Category: Vista

Spore Creature Creation — Unleashed

Paul

I’ve been playing around with Spore Creature Creation a couple days.  I must say for the so called Demonstration game is not bad.  It actually works quite well at making basic creatures.  I made some basic creatures myself. Some of the creatures I’ve made should be able to survive when Spore goes online.  One of my favorite ones is Natsela, although the generic name generator is kind of lame.  I like the way you can upload little videos up to YouTube.  The Creature creation is really nice to make the creatures. The videos that I uploaded to YouTube can be seen HERE.

My Dinosaurs:

As you can see, I’ve made some other types of dinosaurs and this one is one of the ones, you won’t want to meet in person.  Although, the sophistication of this creature isn’t as much as others have created in the full version, I think I could start off with this one and actually be quite happy with him.  When the game goes live I’d evolve him into a fearsome dinosaur, and would be able to fight of others without much trouble.

My stalking Dinosaur

I also have some theories as to why they released the Creature Creator early.  I know some people have thought about this themselves and know that it’s all just speculation and theories but I wouldn’t mind seeing the game when it comes out.  Are they, also going to release a demonstration or a Trail version of the full game.  I would say they are because they did the demo version of the Creature Creation.

Now what about these theories I have.  Here are some of them, and I am sure you will like them.  The reason they released Creature creation early is so they have a base line of creatures to use when the game go live.  This means that if you start playing with this creature when you start they have other creatures to draw from to help populate the game and make the game play even more enjoyable.  Now that comes with a price.  You will probably have limits when you first begin because you did not start off as a single celled organism.  Essentially making the game play fair and making sure there is not any cheaters trying to create a powerful creature and swooping down killing other peoples creatures.  I say the more complex the creatures are going to be the more chance of you having to fight off attacks of the AI, they probably made an +2 attribute for head monsters that will be retrieved from the sporepedia and then it will add the attributes to it to make it even more powerful.  So I was thinking starting off from the beginning to get used to how the game reacts and all.  Then once you get used to it to load up your creature and try it out.

Now on a nicer note, I love to see the creatures everyone else is making to just seeing the creativity of the community.  I also like the animated Avatars you can make with them.  Like these two:

Now if you like the avatars and want to create your own all you need to do is look for it.  I love the avatar selections, If you have an avatar you want to show off use the comments and show yours off.  If you dare.

Vista pleas for Acceptance!!

Paul

I’ve heard people talking about Windows Vista and how bad it is. I’ve decided to write a post about my experiences with Vista to better show you that Vista is not as bad as people say.

“I hate the User Account Control(UAC for Short)” — I’ve hear people talking about how the UAC is so annoying, always popping up when you least expect it. It can be fixed in several ways:

  1. Disabling UAC — You can do this by clicking Start and typing in MSCONFIG and going to the tools tab. Hitting the Disable UAC click Launch button!!

  2. Tweak-UAC — This little program is supposed to change UAC to be less annoying, or if you like to disable UAC for good. This program is good for Turning on AUC, Making UAC less annoying or Disabling it!!

  3. Live with it — This one is self understanding.

  4. Buy XP before it’s too late! — Yes that is right just go out and buy as many copies of XP before it’s too late!!

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“The Aero Glass effect takes up to much of the system resources!” — I have a thought on this one. I’ve been using Aero Glass effects since I’ve had it but I’ve had to change some of the settings to better help my system handle it.

  1. Setting Aero Glass for best performance — Right click desktop, click Personalize

  3. Click  on “Open classic Appearance properties for more color options”

  5. Select one of the other propers like classic or If you want to use some of the other features of Vista put it on the Vista basic!!!

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Now with these steps you too can have a pleasurable experience with Vista.  You can always go back and change them with little effort.  I am hoping with this little blog to help people understand that “Vista is your Friend”.  Also in the news,

Vista’s big problem: 92 percent of developers ignoring it

So that means not a lot of programs are going to even work with Vista.  Does that seem fair, I say not!!  Shouldn’t they start worrying about Vista since XP is going off the market?  You know they seem to think XP is going to live forever!!  I think we need to start telling these people to develop for Vista so we can get more programs working with Vista.  Vista wouldn’t be so misunderstood if they’d have compatible programs for Vista.  Just some thoughts!!

5 things Microsoft Vista doesn’t want you to Know!!

Paul

I’m starting off on this little epic because I’ve been using Vista for the past year and half. I have had so much fun finding these little programs for Vista. They’ve helped with making Vista a much more enjoyable platform. These programs I’ve had to search the internet for all these tips and programs.

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  1. Never Stop using MSCONFIG.EXE — This little program lets you do so many things in Vista it’s not funny. You can Enable or Disable UAC, pick the services you want to startup, or pick the startup programs. You can also use the performance monitor, or change the internet options in the Tools tab. You can speed up or slow down your start up time in vista with this little program.

  2. Shut down Auto-Defragmentation — Windows uses way to much resources with it constantly defragmenting the hard drive. This therefore slows down the startup and shut down time with Vista. This little process will greatly increase your speed. Just remember from time to time to do a manual defragmentation on your hard drive. Click Start>Click Drive>Click tools TAB>Un-Check Run on a Schedule.

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  3. Speed Up the Interface — This little article explains some of the best kept secrets about speed and making windows Do what you want it do.  Making boot up time even faster and not slowing you down.  I thought I’d just link to this article because of all the valuable tips and tricks they suggest in it.  If you have any others just put those in your comments.

  4. Enable Readyboost — using a 2 gig or higher USB interface or Card will greatly increase your startup and shutdown routines in Vista.  You will not have to wait as long for Windows vista to boot.  Extreme Tech Did a very good job talking about this so I just linked to them.

  5. Disable all non-needed programs from startup — Most of the time at startup you get all these programs that you don’t need or want.  Disabling the programs you don’t use will greatly increase your speed.  Be advised that some programs need to be run at start such as Anti-virus, Anti-Spyrware, and Firewalls and other such things like that.  Don’t advise you disabling all of them just the onces that aren’t needed or wanted.  To disable the programs run Msconfig.exe>click startup>Un-check programs that you don’t want.  Reboot and your there.

I hope you like what I posted and remember that there is much more to come in the future.  I will post more later.  Enjoy

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Ways to improve Battery Life in Vista

Paul


Turn off Sidebar:
Turning of the windows Sidebar helps with performance and reliability of Vista. Some people tell me it is nice to have that up. I say this, it’s using system resources and isn’t going to help you out when you’re running on a battery. Here is how you do this:
Control Panel>Classic View>Windows Sidebar Properties


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Doing this will help you with your battery power. By making sure your got your CPU on power Saver when on battery power you will save battery life and will give you more time to use the laptop.

Control Panel>Classic View>Power Options


Change windows for Performance:

By changing Windows Aero to look like basic you can boost your battery life by not using any unneeded video acceleration. Doing this will save your battery and will give you 30 more minutes on your battery. It’s 4% to 5% battery increase but all this will make your battery last longer.
Control Panel>Classic View>Performance Information and Tools>Adjust Visual Effects

As you can see, if you like some of the effects, you can customize it to your liking, but keep in mind the more you use the less your have on battery life. It also affects your system speed, so you may want the computer speed so keep the appearance to a minimum.

Turn off UAC:
UAC has been nothing but trouble for me so I’ve just turned it off, I suspect it is also helping my battery but I am not going to hazard a guess on how much.
Start Menu>type>Msconfig on the Search bar. run the Msconfig and then you go to: Select Tools Tab, then find Disable UAC and double click it. Reboot and you no longer have UAC.

Download Battery Saver:

Downloading Battery Saver will let you pick when and how to deactivate some of these things when you unplug your power cable. This little Utility comes with a lot of possibilities. It allows you to decide when to deactivate Windows Aero and Sidebar which helps on battery life.

There are several other things to consider when you’re trying to save battery power:

Turn off all unnecessary programs in the background.

Dim your LCD by hitting the Function Key + Left Arrow several times.

This also will improve battery life by not draining it. It will dim it to the lowest setting and will extend the battery.

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These tips will improve your battery life in Vista but I do not know by how much time will be extended. I hope these tips will help you out when it comes to using your laptop out in the wild and not wanting to worry about time. Let me know what you think and I’d like to hear all the comments. Enjoy

Turn Vista into a Power Tool!!

Paul

I’ve been thinking of some other cool things you can do with Vista and here are some of them!!

As you see, this little program can make command line shortcuts. All you have to do is go to the start menu search bar and type in a shortcut command and it will run a nice little script. It is a real nice shortcuts.

Snipping Tool

If you need something to capture a portion of a screen in vista. You have a nice little capturing program. It’s call snipping tool, and it isn’t readily available. You can get to it by hitting the start Menu and typing “Snip” in the vista Search bar. It is really nice not to have to download a program for making screen shots.

Super Root Administrator

Now if you’re a Linux user your understand the value of this little secret. Vista has a Super Root Administrator available to use but deactivated and if you use this you must be understand this is for people who need to have an Admin Account that can do more than just an Administrator, so Here is how you do it. Type Cmd in the search bar, (star menu), and right click on cmd.exe and run as Admin, then you type this in prompt. “Net user administrator /active:yes” in the command prompt. Now after you activate, you will need to make it unprotected by selecting a password for this after wards. If you want to disable this account you do the same stuff first then this : “Net user administrator /active:no” on the Command line. That will turn it off. I hope this helps you out when you use Vista.