New Project: PCGamingWiki

I've been working very hard lately on a new project, which is PCGamingWiki.

It's a wiki designed to fix PC gaming and stop forum rage.

Our goal is to fix every single PC game, with a single page for all information about:

• Performance issues and fixes
• Optimisations, cfgs and hacks
• Save game locations and syncing
• Bugs, workarounds and community patches
• Alt-tab and fullscreen windowed mode
• Cutscene and video skipping
• Getting the most out of PC gaming

We are not interested in:

• Synopsis of a game
• Game content or reviews
• Illegally acquiring DLC or bypassing DRM

Sample of articles with strong relevancy:

• Titan Quest: Immortal Throne
• Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

 I hope to see some of my readers there!

How To Make Your Own Automatic Baby Rocker From A Baby Bjorn Bouncer And A Maxi-Cosi Car Seat

There are no decent automatic baby rockers on the market. For example, the Robopax Baby Rocker that we tried out is functional in principle, but in practice, did not deliver enough of a rocking motion to soothe our 2-month old baby Benjamin.

The Baby Bjorn Balance Bouncer was sold to us as a way for a baby to self soothe themselves. It requires tiny amounts of force to create a large bouncing motion which babies love. However, young babies tend not to be able to propel themselves and so young baby Benjamin always seems to need an extra push. Unfortunately for me, it's meant that for many sleepless nights, I've been reduced to a glorified baby rocker, gently nudging the Baby Bjorn Bouncer and rocking him at all hours of the night whilst slowly losing my sanity. (Other sleep depriving attachment parenting techniques include holding him in a sling and sleeping on my tummy).

Blogger Mobile Theme and IntenseDebate Integration

The new Blogger mobile theme does a much better job formatting content onto mobile devices

Can IntenseDebate be integrated with Blogger mobile theme? In a word, no.

In 2011, Blogger implemented a fantastic new mobile theme template. However, this new theme does not provide support for third party comment systems. Blogger's own native commenting system is really poor as it does not allow very basic comment features such as threading or Facebook login. Most serious Blogger users will turn to the two most popular third party comment systems, Disqus and IntenseDebate, for these additional features. However, under the default Blogger mobile theme setting, the mobile theme will not display the Disqus or IntenseDebate; only native comments will show up.

North London Dim Sum Interactive Map And Reviews

View North London Dim Sum in a larger map 

The aim of the follow list is to create a comprehensive list of dim sum restaurants in the north London area, between zone 2 and Hemel Hempstead.

Play HD MKV 720p Smoothly on iPhone and iPad (iOS) Natively Using XBMC

Playing high quality video on your iPhone/iPad like MKVs in 720p format has never been possible using standard App Store apps. This is because Apple have not allowed App Store apps to access hardware acceleration on their devices unless the video being played is in an MP4 format. This is despite the fact that most MKV files these days simply contain muxed MP4 files. Apps with decent performance like AVPlayer can only produce a slideshow with desynced audio, something I've written about in a previous article.

However, the fact remains that high quality videos are most commonly shared through the internet in the MKV format, especially high definition video. However, a solution has come through Jailbreaking the iPhone/iPad, which allows video playing applications like XBMC to access hardware acceleration. XBMC on the iPhone/iPad plays high bit-rate MKVs in 720p perfectly smoothly. Not only this, but there is an elegant solution to load files onto the iPhone/iPad through iTunes which does NOT require the fiddly operation of OpenSSH.

Video is of an iPad 1 running 720p MKV files on both AVPlayerHD and XBMC.

Jailbreak is required for this hack, here is a a way of searching for the latest guide to Jailbreaking.

Putting Windows 7 Aero Snap In Your Office's Windows XP Machine Without Administrator Privileges

Working with two screen side by side on a single screen improves efficiency.

Aero snap is definitely my favourite feature in Windows 7. By dragging your window to the left or right-most part of the screen, the window automatically snaps to take up 50% of that screen. It allows you to quickly align two windows side-by-side vertically, so that you can do things like refer to one document whilst writing an email.

Unfortunately, most offices are still equipped with Windows XP, which still has pretty poor window management. Arranging windows into the right sizes is time-consuming and fiddly. A great free application which will provide the Windows 7 Aero Snap feature in Windows XP is called Aqua Snap. The version that will be needed can be downloaded from their site as the 'Portable Version'. This allows installation of the application to a personal folder without administrator privileges.

How To Share Google Calendar on iPhone, Blackberry and Android

Smartphones offer hyperaccessibility to shared information - they are as powerful as computers, they always-on our persons and they are always connected to a data network. With the right settings, we can instantly share huge amounts of information automatically thereby making communication powerful and seamless.

My wife often asks me to pick up something from the shops before I get home from work. She has a few options to communicate this information with me whilst I am away:

A) She can call/text SMS/email the shopping list. This would efficiently deliver the information to me. However, if she wanted to add or remove items from the shopping list, she would have to send another call/text SMS/email with the additions or changes, resulting in multiple and fragmented copies of the same shopping list information.

B) She can add the shopping list as a task in her Google Calendar (which is shared with my calendar). This will instantly show up as a notification in my own calendar on my smartphone. Furthermore, she can edit the task to add or remove items from the shopping, and this information will be instantly updated on my smartphone.