The first program, called AM Plat, is something that I wrote myself from scratch. The program takes data about arrays of AM radio towers and draws a sketch of them to scale. This image can then be printed, or exported to be used as a map overlay in software such as Google Earth. The towers are described in such a way that they are related to each other. For example, Tower #2 is X feet away at Y degrees from Tower #1. Of course the data isn’t actually in feet but electrical degrees, so some conversions have to be done there before anything can be drawn. To get the data needed, program can connect to a SQL database, can import files from other software, or the data can be manually typed in if the array does not already exist in the database. Of course the program also can save and load projects in its own file format, which is XML-like. The program also has a number of other features such as recalculating the values based on new tower references.

The second program that I am working on is maintaining a rather large FCC Database search program. The program allows the user to search for FM, AM, and TV data from the FCC database. The results are displayed using Crystal Reports. The program also has a number of other features, such as the ability to view the antenna pattern for any tower in the database. I have added a number of new options to customize search queries, and I have rewritten much of the antenna pattern viewer from scratch as the original code was buggy.

Ubuntu has just released the newest version of its Linux distribution, 10.04 “Lucid Lynx”.  Lots of new features this time around. Some highlights include:

• A new “Me Menu” that directly incorporates Facebook, Twitter, Digg, and other services into the user interface
• New music player with Ubuntu One Music Store integrated.
• Ubuntu Software Centre 2.0 – a library for browsing, downloading and installing software
• GNOME 2.30 desktop system
• Uses Linux 2.6.32 kernel
• More features here.

Overall this is one of the biggest changes in Ubuntu in years. I have been using it for a few days and so far its great. Absolutely worth upgrading.

What was good

• As soon as I loaded it up, the Batman 75% off sale was right there on the man page in their banner rotation. This made finding the page to buy the game easy.
• You are offered the choice of paying for the game with Microsoft points, or directly using your credit card. I have been wanting to lower my Microsoft Points balance for a while now, so I was glad that I could use them here.
• Buying the game automatically adds the game to your download queue.

What was bad

• The UI doesn’t show download speeds, only percent complete.
• The download was extremely slow. Perhaps its because of the sale, or maybe buying games on here always takes this long. Either way it took hours to download the game. Of course I cant tell you exactly what speeds I was getting, because of my first issue.
• The GFWL client locked up at about 40% downloaded. This was well over an hour and a half into the download. After restarting the software, the download did not resume from where it left off. Instead, the download started over again. I have never heard of a download manager not caching or downloading in chucks to avoid this. This was pretty poor, and made worse by the slow download speeds.
• Once the download was finished, I clicked the install button. I was prompted with some of the usual stuff, such as language and the license agreement. However, I was never asked where to install it. This resulted in the game being installed on the wrong hard drive. I later found the setting hidden in the menus, and changed it to the right location.
• After uninstalling the game so I could reinstall to the right drive, I had to download the game for a 3rd time.
• I am still waiting for it to download for a 3rd time.

Hopefully I will actually be able to play this sometime tonight. Games on Demand does have some potential, but at this point I would never buy a game using that client over Steam unless Games on Demand had a significant price savings.

Standard lighting models compute the color of a surface based on its properties and the lights in a scene. Objects that are in the path of a light cast shadows, otherwise, their presence does not affect the lighting of other objects. Ambient occlusion improves this model by accounting for the dimming caused by objects that block out ambient light. An example of this is the junction where a wall and a ceiling meet; while no direct shadows are cast, the corner nevertheless appears darker. Ambient occlusion simulates this phenomenon, along with all other cases where objects are close enough to block out ambient light.

Currently only 22 titles are enabled with ambient occlusion profiles, but they managed to hit most of the games I am currently playing on the PC anyway such as Fallout 3, Team Fortress 2, and Counter Strike Source. Hopefully more support for other games will be coming soon.

The following 22 titles are enabled with ambient occlusion profiles:

• Assassin’s Creed
• BioShock
• Call of Duty 4
• Call of Duty 5
• Call Of Juarez
• Company Of Heroes
• Counter-Strike Source
• Dead Space
• Devil May Cry 4
• F.E.A.R. 2
• Fallout 3
• Farcry 2
• Half Life 2 series
• Left 4 Dead
• Lost Planet: Colonies
• Lost Planet: Extreme Condition
• Mirror’s Edge
• Portal
• Team Fortress 2
• Unreal Tournament 3
• World In Conflict
• World of Warcraft

Download: MagicProxy (7.21 MB) – Uninstall old versions first if updating.

Release notes for 1.3.1 – July 23rd, 2009

• Magic 2010 cards added to database

Release notes for 1.3.0 – July 08th, 2009

• Card images now cache after loading from online
• When editing decks, the card list is now sorted alphabetically
• When updating cards, other cards of the same name can also be updated automatically
• New card database to automatically fill out card details. Sets supported include: Tenth Edition, Ninth Edition, Alara Reborn, Conflux, Shards of Alara, Eventide, Shadowmoor, Morningtide, Lorwyn, Future Sight, Planar Chaos, Time Spiral, Timeshift, Coldsnap, and Odyssey

Release notes for 1.2.0 – June 27th, 2009

• Fixed crash when creating and closing new empty decks
• Added support for card images. When building a deck, there is a new field where you can now provide a URL to the image for the card. I suggest using a database site such as magiccards.info to find images. If no URL is provided, a default image is used.
• New load and save dialog boxes.
• Other minor usability changes.

Release notes for 1.1.0 – June 25th, 2009

• Fixed a number of UI bugs
• Rewrote the save code to fix a few issues, be more flexible, and to support future features. Old saves will unfortunately not work, but now all saved decks should work with any future updates.

Release notes for 1.0.0 – June 13th, 2009

• Initial Release

Now that Community Games on Xbox Live is a reality, I really feel motivated to get something together. Plus, I can’t help but look at what is currently available and think, “I could easily do better then this stuff”. So after reading a bunch of documentation and tutorials, and creating a few small practice projects, I have begun work on a 2D Tile Engine. My roommate, who is an English major, has been dying to write a story for a game, and a 2D RPG would be a great chance for us to collaborate. Anyway, I don’t actually have anything to show yet, just a few base classes for a 2D Tile engine, which wouldn’t be of any interest to anyone here. But I do have some basic layered rendering working after only a few hours, so that is pretty encouraging. I am not one of those people that will post every little update. So don’t expect any more news on this until I have something noteworthy to show off. Until then, I will leave you all with a simple screenshot of a test project I did after reading a bunch of tutorials and documentation. This too only took a 5 or 6 hours (XNA is awesome).

For another programming project I have posted about, check out the MSP Conversion app.

These days, a Gigabyte of storage sell for under a dollar, but with all the digital media people tend to collect (such as high quality audio, video and photos) you may suddenly find yourself wondering where all of your free space went to. If you ever need to quickly free up some space, you need to go for the big files. But don’t try guessing which ones those are. There are free utilities that help you get an overview of your hard drive, and see what folders and files are taking up the most space.

The free, open-source app WinDirStat displays your disk usage as a color-coded map that shows what file types and folders take up the most space on your drive, and using this application makes it easy to identify what needs to be deleted. The utility provides a three-paned view: tree view (upper left), list view (upper right), and treemap view (bottom panel). The treemap represents each file as a colored rectangle, the area of which is proportional to the file’s size. The rectangles are arranged so that directories make up rectangles that contain all their files and subdirectories.

Security Software

Comodo Firewall Pro
ZoneAlarm is extremely popular, but that doesn’t automatically make it the best free firewall you can find. One formidable contender is Comodo Firewall Pro, which independent testing site Matousec rated as the top firewall. Matousec found that Comodo offered the highest level of antileak protection, one measure of a firewall’s effectiveness. Comodo offers true two-way firewall protection, is highly configurable, and (unlike most other firewalls) provides a great view of your system and your Internet connection.

Avast 4 Home Edition
Tired of dealing with bloated, overpriced security suites that bog down your system and cost an arm and a leg, when all you want is antivirus software? Then get Avast, a superb antivirus program that’s free for home and personal use. Because it’s a lean piece of software, it imposes a relatively light burden on system resources and RAM. Despite this, it kills viruses in their tracks and has plenty of extras, including live scanning to prevent viruses from infecting your PC in the first place. Avast can scan regular and Web-based e-mail for viruses, too, and it protects against instant messaging viruses, peer-to-peer dangers, and more.

Spybot – Search & Destroy
Spybot – Search & Destroy can detect and remove a multitude of adware files and modules from your computer. Spybot also can clean program and Web-usage tracks from your system, which is especially useful if you share your computer. Modules chosen for removal can be sent directly to the included file shredder, ensuring complete elimination from your system. For advanced users, it allows you to fix Registry inconsistencies related to adware and to malicious program installations. The handy online-update feature ensures that Spybot always has the most current and complete listings of adware, dialers, and other uninvited system residents.

McAfee SiteAdvisor
On the Web, unlike in the real world, it can be hard to recognize a bad neighborhood when you’re wandering around in it. There are no boarded-up windows, no empty storefronts, no hard-looking men lounging on corners or in doorways. In fact, the prettiest and most inviting Web site may harbor all kinds of malware. That’s where the McAfee SiteAdvisor comes in. It warns you when a Web site that you’re about to visit–or are already visiting–may be dangerous. You install it as an Internet Explorer toolbar or as a Firefox plug-in. Then when you search with Google or some other search engine, it displays color-coded icons next to each search result, indicating whether the site in question is safe (green), questionable (yellow), or clearly unsafe (red). It checks sites for downloads that may be dangerous, and for evidence that they will send you spam if you give them your e-mail address. The toolbar offers similar reports about the sites you’re currently visiting.

Malwarebytes Anti-Malware
Malwarebytes Anti-Malware is a surprisingly effective freeware antimalware tool. It’s a relatively speedy malware remover, with the quick scan taking about 8 minutes even with other high-resource programs running. The heuristics engine proved on multiple computers during empirical testing that it was capable of determining the difference between false positives and dangerous apps

Other Tools

Freeware: OpenOffice.org
Replaces: Microsoft Office Home Edition

If you haven’t yet upgraded to the latest Microsoft Office, don’t do anything without test-driving OpenOffice.org. With a familiar-feeling interface, the Microsoft-replacement application is easy to pick up and matches Office’s major functions application for application. For instance, OpenOffice.org makes and edits text documents, spreadsheets, presentations, databases, and drawings. It also has templates, collaboration tools, and support for macros. It can export content to Google Docs and it is compatible with Microsoft Office documents, so you won’t be stranded when sending and receiving attachments.

Freeware: GIMP
Replaces: Photoshop Elements

Prepare to be impressed with GIMP. GIMP supports layering and has a good-size tool kit for adjusting colors, curves, and balances, and adding blur, zoom, and distortion effects. Unlike some freeware photo editors, it has an effective red eye removal filter, and tools for creating paths and quickly changing perspective. Tutorials and an active user base help you work through stickier editing tasks. The plug-in GIMPshop unites GIMP’s two panes and renames some functionality to match Photoshop’s nomenclature.

Freeware: KompoZer
Replaces: Dreamweaver

If you dislike that achy, bloated feeling that other HTML editors can give your computer, KompoZer may be the freeware cure you’re looking for. An open-source Web development tool built on the NVU architecture, KompoZer aims to improve upon the NVU’s bugginess. It does a fairly admirable job of that, while not being bloatware. Major editing buttons live on the top three-tier toolbar, including a one-click Publishing icon as well as one-clicks for Image insertion and Table and Form creation. Font tweaks like Size and Style live in toolbars just below that, making for easy HTML editing. A Site Manager, including File tree, is anchored on the left, although it can be collapsed, and the WYSIWYG standard means that KompoZer can compete more than adequately with other, better-known editors.

Freeware: 7-Zip
Replaces: WinRAR, WinZip

Small, amazingly effective, and absolutely free, 7-Zip compresses files like a pro and unpacks archive formats including RAR, ISO, and MSI. It can also pack ZIP, TAR, and GZIP files. The latter two are often found on Linux and Unix systems, and are file types that the commercial go-tos can’t muster. Plus, its fast and has good compression ratios.

Freeware: IOBit Smart Defrag
Replaces: Diskeeper

There’s no shortage of well-rounded defragmentation applications, but IOBit Smart Defrag runs circles around them. Its built-in tool persistently defragments your most-used files without gumming up your system. Like Diskeeper, you can set it to run during idle moments, and its performance is steady enough to run on older and more resource-scant machines. Smart Defrag’s scheduler also lets you plan late-night defragging, and can shut down the computer when it’s done.

Freeware: BurnAware Free
Replaces: Nero

Unless you’re editing data, audio, video, and burned images a significant portion of your time, a fully-caffeinated application such as Nero is probably overkill. If all you want to do is burns some discs, BurnAware Free offers the same basic functions for CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray, without the extra bulk of Nero’s video editing and slide show software.

Freeware: Audacity
Replaces: Adobe Audition

Audacity is a digital audio editor and mixing platform, complete with a graphical user interface and cross-platform OS support.

Freeware: Foxit Reader
Replaces: Adobe Reader

Adobe Reader is monstrously large, slow to load, and includes many features most users will hardly ever need. Foxit PDF Reader pares down its PDF-reading code and comes up with some neat features, like annotation tools, to give you a PDF reader that’s far more appropriate for the average PDF user.