Installing Windows Themes WITHOUT the Use of Third-Party Bloatware

Normally in Windows XP, you can’t use third-party themes because well, it’s Microsoft and they want to control the entire user experience in Windows so that they can turn a buck off of it.

Sure, you could TRY using third-party applications like StyleXP, WindowBlinds, FlyAKiteOSX, or even replace Windows’ default shell altogether, but each one of those solutions invariably leads to either compatibility problems, or they make a tasty snack of your system’s resources. A better alternative, in my opinion, is this: Hack the Windows theme engine to allow for third-party visual styles.

Okay, Okay, I know that sounds complicated, and to be honest, it probably is. Which is why someone else had the courtesy to take care of this for us and provide a hacked version of uxtheme.dll (the Windows Theme Engine) that will allow you to use third-party themes. However, a simple copy-and-paste won’t work here, you’ll just get an error saying the file is in use. So you need Replacer, a command-line script that safely replaces system library files.

Altogether, the process is rather simple:

1. Download the hacked uxtheme.dll for your version of windows.
2. Download, unzip and run Replacer
3.  ???
4. Profit.

Once you have everything hacked, just reboot and start downloading themes!

To install the themes, just unzip them to Windows’ Themes folder (C:\Windows\Resources\Themes) and apply them in the Appearances tab of the Display Properties Control Panel applet.

A couple of sites I personally recommend for finding themes are themeXP.org and InterfaceLift. If you have any other theme sites (non-WindowBlinds, for obvious reasons) feel free to link ‘em in the comments.

Guitar Hero: Aerosmith – Epic Fail or Huge Success?

Yesterday we found out about the latest installment in the Guitar Hero franchise, Guitar Hero: Aerosmith.

No, its not Guitar Hero 4. No, its not Guitar Hero: Rock the 90s. Its Guitar Hero: Aerosmith edition, meaning it only features one particular band.

The announcement angered many people and made some change their pants, but at the end of the day, is it a good idea? I’m not talking about an Aerosmith version of the game, but the idea of one band having its own version of Guitar Hero.

Whenever we find out about a new GH, the first questions to pop in are “Whats the track listing?, Which bands are in?”but what if it was only one band? I came up with two possibilities, lets just brand them A and B.

A) You love the band and will buy the game the day it comes out so you can worship and jam out to a large portion of their songs. Huge Success.

B) You hate/don’t give a damn about the band and this game does nothing to change your life. Epic Fail.

This game can be targeted towards an entirely different audience. Audience A (the current audience) looks forward to the “variety pack” edition of Guitar Hero. They just love music and this is their fix. But Audience B might just like to play songs from one particular band.

When “One” by Metallica was announced for GHIII, many people wondered, why not Enter Sandman? Fade to Black? well if a Metallica edition came out, that problem would be solved!

So at the end of the day, is this really a bad idea? Honestly, think about it. As long as the game has at least 30 tracks, the price is justifiable. Keep in mind that every downloadable song goes for about $2 bucks a pop. 2 x 30? Exactly. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still not sold 100% on the idea, but it might be the beginning of a whole new deal for Activision.

Feel free to comment and leave your opinions!

- JC Magnus

The Dark Side Of The Pokeball

I bet when you were little, you were so eager to find out if the rumor of a banned Pokemon episode was really out there.
Now, we’re all grown up, and here I am, talking about them!

This past week I got my wisdom teeth out, being bedridden has allowed me to use my time to do some research. It started with a conversation with my partner in crime Brian about the seizure episode. Which in turn Pikachu was the one that caused the flashing that poor Porygon got blamed for, moving on. Here is a run down of the banned pokemon episodes that I have searched the interweb for.

1. The Ice Cave.
This is a case of that buzzkill mom. A woman named Carol Weatherford caught a glimpse of the pokemon Jynx. She then went to unleash the fury upon Japanese cartoon creators everywhere. She wrote an essay pointing out how Jynx and a Dragonball character Mr. Popo, are ‘blackfaced’ Blackfaced is a stereotypical way of depicting people of African descent (ie black skin, big pink lips.) The Japanese saw nothing wrong with this, quite possibly because there aren’t a lot of African people in Japan! So of course, Nintendo in the North American division freaked the f#$k out. Let me ask you this, have you seen any Jynx merchandise? Didn’t think so. All the Jynx merchandise was pulled off the shelves. She was even recoloured purple in the video games. The episode ‘The Ice Cave’ was about Jynx. So there was too much of her to edit out, so they totally banned the episode. Talk about not giving African Americans fair treatment, the episode where a Pokemon resembles an African gets scrapped!
Another reason it was banned was because the flu was going around in this episode. At the time, the whole SARS issue had everyone in fear. Not good, so scrapped.

2. Electric Solider Porygon.
Yeah we all know the deal. Red lights, blue lights, 700 seizures. 700 injured kids, not good, episode banned. NEXT!

3. Dratinis Legend.
So in the Red, Blue and Yellow games. There was the the Safari zone. The warden in these games was an old man who lost his teeth. In the anime, he was clearly the opposite. Kaiza was an old grouchy bastard. This episode explores two things, guns and torture. Kaiza proceeds to point a gun (looks like a magnum) at Ash and gangs heads! Then later on, He is captured by Rocket Dan and tortured with Meowths song, with a gun to his head. Kaiza did give in, but we all know the day was saved and whatnot later on. Finally Kaiza then shoots at Rocket Dan. This episode was also removed largely due to the Columbine Massacre.

4. Holiday At Aopuruko
One word. TRANNY! Don’t get me wrong I love trannies, I’ve encounter a few at my old job. But lets get to the point. James from Team Rocket dresses up to enter a beauty contest. In doing so, he dons a pair of inflatable fake boobies. And then proceeds to inflate them into HUGE fake boobies, and flaunt them in front of Misty. It was later aired, but with all of James scenes taken out.

5. Dojoach vs Namazun!
In this episode its harmless, Ash and the gang on their journey get caught in an earthquake caused by Whiscash. They then team up with a Pokemon trainer to get rid of the Whiscash. This was going to air on November 4th 2004, but unfortunately about a week before, there was a huge earthquake in Japan. Once again to similar to reality, so not shown.

6. A Scare In The Air/Spirits In The Sky.
Since 9/11 many things have had to be cut out. The title was the first thing to go. Then a Tentacruel is destroying buildings while Rocket Dan is shooting some down with a rocket launcher.

So there it is! My little list of banned Pokemon episodes. If I forgot anything or if there are any corrections, please feel free to comment!

EEEpc Web Cam Review (with Pictures)

I’ve owned an EEEpc for about… hmm maybe two months now, and its been one of the best purchases I’ve made in a long time. Overall, it does everything I need it to do. Browse, watch videos, write documents, etc. its a great basic laptop, but I’m not here to do a full review about it, (maybe in the future) I’m here to talk about one of its features, the Web Cam.

Most of the EEEpc models, come with a built-in 0.3 megapixel camera, which gets the job done and works pretty well. I’ve used for Skype chats, taking personal pictures, even taking some snap shots around Puerto Rico… which is kind of hard to do seeing as I have to turn the laptop around to take the picture… which needless to say makes me look weird.

The camera is capable of taking (near) crystal clear pictures, but it HAS to be in the perfect setting (lighting, next to no movement, etc.) but even when in motion (as seen in my pictures below) the pictures look very, very good for such a low spec cam.

The two issues that you might encounter while using are:

1) Lighting. The camera will often get confused and might turn into a weird color for a few moments. It might think its too bright, it might think its too dark, so one thing you want to make sure while using it is to keep it in just one area with natural lighting… it seems to hate light bulbs as the quality definitely drops.

2) Speed. Now I don’t know if this is an issue with the camera or the EEEpc’s memory, but the camera will shift speeds pretty often. Sometimes it will go at live speeds, letting you take pictures, even while in motion, and still have them be clear. However, sometimes it will go at near slow-mo speeds, making it almost impossible to snap a good one for the memories.

Overall, the camera does what its supposed to do, take good pictures and get the job done. This will by no means wow anyone with amazing quality, but it will be impressive to see how it can take some pretty detailed pictures from such a low-cost budget Web Camera.

Verdict: Another great feature from the EEEpc. Must buy (the EEEpc) for people on a budget, college student or casual web browser that want an ultra-portable laptop.

Note: I just want to say that the pictures uploaded onto the Flickr account taken with the EEEpc, have been slightly altered (made brighter). I talked about the brightness issues above, hence me raising the brightness on them.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/14834615@N05/

The first picture is unaltered. Images labeled “0208**” were taken with the EEEpc Web Cam. Enjoy!

Social Security: An Oxymoron?

I find it interesting that so many social networking websites do not support Full-Stream SSL. by Full-Stream, I mean even past the login page, your session is still encrypted. Am I the only one who sees the massive security blunder in having sites where you share large amounts of personal data between people totally open to anyone with a copy of Wireshark? Surely not, I’ve heard others talk about it before. Hell, I’ve even heard other industry wags like Leo Laporte discussing it. And while we’re on the topic, why does a browser as powerful as Firefox not come standard with a feature that watches for sites who have a secure HTTP session available and use that as a preferred method for browsing that site??

Have people really become this complacent and lackadaisical about information security that they’re willing to just hand over their information to any technologically-inclined teenager who happens to be sitting next to them in a Starbucks??

And for whom do we place blame with in this matter? Is it the responsibility of webmasters and developer teams for sites like MySpace and Facebook to step up and start offering a more secure site? Should it fall on the heads of the average user to have to constantly fret and worry over who can see their information? Or is there ultimately a balance that needs to be achieved between the site’s staff and their clientele?

Personally, I think there should be more of a balance, however I also believe that while yes, users should be careful, they are not always the most knowledgeable, so far better to let those who are handle the situation. However, I’d love to hear all of your opinions, so please feel free to leave a comment.

Metal Gear Solid: The (Must Buy) Essential Collection

So theres one thing that I want to get out of the way here so people know, I am a big fan of Metal Gear Solid, (as I see fellow blogger Kenny is too) so whenever there is anything new MGS-related coming out, I can’t help but get excited, and this is something to definitely be excited about.

Metal Gear Solid: The Essential Collecion, comes with all 3 of the previous MGS games, Metal Gear Solid 1 (PS1), Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance (PS2) and Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence (PS2), so not only are you getting three great games for one great price ($29.99), two of them are special editions as Substance and Subsistence include additional content (such as the original Metal Gear games).

If you love MGS and want to relive the memories , or you’ve never played MGS and want to catch up… BUY this once it hits stores on March 18th.

KDE 4.0.1: A Step In The Right Direction?

Yesterday, Trolltech announced the release of KDE 4.0.1, the much-needed update to KDE 4.0. So what can we expect from this update? To be honest, not a whole hell of a lot. To their credit though, they HAVE managed to fix a few of the bugs that plagued the initial release.

KWin is a little smoother and less crashy, Plasmoids are now a little more flexible in terms of how you can manipulate them, and the K Menu Plasmoid (or KickOff, as it’s now called) is far less buggy and has gone through a bit of a visual tweaking since 4.0. Other than that, I have to say, it’s still very much a work in progress.

Conflict: Denied Ops – Demo Review

I review the recently released demo for Conflict: Denied Ops, in the video below. Is it good, bad, horrible? Only one way to find out… watch the video!

Metal Slug, The Arcades, The Memories

I rented Metal Slug Anthology (PS2) the other day and relived some of my fond memories of playing those games back at the pizza place.

I was originally going to buy the collection when it was released, but I just never really got around to it. So when I went to the rental place and saw it, I picked it up right away.

MS Anthology comes with 7 Metal Slug games(Metal Slug 1, 2, X, 3, 4, 5 and 6), so it gives you plenty to play with, and will entertain many MS fans (like myself) for a good while. One might say 7 games of more-or-less the same thing might get boring after a while, but play with a friend in co-op mode, and its like the arcades have become popular again.

For those that never played Metal Slug (and why haven’t you?), its a scrolling shooter, like a Contra one might say… minus the dying every 5 seconds. You would find this game on nearly every Neo Geo arcade machine (the ones that had like 4 games on ‘em), and you could sit down and play it since the machines (well most of them) would had chairs with them. The Neo Geo machines would also have King of Fighters, Samurai Shodown, Knights of the Round (oh how I loved you) and many other great classics.

I was always a huge fan of going and playing shooters, fighting games and all of that good stuff, and its just a shame that is has died (in North America at least). I had a routine after a while where I would head over to a Time Out (arcade place) and play Tekken Tag Tournament, for a long long while against other people right after school. Me and this other guy would end up playing each other on a daily basis, just playing quarter after quarter… my mom must still be paying off those bank loans… we played so much to the point where the guy at the arcade would lower the price of the machine from 2 coins to 1 after a certain hour, since we were the only ones playing, those were fun times.

I headed over to another (and probably the only one left) Time Out about a week ago, to see what was still there to play. Most of the things that I would play (House of the Dead 1, 2, Time Crisis, Marvel vs Capcom 2, Tekken, etc.) were still there, event though some actually cost like 4 coins to play… F that! I ended up playing some Area 51 (Shooter), which I would play a lot when I was a kid and Marvel vs Capcom 2 for a little while. That was a good trip down memory lane, but also sad because it sucks that the arcade era is basically gone. As fun as it is to play arcade-like titles at home (Guitar Hero, etc.), it doesn’t have that feeling that you got when you went over to the machine, put the coin in and had a blast.

Playing with/against random people (not online) and watching others play at the arcades… nothing can replace that.

-JC

As a little bonus, here’s a video of me playing a level in Metal Slug 6: