Random Thoughts: Google Hangouts and Dragon Age

Google forced the switch, abandoning Google talk in favour of this new Google Hangouts.  All I can say is that this app absolutely blows.  Suddenly, my chat list is populated by:

1. Acquaintances I don't chat with;
2. Mailing list e-mail addresses;
3. People I've only reached out via e-mail once or twice.

To make matters worse, the only way to fiddle the list is to go to another Google service and basically delete people you don't want to chat with.  The UI to get to the contact I want to chat with is also incredibly cumbersome.  Google?  This software is a piece of shit.  That is all.  Moving on.

Rune crafting sucks.  Don't like crafting.  Never did in any RPG.  To see that Dragon Age: Awakening doesn't have any vendors that sell armour runes better than novice ones suck.  Abso-freaking-lutely sucks.

While I'm at the 'This thing sucks' mode, I would like to say I never liked Dragon Age: Origins' cute puzzle to get the Sacred Ashes.  Awakening has a few optional ones, and I don't like any of them.  Still, BioWare did a heck of a game series and I'm still looking forward to Dragon Age 2 (despite the complaints of everyone who has played it).

Downgrading from 13.04 to 12.10?

Generally, 13.04 is fine for my nVIDIA desktop, but on my HP laptop, I'm very unhappy with it.  The lack of a dual head setup is seriously killing me (Thank you, AMD...) and after the recent updates, my touchpad click button is now playing tricks on me.  What do I do?  Do I downgrade to 12.10?  Will the next Ubuntu release fix all of these issues?  Hmmm...

I intentionally upgraded my PC first and give 13.04 a week on that machine to make sure everything was spiffy.  This grace period was for me to decide whether or not to upgrade my work laptop.  I see now that I should probably not be upgrade happy with my work laptop but that will mean I will get stuck with the same problem I had before, which is getting stuck on old releases forever.

It's been a rough week...

TCL and the Blasted Dates!

So, I've had a programming task to do on TCL that involves things that I don't normally use.  This one was basically to take the first Sunday of a specific Month and Year.  After some time of researching and testing, I figured it out.  This entry is just for archival purposes.

% clock format [clock scan {Sunday} -base [clock scan "2013-05-01" -format {%Y-%m-%d}] -format {%A}] -format {%Y-%m-%d}

Base sets the base time for clock and the format for the return can be tweaked to whatever you want.  It's also worth taking note that -format parameter on clock scan only works on TCL 8.5 and above.

Random Thoughts: Linux, and Dragon Age

First thing is the important part.  I don't normally do message sending on Linux, but lately, having to maintain servers, it's been a critical way of communicating with another user logged in so both of you can coordinate while on that server.  So, I will just leave this note.

Use the wall command which broadcasts messages to everyone logged in.  It's an extension of the mesg command (use man pages, mate!).  Type wall, then hit enter.  Then write your message (20 lines maximum).  EOF (typically CTRL+D) ends and transmits the message.

Second point.  Dragon Age Origins: Awakening which so far has been a cruel drag to play.  Something about the writing is absolutely uninteresting and the game really gets a bit more fun to play for me when I'm not having to deal with the main plot quests.  Ugh.  Plus, why is BioWare so keen on stripping my Warden of his gear to make me lose inventory items?  This happened twice now.  First with the damned Sacred Ashes quest and then on the Silverite Mines.  Bah!  Dragon Age Origins is great.  Awakening is teetering on the not-so-good area.

My Autodesk Sketchbook Express Workflow

This entry is primarily for archiving my techniques for finger painting on my Android device using Autodesk Sketchbook Express which I have learned to really like.  It is a shame that my WIP files are lost with my tablet's demise, but I still have a few of my works saved.  More of the guide after the jump.

Dead Iconia Tab

So I got the stuck Acer logo on startup after the tablet froze on me while playing Magic 2014 (awesome game, by the way).  From the looks of it, for whatever reason, the boot loader cannot get ICS running so it's always stuck on the Acer logo.  I've read dozens of articles for resetting the tablet using the Volume Button +, Power button and then flicking the flip lock screen and the first time, it got through just fine but I still ended up with the stuck logo (strangely enough, I used the Volume Button - for my device).  Second time resetting only got stuck with the "Bootloader v0.03.12-ICS: Starting Fastboot USB download Protocol".  Well, ain't that nice?

I'm bracing myself for a busted NAND memory.  It sort of makes sense that if the data is truly corrupted because of hardware faults, then the machine is toast.  It also doesn't look like I'm the only one suffering from this.  I love my A500.  It's a splendid tablet, but this just has to be grating to experience.

Sad day.

Fighting games and Wine

I have 2 fighting games that I have gotten working on Wine.  First is Guilty Gears Isuka from the Gamers Gate release.  The controller support is a bit wonky when you start the game, but pressing any arrow key stops that.  You can also reconfigure the game though I don't quite remember anymore what I setup.

Second game is Street Fighter Alpha 2 from GOG release which is reported as garbage on WineHQ but actually works.  The shortcut the game creates is to the GOGLauncher.exe which doesn't work.  You have to run ALPHA2.EXE directly from the install folder.  The game will then run fine.