Today was my 37th birthday.
Went to school as usual
My students were very cute when they wished me happy birthday.
I went to lunch with my co teachers. I had a hamburger steak for lunch. It was nice, but it is definately not a real steak.
Mum also called me, which was nice.
For dinner I went to the new Chinese restaurant and had seafood on rice, which was not bad. But at 10,000 won a little expensive.
Had a snack with my kwang-jang-nim at da-glow man hof.
Had some dried fish, very nice.
Last night I was really angry with EA’s Battlefield 2 because
1. My PC wouldn’t recognize the PLAY CD because of the copy protection on CD !
… So I couldn’t officially play the game without a NO CD crack!
A PLAY CD is a CD that has to be in the computer for the game to play. It is designed to stop people from copying the CD.
A similar scheme exists for music CD’s.
The main reason I purchased the game was for the serial number which lets me play online. A cracked version of the game does not give you a valid CD Key. So the best protection for the game is the fact that you can’t play online without a valid cd key. The only way you can get a valid CD key is to buy the game!
So this begs the question, why put copy protection on the CD ?
2. Worse still when I could run the game it would crash on me particularly after it had loaded a new level.
Status: Problems solved. I love the game.
How ? … Download the 1.01 update
Result: the No CD crack does not work, can’t even open the game
Downloaded a mini CD image to use with Daemon tools from http://www.gameburnworld.com/gp/gamefixes/battlefield2.htm
Result: This circumvents the copy protection. This combined with the patch has meant I can play more games then I should!
It just works.
So I think the key here is the CD mini image, not the patch.
So if I had to rely on EA for a solution I would still have a legal game which does not work.
Now I have a legal game but I have ‘broken’ the copy protection by using the Mini Image and it only took me six hours to get to this point.
Very frustrating!
Went for a bike ride today after school to do the rounds of the big department stores in Ulsan.
The local equivalent of Myers or Grace Brothers.
So I rock up in my grubby shorts and Tshirt. I looked a little out of place, especially in the cosmetics sections you have to walk through on the ground floor.
Anyway I was looking for a copy of Battlefield 2. I finally found it at HomePlus. They had three copies left.
So I ride back home, working up a huge sweat riding up the hill to my suburb.
I install the game and …. It tells me please insert CD 2
OK no problem, obviously some sort of copy protection.
I insert the CD and it does NOT recognise it!
What the fuck!
I purchased a legal copy of software, which I know works b/c I had an illegal copy before 🙂
And how do they treat their customer? not very well.
So I download a NO CD crack, which is probably a classed as a crime these days in the USA and I can now run the game.
But, it keeps crashing all the time!
The demo never crashed !
The pirated copy running single player did not crash.
So why all the hassle.
I guess this is what happens when you do the right thing!
An elementary school with 36 classes opened this March in Jukjeon, a newly developed residential district in Yongin City, south of Seoul. But it is to be closed just one semester after opening. The reason: the number of students is too few. When it opened, there were only eight students enrolled.
I have been playing the Battlefied 2 demo since it came out and I love it.
The biggest problem with the game is it requires a new video card. The game has very high requirements, much more then doom3
I have been playing it at a friends shop because my pc does not have a video card that is good enough.
I wanted to get a Nvidea 6800GT but because I have a Shuttle XPC SB81P I had problems.
Specifically heat and size: The shuttle is a small form factor PC. What this means is that the space for a video card is very limited !
If space is limited it also means heat can become an issue.
So when choosing I had to make sure that the card is low heat and that it will fit.
This means either recommendations from other shuttle owners or trying out cards by plugging them into my PC.
Well living in Ulsan ruled out the second option.
It is pretty hard finding a shop that stocks 6800GTs even six months after they have come out!
So I ended up buying a 128MB 6600 for 120,000 w (@SU$120)
In hindsight this is a bad idea, but I was impatient!
(When do we want it? NOW, no fuck that, yesterday)
Pros: It works !
Battlefield Earth plays very well at medium settings at 800×600@60hz.
Cons: I should have got the 256mb version, if they had it, which they probably didn’t
I also ran Nasa’s World Wind which is an excellent program to test a video card. Result, fantastic, it works really well.
Now for the game itself.
I downloaded a version of Bittorent. I love it!
So now to buy it!
Fortunately I live in the Mega city of Ulsan 🙁
So I looked at HomePlus, Wal Mart, and Save Zone.
They are all big department stores / supermarkets
RESULT:Not a bloody copy in sight!
I looked online, and they appear to have it for sale.
But I would rather support local businesses, so I will wait.
There are some fantastic shops for XBOX and Playstation gamers, but alas, for PC games, the field is barren indeed.
Here is my PC.
You can see the video card in the bottom right.
At the top is a Seagate Baracuda SATA 200GB H/D
Inside the PC you can see a green circuit board belonging to the second hardrive, a Western Digital 200 GB IDE drive.
The space above the IDE drive and next to the Seagate is where a second SATA HD will fit.
I put a 2nd Seagate Baracuda there and the system could not keep it cool even when the fans were running at 100%! So I replaced it with the IDE drive you can see now.
The WD drive runs about 7 degrees cooler then the Seagate!
The Seagate is too hot for a small form factor PC like the Shuttle.
It can easily hit the high 40’s, while the WD sits on 37.
Ulsan 180 degrees of it. I have just discovered a new program which automatically splices or stiches together a bunch of photos to create a panorama.
Now I am going around taking lots of overlapping pictures of places, so I can create panoramas. I am really enjoying mysefl !
If you want the program try here:
www.cs.ubc.ca/~mbrown/autostitch/autostitch.html
For some of my photos have a look at https://www.stephenhucker.com/blog/photo/Panoramas
The excellent tech support alert newsletter published an article on useful free utilities for your pc.
I highly recommend subscribing to the newsletter if you are interested in PCs.
Here without further ado is their article
This is an update of my previous posts. As a lot changes have occured in the time gone by.
https://stephenhucker.com/blog/2005/02/26/bittorrent-web-sites/
https://stephenhucker.com/blog/2005/01/25/bittorent/
As of 19th of June, 2005 KST the following sites work:
http://www.torrentreactor.to/
http://torrentspy.com/
http://torrentreactor.net/
http://www.newtorrents.info/
http://www.fulldls.com/
http://liberaltorrents.allhyper.com/
http://www.bytenova.org/
A good bittorent client for windows is Bitcomet
Had a play with a MTB with mechanical brakes … WOW … they are extremely powerful.
I gently squeezed the brake handle with my little finger and I did an endo!
(hmm … endos, last time I did one of those I broke my arm .. perhaps not a good idea?)
A little bit of research has revealed that people have a very high opinion of the Avid BB7. The Avid Juicy Seven also got good marks, but they are hydraulic and much more expensive.
Had my last visit with the Physio on Thursday.
He said that my ankle / calf had improved a lot.
When I first saw him the tendonitis in my ankle (inner ankle bone) had caused my calf muscle (the inner bit) to be stiff.
Now it is much better, but it feels worse the last few days then it did last week!
When you are walking normally or cycling it is OK.
But when you run, jump, move laterally (sideways) like in basketball, then it hurts.
Not a sharp shooting pain, not even the pain like with a bruise, but more a tightness.
Very annoying !
Anyway I have to do three things to help my ankle and it hopefully with be back to normal.
1. Stretch the legs/hips, especially the calf muscle
2. Do strengthing exercises for the injured area.
3. Losing some weight probably wouldn’t hurt.
Previous post on physio: https://stephenhucker.com/blog/2005/05/12/physio/
