casual to hardcore; or 8-bit to next gen.

Previews for upcoming games, witty stories, socially relevant gaming news, and loads of photos literally litter the page. There's also a little Q&A portion for all those geeky questions. Consoles, games, tips & tricks, ask and you shall be answered.

Here's a screenshot of GGF Issue#2.

Note: Not actual size. Click for a slightly larger version. milk is still best for babies.

Since its release last Fri, 16 May 2008 10:01 am (Issue 1), it gained a huge following. People from all over the world got excited on what this weekly newsletter had to offer. And issue number 2 never failed to do that -- GTA4 anyone?

One more thing -- there's something really special about this newsletter. Because of the "connection" between the readers and the author, the experience of reading the columns ain't that passive anymore -- almost turning into a community. There's always something to look forward to.

That's it for now, if you want to catch up with the latest issue of GGF, or even get a chance to read its maiden issue, you know what to do. *hint hint*

• Content (9/10): Well written stories/news/etc. Easy to understand and the flow of information is very consistent.
• Graphics (8/10): Girly Ryu Hayabusa...
• Interactivity (8/10): Very good, as I've mentioned a little earlier.

Well, with all of the crap I've written here, I give GGF a rating of Math.round(8.5) out of 10.

Have you ever wanted to download something, but you just found out that the file was hosted in MegaUpload (One example is from http://gewdlooks.multiply.com -- shameless plug) and sadly you're greeted with the no available slots message.

Fear not, let's fix this.

You have 2 choices -- (a) install the Megaupload toolbar, (b) install a firefox add-on. I'd rather do option (b), hehehehe.

If you decided to do option (b), then just follow the procedure below. This is really really simple. All you have to do is;

1. Fetch a copy of the latest build of Mozilla Firefox.
2. Fetch and install the MegaUpload SX 3.2-fx.xpi add-on.
3. Restart Firefox.
4. Tools > Megaupload 3 > Enabled.
5. Test it. Try to get a megaupload link from Chris' site (http://gewdlooks.multiply.com -- another shameless plug).
6. Cross your fingers.

Great it worked! Heh!?! But my internet connection is unstable... my download never finishes. Could I use a download manager? Well, that's another story. ;)

It was only today that I discovered that once in 2004, there was a game creation competition for the GBA platform.

Now there is a downloadable version that we can all enjoy!  

I just want to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! May you all have new opportunities to grab and new goals to reach. Have a pleasant day everyone! God bless!

 Have you guys tried the new beta of the famous instant messenger?

 Just installed it and I was blown away with the new look! Take a peek:

The one above has my favorite skin so far, you have 7 default skins available. Aside from that, there are more emoticons to choose from, which I heard were based from the winners in the previous emoticon contest (But I will have to confirm this).

There are also these new technical features like the media player, which can view Yahoo! video and YouTube video directly on the message window. I could not try it out because all my contacts still use the old YM. This will only work between YM 9 Beta to YM 9 Beta chat.

Since it's beta, there are sure to be bugs/annoyances,  I found 3 (Ohhhh, I love beta testing):

• Whenever the client is minimized to the tray, then the ads change,  I get out of focus with other applications.
• When you click a contact, a box pops up immediately, which is a little annoying/distracting.
• Added on 11.07.2007: When you change skins, the contact search bar re-appears when in the first place you have hidden it. And if you check the settings, it is actually set to hide, but its not.
• Added on 11.08.2007: When you're chatting with someone, then he/she logouts, there are no visual signs that he/she did (Unlike the old one, you'll see <nick has logged out>), I don't know if this was intended or they just simply forgot. UPDATE 11.21.2007: Weird, in other PCs I've tested it on, this does not occur, on my office PC and others it does? All OSs are XP...

That's all I've found so far.

If you also wanna try it out, fetch the downloader from this address - http://beta.messenger.yahoo.com/ - :D

See ya! 

Picture this, you have 9,999 .doc files. You decide to zip/rar it to save space. But you thought, "I want them individually archived so that I wouldn't have to open a huge zip/rar file just to find a file." But doing that could each up your time, doesn't it? Want a solution, read on!

You might not be aware of it, but one of the most famous archiving utility (WinRAR) already has this feature. You can fetcha demo at their site - http://www.rarlab.com - :D

So here's how you do it.

1. Compile all the files that you want to compress individually into a single directory.
2. Select/highlight all the files.
3. Right-click, click Add to archive... (you should enable context menu for WinRAR)
4. Choose between RAR or ZIP (I prefer RAR, better compression level in most instances)
5. Choose a compression level. (I usually go for the slowest/best)
6. Go to the"Files" tab.
7. Look at the "Archive" group, check the "Put each file to separate archive" checkbox. (Check my screenshot below if you can't find it)
   
8. Click Ok.
9. Watch and see the magic happen.

Sorry but I just can't help it.

Happy happy happy birthday, sa'yo ang inumin, sa'yo rin ang pulutan. Happy happy happy birthday, sana malasing mo kami!!

Maligayang bati sa'yo master Keith!
 

Regarding lamia's blog entry Dark_AleX Going Bye Bye... hey, I think we've been had. Remember when Dark_AleX said "goodbye" -- another team called M33 emerged from the scene right? Now, rumors in circulation says that M33 is actually Dark_AleX! Could this be true? Supposing the rumor was true, why did he change his alias? Nonetheless, M33 or Dark_AleX, it doesn't really matter that much, anyways they've "both" have had fine releases. :D

Anyways, aside from this news, another rumor said that after the release of the new custom firmware (3.71), M33 (DAX) will now leave the scene for real. Awww...

Could this mean the end for us? I hope not.

After a year I posted my rounding question in the forums, I finally got it working. Here's the original post I made; http://devpinoy.org/forums/t/915.aspx.

Just this morning, I had nothing to do, so I excavated some of my unsolved sources from my archive. Then I remembered this problem about rounding stuff in assembly. I thought, maybe it's time to solve this, so I did.

The original problem I had was I did not know how to round to a specified number of digits. For example, I have the value 3.1456825863, which I wanted to round to 3 decimal places like this 3.146. For my original code, it always outputs 3. Then it hit me! I already had this problem in flash before, the function Math.round does the same thing, but I already solved it there. So again, excavated the FLA project... and the rest was rounding history. So here's the code using the FPU.

01     .586
02
03     ...
04
05     .data
06     buffer   db    1024 dup(0)
07     fbuffer  dq    0
08     pi        dq    3.14
09     rdigit    dq   10000.0
10
11     ...
12
13     .code
14
15     ...
16
17     invoke GetDlgItemText, hWin, IDC_EDIT_INPUT, addr buffer, SIZEOF buffer
18     invoke StrToFloat, addr buffer, addr fbuffer   
19            fld         fbuffer
20            fmul      pi
21            fmul      rdigit
22            frndint   
23            fdiv        rdigit
24            fstp       fbuffer
25     invoke FloatToStr2, fbuffer, addr buffer
26     invoke SetDlgItemText, hWin, IDC_EDIT_OUTPUT, addr buffer
27
28     ...
29
30     end start

The most important parts for this are lines 09, 21, 22, and 23. Line 09 (rdigit) is the one responsible for controlling the number of significant digits to be displayed, depending on the number of zeroes in it. Example, the input is 3.1456825863 and rdigit is 100.0, the output will be 3.15, since there are 2 zeroes in 100 (My code above will output 3.1457). Lines 21 to 23 simply means that Math.round(ST(0)*rdigit)/rdigit), which is responsible for doing the trick.

So there it is, I hope this helps anyone who will encounter this problem. Please feel free to comment if there are errors in this. I tested it with my scenarios and it worked like a charm, but who knows...

 Creds goes out to cvega for the help I got with this piece. Thanks!

Another one of those. It's really fun analyzing these spams, so let's rave.

First of all, check out the subject, alright! Rod Stewart marries a model? Very catchy, who's the model?

But wait, what's that, it's addressed to a certain Zhirnov Stansislay. The surname is really cool, Is-tan-is-lay, hehehe. So it's not for me eh... but the address is my address? Oh well.

Then let's open up the mail (But I suggest that you don't for safety measures, I'm just doing this for fun). What the... :-o

Just having fun here! ;)

Original Message:

Subject: Reports: Rod Stewart marries model
From: Sales <sales@turningpointprop.com>
To: Zhirnov Stansislay <modchip@xxxxxxx>

Everyone need it Original.

Genuine Viagra and Cialis directly from Phitzer

Here: http://www.turningpointprop.com/
Prices are VAT/TAX removed 

Wow! I won the Frontline Lottery! Spammers/Scammers (Ed: Is there such a word?) never learn. Just look at the subject, why won't they learn to write proper english first before sending out these scams? I don't claim to be an expert in the English language, but I can tell that their English sucks.

Don't they have their own email address domain name, why are they using a canadian Yahoo! account? And look at the email address, it's so pathetic, theofficeofduncanjames01.

Lastly look at the bottom part, it says "Your's in service", which in longhand I think means "Your is in service", haha, funny.

Original Message:

Subject: CONGRATULATION {YOUR EMAIL SELECTED} !!!!!!!!!!!
From: theofficeofduncanjames01@yahoo.ca

Programs and Events Department
The Camelot Lottery - Frontline Group
The National Lottery,
P.O. Box 251,
Watford
WD1 8GD
WINNING NOTIFICATION: !!
 
We are officially informing you of the result of the Frontline Lottery Winners International programs held on the 5th of May 2007 as part of our promotional programs for the year 2007. Your e-mail address attached to ticket number 77007742781005-18721 with reference number EGS/2251256003/02 drew winning
numbers 7-00-71-00-66-49 and credited to batch number 121FTG, which consequently won in the 3rd category via our electronic ticket as stated above. You have therefore been approved for a pay out of 600,000
GBP (SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND POUNDS ONLY).
 
CONGRATULATIONS!!!
We also advice that you keep your winning information very confidential as our security policy demands to avoid double claims/impersonation and unwarranted abuse of this program by some individuals.
 
The selection process was carried out through random selection in our computerized email selection system (ESS) from a database of over 500,000 email addresses drawn from all the continents of the world. This promotional program being the first of its kind will now take place annually and we hope with part of our
winning you will take part in our next year Eight Hundred And Fifty Thousand Pound Sterlings international Lottery. To file for your claim, you will be contacting our Customer Service Unit, authorized to conduct the neccessary verification to enable you receive total payment (You will receive more information upon your acknowledgment of this email).
 
Customer Service Unit
CONTRACTED AGENCY: DUNCAN JAMES & ASSOCIATES
Mr.Duncan James
Tel: + 44 701 114 7831
Email: theofficeofduncanjames01@yahoo.ca
20 Lausanne Road London, SW2 3JB ENGLAND.U.K
 
You are to provide the claims agent with the under listed information as soon as possible:
 
1. NAME IN FULL:................................
2. ADDRESS:.....................................
3. NATIONALITY:.................................
4. AGE:.........................................
5. SEX:.........................................
6. OCCUPATION (POSITION HELD):...................................
7. PHONE:........................................
8. FAX............................................
 
This promotional lottery is promoted and sponsored by software corporations and other private organizations and we intend to use this medium to help individuals generate fortunes which would encourage them to expand their business frontiers thereby creating more opportunities and assisting with humanitarian concerns within their immediate environment. All winning must be claimed not later
than One Week of Acknowledgment. After this date all unclaimed funds will be returned to European Union Treasury as Unclaimed.

After this date all winning funds will be included in our subsequent program. In order to avoid complications always quote your reference number in all correspondence.
 
NEWS UPDATE:
Lottery Diary http://lottery.merseyworld.com/Info/Diary.html,
Suscription leaflet: http://lottery.merseyworld.com/Info/Sub_Leaflet.html
links: http://lottery.merseyworld.com/Links/All.html

Furthermore, should there be any change of address do inform us as soon as possible. Congratulations again from all our staff.
 
N.B: Anybody under the age of 16 is not eligible to participate in this program.
 
Your's in service,
Mr. Greg Twentyman
(Programs & Events)

Whew! It's been a while, but rejoice, I'm back with another dark tip!

Have you ever wondered, "hey, I have some files that I want to keep in my hardrive, but I don't want anybody opening/reading/executing it...". Yeah, there are lots of ways to do it. But what I'm going to demonstrate is *cooler* than those. We will actually learn how to hide your files inside an image! :D

Requirements:
1. Any archiving utility.
2. An image file of your choice. (Can be JPG, BMP, etc...)
3. Your file. (I'll use an asm source code for demo.)

First, gather all the "secret" files that you want to hide. Once you're done, zip/rar/etc. them all up. For the demo, I'll name it myfiles.zip. Find your image file, I'll use a gif file named modchip.gif, then place your secret archive with it.

Run your prompt, type the simple command;

copy /b modchip.gif + myfiles.zip modchip_s.gif [ENTER!]

copy is the copy command we all got to know in the good 'ol world of DOS.    
The /b option is used to copy binary files.
modchip_s.gif is the output file where modchip.gif and myfiles.zip will be copied to.

Now, once all have been done correctly, the message "1 file(s) copied." should be displayed on the prompt.

Navigate to the directory where you placed all your files, find the output, in my case modchip_s.gif. Double click it, hmmmm... seems like a normal image file ain't it? But how do we see the hidden file? I leave that all to you. ;) (@EDIT: Tip: Just look at all the requirements above, see what you could use to extract the files. :D.)

Below is the output of my demo. Can you guess what my *password* is?  Haha, it is literally IN the image!

Hope you learned much from this. So the next time you open an image file, take a second and think, there might be some surprises in it! (Just hope it ain't a trojan... :))

'Til next time!

A few weeks ago, if you guys were attentive to the forums, I posted a question regarding my problem about some of my AVI files' audio and video not synching. (Reference: http://devpinoy.org/forums/thread/10708.aspx) I finally got the software that could help me re-synch them. It's called VirtualDUB, you can download it at http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/apps/virtualdub/en/install/VirtualDub-1.5.10.zip -- it's about 665 KB in length and it's FREE!

Anyways, to solve the out-of-synch problem, we gotta change the the time the audio enters in our clips, whether it enters too early or it enters too late. You can do this by clicking Audio > Interleaving... on the main menu. Then in the bottom part of the dialog, you'll see the Audio skew correction part. Remember, the value here is in ms -- so if your audio is delayed 8 seconds relative to the video, then you must enter -8000, when in reverse, enter 8000. (1 sec == 1000 ms).

That's it! Now just sit and wait for it to recompile. :D

But, this is one of the stupidest things I've done. The audio in my files weren't really out of synch, I was just missing some CODECs... :)) But it's ok, because I learned much from that experience anyway.

Hmmmmm... did you ever buy a PC and found that when you go to My Computer, right click, then hit Properties, the logo of the place where you bought the PC appears on the lower left side corner of the properties box?

Did you ask yourself, damn that <insert name here>, I don't want their logo to appear here!

Well here goes, let's replace it.

First, you must have your logo or anything you want prepared. Then in Photoshop, make a 180 x 114 pixel canvas. Paste your image, resize if necessary. If you are satisfied with the image, got to File > Save as... the choose BMP as the filetype (Windows/24bit), then type OEMLOGO.bmp on the filenamebox.

Next, create a text file with the following contents;

[general]
manufacturer = Anything goes here
model = As well as here...

Then save it as OEMINFO.ini.

Once all of these are done, copy the 2 files we have created then paste it in you //WINDOWS/system32/ directory.

Done! Go on and check! It should somehow look like the image below;

PS: BTW, if you want to have transparent parts in your image, just fill the supposedly transparent areas with the color #FF00FF (Like what you see in most game sprites, purpulish/pink color). But, be sure to save it as a 256 color bitmap in order for it to work, else it wouldn't.