All posts in “Guides”

Workflow

Posted 632 days ago · 3 Comments

E-Mail & Contacts

All my e-mail accounts (personal, work & school) forward to my main Gmail account, and I use Gmail’s web interface since no application support Gmail’s labels and filters very effectively, as far as I know. Gmail also makes it possible to set the sender of composed e-mails to external e-mail addresses, meaning that I can send e-mails from my student account from within Gmail’s web interface.

I strive to have no more than 20 e-mails in my inbox. To do this I use stars for important e-mails in the following fashion:

Red Star: Needs attention today or tomorrow.
Orange Star: Needs attention within a week.
Green Star: Needs attention within 1-6 months.
Yellow Star: Needs no attention until reply is received.

Furthermore I use filters and labels extensively, also based on colors:

Reddish Labels: School-related.
Greenish Labels: Work-related.
Blueish Labels: Receipts, invoices, etc.

My contacts are synched from Google to my iPhone, I am however thinking of switching this to iCloud when it becomes available.

To-dos and Project Management

For personal to-dos I use Flow. The interface is amazing and so are the features. The service syncs automatically with their iPhone application and it has a Mac application making it possible to always add to-dos with keyboard shortcuts. My use of it is quite simple, I have different lists depending on the category of the to-do, and I use the “flagged” feature to flag important to-dos such as pressing homework.

For project work I have mostly used Pivotal Tracker. Although it’s designed for software projects, I have also used it for other project-related tasks such as writing reports.

Calendar

I use Google Calendar for all my calendar needs. Within it I have several external calendars added such as upcoming tv shows, Facebook events, and school schedule.

Note-taking

For notes I use Simplenote, another service which automatically syncs up with an iPhone application. I used Evernote for a while but found it to be too cluttered for my needs.

Bookmarking

I use several services for bookmarking. I use Google Reader for my news reading, and within it I star news I want to read later. For websites I want to look at once or twice again I use Instapaper, and for sites I want saved permanently I use delicious.

Tutorial: Mesh Render in Maya

Posted 978 days ago ·  Tagged: · 0 Comments

This is a write-up of this video, mostly so I don’t have to watch the video every time I want to mesh render something.

  1. Go to “Windows” -> “Rendering Editors” -> “Hypershade”.
  2. Create a new Lambert shader, and open its attributes.
    1. Set “Color” to black.
    2. Set “Diffuse” to 0.
  3. Right-click-hold on shader to assign it to all objects.
  4. Click “Output” icon in shader attributes (arrow in a box next to “Presets”.
  5. Open “mental ray”, and “Contours”.
    1. Tick on “Enable Contour Rendering”.
    2. Set “Color” to white.
    3. Set “Width” to 0.25 or 0.5.
  6. Go to “Windows” -> “Rendering Editors” -> “Render Settings”.
  7. Set “Render Using” to “mental ray”.
  8. Go to “Features” tab, and open “Rendering Features”.
    1. Set “Primary Render” to “Raytracing” under “Rendering Features”.
    2. Set “Secondary Effects” to “Raytracing” under “Rendering Features”.
  9. Open “Contours” in the same tab.
    1. Tick on “Enable Contour Rendering”.
    2. Set “Over-Sample” to 3.
    3. Set “Filter Type” to “Gaussian Filter”.
  10. Open “Draw By Property Difference” in the same tab.
    1. Tick on “Around all poly faces”.
  11. Render your image, and you should see something like this:

Optimizing Your Computer Use #1: Firefox Search Keywords

Posted 1123 days ago ·  Tagged: · 4 Comments

I’m a huge fan of optimizing the way I use my computer, if I stumble upon a task I know I will be doing in the future (e.g. looking up opening hours for the local grocery store) I usually try to make this task easier. So I’ll write a couple of articles about what techniques I use to do these things, the first being Firefox search keywords, which I’ve talked about before.

Firefox has a built in function that lets you add keywords for search fields on websites by right-clicking them and pressing “Add a Keyword for this Search”. This makes it possible to make a search on a site by typing “<keyword> <search term>” in the address bar (e.g. “i die hard” searches IMDb for “die hard”). This obviously has a lot of possibilities, and it’s probably the one thing that saves me the most time on a day to day basis. I use the following keywords:

  • Google
    A standard Google search. Type “g <search keyword>”.
  • Keepvid
    Download video from sites like YouTube, Metacafe, etc. Type “d <video URL>”.
  • Port Check
    Checks if a certain port is open. Type “p <port number>”.
  • Google Maps
    Searches Google Maps. Type “gm <location>”.
  • Google Maps – Directions From Home
    Search for a direction from your home. Change “blegdamsvej 78A, københavn ø, denmark” to your own address. Type “gmd <destination>”.
  • Google Translate
    Type “gt <text or url>” to translate something from English.
  • YouTube
    Search on YouTube. Type “y <search term>”.
  • WikiPedia
    Search on WikiPedia. Type “w <search term>”.
  • IMDb
    Search on IMDb. Type “i <search term>”.
  • Kino
    Search on Kino.dk Type “k <search term>”.
  • RottenTomatoes
    Search on Rotten Tomatoes. Type “rt <search term>”.
  • Play.com
    Search on Play.com Type “p <search term>”.
  • UrbanDictionary
    Search Urban Dictionary. Type “u <search term>”.
  • Ordbogen
    Search on Ordbogen.com. Type “o <search term>”.
  • Google Currency Converter
    Convert money to Danish Kroner. Type “dkk <amount and currency>” (e.g. “dkk 50 usd”).
  • Google Currency Converter (USD)
    Convert from US Dollars to Danish Kroner. Type “usd <amount in US Dollars>”.
  • Google Currency Converter (EURO)
    Convert from Euro to Danish Kroner. Type “euro <amount in Euro>”.
  • Google Currency Converter (POUNDS)
    Convert from Pounds to Danish Kroner. Type “pounds <amount in Pounds>”.
  • Dansk Wiki
    Search on the Danish WikiPedia. Type “dw <search term>”.
  • Wiktionary
    Search on Wiktionary. Type “wi <search term>”.
  • Amazon.co.uk
    Search on Amazon.co.uk. Type “a <search term>”.
  • Filestube
  • Search for files on Rapidshare. Type “f <search term>”.

You can follow these steps to import my keywords:

  1. Right-click on my Search Keywords bookmarks file and choose “Save Link As…” Place the file somewhere on your computer.
  2. In Firefox, from the Bookmarks menu, choose “Manage Bookmarks”.
  3. From the Bookmarks Manager File menu, choose Import. Choose “Import Bookmarks from File.” Browse to and open the file you just saved.

The next article will be about Greasemonkey scripts.

How to play Ocarina of Time with cell-shading and hi-res textures on Windows 7

Posted 1899 days ago ·  Tagged: , , · 83 Comments

NOTE: If you have any questions, write a comment.

CHANGELOG

27th of October, 2010: Tested with Windows 7.

12th of March, 2008: Tested with Windows XP.

The communities for old console games are quite amazing, I myself am mostly interested in Nintendo 64 games, especially The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (best game ever made), and I had heard about someone redoing all the textures. I finally decided to check it out and since it took me forever to figure this out, I thought I might as well do a guide about it.

Emulator

First of all you need an emulator to run the game, the most popular are 1964 and Project 64. Since I got everything working first on 1964, that’s what I’ll be talking about in this guide. So, without further ado:

  1. Download 1964 version 0.9.9 here.
  2. Install it.

Now we need a better video plugin, the most popular is the Rice Video Plugin version 6.1.1 beta 10. As far as I’ve understood a guy named ‘Mudblood’ started updating it after that, so this is the last version made by ‘Rice’ himself.

  1. Download Rice Video Plugin version 6.1.1 beta 10 here.
  2. Unpack it and put the two dll files in this folder: C:/<installation folder>/1964/099/plugin/.
  3. You need another file though, it’s called BMGlib.dll and you can download the package here.
  4. Unpack it and put the dll file in C:/<installation folder>/1964/099/.

Now we need to configure 1964.

  1. Open the program.
  2. Go to Plug-ins -> Change Plug-ins.
  3. Select Rice’s Video Plugin 6.1.1 beta 10 from the dropdown window under System Default Video Plugin.
  4. Press OK.
  5. Go to Plug-ins -> Video Settings.
  6. Go to the General Options tab.
  7. Change Full Screen Resolution to something higher (like 1024 x 768).
  8. Uncheck Hide Advanced Options.
  9. Press OK (closing the options window).
  10. Reopen Plug-ins -> Video Settings.
  11. Go to the Texture Filters tab.
  12. Change Texture Quality to 32-bit Texture.
  13. Change Texture Enhancement to 2x (Double the texture size).
  14. Check Load hi-res textures if available.
  15. Press OK.

That’s all for setting up the emulator.

ROM

Now you need the rom, the game itself. I can’t really help you with that, although looking here may be a good idea. The rom I’m using is called Legend of Zelda, The – Ocarina of Time (U) (V1.0), the guide may work on other versions of, though. If you find the rom you can run it from 1964 by pressing Ctrl + D and then selecting the folder where it’s located.

Cell-Shading and Hi-Res

This is really what makes it worth going through all this trouble to play the game. The texture packs are rather hard to find, but I found two of the most popular. The first one is made by a guy named ‘Djipi’. He spend 1,5 years redoing every single texture in the game, making it look like Wind Waker. The second pack is with high-resolution textures, which look a lot like the textures from Twilight Princess. This is how you install them:

  1. Download the cell-shading package here (mirror 1, mirror 2).
    Or, download the hi-res package here (mirror).
    UPDATE: I found a more complete, community-created hi-res package, download here. (More info, video and screenshots here.)
  2. Unzip the package you selected.
  3. Put everything into C:/<installation folder>/1964/099/plugin/hires_texture/ (you may need to manually create the hires_texture folder).
  4. Now your directory structure should look like this: C:/<installation folder>/1964/099/plugin/hires_texture/The Legend of Zelda.

If that’s the case you’re done! If you want to try the other package you can rename the The Legend of Zelda folder, and then put the other folder in there. Now, when you open up 1964 and double-click the rom the emulator should start going through all the new textures before loading the game. If it doesn’t find anything you probably forgot to check Load hi-res textures if available.

Taking it to the next level

Playing Ocarina of Time on a keyboard isn’t quite the same though, I decided to buy this, so now I use my wireless Xbox 360 controller to play it and all my other roms. Also, you can connect eight controllers to it, which is awesome.

There are also some unfinished high-resolution texture packs for Ocarina of Time but I haven’t been able to find working download links. There are a lot more texture packs on emutalk.net, but, as I said, it’s pretty hard to find packs that are totally done. Anyway, hope the guide is helpful, here are some screenshots:

Cell Shading Package

items

THE LEGEND OF ZELDA-4

THE LEGEND OF ZELDA-11

THE LEGEND OF ZELDA-20

THE LEGEND OF ZELDA-194

untitled1

High-Resolution Package

THE LEGEND OF ZELDA-1

THE LEGEND OF ZELDA-2