Tech Review – TruXter

So far I have found a great Voltage drop LSP file for when I do fire alarm drawings in Cad.
I can not find the Battery Calculations yet.
Of course each fire alarm parts company offers some sort of tool. but not one person has pressed out a fire alarm battery calculations LSP file. and well that kind of frustrates the heck out of me.
I have tried a few times to build one but failed. Plus I work so much I really haven’t the time to build an LSP that does actual calculations.
Would be nice to just type “bc” and hit enter and have that thing open just the voltage drop program does.
So if anyone knows of a battery calculation lsp file for autocad
Please respond to this thread.

I would be quite thankful.
Houston fire alarm guy

Starcraft II Review

Ten or so years ago, Blizzard put put out Starcraft. The game was so well designed so well built, that some countries actually held tournaments playing as the Zerg, Terran and Protoss  species/races. The game in some Asian countries was more popular than the Olympics.

After ten years of dormancy, it has come back to challenge us again.

Here is my first day with Starcraft II (I wrap it up with a full review)

Bought My Startcraft II today.

Install took a while but nothing major. Just felt like forever. but what the heck is 5-10 minutes when I have been waiting ten years.
open source video, online video platform, video solution
After install was a download of a patch.
open source video, online video platform, video solution
Then came the video we all saw in the teaser. Seemed there wasn’t a lady talking in the teaser. so… listen closely you might hear something you haven’t heard.
open source video, online video platform, video solution
Oh, video card crashed at the end. It’s okay I have another :-)
On first Install of the game, the cenematics, Really good. This is what I have been waiting for. The cigar is back ( the thing that seemed to have the best detail in SCI).
The Blizzard people really know how to do CGI.

That little ps2/ record player thing with the Hologram . Cool effect.

Difficulty selection for Starcraft II

Casual Normal Hard Brutal
I selected Casual. Come on. I’m learning.

Huge selection for hotkeys.

I can’t imagine I memorized that many keys with the first Starcraft.
Menu Selection for Starcraft II

Video Resolution didn’t go as high as I wanted. Seemed to be a bit of an anti-aliasing issue going on. Kind of wavy. No lag or nothing just an occasional wave in the video and some broken lines.
After finishing the first mission you go back to bar.

They put plenty of items for you to click on and get curious about. I looked at everything. because I want to know all of it.
End of third mission in the game.

it took me 20 minutes to do that. and I had it set on the lowest difficulty.
On board a battle cruiser.

Your bar from the first is now a Battle cruiser. Back Starcraft I, we just called them “BC” gotta type fast mid game.
You can click a lot of stuff there also. You learn a few things that way. It’s not like the first diablo where people just babbled random useless stuff and then the same stuff all the time. They actually change their phrases after each mission.
if you click around enough, you learn tricks about the game, study abilities that you can’t have unless you learn them by clicking stuff and buy better weapons.
open source video, online video platform, video solution
That guy sounds just like Chris Pirillo. He has plenty of videos on youtube. Just type his name. you will see. Kinda looks like him also.

FYI His Name is “Steadman”

Now all of the media is presented. Sorry I didn’t want to install fraps… I’m on strike. So my pics are via cam on my cell.

Time for the Review

Game play

At first I was upset because the buildings didn’t lay out in straight lines like they did before in the first Starcraft. I kept getting my SCV stuck between buildings. That is of course until I found the button that allows me to sink the supply depot underground. After seven missions i haven’t seen if that prevents attacks on them. I am sure a Zerg can attack it… Right ? All of the old buildings look the same, just you get a better look at them now. They seem to do all of the same stuff and the costs and upgrades are still the same. There are a few additions to equipment and to units. I don’t want to ruin to much. Just there is something that looks like a flying vulcher. That thing has some awesome artillery. Turret Lasers :-D !!!! Fire bats are bigger, but still have low range ground attack weapons only. but they can be upgraded pretty good.

You know, I don’t think I want to ruin it for you . So I will not go into it. Kinda hard to talk about Starcraft ii and not same the names of the units. They are all listed on Blizzard’s site with Starcraft unit name next to it. But you just don’t know what it all means till you play. So I don’t want to ruin the surprise for when you buy your copy of Starcraft II.
This game is a 100% must buy for any person who enjoyed Starcraft or Starcraft Brood Wars. They reference so much. The familiarity is there.
If you are a console gamer who has never played a PC game, a game that was created for pc and played on pc only, you will not get the fun in watching the videos. The videos are all very important. This is not a RUSH-RUSH-RUSH-RUSH-complete the game kind of game. This game is not for the console kiddies.
Online play, I think they scrapped the idea of the chatroom. How can you talk smack and get your butt handed to you after? There is a forum option and a community option, but the community option just sends you to Starcraft II website.

I didn’t dig much into the online play at all. I just want to finish teh game first and get the hotkeys memorized before I do all that.

Ladder matches are back.
Everyone is huge Muscular except the women and the scientists.
Jim looks different and voice sounds different. Many return roles. Different voices but similar. could be the same people, it has been ten years and all.

Also they removed the community. I find it hard to make a challenge when you can’t talk crap. So here is the community of Starcraft II Clans.

Scoring for Starcraft II

Scoring is on a 1-10 scale. 10 being best and 1 is sucky.

Resolution 9

Cinematic 10

Game play 10

Audio 10

If you want to understand a pc gamer and how we are a breed apart.

Conduit Toolbar Review

I have had my iworkwithpeople toolbar out there for a few years. For about 4 years now. There never really was all that much movement in my account for usage, for the first two years nothing really happened. Over the past year and a half I have been seeing lots of activity. I started seeing an actual bit of revenue. So I have been pushing people to notice the toolbar and requesting people install it so I can generate more income. In dong that I added so many useful tools for the toolbar’s theme. There is a cashout balance that must be achieved. You must achieve $50 before you can cash out. I have been sitting at 49.41 for twenty six days now. Not one penny in revenue from searches. Nothing. Not a drop.

I’m starting to suspect foul play. Considering it is such an old toolbar that is tested and true and useful for work associated uses, (games and job search) and many many other add ons and now right when it is finally almost able to cash in, it stop creating income?

Update. 8/4/10
I received an email, I have not yet had a chance to respond (because I keep seeing it while at work.)

Daniel &&&&&
to me

show details Aug 3 (1 day ago)

Hello,

My name is Daniel and I am an account manager to Conduit. We have noticed your post on Truxetertech regarding your rewards and I wanted to clarify some facts and offer my assistance to generate more revenue from your toolbar.

Beginning July , we have made a change to our billing system. The purpose of the change was to offer an easier and more convenient way for our publishers to generate revenue. The new system is based on payment per install so for each install of the toolbar you will generate revenue. The revenue is based on the usage and geo location of your users so the more users use the toolbar, the rate per install will increase. This means that in order to continue generating revenue from the toolbar, you need to get more users to install it by adding banners and promotions to your site, emails, forum posts and social networks. You have an excellent toolbar and an interesting site so I would imagine there are many users who would be interested in your toolbar.

We do want you to earn money since then we earn money. I will be happy to assist you in driving more revenue as well as users to your toolbar and to your site. Please let me know if you are interested.

Thanks,

Daniel

Daniel &&&&&&

Account Manager

Conduit Your Site

p +(removed phone number) |

m +(removed phone number) |

f +(removed phone number)

Connect with the Conduit community

Facebook | Twitter | Linkedin | Flickr | YouTube

From: Victor Vlad
Sent: Tuesday, August 03, 2010 9:33 AM
To: Daniel &&&&&&
Subject: FW: sensitive review about Conduit

Please approach him – he was moved to PPI from old Rewards… try to make him happy.

CT1223389

From: Hai &&&&&
Sent: Monday, August 02, 2010 11:18 PM
To: Gil &&&&&; Shiri &&&&&; Amir &&&&&; Yochai &&&&&
Subject: RE: sensitive review about Conduit

Am should be involved as well.

From: Gil &&&&&
Sent: Sunday, August 01, 2010 11:45 PM
To: Shiri &&&&&
Cc: Hai &&&&&
Subject: FW: sensitive review about Conduit

You may want to consider posting a comment there.

Thanks

Gil

http://truxtertech.com/2010/07/conduit-toolbar-review-affiliate/

No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG – www.avg.com
Version: 9.0.851 / Virus Database: 271.1.1/3044 – Release Date: 08/01/10 23:35:00

I am not sure what that means. It sounds as if there is incentive to get users, but not to keep them. Easy part is getting them especially if you have something good and someone tells a friend “hey look at this” but keeping them is another.
I wonder if I can just install it on every computer I work on and not care if they uninstall it .

Really I need to email this guy and let him know I am not mad. just in the dark a bit here.

To be totally fair everyone. Their toolbars are the only one I know that is out there that you can trust. Even through the days of the bad toolbars, Conduit is safe and always has been. That is the number 1 reason why I use them

Adsense. What is the easiest way Google makes certain their people who pay to be in the search engine get seen ? they share the wealth.
Bing has yet to even begin to try that. all they have to do is make an affiliate program to share the adverts with the websites out there.
Totally remove the whole Silverlight program. That and adobe air have got to be the clunkiest pieces of garbage. I don’t care how you improve it. A perfect turd is still a turd. Quit forcing people to hold that turd. I don’t want it in my computer, I don’t want a turd in my hand. Simply put, If I have to install that program to use your software, I will stop using your software.

Get yahoo off of Clicksor. I used to clicksor with all sorts of hopes of having an alternative to the goliath. I never made one red cent. Not one penny. I had a relative call me and tell me they clicked some ad on my old site, they said they bought something from one of the ads and never got their product. They thought I controlled it all. Clicksor never even noted the click. I did not tell my relative 700 miles away to click it. it was months later when I found out they did. Once they got tired of waiting for their products.
Clicksor then dropped me and said I didn’t have enough traffic. I had 200-2000 people a day. It fluctuated.

So having yahoo tied into something like that, surely isn’t helping them at all. Having a program where websites serve their ads for them will profit Bing and the website owners and would allow competition to Google’s adsense. Truth is adsense needs competition, they are getting a bit diva/spoiled princess.

When a person uses a search engine, they don’t want to be told how to search. People do searches like they think. They type it like they expect it to work. Not like they are told a search engine should be. Bing can do this if they just look at the most common searches. They all look like a question. Bing has this information. Google has this information. Yahoo, I have no idea why yahoo quit like that.

If you have suggestions for Bing or Yahoo post them here in a response.

Everyone Keeps asking the same question ” Is Pc Gaming Dying?”. The answer is hard to explain but i will try and give it to you like it is.
Most games are being created for consoles. consoles have a fixed set video card. Consoles have a fixed set processor. They all have fixed set motherboards. So all compatibility issues are resolved at one time. They never upgrade. They just get replaced. This makes game creator’s job simple. This also Ruins any evolution in gaming and ruins the future of “bigger better faster”. Why? because they all have limitations and if they exceed the limitations then the console makers have to expand and evolve. Then the game makers have to start all over in their game codes and engines that they have been kicking around easily. They don’t want to ruin their “easy money”.
Games get created for the consoles first because that’s where the majority of sales are. Many of these games get “ported” (converted to compatibility) to the Pc. These ports have become sloppy and careless. These ports are becoming further and further from the original release date. If ever at all.

So Far 2 of the top Selling PC games are Blizzard Games. Both of these games have epic sales totals in comparison to the rest. One of these games had the highest sales total for many years. This game was Starcraft. Now with the release of Starcraft II finally about to be released, I can imagine the pc video game sells will be greater than ever. The cinematics should be greater than your highest resolution video and teh game play will be more fun than any game on your wii. You will be required to just have one of the most average computers to play this game. This should provoke more old game makers to come out of the woodworks, motivated to make a fun game. Of course there will be game makers making more extreme graphics, more cpu intensive engines and more Memory utilizing AI. And there will be some that use them all. If  things go right, Then pc game will wander off in it’s own direction from console gaming. The way it used to be. The way it should be. The way it should have been all along.

Manifesto

If game makers kept in mind they are dealing with a different breed of gamers when it comes to pc games, they would understand, we like quests. We like interaction. We like a never ending challenge. We don’t like to beat the game, We like to have a reason to play it again. And when that finally gets old, we go and get the Expansion. We wait for the second version. The new engine, the new story to sit through before we jump online and mash together will a bunch of crazies. We are not the ones who hurry and finish a game so we can tell everyone it’s old news. We play it into the ground and we tell everyone we know how fun it is. We are a word of mouth crowd. We are the heavy metal music of Gaming. We are the underground difference of opinion. We like a challenge, so we play the game again to find someone who can beat us. We have no thumbs so keep your game controllers.

Is pc gaming dead? no. Is pc gaming dying? yes by the lack of resources. Can pc gaming be revived? Oh by many means , yes. They just have to entertain us. We need more Blizzard, We need more Starcraft more Warcraft more Diablo.

Official TruXtertech Toolbar

Got tired of Googling all of the tools I use on a regular basis and decided to put these all in one toolbar.  Since I am of the two I.T. guys at my job, This tool bar will come in super handy.

There are antivirus tools. Virus scanner tools and Search Engine optimization tools.

so now when building website, there is tons of media to listen to and SEo tools to ensure the website being designed is properly optimized and handily ready for Bing, Yahoo and Google to crawl about it.

Grab a copy of this toolbar and see for yourself it is very much useful for Most of your IT needs and wants.

“Watch computer stuff on your tv”
Really we already can.
Could for some time now.
But ok.

Boxee Beta from boxee on Vimeo.

I saw the Boxee box on Mashable and it looks pretty cool. It’s functionality I don’t get it though. I understand it uses your WIFI to access the internet. Then what? it’s not a web browser. So you have to actually locate the stuff first from your computer (watch it) and then store it locally on your computer and then walk over to the couch and change  tv source and finally watch this video from the comfort of your couch.

In the preview video they mention a few places you can watch videos from. They mention “Digg” . Really? you want to risk that? unless they mean revision 3 with Diggnation. That would make plenty more sense. To bad Diggnation is calling it quits.

Probably the coolest device I have yet seen for watching pc media on TV was a USB connection on a DVD player. This made a lot of things a ton easier.

I do understand that Boxee will read feeds. i also know that stuff happens on websites and Feeds get rerouted or changed, or just fouled up. Heck the TWIT feed has changed at least 6 times in it’s 5 years.

Maybe it’s just not for me. I bet you plenty that it’s too technical for the common public and will have sensible errors (meaning not boxee’s fault) and those who bought one will write and post about how crappy it is. This of course will prevent the rest of the world from getting one.

Sling box.

Nuff said.

I have no idea how companies do it. I have been working like a dog to gain rank for some of the sites I work on. I do all of the optimization I do all of the meta tagging. I find that social sites are a poor source. I mean 3-5 years ago, it was the best snowball. Now, not as much as they still claim it is worth. advertising on sites seems to do nothing for me. I mean it is good while you pay for the advertisements. As soon as you stop paying, your rank plummets. The whole time you pay, it seems no one clicks the links.

I work hard on alexa ranking, Compete ranking and MozRank. Alexa moves really fast when you try hard, but compete and Moz not near as fast.

Web ring. So far the best assurance to gain rank at either site, is to be in the good old fashion web ring. A web ring is a bunch of sites with similar interest who link back to each other. That of course is very hard to achieve. Most of the people who are in the same field as the site I am working don’t want to give up some potential customers by having them click my links and see better stuff for cheaper cost. Or what ever. There are a bunch of sites that have “submit link” button on their site with a code that you put on your site so people can find them better, much like a web ring. Downside to that is, if your competitor crawls your website to see what gets you so many people, they will  see that stupid link and use them also. Now you are right back where you were before you resorted to that method.

Originality. Many of the sites I work on, I can copy almost every sentence the owner wrote up and find it in Google. Word for word. Google will not accept that. Why would they link to a re-run ? So now I have to explain the importance of originality to the site owner without talking to complex and without sounding like I think they are a moron, yet still keep their attention so they allow me to fix it.

Updating and creating new content. I do it all the time, but you can only have so many pages before your website is to much. You can’t have customers trying to look through a website of greater than 10000 pages. It’s just insane. Unless you have a detailed search feature. Getting page rank is a bit more costly that it needs to be with this method.

Generating traffic. Well you can’t force people to go. you have to have people say “no it’s cool and all of the cool people do it” otherwise everyone everyone refuses to follow advertisements. Yes we are that simple of a species. Good idea to try is find a social site of some sort and make like 50 fake accounts and mention your site. but not spammy, just find topics that relate and chime in. Of course one person calls you spam and your i.p. addy is banned and your site is submitted to your dns and Google dns as spam. BLACKLISTED.

I do what I have to do. Sometimes I have to do everything. Just not so much it jeopardizes my domains. Gaining pr is no easy task, page rank shouldn’t be easy. Otherwise Google would be full by now. Alexa, mozrank, compete, search engines like, Google, bing and  yahoo would practically be useless. you would just type stuff and see where it lands you. So getting page rank is a validation of your site’s worthiness. Only thing is  to get page rank you have to get someone’s attention to prove you are everything you need to be. So how do you get the needed attention to gain page rank? well…. just keep at it. It will happen.

Okay we all know that web-design, Some people can do it, some people can not do it. (wait, I am not selling you web design, simply because i am sick of it) I know it’s not actually an art . but you really have to think of it like you think of art. Try and not think of it as construction. You can not just lay out blueprints and say “hey this is how it goes, this is what i want and this is exactly what you will give me”. Ever try that crap with a guy that just draws cartoons or caricatures ? You can’t go and grab someone who draws realistic drawings with perfect angles shading lighting and life like appeal, to just draw you on a rocket ship with a rodeo clown shirt on. It’s just not his thing, and well, he has his certain fields he has focused on really well. It is best you let him utilize his abilities to his best interest.

You are not a web designer. So having a lay out or a design  that you want, well you are going to have to do it yourself. If you do not lay out your website yourself, be certain that what he will make for you, will not be to your liking on the first round. It’s just a fact.

A person that knows about web design is doing everything with full optimization in mind. This person has this thing laid out with full SEO integrated in their design. The more you toss ideas at them and the more you incorporate a third party web designer in this project, the more you throw this guy out of his field of operation. You will also start to make a complete professional web-designer look like a total amateur. Let him finish his project and you will see what he gave you will have tons of great cooperative segments of the site’s design.

1. If you have a specific idea that you want done and must have, then be clear about what you want from the start. Draw it on paper, show each page individually and fill in the exact text you want or need that explains that page. He can not read your mind. He is not in your business, or you would have more competition. Be prepared for the designer to re-word your text to handshake his SEO portion of the design.

2. Give all logos you need for the design.

3. Be ready for some of your ideas to scratched. They may be obsolete or to complex for the average user to enjoy. Or they just may screw up the Search Engine Optimization portion of your design. Some of your idea may be unrealistic.

4. Be certain that your site’s topics cover what means the most interest in your company. If you sell airplane door hinges, don’t make your company website talk about what your company started as, what it is becoming and what it is now. Make your website about airplane door hinges. It would take a pretty submissive web-designer to not tell you that you are goofing  by using the wrong content.

Don’t ask the designer of your website to copy another website. Do not go to the nearest search engine and steal pictures off of the internet and ask your web designer to design your website around them. Do not under estimate the power of proper Search Engine optimization. Do not expect SEO work to happen over night. It takes most search engines two weeks to set your site in rank order. Heck it actually takes that long just for them to get around to noticing you are there. Do not look at a crowded Navigation bar/ menu and request more in there without a bit of a remodeling.

You can have the site you want. Just have your wants and needs laid out already. save a copy for yourself and give a copy to the web guy. If you already have a web guy then by all means, let him do the work. just be ready to hire someone else for SEO and make sure your web guy is ready to comply with the SEO person. It’s hard for one web guy to go back behind another web designer and figure out what they changed and how to make it work with the full plan. Improper communication ends in crazy results.

Split Second for pc

The graphics are really nice. Fire looks brilliant. Car skin looks like fresh real paint. All of the cars are beautiful and fast. From the street to the tops of buildings, the city looks amazing and real. This is a pretty game. I mean it in the sense of it looks great and is built to fit today’s computer world. This is in every sense, a Racing Video Game. Menu area is a pretty cool new looking format. They went all out on this racing game.

On the down side, this was a game that was created for a console. Clearly. You have limited control mapping. You have limited  Resolution adjustments and tons of current gen console “motion blur”. On the upside, for this high end of resolution, it is very light weight on your hardware. I never once felt lag or lack of response with my 3 gig tri core AMD, Nvidia 250 and 4 gigs of ddr2 pc6400 memory.

I did sense this game looks and feels a lot like Need For Speed Most Wanted with better textures and slight engine add on mod. Added gun thingy and some sort of change to the slow motion . Drafting is there like in Need For Speed Carbon and Undercover. I love all three of those games and wish there was more to them, so this is perfect.

I will be wasting many hours completing this game, even though I have no idea what the story is. Is there a story?

I finished first race hit escape. Totally lost my win. Re-started game and had to enter my user name again. Had to do most of my video settings. Screen resolution stayed but not video quality. Had to enter all of that again.

Not much to the steering. Can’t explain much but will say, you can smash them buttons, you aint turning any sharper.

Textures- 10

sound-10

control-7

entertainment- 8