Some ramblings...

Just a few things.  The stock gallery in Android really sucks.  When I finally got a microSDHC and moved all my photos and videos, this stupid app kept re-scanning the card and inserting duplicate thumbnail entries for each picture and video there.  Talk about stupid stuff.  I learned a few things on the Acer Tablet Forum.  Putting in the .nomedia file in the folder means that the apps (at least ones I've checked) will ignore this and treat it like there's no media files in there.  Second, from Settings > App > All, I can select Gallery and tap on Disable to turn the damn app off.  Lastly, I installed QuickPic which proved to be so much better.

On Sims FreePlay, if you need your Sim to go to work with low hygiene for that 1 LP reward, just send the sim to kick his own trash can and clean up that mess repeatedly.  Kicking a friend's trash can means hurting the relationship.

Mass Effect Infiltrator should not have had any walking parts in the actual combat.

Linux and Core dumps

I thought I'd just drop a little snippet on this.  Read a bit about trying to get my Linux to dump cores and saw two tips on it that I thought I'd easily forget.

First is to define the core pattern at /proc/sys/kernel/core_pattern.  This defines how the core_pattern is being generated and what the core file will look like.  By default it dumps it on the current working directory of the application but the core_pattern should allow you to play around with that.

Second is to change ulimit.  ulimit -a will show you what the settings are for core file size.  Change it to impose a maximum file size by invoking ulimit -c .  You can also invoke ulimit -c unlimited.

Damn! A proper VNC viewer on Android!

For a long time, I've endured androidVNC as my primary remote desktop viewer on my Acer tablet.  It's rudimentary but works and is free which was what I was looking for when I got my tablet.  There are a couple of things that really bothered me with this software though.  First was the propensity to crashes when doing multi-touch accidentally.  Second was the cumbersome keyboard support and the fact that half the time, I can't see what I'm actually typing.  Third was the lack of support for the very well developed Hacker's Keyboard.  While using it a few hours ago, I really started to think that there had to be a much better option that didn't cost a dime.  Google took me to another VNC that works so much better.  That's the PocketCloud Remote RDP/VNC.  Love how everything looks professional and the mouse circular menu really makes using the desktop much, much better.  Can't look back at my old VNC viewer after this one.

仮面ライダーBLACK Hyper Detail Molding

My brother managed to find these two bad boys in the shop.  Black (HDM Secret Release) and Shadow Moon!

Witcher 2 thoughts...

Yes... apparently, the Lady of the Lake bestows crap swords.  Better to wield a cutlass!

Finally beat the Kayran after setting the resolution to 320x175!  Woohoo!

Android ICS Irritation: Application Not Responding

I started getting some slow downs with my last few days of Honeycomb.  Launching apps had gotten generally slower.  The stock browser paused damn too much.  Everything was becoming a painful experience for me.  With that, I looked up Elixir 2 and Lookup Ad Detection to figure out just what was happening.  No matter how much I inspected the 'top' command output, I couldn't see anything that was really causing a bottleneck.  I then looked up the ad network apps that were in my system.  It was there I realized that there's a chock full of these that come with your freebie games.  Without hesitation, I proceeded to zap away the multitude of freebie apps that were hooked up in these ads.  Truth be told, I don't know which one did it, to be honest, but I could definitely sense a good change in speed.  It wasn't enough though.

EA at Ubuntu Developer Summit!

"We are a platform agnostic company." - Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

Ha!

Acer A500 and Ice Cream Sandwich

Ever since the word got out that Android 4.0 (aka Ice Cream Sandwich or simply ICS) started going out, the wait for the update has been infuriating.  Every time I check my device for updates, it has always insisted it didn't have any.  I knew it was already out there though and its inability to find it was aggravating.  People had mentioned that the Iconia Tab Updater needed to be updated but as far as Google was concerned, it was which only made matters more irritating.

Finally I decided to go to Acer's local support website and looked for this apk and bit the bullet.  As soon as the app replaced the one installed by Google, it picked up 4.0.3 right away.  I knew ICS had problems but I was willing to bite the bullet.  After the update went through without a hitch, I've decided to write down my thoughts on this.

Thoughts on Witcher 2

I don't know what to think of when it comes to Witcher 2.  Sometimes, it shines as  such a great game and sometimes I just want to bash my head into a wall.  My experience has been a combination of many things that I really take away from the experience, the first major factor being Wine's own glitches.

Some random stuff...

First off, git sucks again.  For some reason it keeps deleting this file while I'm pulling to update my branch.  Why anyone uses this stupid software I will never know.

Second, one guy in the Witcher forums had been helpful in providing tips to run the game on.  I am advised to try Aspect Ratio scaling to see how that works.

NVIDIA X Server Settings
GPU 0 > DFP-1 > GPU Scaling Method > Aspect Ratio Scaled

Will see how that pans out.

Witcher 2 on Wine Update

Well, the game finally worked!  I installed it and then installed vcrun2010 and d3dx9 after (actually I forgot to do it before install!).  The game wouldn't work so I decided to use the hot fix installer here.  Frame rate was all over the place and starting a new game would just make it load forever.  According to the Witcher forums, it's because the graphics card cannot hack the game, so I was forced to lower the resolution to 800x600.  I'll work my way up from there because it's tiny.  1024x768 also doesn't work.

On a side note, the GOG release includes the Polish voice overs already!

Additional user.reg stuff:
HKCU\\Software\\Wine\\Direct3D
UseGLSL=disabled

Also, mouse warping is an issue.  I remember now that the mouse wouldn't warp back so I had problems navigating and clicking on stuff.  The pains I go through to play Witcher 2...

Mouse warping seems to work??

I ran a test using Tomb Raider Underworld to see if the mouse warping code was working out of the box.  Much to my surprise... it seems to be!  I wonder if it's just because I used 1920x1080 resolution and force mouse overrides.

Cross fingers and hope the findings is true.