Category: computer

Free Online Games That Don’t Suck

Posted onAuthorTruXter1 Comment

I have to say , ” My hat is off to ijji.com”  These people took some game engines from I have no idea where and made new games. Or they made their own games from complete scrap. But what ever the deal is, they made them good, they made them free. They even have done extensive measures to reduce the cheaters.

IJJI.COM Has a huge set of games. I’m not fond of the racing one. It seems kinda like an old 80s arcade game, always eating and wanting more quarters. all of their games you can add money to your accounts and get more stuff, kinda like the games on myspace. It’s great to not pay for anything and be able to slaughter the people who spent tons on the extra equipment. On another note, to have the ability to slaughter them people without buying, but go ahead and buy anyway because you just have to see what it does, must be natural because I really want to try everything. I know, you might not have an idea what i am rambling about, no worries.. You will soon. Very soon.

My favorite IJJI game is

Soldier front Fast paced Capture the flag type games in a small area so the battles can go nuts and be loud almost seem chaotic at first. Once you settle into the game, it is so addictive you get 8 hours consumed and not ever notice.

Another game like soldier front is called

A.V.A. Extreme graphics on a free game

Man you can crank the graphics up really well on this one, be sure and check the “manual” check dot. If you do not have at least 2 g processor and an nvidia 9 card with  2 gigs mem, I would not suggest you  crank anything up. By all gaming means these days, those are low low low specifications.   from what I see, the better settings they have are at 720p. it may go higher but I didn’t push a whole  lot of my Rig.

AVA screenshot

AVA screenshot

The fire looks crappy, will remind you of grand theft auto III, with a crappy gif looking flame in the middle of it.

Now a good game that will remind you of doom and quake

Gunz just not enough people on it.  looks a bit like  anime . If you have a network of computers at your house and a bunch of friends over to play a game, this one is perfect for that. because it is a great game, but not enough players for anything fun to happen of it. Not to be played alone.

Ok for the nvidia

Warmonger These guys need to take a tip from ijji and clean and lean up the game a tad bit. a bit to taxing for a freebee.

Then there is Huxley.

This game is the game to make halo look like pacman, to make grand theft auto play like doom1.

The in game looks like cutscenes from starcraft II. if you know anything about stracraft cinema , you know there is major extreme detail in their characters and images. The  terrain looks amazing.The skin has pores, the hairs are all single images and dimensions, instead of one blob with  hair drawn in. IJJI has out done everything there is to play. and the fricken game is free.

Kills me that while I was in my game testing phase, the game was still in beta. and I  only have videos to go by. The smoke looks like smoke, the explosions are  unruly real explosions.

These have to be the best of the best free first person video games. The internet needs more of these.

If you know any video games that are totally free and legal to download, please leave some information here in a response

Fire Alarm Cad Template

Posted onAuthorTruXter12 Comments

fire_alarm_title_block

(Give me a like on a social site or share this with a friend, I don’t have a 2000 pr team, it’s just me here)
I have been working on a template in autodesk for a year or so, trying to eliminate all issues. I have not yet prevented everything that I may encounter, but I have reduced the amount of issues that can come. So no this is not a perfect download. It is how ever as close as I have come this far. Fire Alarm Legend and Title Block is now for sale only. There are tons of websites that help you get the Symbols for you legend and there are many sites that give you fire alarm sprinkler addons for autodesk autocad. There is very little for fire alarm. So it is a rough start.

Most of this is my own work, but much of this is what I have gathered around the internet doing searches In Google and Bing and Yahoo and Ask. There just was not enough out there for me to get the job done. What you see there in Layout view is nothing compared to what is going on  in Model. Everything you see there is through view ports. All of my view ports are built to scale.

The trick is to drop all images into the square above the  title-block  and then scale it so that it prints out to scale. there is a second view port in layout view that opens to that location.

If you are in need of this whole Fire Alarm DWG file, let me know I will set it up for upload and message you when it is ready.

There is a huge original version of this, so what you are seeing in those two pdf files would be the light weight trimmed down most used items version. There is a huge one with everything I can possibly use, that would look like a train wreck though.

******update*****
I have the cad file listed for sale. I will be emailing the DWG DWT file to every person who pays for it.

All prices are marked and made easy.  Major credit cards and paypal are welcome, If you require any other method of payment, use the contact form on that page.
Simply because I would prefer to sell the thing for at a lower price for the basic and limited tools.
There is a full version with full tools and all addons to make it easier to complete your fire alarm
design in cad. Oh and the one I had here on the site, Is about 10 versions old.
The new one has a few Candelas tools in it already and many block features that most people do not even know
exist.
This Template comes with a my personal created method to measure Candelas , Smoke coverage, a battery calculation addon that I created, Blocks for every device to me inserted, and instruction manual with short cut codes for calling the block.
This Fire Alarm Template has everything I use on a daily basis and will shorten your design time, reduce room for error and simplify fire alarm design so much that you can give someone a computer with this template and they will be designing fire alarm systems like a pro, as they read the “HowTo” file.
So Simple, even your boss can use this .DWT file.
If you want a copy just reply with a comment, all messages here are filtered so they will not post till I approve them.
All personal information will not be shown here.
******update*****

**update** This post is 4 years old. There have been many updates to the fire alarm template. It is no longer free. I have listed it for sale. The update to this is located here Fire Alarm Design Made easy

(Here is the 2014 version of the fire alarm template)
and here is the fire alarm template version from 2015 (Videos showing function) <– NEW
Also please notice I added a fire sprinkler template and an access control template with symbols.

Bing Verses Google

Posted onAuthorTruXter

I started with a simple search for a friend. My friend is looking for a store, any store in Houston that has Thomas Kinkade books for sale. I did a search in Google first, and found only one location and it says Rice Village. I did the same exact search in Bing and found two locations, the next location says Galleria. I am not sure there are any books by TK. All i really find is paintings, and some company that says they have TK lights and Lamps. I personally think his paintings look like they are supposed to be on Christmas cards.

Fuzzy Snowy teddy bears.

In my frustration of searching something I have no idea about i decided to do another search that was more to my level.

My new search was “free image editing  tool”

Bing on it’s front page, never once linked G.I.M.P. but it did link a bunch of rubbish sites that talk about  image editing tools.

google how ever linked gimp second link and picassa  fifth link, it’s first link was “graphic soft” page showing gimp,photo scape, paint.net.

Actually, everything they linked in that page is found on the first page of the search results in google. Names I have heard of, Items I have used, stuff I know works.

Google won this one by far.

My follow up search. “free website flash”

First link in bing is flashmo

Flashmo has great stuff I know this for sure

The flash mo link in google is teh second, but the first is WIX, wix is for myspace flash . understandable that it is on top, more people want flash on their myspace than there are of website designers.

Again i score to google. simply because bing links wix twice in the first page. Looks like bing gets gamed easily.

my third search was “gta clans”

of course gtaclans.com is first result in both, but bing links second post as gamespy,SPAM. No one uses gamespy…. do they? i have never had anyone recomend gamespy to me.

google again

Fourth search was “discount auto parts”

Both had similar results, except  google linked some sort of carpet place on the first page. big no no.

I give that one to bing.

For the most part, these are hit and miss. it is nice to have two strong search engines. I just the lay out of bing. Otherwise it’s no worse or better than google.

Oh and all my searches  I only looked at the first page. the rest of the pages are always junk anyway.

Budget Tech Reviews

Posted onAuthorGame News

Finally enough time to actually do reviews. There is now a tech review section of the site created specifically for budget tech. From imitation components, to budget makes and models.

See it’s as if 99% of review sites out there do the high dollar high interest  stuff. For some of us that means “dream stuff”. well this site has a whole section for the budget shopper.

you will most likely not see reviews of the 9800 video card, but you will see a review of the 9500,9400 and so on. If the best video card costs $400, you will see reviews of the $59 video card, tricks that the High end video cards barely use and how to make your budget card just as good as the $400 video card.

Inexpensive cell phones, old used cell phones found on Ebay and craigs list and so on. I call them “GEMS”. The ones that everyone owned a year ago and hacked and modified so much you could almost not tell it was the same one, The site will show you how.

Do not worry, the news section (this section) will still have tech news. All news here, all budget review and budget tricks will be found on

Budget Tech Reviews and tips

You are all welcome to visit.

Hello world!

Posted onAuthorTruXter1 Comment

Tech Reviews on a budget. Reviewing new budget products, used products and faulty products to tell you  how it can be used to make it better or even used  toprove it’s full value, some stuff can be tweaked and that will be posted also.

Website reviews, download reviews of opensource products and free programs.

Windows Update Keeps Re-directing To Google ?

Posted onAuthorGame News3 Comments

Yep this also happened to me. While at work. AT WORK !!! sorry had to say it like it is supposed to be said, yelling.
Now at my job, I am not “The Tech Guy”. I am the drawings and images guy. I mean I know plenty, but they already have a “resident nerd” and well, he is pretty good at it. So by my wandering around on the internet doing things “my way” and stumbling into an ” Oh dang!” moment isn’t the best thing for my career. First warning was ” Microsoft is ready to install Explorer 8″ Yep you guessed it, I installed it . Not thinking one time that I was on Firefox the whole time.
Ok I started with the on board Symantec end point. It caught either 8 viruses , or the same virus kept trying to rescue it’s self. lol I have no idea, I was panicking and hurrying , I saw the word ” Trojan” in the pop up warning from Symantec, and freaked out. I decide I better go check Windows update site and see if I ever downloaded Internet Explorer 8, The page would not load, I run to another computer on the network and all is fine, I head back to mine, still nothing. So I headed to the first place I could think of. Bitdefender’s online malware scan. It never lets me down. Well this time it surely did. I take it up a notch and head to “Malware Bytes” and start doing a search in Google and search the term “windows update takes me to Google” and started reading all the people praying and begging for help. The ever so faithful “tech guy forums” turned up an unanswered request for help, wow that was surprising. After about 45 minutes of reading, I find nothing (well I actually found the right thing but over looked it like 10 times) and malware bytes is done scanning, It found nothing, nothing at all, I try and update it, will not let me, along with anything else I tried to scan with.
So now I break out A-squared, not the worst thing in the line up for sure, but it did not find anything either. Ok now I am feeling like I am losing my mind. Well as this is going on I am still reading threads in forums about the issue. I go back to this thread . The first link in the first and only response, well tried that. Second link I click it it takes me to Super AntiSpyware. First thought is ” Well crap, this place looks like it’s just going to make the issue worse. I figured that it really couldn’t get much worse if I scan the file first. So I wander off to the download area for the free version. All was fine until I get to the point that I actually try and download it. Another dead link.. “hmmm, the link is dead, it is blocked, it must be what I need” is exactly what I thought. Ok also another thing about that name, just kept making me think about power rangers. It really sounded like the slogan from some kid’s show “super anti-spyware free trial go team action go!!!” is what I kept saying and giggling.
I walked over to another one of the computers in the office and download the file and slip it onto an open space on the server.
Walk back to my computer and here comes the I.T. guy, just in time. I let him fumble through it like I did. He made a lot of the assumptions I did at first, I walked away to the store next to the office and get a soda while he does exactly what I did. I get back into the office and there he is, lol just like me.. Reading the forum posts for a second time. We agreed that super action malware scanner was the way to go. Well we install it while Spybot S&D or something was finishing it’s scan.
We reboot to safe mode administration by pressing F8 after the bios scan, just before the windows logo. Yes I was just sitting there hitting the F8 button repeatedly till I got the boot menu.
In administration mode we ran the quick scan. Within seconds it finds 3 Trojans and a dns changer, by the end of the scan Super AntiSpyware found two root-kits and two registry key modifications.
We rebooted after the scan and checked to see if Microsoft Windows Update worked, all was fine but still could not update any of the virus scanners. So we reboot to safe mode administrator, and do the full scan. Nothing came up.

So far not all of the issues are resolved, I will go through my “hosts” file and see if there are any changes there. Probably not but hopefully there are. I know how to change that. and I will add the link that I got the file from in the first place to the list of blocked sites. I may even email a heads up to the guys from mvp’s hosts file website (google it).
This is the help I have for you. I hope it works for you. Heck I’m going to run that goofy named program on my home pc now and see what it finds. http://www.superantispyware.com/
Hope it helps you get un-hijacked. I promise that program actually works, just the name is stupid and their web designer is cheesy.

Also that “Google” page I kept getting redirected to was not regular google. it was an affiliate page. Google English. So the freak was making money off of each search we did while we tried to resolve the issue.  Google needs to ban that account.

Windows 7 At home, good, bad, it’s ugly

Posted onAuthorTech News

Ok for starts,

I did do a big full test of windows seven at work on a machine and threw everything at it that makes vista and xp crash. the version we used for that test is windows 7 32 bit, here is  Windows & in Workplace Environment.

I have to say that anyone who preaches on about 7 being better than windows Vista, You really did not even try both with an open mind. I like vista, Seven is not impressing me at all. All the stuff about vista I heard everyone complain about but never noticed myself, I am seeing it in Windows 7. I think by now it’s just common enough to blame everything on George Bush and Windows vista, it’s the first two things out someone’s mouth. But ok here is what I get in the trial at home on  windows 7 64bit.

Well I am on day two of windows 7. The default drivers it installed, amazed me, almost as much as windows vista did. Video card drivers, not so much. I am forced to use almost one year old nvidia drivers. Fine.
For the record, my machine is a mid way between work horse and light gaming machine, nothing to brag about in either direction.
Specs are
AMD 5600+ 2.9g dc
3 gigs pc6400 800mhz
Nvidia / evga 9500 gt 512 mb
some ecs motherboard
air cooled.

Well the video drivers have been iffy on me and would not let me use the manufacturers drivers. This has always been my special sweet spot, using EVGA drivers instead of nvidia drivers has always givin me a cooled advantage. but no, win 7 rc is forcing me to use the ones they have from the update service at Microsoft, if I install anything else I look at 8 bit graphics at best.

Well I tend to do my benchmarking at pc pitstop.com (full test) . to say the least, my scores drop dramatically over my vista scores. I usually use the old test , it’s hard to find but it’s there it’s a link in the description kinda hidden there. my scores have been i the 3000’s for about a year now. With windows seven they dropped to 1500. strangely it shows my 2d fps increased by nearly 100 fps. Well that’s cool…..
So I turn to my faithful typical benchmarking methods of real testing. :-)
I crack open every version of Grand Theft Auto and install them all.
On gtaiii I get the same hesitation I used to get about 6 years ago. While passing under bridges and through tree covered areas there is a lag that comes in spurts. with vice city, the yellow almost takes over the screen and the cut scenes are jittery just like it was the day the game came out and I was on out dated hardware. San Andreas, well not much better.
GTAIV For me to achieve the 23 FPS at best in game I had to turn everything off or all the way down. When I was on Vista I was seeing 35+ FPS with some things turned to medium. Yes I know my video card is not the best in the world, but it was the same one I was using on windows Vista and it makes a great “before and after” comparison.

Now for the lock out issues everyone complains about with windows Vista.
I head to MVPS Hosts site to update my hosts file to block bad sites and advertisements. Nothing fricken happened. Wouldn’t block anything, So I head to the ETC folder to modify the file by hand. HA! No administrator rights to modify that file. Meanwhile in the background I am playing myspace mobsters. I refresh a page and bam new advertisement, all my browsers drop and fricken notice comes up telling me my computer might be compromised, and it offers this virus scan. then it scans my computer anyway and says I have a virus then tells me to update. I freak out and try and close the page and notice, it’s not windows explorer, it’s Mozilla. it’s a fricken spam scam. See if I could have changed my hosts file, that never would have happened. so I head to bit defender to scan my disk onlline. would not allow me!!!!!! WTF!!!!!
So I head to emsi and get a-squared and do a scan, sure enough… I am infected with 4 types of Trojans. I am upset now.

The hardest thing for me to find, I still have not found it yet, is how in the blue hell do you turn it so that you can see your file extensions? Have they disabled so much user ability that they have turned that off? I feel as if I am being dumbed down and pacified with big shiny buttons.
You can like windows seven all you want, but I really have this whole thing figured out.
Either it’s going to turn out to be Mojave, or windows ME 2.0

still the same issue with Windows Seven that bothered me most with Windows Vista , No Ftp. You have to download Fire FTP for firefox and use that . You no longer have direct access with windows Explorer.  I find this unacceptable. It really feels like we are being dumbed down.

After some help, someone linked me to how to use notepad as administrator to modify files such as the hosts file
Here

I Test Drive BIng

Posted onAuthorTech News

Well the big Selling point of Bing is that you can ask direct questions.

So i had my very first question to ask bing.

We got a file today, labeled with a .mso extension. Email opens it fine, but once out of email I have no idea hat to open it with, so i turned to bing with a question. “what is .mso” . Number one answer is “Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra”.

Didn’t like that answer at all lol. So I look deeper. Nothing identifies the use of the period/point mark showing that was not an abbreviation, but it was a file extension. Nothing for pages. So I tried a few simple ones. Sure that was fine and dandy, but why show me the simple ones but not the hard ones??

so I did the same search in google. Top answer was the same but in like the 8th  spot, there it was.

Sure it’s more difficult to locate things in Google sometimes, unless you know the tricks for locating specific details. like plus minus quote and so on.

My opinion, Bing is still being developed into a blue version of yahoo search and is not ready yet for competing with anyone other than old msn search.

The whole pop up description thing is anoying

Bing= but it’s not google!!!???….(with a sad face)

China Put’s Computer Users at Risk

Posted onAuthorTech News

Ok the simple skinny break down.

China decides that it will crank down harder on it’s people’s internet usage by mandating an installed software  that allows the government to snoop and monitor people’s usage.

Looks like everyone is hard at proving that the software can be reverse engineered and then software can be created to manipulate the usage of said software for malicious use, or theft. Yes the software is meant for a filtering system , to reduce the people of china from seeing specific things, but it also is set for checking and double checking for modifications.  Let’s call this a true

Zero Day Notification.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8094026.stm

Windows Seven Work Environment Day 2

Posted onAuthorTruXter1 Comment

Day 2
Auto desk did not install directly, had to do sp2 update for autodesk/ autocad 2007
video card is an 5200 pci-e Nvidia bfg.
Scrolling within Autocad is smooth, no hesitation as my dell computer with 8500 pci video card seems to lag and work in spurts.

Printing with Autocad to the Ricoh Aficio m wp2400, came out very well.
line weights  fine, antialliasing is fine and smooth

directory mapping via cross network is the same.

switching through desktops and backgrounds, umm.. these people.. um to be nice and prevent my sponsors from dropping me
let’s say the people who made the themes, lived in the sixties, and chewed on small peices of paper, and or plants that
grew on cow dung.. these desk tops are weird!!

ESC 9  installed fine, no patches needed, no updates needed.
Peach Tree 2010 install.
Error notice was “there was an error”  gives a phone number.
We continued install anyway.
Got notice “change firewall” and “change virus scan”
We just selected “um Ok”
Setup status is fine. looks like 30-45 minutes.

install of peachtree 2010 on windows 7 is faster than peachtree 2009 on xp.

Had error with “Crystal reports” failed to execute the install/setup  file.

Peach Tree installed, but when we started to run it, and sign in to the peachtree server, it said “not compatible with current version of esc” well that blew all the earlier great goings. Now we are updating Esc. For now there is no update for ESC9  to comply with Peach Tree 10

Windows 7, Day one of the workplace testing.

Day 4 Testing Windows 7 at work