QA - Daunte's Inferno

Location: Checkpoint just after talking to Virgil for the second time. (Virgil's Dialog: Into the Blind World)
Difficulty: Hellish (likely doesn't matter)
Health on respawn: last 1/6 (like doesn't matter)

The player is to pull a lever to extend a time limited bridge (there is a purple mana restore just left of the lever). After dieing to the wave of skeletons and flying beast, respawn and return to Virgil, and jump up onto the platform below the soul wall. Move screen right until you touch the invisible wall, then return to the switch. The R1 click event is not available.

It appears the only option for the user is to jump off the bridge to cause a respawn.

I have not checked to see if this can happen on the first walk up without being at the checkpoint. There is also the possibility that there is a specific scenario just before the checkpoint required for this bug to occur.

Remember, Remember the Event You Need to Remember

Summary

Gmail and Google Calendar together can help you remember important events without resulting in tons of unread emails spamming your inbox. How? That is what this post is for.

You Will Need

I must first assume you:
1) Have a Gmail account: www.gmail.com (bottom right "Create an Account >>")
2) Have Google Calendar: calendar.google.com (you should already have an account from step one)

Step One

Within Google Calendar, create a calendar specifically for reminder events. Once the calendar is created, add relevant email reminder events to that calendar. I use 1 hour, 1 day and 1 week reminders. The email address displayed on the top right of the calendar screen is the address that will be receiving these reminders.

Okay, the more commonly know side of remembering key events is started. You will still need to create events, and set them to repeat as often as they do.

Step Two

The second step is from within Gmail. Setup a filter for the reminder emails to be added to a label when they are received. Use "calendar-notification@google.com" as the "from" of the filter, and apply the label "Reminder" on the second step of creating a filter.

With the filter and label created, change the reminder label's color to something that stands out, like red.

Step Three

Finally the last step that makes this method really shine. If your not a micro manager of your emails like me, you won't want to delete this massive number of reminders one at a time. When you view the messages of a label, you can select all of the messages (just above the messages is the line "Select: All, None, Read, Unread, Starred, Unstarred") and deselect the few still relevant reminders. Hit delete with the unwanted remainders selected, and you have successfully reclaimed your inbox (at least from your own reminders).

Buzz link

PPP: Alpha Counter

1) Alpha Counter

Provide me with a program that will satisfy the following curiosity. If each letter of the alphabet is represented by it's slot number, where A is 1, B is 2, and so on, what is the sum of the letters for your first name.

The program should take the name "Levi" and output 48. Any unrecognized chars shouldn't add anything to the total (such as the apostrophe in "O’Reilly" or the flem sound in Achmed").

2) Key'ed Alpha Counter

I recall going to lunch in second grade, and as a class being put in alphabetical order. With a last name of Watts, this was only enjoyed when we were in reverse order. To this end, this gives me another idea.

Add a means to our program to change the alphabet order with a key. Any letter not specified is added to the end in alphabetical order. For example, if we say "cat" then the three letters c, a and t are moved to the front, leaving the rest of the alphabet behind it. eg catbdefghijklmnopqrsuvwxyz

There is at least one sticky ambiguous decisions to be made. You are free to deal with it as you see fit, but document those choices. (If you are unsure what I speak of, I will be using my last name as a key to test your app.)

To see my implementation of this PPP, as well as a means to check your code's output, see my alpha counter. Use it as a means of checking your output, and point out any errors you find in my output. I'd hate for my errors to end up on prod.

Sallie Mae

I pay money to three different companies for my college loans. Of the three websites I access to pay these loans, I dread using SallieMae the most. The payment process for SallieMae is often at least eleven pages. (Salliemae.com, Make payment, Not goverment loan link, Login page, contact info conformation, offer page, offer page 2, summary page, make payment (several pages)).
Of these pages, I find the login, summary and payment pages acceptable. I also find the contact conformation page acceptable once yearly. I find it discerning that SallieMae uses people's impatience to thrust upon them legally binding actions each month. It is both annoying and uncalled for. Unfortunately for myself, I know not how to get my loan moved to another company so that I no longer have to deal with SallieMae. I imagine this is a banked on assumption of SallieMae (no pun intended). Carry on.

Mouse wheel affects: Focus vs Mouseover

I was recently asked to cite sources of applications that have their scroll wheel act upon their moused over target, as opposed to the mouse wheel acting upon the application's focus.

I am pro-Mouseover scroll wheel. Among the mouseover based, there are two camps. Those that ignore the wheel when the mouseover doesn't make sense, and those that use the focus when the mouseover doesn't make sense. I agree with the later.

Mouseover based: Uses mouse location to decide what the scroll wheel means.

Firefox v3.5.5 Tabs vs Window
Picasa 3 v3.5.0 Explorer vs Picture list
Calibre v0.6.7 Content vs Detail
TextPad v5.2.0 Explorer vs Content
Photoshop v8.0 Picture vs Picture
Google Earth v5.0.11733.9347 Left Menu vs The Planet >.<
FreeMind v0.8.1 Content vs Notes

Focused based: Uses the application focus to decide what the scroll wheel means.

Visual Studio '05 v8.0.50727.42
Windows Explorer XP Pro SP3
Excel '03
Dreamweaver MX v6.0
EVEMon v1.2.8.1385
FileZilla v3.3.0

Unique

Cool Edit Pro v2.00, Mousing over the sound wave and using scroll drops focus from anything else. Otherwise focused based.

SVN Automated Local Update

Summary

This short tutorial will get SVN to automatically grab any changes to a SVN repository for you at designated times. I use this so that each morning, I have a "what was changed" report, without the monotonous select all folders and ask for an update. You will need TortoiseSVN installed, and running Windows for this script to run correctly.

The Tutorial

Start by copying this base script into TextPad (or your text editor of choice):

@echo off

cls
echo == Initiating system instance variables...
echo. -- Setting the variables...

:: Here you need to make some changes to suit your system.
set SOURCE=CHANGEME!
set SVN=C:\Program Files\TortoiseSVN\bin

:: Unless you want to modify the script, this is enough.

echo. %SOURCE%
echo. %SVN%
echo. ++ Done setting variables.
echo.
echo == Updating source from SVN
echo. -- Running update...
"%SVN%\TortoiseProc.exe" /command:update /path:"%SOURCE%"
echo. ++ Done.

echo. -- Cleaning up...
set SOURCE=
set SVN=
echo. ++ Done.

Edit the SOURCE's CHANGEME to a directory that you could normally right-click and select "SVN Update". This address can be grabbed with a quick copy paste of the address bar when you have navigated to that folder in Windows Explorer. Such an entry should appear as so:

set SOURCE=E:\My Files\My Work\SuperSecretProject

Save that script as "SVNUpdateMyFilesPlease.bat". Next step is to get that file to run at proper intervals of time. Navigate to: Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Scheduled Task -> Add Scheduled Task.

In the wizard, hit next, then browse for your bat file you just made (you did test it to be sure it works, right?). From there, I trust that you can figure out the rest of the wizard.

If you have multiple projects, you need to make multiple bat files and multiple schedules, right? Wrong. All on one line, keep adding each project behind the last with a "*" between each.

set SOURCE=E:\My Files\My Work\SuperSecretProject*E:\My Files\My Work\KindaSecretProject*E:\My Files\My Work\ProjectIKeepForJobSecuirty*E:\My Files\My Work\ProjectThatWillHelpMeRuleTheWorld*E:\My Files\My Work\MuhahahahahahahaProject

The ["%SVN%\TortoiseProc.exe" /command:update /path:"%SOURCE%"] line can edited to do many things, such as close the update window when there were no errors, conflicts or merges.

%SVN%\TortoiseProc.exe" /command:update /path:"%SOURCE%" /closeonend:3

A list of what each closeonend:# does can be found here.

Credit Where Credit is Due

The script that makes this possible was written by varl from stackoverflow.com. The multiple files in one line for windows command line was learned from this random "U B" fellow.

Grabbing Dews from a Fridge

As I walk off with the first can of Dew, it doesn't seem very cold, so I put it back and grab the other one. It feels much colder, and therefore, is the right one.

I can't help but think that my time holding the first can makes my fingers colder, giving the illusion that the second can is colder. I fear I'll never find the right can the first time.

(We only keep 2 cans in the fridge at a time, and replace them as we grab them. With three drinkers in the house, from time to time, they are both warm.)