I am Oz! The great and powerful! Ok, that may not be true, but I have accomplished some great things with my sister’s computer tonight. For starters, I added a new video card to her computer so she can finally use her new monitor with the correct resolution. The integrated graphics just weren’t cutting it.
But in spite of that, it was only a cosmetic fix, something far more devious was in her computer, and something I spent two months looking up on.
Essentially what was happening was every time she (or I) tried to open up her Internet Browser, or the Control Panel, or any program or feature for that matter, there would be a handful of “Bad Image” errors popping up. You could simply press “Ok”, make the window disappear, and everything proceeded to work fine, but c’mon, that’s annoying as hell, right?
So I am looking and looking and looking for answers as to why these particular DLL’s were causing “Bad Image” errors (for those wondering, “mazomoki.dll” was the worst offender). In the end I decided to turn to the usual solutions: Microsoft Security Essentials, and Spybot Search & Destroy. They ended up finding LOTS of errors, and I was thrilled with the ease of use, and results of these programs. But in the end, the problem I intended on solving never got solved! Every time I log on her computer, these messages pop up over, and over again. It was driving me nuts not being able to figure out how to fix it, so I can only imagine how frustrating it must have been for Katie to have to deal with it day after day.
I ended up coming to the website maximumpc.com and they offered a lot of good suggestions about how I could clean “my” computer of lots of unwanted errors. Towards the end of the article they came to a couple of programs that promised “registry” cleaners. I decided I like Maximum PC and would trust their recommendations. So, I tried the first one on the list, SUPERAntiSpyware, and while it appeared to solve a few problems, it didn’t fix anything noticeable.
After that, I made the mistake of skipping to the next ones on the list that generally looked like something I wanted to do. I thought that the problems I was having had to do with registry errors so I skipped ahead to the section that described a couple of programs that dealt with registry errors. I first installed the program COMODO and ran that. After running that program, I got similar results. At this point I was pretty frustrated and was out of answers. Fortunately, I went to the beginning of the article again.
I ended up making the wise decision to download and install MalwareBytes and ran that as soon as it installed. As you can see on the screen shot in this blog post, there were quite a few errors that it picked up even after running the previously mentioned programs. As this was running I was very impressed with the results. Of course a lot of the programs had errors of their own so I was skeptical to say the least.
A funny thing happened, though: it actually worked! I managed to restart the computer many times and not a single time did these error messages show up again. Things went so well that I was even able to enter control panel and get another problem I had no intentions of fixing under control as well.
In the end, it seems I spent a lot of time trying to fix the problem this simple program was able to do in five minutes for me. I am sure my sister is more than appreciative of the effort I put forth, but I understand the true nature of the solution and am very grateful for the solution I have just described. In the future MalwareBytes will be the first program I try whenever I have computer issues in the future. I just figured you all should know!
Galcon is a rather simple game that can be played on your own, or online with up to 12 players on any number of teams.
I first got introduced to Galcon by Robin and the fact that it was so easy to pick up and understand was great. It was a rather simple game, with simple objectives, and simple rules. It is the type of game that is fun just like Minesweeper or Solitaire is.
Basically in multi-player mode, the host chooses various options, like how many planets a player starts with, and what size the planet is, and various other options. In single player mode these options are predefined based on the mode you choose.
Simply put, Galcon starts everyone with the same identical type of planets for the most part. Usually your planet will generate 100 ships per minute. You can use these ships to capture other planets. Each planet on the screen has a value. The bigger the planet, the more ships it produces when it is captured.
At the start of the game usually there are many, many planets that have no affiliations. These are most likely your primary targets. These planets have big numbers on them which indicates the amount of ships you need to capture it. When you send ships, they basically sacrifice themselves until the planet is captured. Once the planet is captured, all the ships that you send to your own planet will simply be put in reserve on the planet. This adds up quickly when you factor in the amount of ships the planet itself produces.
Enemy planets do not indicate how many ships are located on them as the neutral planets do, so when you feel your army is strong enough to attack a planet, you must choose wisely.
If you strike early on, you can tell if a planet is strong or not, based on the amount of ships the enemy needed to sacrifice to capture the planet, and based on how many ships he sent.
Strategy is key when it concerns this game. For the most part, the person with the most planets at any given time has the lead and should win. But replenishing ships is not instantaneous, and if one player has 4 planets with next to no ships on them, and the other player has 3 planets with 30 on them, the second player can just pick off the enemy one at a time.
Defending planets is the same thing as capturing. Basically you need to have more ships there then the enemy. If he sends more than you have there when he arrives, then the enemy will capture the planet.
It is a fast paced game that can usually end a round in about 5 minutes or less. As you have seen on these videos, my rounds are around 1 minute .
Online can be a bit more tactical. Ultimately you need to befriend someone in order to win, or you must be very lucky. Skill can only take you so far, as ultimately it is a numbers game. Simple math. Player X produces 400 ships per minute in total, you produce 200 ships per minute; well you would need to capture more planets before he captures your or you will be toast.
Galcon has basic chat in the game so you can talk to players online as you fight them, and you can even designate yourself to watch mode, so you can view a match in progress without participating. You are not excluded from the chat, however.
Ultimately my opinion of this game is tied directly to its cost. This is a fun little game, with a large price tag, and is ultimately why it is not everywhere.
This game costs $20, [EDIT: This game is now only $7.95] which is what 1-2 year old PC games cost nowadays, and there is MUCH better bangs for your buck. Considering this developer used an open-source game engine, gives it yet another thumbs-down.
Being able to use the game in trial mode is nice and all, and all things considered, you aren’t missing much by refusing to buy it, as the trial allows you to play online. The single player features are simply different scenarios. There is no campaign, no story. Just various starting scenarios and that’s it. The game play does not change.
woot!!
Ok, so I know you are going to want to know what I did exactly, and while I am not 100% certain what worked and/or why, here is what you need to know.
First things first, here are my specs:
Intel QX6850 Quad-Core Extreme 3.00 GHz processor
nVidia GeForce 8800GT
Gigabyte P43-ES3G motherboard
- ALC888 Audio Codec
- LAN is, um idk
- go Google my motherboard for specs
Ok, now to start, I am using Robin’s Boot-132 boot disk, which allows me to load into the retail OS X (10.5.0) disk. This is important because for obvious reasons the retail disk won’t load all on its own, it’s meant for Mac hardware. I had to set my hard drives to be in ACHI mode in order for the OS X disk to see them. If I didn’t do this the disk simply wouldn’t see the hard drives. Hopefully I can change this, because to get back into Windows I need this setting off. I’m sure you can see why this is annoying!
So now that I have the retail disk loaded, I install OS X like normal, as if it were a Mac. Just partition a hard drive with the partition utility found on the disk, and partition it as Journaled. There are lots of guides about how to do this. Just know that my motherboard and processor combination had no issues installing OS X. I didn’t have any hangs or anything. The whole process was in very low resolution but whatever, can’t expect miracles.
So after I have OS X installed on the hard drive, I still have the issue of getting to it. I just used the Boot 132 cd again, only this time I didn’t use (9f) as my device to boot to, I used in my case I think 80 for the default hard drive. The boot loader can see the name of the drive so if the name matches what you named the drive when you partitioned it then you know you selected the right hard drive number here.
I have 3 internal hard drives that total 4 partitions, and an external hard drive. In my various attempts to do this it has ranged from 80 to 84 for the number that corresponded with the right hard drive.
But now that the drive is selected, just boot into it. If everything is ok you should still be good. Now for me a lot worked out of the box. Although the resolution was low, it still displayed a default resolution, so that was good enough. Audio didn’t work, but lan did, so I could go on the internet instantly to download the files I needed.
The first thing I did was download the update to get from OS 10.5.0 to 10.5.2. This is a combo update, and you can Google it, or you can click the link I have up top.
This did basically nothing from my perspective. Even though this update is supposed to have drivers for my 8800GT, it didn’t work. Still low res. Also audio still doesn’t work. But at this point it is 10.5.2 and that’s good. More up-to-date so that’s a win.
At this point I wanted to get my resolution working so I followed the instructions to the letter found on the link I posted up top. I had to hand-write the instructions on paper to know what to type when I logged in as single user mode.
At this point after I restart, booting from the CD didn’t work for me anymore, so I tried booting straight from the hard drive, and somewhere along the lines it put in a boot-loader. I tried booting with the -f flag (so I could implement the changes I just made), and viola! Graphics work!
(In case you were wondering how the CD failed me, if I tried to boot off the CD at this point, I would get the gray Apple logo just great, but when it was time to log in my monitor turned off. It sounded like my computer was churning, so maybe something was on that CD that conflicted with the drivers I just installed, but whatever it was, the CD was out)
Now I have internet, and graphics, next I need sound. This was horribly pesky to fix.
Basically, I tried everything. If you Google ALC888 you can see like 8 different solutions. What I did in the end is use the kext’s located at the link listed up top and installed them with Kext Helper. It worked!
To be fair I tried so many things first, so I don’t know specifically what put it over the top. I tried every other way I could find to get the audio working that didn’t involve me going into terminal (the only solutions I tried were packages or txt files I used with another program).
And now, I am at the point where I can type my results and display them here for you.
Whoo!
I know I haven’t gone into so much detail as I could have, but I am honestly tired of thinking about what works and what doesn’t. I am really only able to tell you what I did, I can’t tell you why certain things work and others don’t. At least you now know my motherboard and other important things about my system.
Ok, so now I have gotten my computer all the way up to 10.5.6, so yeah, win.
Here’s what I did:
I went to apple.com and downloaded each update from 10.5.3 to 10.5.6. I did NOT download the combo updates, just the updates that took me from the previous version to the next version. I think combo updates (since they are for bringing something as low as 10.5.0 to whatever version I downloaded) I both didn’t need that, or want it. Plus it saved bandwidth and download size.
After I had gotten it to 10.5.2, I used this guide to update my computer to 10.5.3.
After using that guide, I got to 10.5.3 with relative ease. After the requisite restart I searched and found out I didn’t need to do anything to update to 10.5.4 or 10.5.5. I did it in steps still though, and once I updated to 10.5.4 and restarted with no problems, I did the same with 10.5.5.
At this point I had gotten through almost all of them with very little effort all things considered (which is great). After looking some more I found out 10.5.6 should be the same thing. After I installed it and restarted, I had an issue. (Gasp!)
After I restarted I thought it had failed (I was restarting in verbose mode just to see what was going on with each restart), and I noticed it had the same “MACH_REBOOT” message that I was presented with following the 10.5.3 update. This felt reassuring to me, so I simply hard rebooted in verbose mode, and viola! OS X Leopard all up-to-date.
So that one guide listed was basically all I needed. And now you know. I should post my specs on the OSx86 wiki page now… End EDIT (4/15/2009)
All this time, and I have not committed a full post to this awesome game! What a shame! No more, though. I am going to dissect this game like never before!
Ok, with that out of the way, let me introduce you to the world of Simulation Auto Racing! Yay!
This game and this franchise has been a part of my life since I can ever remember owning a computer. This game franchise started in 1994 with the incredible game NASCAR Sim Racing. This was followed by NASCAR Sim Racing 2, NASCAR Sim Racing 1999 Edition, NASCAR Sim Racing 3, NASCAR Sim Racing 4, and finally NASCAR Sim Racing 2002 Season.
(PHEW!!)
I have owned every single one of these games except NASCAR Sim Racing 2 (and various expansion packs I didn’t have the money for). The transformation these games have made has been astounding. Ever since the release of NASCAR Racing 1999 Edition, this game had a new version released yearly.
The success of this franchise was in its realism. Simply put, the tracks, the cars, the physics and everything associated with NASCAR was the best in the business. No one had more official tracks in their games, or more official car sponsors, or more official drivers.
This game had all of it. On top of this, though, they had the most realistic driving game out there too. Graphic quality aside, this game looked right. Cars were hard to handle. They spun out in the right way, they crashed the right way, and damage models were scary-real.
As computer technology improved, so too did things in the graphics department and the sound department. During the transition to NASCAR 3, Papyrus (the game’s developers) added cool effects like a ‘groove’ that closely resembled a ‘groove’ you would see at a real NASCAR track. They added translucent smoke, so no longer were you left with cartoon-ish looking smoke. You could the see the fog surrounding cars in front of you, and better avoid wrecks (although heavy wrecks you couldn’t see through, so good luck getting through! Another dose of realism!).
Once NASCAR 4 came around we were allowed to have Indianapolis Motor Speedway and Daytona at our fingertips for the first time, as these venues had open rights to appear in games (Daytona had been SEGA exclusive previously). In addition, the NASCAR team implemented new physics, which allowed cars to get airborne (previously only sliding and rotating happened, which was fine because hitting a wall upside down or not still was a wreck). This just upped the ante on the realism.
NASCAR Racing 2002, and then NASCAR Racing 2003 season (NR2003 for short from now on) added new effects like blimps hovering around the tracks and helicopters, as well as sunlight effects on cameras, with reflections at an all-time high, and shadows playing a major role in the game.
These things have allowed NR2003 to live on, even to this day, even though the game has passed it’s 6th birthday.
The game has 2 comprehensive modes: Single Race, and Multiplayer. There are two additional ‘support’ modes: Season and Testing.
Single Race mode acts the way you would expect. You set up the settings many different ways. You can have a short race at any of the tracks available, you can set the number of computer controlled cars, their strength and also things like whether yellow flags are enabled and how fast fuel and tires get consumed.
Of course a rate of 1x is considered ‘normal,’ as in, closest to real life. You cannot slow the rate of fuel consumption to slower than that, although I don’t know why you would want to.
Computer controlled cars and their overall strength is determined by a combination of the base strength you assign them when entering a race, and also by their stats as defined by the game. You can go into the settings and adjust the strengths of any driver. The game does not inherently know “Jeff Gordon is this good at this track,” it simply got supplied these values by a human.
You can make your own cars using a paint shop in the game (although making skins for the car out of the game and then simply importing them works much better). You can then set the settings of this player any way you like. You can make your own player, or you can add a player you wish to be included.
This level of customization really brings the fun into racing. It’s fun to try to beat the ‘other guys’ with ‘your own stuff.’
To go along with the single player mode is Testing, and Season mode. Season simply is a predefined series of Single Races that compiles a rank of drivers based on the order they finish after each race. The driver with the most points at the end of the races wins. This mimicks the way the Championship was decided at the time the game was released (NASCAR has since changed it).
The testing mode is a practice mode that allows you to go to a track without any other cars and practice. This is the place to go to get better. Driving around while trying to avoid other cars is no way to get better at a certain track, although if you wish to get better at passing then that is the way to go .
Multiplayer is an experience all its own. Unfortunately at this point the servers are no longer maintained and the only way to play online is through dedicated servers. Finding these servers can be tricky, and you must connect via IP address. This is ok, but the standard 40 car fields is hard to come by.
Onto the gameplay itself: the physics (which is central to a simulation being good simulation) is nearly spot-on. Issues I have noticed, though, are that the cars seem to ‘stick’ to the walls, rather than bounce off. This is maddening as it can quickly ruin any form of momentum you had. You can try to steer quickly off the wall but this usually results in a spin, and if you don’t turn away from the wall, you will grind almost to a complete halt (not kidding).
Also it appears that the computer controlled players are not being controlled by physics the same way your car is. This makes their cars seem to rotate around a corner, instead of drive through it. This isn’t a big deal though, since all cars spin just as easily as you do, and generally slow down and speed up in the same locations you do. There does seem to be issues with the AI running into the back of you if you go too slow, and they can spin you out quite easily if this happens, but generally if they are running into you, you are running at way too high a difficulty level.
Physics in the game on the whole are strong though. The car gets airborne exactly the way you would expect. It doesn’t happen all the time. usually it requires you to get hit in the side at a very high rate of speed to turn you over.
The difficulty level on the whole is high, but driving cars on the brink of spinning out is not supposed to be easy. Conquering this and winning races is a challenge, and as such, is very rewarding when you pull it off. Even finishing 2nd can feel like an accomplishment if you run a long enough race.
This game, just as in real life, is about minimizing your mistakes. The longer you go, the harder it is. While no single small mistake will take you out, multiple small mistakes or one large mistake will put you behind in a hurry. This is true-to-life.
In addition to the total package Papyrus has brought us, the community has brought us even more. Perhaps the most beneficial add-ons have come from the Project Wildfire (PWF) Stable. These guys have released mods for different car types such as the craftsman trucks series, and the Busch series. They have released a few tracks that are of extremely high quality, and they have released the most beneficial tool of all: Sandbox.
Sandbox is the tool Papyrus used to create the tracks in-game, and combining this tool with others has allowed anyone who wants, to make their very own tracks.
The way the game simply sucks in game resources (such as tracks and cars) has allowed the community to update the game for us.
It is very easy to download and use up-to-date tracks, and cars in the game. I have even made my own track that has gotten some love at one of the places still offering online racing.
The overall impact of this game is immense. The effects of this game are un-matched. Smoke still to this day looks spot-on, as well as damage models and light effects. While driving and winning are hard to do, succeeding is VERY rewarding.
Combine these things, and an ever-present online community providing fresh updates to the game and we have a real classic here. This game still takes up tons of my time, and I am thrilled to be able to share it here.
If you are able to get your hands on a copy, I recommend you pick it up. I wouldn’t pay the $100 or $200 it fetches from 3rd parties, but if you can get it for cheap, do it.
The world of computer games is a vast world. There can be many different flavors of computer games, varying from Flight Simulators, to city management games, to real time strategy games and first person shooters.
Savage 2 is the type of game that merges game types, in a way that hasn’t been seen in this type of package before.
This game actually combines the real time strategy component of games, and the role playing / third person type of game, and merges them into one.
I first found Savage 2 by typing these fateful words into Google: “Free MMO RPG.” This was a VERY bad thing to do. See, I enjoy World of Warcraft tremendously, but the game is expensive as all hell. Having to pay $15 a month, every month is a lot to pay. Sure you get a lot out of it, and I am not going to say it is a bad value, but cheap it is not.
This lead me to try to find an experience similar to World of Warcraft, that wasn’t necessarily identical. That’s when I came across Savage 2.
When visiting the web site I was at first skeptical about this ‘FREE’ thing they had going on. I didn’t know if this was free for a month, then you pay or something, or what it was. I was expecting a ‘catch.’ As it turns out there is no catch – other than if you pay to upgrade your online account, you get more ‘stuff.’
Fortunately these do not restrict your ability to play a very fun and deep game. They simply restrict you to things like 4 item slots instead of 6, and things along those lines. They don’t make you weaker or anything like that. Of course if you want, you can pay $10 bucks and gain those extra slots and extra perks. This appears to be a one time fee.
After downloading this game, not knowing much about it, I instantly went into the tutorial. This was my chance to understand exactly what was going on. As it turns out there is a lot.
The first part required me to learn basic combat maneuvers, which seemed pretty straight forward. There was your standard WASD movement, 3rd person view, and you had your standard 1, 2, 3 … etc keys for magic and general abilities. This seemed pretty straightforward, as it mirrored World of Warcraft pretty well (with the exception of simple projectile weapons being used in Savage 2).
The next part required me to play the game in RTS mode. This is where things got strange. I had no issues controlling the players to do certain things, and was able to follow directions to victory quite easily.
This confused me though. I had no idea how the game would be played outside of tutorial mode. I didn’t know what was what, and ultimately I felt very lost at this point.
I played the tutorial one more time and once again, did not know how exactly I was going to play this in non-tutorial mode. I then headed online to play live.
Ultimately, I realized, I was to choose. While only one person can play in ‘God’ mode (RTS mode, or as Savage 2 calls it, ‘Commander’), no one person is conscripted to play the part. It is voluntary. If more than one person offers, then a simple vote is taken to determine who is commander.
Teams are auto-balanced (to an extent) and everyone who isn’t a Commander fights in 3rd person mode. This mode is pretty straightforward, and it is up to these people to conquer areas for their commander to build mines to gather gold (the game’s currency) and to fortify it with towers.
The action can be fast and intense, and each round can last anywhere from 10-15 minutes, to over an hour.
The game being mainly online-only is both good and bad. Dealing with humans is hard to deal with, as some go off to fight their own battles, and it makes it tough to defend certain areas, and capture others. As commander, or a player on the field of battle, it can be frustrating to work as a team.
Commanders generally play a small role in the outcome of the game if not keeping up with the game. Commanders how wonderful powers that can allow them to heal players in the field of battle, resurrect fallen teammates, and various other spells that affect players. Commanders even have spells that can effect enemy players.
The commander can only see what is revealed in the fog of war. The fog of war generally works the same as in any RTS, which essentially is viewable as the players move around the map. Since these characters are controlled by other people, it takes some coordinating to get tactics in order. It is quite possible for players in the field to see enemies before the commander will.
On the subject of teams, it appears that the two races are not balanced. This is hard to measure since individual skill levels of the people playing cannot be measured. It seems, though, like the Beast Horde have the upper hand.
In my experience playing the game the Beast Horde usually win the game, in spite of the Human’s best efforts. Usually if the Humans win it is due to the other team being down a man or they simply don’t care.
And talking about being down a man, the way the selection system works, it seems that the beast horde is always the team that gets the 1st, ‘next’ player. What I mean by that is if the teams are balanced by volume, the next player to join the lobby can only join the horde. So if it is 3 on 3, the horde get the next player, that player cannot join the humans. Odd number games are not hard to come by, so this outcome happens far too often, and may be a big factor the Horde always seem to win.
On the whole though, this is a very solid game. The 3rd person RPG style action is fun, and the type of combat varies. As you build up your base you can add new buildings which unlock new classes, such as siege weapons for the humans, and giant trolls for the horde. These unlocked classes can swing the momentum of battle and are valued as such.
The RPG element is great too. You can be the eye in the sky for your team and show them what the enemy is doing and form tactics this way. This allows the fighters to fight, and the good players will follow your commands.
At the end of the day, this is a solid game all-around. The graphics are not state-of-the-art, but are close to on par with games such as World of Warcraft. The number of effects are lower then that game, but the level of details are similar. The sound is a bit lacking, as there is not much music (if any) to speak of, and the sound effects can only be summarized as ‘generic.’ They are not awful, they get the job done, but that is about it.
This game is in fact free, however, and as such is perhaps the greatest freeware game out there. If you have something else, let me know, I’d love to take a look at it.
Anyway, what am I geeking out about, you might ask? Well it’s simple really. I love Firefox.
Ok that isn’t the most relevant thing to say, but let me explain. Firefox is at his point the 2nd most popular web browser available. It has slightly over 20% market share. That being said, it’s not 100%, and it’s not #1.
Internet Explorer is number one, simply because it comes installed on every Windows computer. It does a good enough job to get things done, so the people that don’t care about having as close to a perfect web experience as possible just don’t have much incentive to go find out there are different ways to view a web page.
Granted, there are some Internet Explorer-only perks that are sprinkled in here and there, but overwhelmingly it is agreed upon that Internet Explorer is NOT a good enough browser.
If it EVER gets CSS selectors right, or gets on the same page with web formats correctly (SVG for instance), then IE will have earned its #1 market share.
Firefox is cutting into it, though. My dad even has it installed on his Macintosh computer AND PC, even though Mac has its own superb browser (Safari).
The biggest thing Firefox has going for it (in my opinion)? The extensions. What are extensions? They are little nuggets that alter the default way the browser behaves in some way. Ultimately HOW they do this depends on the developer, but the simple fact that you can customize the browser is a very big deal.
To me, this wasn’t a huge thing. The fact that Firefox rendered web pages the way they were supposed to was the biggest draw (and the fact it wasn’t cluttered by menus and functions and junk I didn’t use for drivers I didn’t want).
Anyway, lately I have been trying to catch up on some reading. This is something that my own personal philosophy has dictated. I don’t feel like I can know too much. But I don’t enjoy buying books that I intend to read once, and to have all that expense and all that ‘bulk.’ Whenever I move, schlepping books is NOT one of my favorite things to do.
So what do I do? Go to the Library! This allows me to check out books for up to a month at a time, for free! Yeah I know, strange concept, going to the library. But how does this relate to Firefox, and about why I am geeking out?
Well, my library out here in the Bay Area is signed up with the website Safari Books Online. This allows me to read books on almost every topic known to man, in my own home, on my own time, on my computer screen! No late fees involved, no driving, no walking, no nothing!
Not every book that is available in the library is available to read online, but for the most part I have noticed once you get ‘in’ to the online portion of the library, you can read just about every book listed in their database.
But once again, how does this relate to me geeking out? Well I have a widescreen monitor. This means my screen is MUCH wider than it is tall. This is great for things like games, and just entertainment in general like TV and movies (yes I watch TV on my computer). But for all of documented time we have been writing words down on documents that are taller than they are high. This certainly has not changed recently.
This creates a little bit of a problem. Web browsers tend to follow the convention of my monitor: they have a very WIDE viewing pane. All the functions are at the top and bottom, and the only functions at the sides are the scroll bars. This is fine for CRT monitors, as they are relatively square, so SOMEWHERE it has to go, and the top seems like as good a place as any.
The issue for me is that if I want to view a pdf, or go to this website to read books that allow me to read online, all that stuff prevents me from clearly reading an entire ‘page.’ I can have it one of two ways: I can maximize the page within the window as best as it can fit, and then the text will be proportionally small, or I can zoom in and then I need to scroll to read the bottom of any given page.
I don’t want to have to deal with either. I want it all!
So the only way to do this is to figure out how to manipulate pdf documents to fill in a larger portion of the screen. Usually the height of the viewing area is the only thing dictating the overall size of the document. If my vertical viewing area increases, so too does the size of the entire page!
So with my resolution maxed out, where do I get additional vertical pixels? The first area I found extra room was with Windows. I use a dock similar to the one found in Mac OS X, from Stardock, and it has an option to disable the Windows Task Bar, which takes up about 30 pixels or so. Not a lot, but every little bit helps. My dock can then simply slide up on top of everything when I pull my mouse to the bottom of the screen.
Now, with that accomplished, I need to find more vertical pixels. The only thing that is ‘stealing’ pixels at this point is Firefox itself. I like the way Firefox is designed. It looks good. All the text is about the perfect size. Not too big, not too small. Buttons are the same way. Not too big, not too small (at least with the default theme. Yeah Firefox can be skinned too. The options are yours!)
Now where is Firefox using pixels and what can I do about it? Let’s approach this from the top-down:
- The title bar stays. I use it to move my windows around and don’t think I could ever get used to it being removed. Plus using it to view page titles just makes sense to me.
- The menu bar stays too. I tried moving all my navigation elements up there and merging them, but the bar was too thin and it made my icons too small for my liking. I would have lost a lot of functionality if I did that, and my goal is to lose ZERO functionality (if not gain functionality). So it and the navigation bar stay.
- Bookmarks bar: They go. Just right clicked on the main chrome, and unchecked ‘bookmarks’ toolbar.
- Status bar and tabs: these are where the fun starts! For now they go.
Ok so with the tabs bar dedicated to be left out, and the bookmarks bar gone, and the status bar decided to get left out, how do I do it, and how do I replace their functions?
For the tab bar I installed this nifty extension, called Tab Kit. This cool buddy is great. It allows me to display all my tabs in a vertical bar off to the side, so I can save my vertical space. It also has a lot of cool features that allow me to interact with the tabs a lot more intuitively (like it adds newly created tabs in the ‘queue’ next in line after the current tab, instead of at the end of the queue). This is a HUGE plus, and not only that it allows a lot more tabs to be displayed with out losing practical information. This comes at a BIG expense to horizontal width, but that’s fine by me. I still have LOTS left over for the web page.
For the bookmarks, I simply used the sidebar. This is something that takes up a LOT of space too, and I am deciding whether I want to use an auto-hide extension to save space when I am not interacting with it. I think I may end up doing just that.
For the final touches, I installed autoHideStatusBar (yeah it is all one jumble of letters). This allows my status bar to remain off-screen when it doesn’t need to be used (which is about 99% of the time). The only problem I have with this is that when it ‘pops’ back in it can be quite disruptive. I wish it had better ‘floating’ properties, but at this point it is a big in.
So, with all these changes, I have gained a LOT of vertical space and can read all of my documents with ease. With the removal of the Windows task bar, I even get extra room for everything else, whether it be Word Documents, or Spreadsheets, I mean, you get the idea.
Anyway, I think I have gone on long enough about this. You now know my path to conquer document space in Firefox. If you are using Internet Explorer, oh well
Well, we got it up!! I’m not sure if Robin became aware of the OSx86 Project through me, or if he was drawn to it organically; hell I guess I don’t even remember how I heard of it, so I guess I could have heard of it through him…
Anyway, thanks to some great help from community members in those forums and thanks to the Wiki there, Robin has gotten his very own Hackintosh up and running!!
After getting us getting laid off, Robin lost his access to a powerful computer. He had an old mac sitting around that didn’t even have a 1 ghz processor in it, nor did it have a DVD drive. With the lack of a computer monitor, he had to plug it into our TV! Yeah I know .
Well searching through what was available online and through Apple directly, he decided it was time to try to build his very own Hackintosh. This has been a goal of mine for some time, check out my about page. He checked out the parts on the OSx86 Project Wiki, and looked to get compatible parts from places, most of which, if not all of which, ended up coming from NewEgg.com.
With some assistance of people having gotten their own ‘hacks’ up in chat rooms, it looked like the right parts had been chosen. Of course the next part came of the excruciating wait of shipping, which was not aided by the fact we had no jobs.
By the time the packages were set to arrive, a small error was going to result in a further delay in the shipping process, so Robin made two trips up to get all the rest of the equipment.
Finally, with all the parts here, assembly commenced!
Building a computer, whether a tradition PC with Windows, or with Linux or any other Operating System, the process is straightforward… get a case, a power supply to power it all of course; a motherboard which connects everything together; memory, like the stuff you use in your digital camera, only better; a hard drive (or two, or three I guess if you want, but you need at least one); a graphics card (if one isn’t built into the motherboard – for good graphics a stand-alone graphics card is best); a CD or DVD drive, I prefer DVD; and you need any other add-ons you might dream of. A monitor is required of course as well as a keyboard and mouse.
Anyway, after putting these things together we discovered that the processor Robin chose would not work with his motherboard unless he updated the bios. Unable to understand how to do this without having SOME processor in there, we were fortunate to have one of my newer processors hanging around waiting to go into my computer.
We place that one into the motherboard, and presto! It works! At this point we needed to update the BIOS so we installed a copy of Windows XP on it in order to download a bios updating tool off the CD that came with the motherboard. Once this was done, we put in Robin’s processor, and that worked too!
So now came the impossibly hard task of trying to get Mac software, to understand and run on PC hardware. Fortunately there are MANY ways to do this, and after only a few attempts, OS X was running on his computer.
Though once we got it on there (it took about 2 days to get it right, no joke), there was the process of getting the kernal extensions on there to get the graphics card and all the other peripherals.
Once OS X was running, at this point the computer bolted to Robin’s room, and from there I only hear of success or failure, so the processes he went through I was out-of-the-loop on, so I don’t have any details on that .
On the bright side though, I was able to use a newly burned version of the Kalyway OS X 10.5.2 disk to get OS X working on my computer – but I am having the darndest problem: the Vista bootloader gets corrupted every time I un-plug that hard drive, or even simply install OS X onto the other hard drive. So I can get OS X working and fine and all, but not having a 3rd hard drive, I need to wipe the OS X drive in order to install Windows XP on it, which then is able to fix my Vista bootloader.
Yeah, it IS a big pain-in-the-neck. Hopefully I can get this figured out in some time, but at least KNOWING the Kalyway disk will work is a step in the right direction, so until I actually NEED OS X on my computer, I won’t worry about it.
Well, that’s about all I think I can share about what has happened so far here, so hope you enjoyed the triumph!!
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