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.

Change What Programs Are Loaded When Your Computer Starts Up

It's a common misconception that a computer will work less and less well and get slower and slower the older it is. The reality is that most computer slowness is software is due to what programs are being loaded when you start your computer. Applications that people install on their computers spawn smaller applications that load when Windows starts. For example, if you installed iTunes on your Windows PC, then you have also allowed it to install the 'iTunes helper' which loads up every time you boot your computer. All this program does is open up iTunes when an iOS device is connected, and it occupies approximately 50mb of a computer's RAM. Lots of these kinds of programs are loaded up on your computer. By going through the following guide, you can disable the loading of these programs and make your PC boot much faster.

Step 1) Press Win + R.

This allows a command box to be run in administrator mode.

iPhone and iPad Review Of AVPlayer - The Native iOS MKV Solution

Ever since I made a switch to the iPhone, I've been looking for a solution that would allow me to play the video content that I viewed the most on my device. The iPhone only natively supports MP4 videos encoded to a specific resolution. If I wanted to view any other common third party format, for example, AVI, DIVX or MKV, I would have to convert videos to iPhone MP4 - a time consuming process that often results in errors and audio sync issues.

Up until a few months ago, there were no real solutions to watching an unconverted MKV on your iOS device. The recently released VLC for iOS (now withdrawn from iTunes due to licensing issues) could open a large number of video formats, but was like a slideshow when playing higher bitrate MKV videos. Thankfully, AVPlayer, available for iPhone/iPod Touch and in an HD version for iPad, has much better performance when it comes to playback of MKVs and high bitrate videos as of version 1.3.

The performance of MKVs is much smoother on AVPlayer than on VLC:

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm MMO Gaming Mouse SteelSeries Review and Tips

I recently acquired a WoW: Cataclysm Mouse, the 14 button monster of a human interface device. My impressions of it have been hugely positive for World of Warcraft, and it's a must have for end-game type playing (which requires the use of upwards of 30 abilities to play effectively).


Not Booting Up

I had an initial issue with the mouse out of the box, where Windows 7 was not recognizing the mouse on boot (although a subsequent cycle of the USB would fix this issue). This was due to the fact that the mouse was operating on an older firmware. There is no option later within the driver settings to install new firmware. When you install the drivers you have to make sure that the mouse is plugged in at that point, otherwise it won't detect and update the firmware. Once I uninstalled and reinstalled the drivers and the firmware was updated, the mouse was recognised on bootup without any issues after that.

There are 10 profiles to store on the mouse, but I think it's best to use the WoW in-game native configuration.

Best Method Of Mousebinding

There are a lot of options for mousebinding with the mouse. Personally, I do not recommend using SteelSeries' driver software to do your mousebindings. Working within the WoW interface is much faster for setting up and testing bindings.

Stream The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and South Park From Anywhere In The World

Current and up to date episodes of The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and South Park are available for flash video streaming for those living in the US. However, these shows are restricted for people outside of the US. With this method I'm about to go through, current episodes can be watched from anywhere in the world.

The method has worked since January 2010. It does not require the use of a proxy service and it works by changing the user agent in one's Firefox browser.

Step 1) Open Firefox and install the Add-on from this address: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/967/.

Step 2) Restart Firefox, and then click Tools -> Modify Headers.

Pleco OCR Review: A Chinese Real Time Dictionary

Pleco is a well crafted Chinese to English and English to Chinese dictionary for iOS devices. The basic free app performs the function of a Chinese dictionary very well. However, the software is unique on the App Store because it is very customisable and allows the purchase of 'Add-ons' to add more features to the dictionary and the sheer number of these in-app purchases that are available is extremely impressive. The most interesting and unique of these features is the Pleco OCR, which allows the use of the iPhone camera to recognise Chinese characters and find related dictionary terms instantly and in real-time.




The OCR module can be found in the 'Add-ons' section of the Pleco app. The module itself costs £8.99 (or £7.99 with the opt-in educational discount) or for $14.99/£12.99.

How To Rip DVDs To USB From Any Computer In Under 10 Minutes

This guide allows you to copy a full two hour DVD to a USB flash drive in under 10 minutes without installing any software or making any permanent changes to any computer. It means that instead of borrowing a DVD from a friend, you can choose to do a very quick copy of it straight to USB flash drive. This guide works with any CD and DVD, and the method can bypass all copy protections and region restrictions. Virtually any computer can be used, even if it is a school, library, office or university computer without any risk. This is because the programs do not attempt to make system changes. The only real requirement is that the computer allows executing programs from a USB flash drive.

Use A Fruit Peeler As Cheap Cheese Slicer

Using a standard fruit peeler is an easy way to cut thin slices of cheese quickly and conveniently from a larger block. Simple as that!

But why?

1) No need for an expensive, specialized tool.
2) Easy to wash up and clean.
3) No need to take the cheese out of the packaging fully.
4) Keeping cheese in blocks minimizes surface area exposed to air and prevents the cheese drying out.

Essential Windows Tools For Seamlessly Migrating To A Solid State Drive

Switch from a standard platter drive to a solid state drive can have a drastic reduction on loading speed. It is definitely the preferable options for loading large complex applications or loading data intensive games. However, with the prices of SSDs being so high compared to HDDs, it's not possible to find solid state drives with storage sizes like1tb without spending a fortune. The best option is to consider a hybrid approach and to place your most and critical applications on the SSD, and to keep a high capacity HDD for use for storing and backing up media and data.

In the past, the only real way to do this without reinstalling your operating system was to clone the older HDD and then restore the image onto the new SDD. This would require reducing the size of the original drive to fit onto the smaller SDD, and to engage in a fairly lengthy and complicated process of cloning and restoring. However, there are some free tools that you can use in Windows which will allow seamless moves of data from one drive to another, without ever having to reformat, clone or image your drives. The tools listed in this guide can also be used to migrate or upgrade to any other drive, be they larger or smaller than the origin drive.

5 Reasons Why Casuals Should Return To World of Warcraft: Cataclysm

World of Warcraft is a mess. Blizzard themselves admitted that 70% of players never even get past level 10. How many people quit the game upon reaching level 40 quit because they didn't have 100g for the mount riding skill? And how about raiding? How can sane people get anything done at maximum level without spending 6 straight hours in some raid dungeon hoping that a piece of loot drops from a boss that you don't have to fight 4 other people in the same class for? It's easy to get burned out from World of Warcraft because it can seem to require a huge commitment of time an energy to make any progress within the game.

It's not so bad anymore. Blizzard have listened to the player feedback and have improved everything for the better, and the game is now much more casual player friendly. With the coming release of Cataclysm in December 7th 2010, there has never been a better time for the casual player to be drawn back into the game, and here are the 5 reasons why:

Turn Any Old PC, Laptop Or Netbook Into A Flexible Media Centre

More and more people are experiencing streaming video as the primary source of video entertainment. For example, most students at college or university rely on their laptop for their source of (usually illegal) video content such as movies and television shows. However, with legitimate services like Lovefilm, Hulu, YouTube, BBC iPlayer and 4OD, a truly immense catalogue is available at one's fingertips (not to mention PPStream, a very impressive video streaming client). The problem is that most people are still consuming online video via their PCs at their desks. Video content like movies and television shows should be enjoyed as they were designed to be viewed; to be watched in the living room and shared with friends and family on the big TV screen.

Inverted Y-Axis Option And A List Of Games Without Y-Axis Support

'Normal' mapping is the case where moving the joystick/mouse/analogue stick 'up', results in the game point of view shifts 'up'. The y-axis inversion control scheme is basically the inverse of this. 'Up' points the camera 'down', and 'down' points the camera 'up'. Y-axis inversion is the way that I've learned to play any game that requires change one's point of view.

Inversion of the y-axis was never really a choice me. Like many, I learned to play like this because the first games I played were flight simulators or space combat games like Wing Commander. In real-life, airplane joystick controls by default are 'inverted'. When I transitioned to first-person shooters, the mentality of the flight simulator stuck with me through the first-person view point (as well as third-person view point games).

The way that I see it, y-axis is a valid way of thinking about pointing a camera. If you imagine your virtual character as a puppet facing away from you with a pole sticking out of its head horizontally, you can make the puppet look up by tugging the pole down, and vice versa. And a similar logic applies to the flaps of an airplane, where one pulls the joystick downwards in order to 'pull up' the plane.

Inverting the y-axis doesn't really offer an advantage or disadvantage. Rather, it's just a way that some people expect controls to work in a game. And developers know this: almost every single game that has come out in the last 10 years supports y-axis inversion. However, there are a select few titles which do not, and this is why I've created the list. I hope this is a useful resource for you. Inverted gamers unite!

Ultimate List Of Steam Serial Keys From Retail

Steam always sells games at higher prices than in the retail stores. However, many retail copies of games contain serial keys that can be registered on Steam. By comparing Steam Store prices with retail prices, it is possible to find a Steam serial key that costs much less than buying directly from the Steam Store. For example, Order of War is available from the Steam Store for £29.99, but can be bought on Amazon for £2.60 including delivery. This retail copy can be registered and played on Steam without ever using the disc.

The following page is a list of every possible retail Steam key with a Metacritic rating over 60 that can be bought from retail. Each game title contains a link to its Steam Store page. My list includes a price from Amazon which is generated dynamically, as well as a link to Camelcamelcamel, a site which generates graphs of Amazon prices to track the decrease in price of a game over time. An explanation of how the graphs work is available in a previous article: Buy New Games For Less Using Graphs. The source of games that this article is based on is from Steam Support which lists the serial key formats of the games.

Last Updated: 18th January 2011.
Please comment if there are any new additions that I have missed.

(All versions linked are for Steam PC versions of games, even if the correct box art is not displayed).

Watch PPStream In English On Windows

PPStream is a streaming video player popular with users in mainland China. The technology PPStream uses is a combination of YouTube and BitTorrent. Users can stream video instantly, storing the data on their computers, and then upstream this data to other users.

What is unique about PPStream is how centralised and organised this content is made available to users. The range is phenomenal - it includes DVDs, camcorders of current films in cinemas, Asian dramas (from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea and Japan), and most importantly, a gigantic range of American and British movies and TV shows. Almost all of the content is moderated with care, and most sources include subtitles in Chinese (Simplified). For example, the entirety of Lost seasons 1-6 can be streamed, as can Battlestar Galactica (dual subtitled in English and Chinese), Mad Men, True Blood, The Simpsons, Firefly, as well as more obscure things like British snooker games, pro StarCraft II matches, Little Britain, Australian Top Gear, The IT Crowd, the British rebooted Sherlock Holmes series, etc.

For this reason, I believe that PPStream is the most ridiculously, blatant and well organised wholesale infringement of copyright that has ever occurred on the internet. The content streams are very fast, the software and website is centralised and user friendly, and the breadth and range of content is staggering.