Marc O’Morain

This weeks driver update for my webcam was 34mb. It also tried to install a service. Nice.

The best game ever (after Super Monkey Ball).

You can now play this popular toilet-based computer game. Diarrhea Dan must race against the clock to get into every cubicle and win vital loo paper by answering the toilet-related questions.

Also watch this:

This week my favourite piece of software is Launchy.

It works like Quicksilver on OSX. Just hit alt+space, start typing enough of a programs name until the auto-complete takes over, and then hit enter. It doesn’t appear in the system tray. It just works. Task manager claims that it is using 15mb of RAM however. I don’t know how much is resident, and how much of that can be paged out - does anyone know how to find this of on XP?

(Needs sound)

Windows Update installed a new driver for my webcam today. Look at the filesize: 71.8mb for a web-cam driver. Good job.

Lionel sent me a link to this game that he has been working on:

I have just found out that I didn’t need to use the mouse to copy and paste to / from a cmd.exe Window.

With your hands on the keyboard:

Windows+r, c, m, d, enter, alt+space, p, alt+q, enter, alt+s, enter.

For those less fond of the keyboard: start cmd.exe, right click on the titlebar, and select properties. In the first tab enable ‘QuickEdit mode’, and click OK. You will then be prompted if you want to apply the changes for this session only or to save for all future sessions.

Now you have a quick edit mode enabled. You can select text with the left mouse button, and paste it with the right mouse button. Without quick edit mode to copy text I had to take the mouse, right click on the titlebar, click, edit > mark. To paste text I had to click edit > paste.

I think I have all links working on the site now. I have my final year project up again.

My planet feed reader is back in action.

Does anyone know of any good text editors for Windows? I currently use TextPad, which I cannot fault. I use it for taking notes on phone calls, writing code snippets, and as a general scratch pad for text if I need to use some macros to edit something.

I would also like to know of good XML viewers / editors? I ended up having to write my own XML viewer / editor one day, because I couldn’t find one that suits my needs. I tried Microsofts XML Notepad, but it doesn’t really fit the bill. I want to be able to navigate around XML files in a tree view, lightning fast. I also need to be able to see the data presented in a nice clean fashion.

Any ideas?

I forgot to mention PureText, a program that I use all the time at work. It sits in the system tray, doing nothing. If you press Windows + V, it pastes the current clipboard as ASCII text, stripping any Windows rich text. I can paste code between applications without it going blue and green and bold.

And it is 11kb. Yum.

Here are some of the programs that make the world a better place:

• WinCalendarTime.

  

  WinCalendarTime replaces the standard Windows clock with an enhanced clock, if you click on it a calendar is displayed.

• Foxit Reader

  A PDF reader that loads as soon as you double click on the icon. Amazing. It takes no time to load, and doesn’t install itself all over the system tray and desktop. It has no splash screen. It has no auto updater. It just reads PDFs.

• 7-Zip

  

  7-Zip comes as a 1238KB MSI installer file. This alone makes me want to install it, no matter what the program actually does. In case you are wondering, it opens ZIP archives. And CAB, GZIP, RAR, TAR and any other compressed file format. And that is all it does. It does not go near the system tray. It does not have an auto-updater. It does not ask me to buy it.

I installed a new version of Wordpress at the weekend. I might as well update my blog.

Blue Monster

Originally uploaded by marc_omorain.

I have just uploaded photos from my trip Disneyland in Paris earlier in the year to Flickr.

For the last two weeks I have been working from the Havok office in San Francisco, and attending the Game Developer’s Conference in San Jose. I have done very little out here that wasn’t work related. I tried to go to Alcatraz twice, both times it was all booked out. Next time I am over in this side of the world I will have to book my tickets in advance.

I have taken a grand total of one photograph while I have been out here. I will be sure to upload it when I get home.

Gamesindustry.biz has a story today about Capcom’s Q3 financial results. Net income was up 400%. This doesn’t surprise me one bit, when Capcom keep inovating with titles like Viewtiful Joe, Killer7, Gregory Horror Show, Power Stone, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure.

Soup Dragon is Far Away, Chill is Close!

I was just reading Luis Villa’s Blog, and I found the best blonde joke, ever. (No Gordon, not better than Super Monkey Ball).