We will never speak of this again.

In order to recover my deleted start menu icons I wrote an application in C# to help. It scans the various “Program Files” directories (or any others you specify) for .exe files and presents them in a list. You select the files you want and edit the default folder/name options and press “add selected” and the program automatically creates all the folders and short cuts in the start menu.

This application only works with Windows Vista.

In case anyone else runs into this problem, the app can be downloaded below.

Start Menu (Re)Builder Version: 1.0

This blog of mine gets quite a lot of spam – and has been recently. In order to protect it from such senseless attacks I run Spam Karma 2 on top of Wordpress’s own anti-spam tool. Currently – between both systems – I have a total 33,750 of spams logged (40 days later the total is 34,459). I recently upgraded wordpress to the latest version and I was having some problems configuring Spam Karma – which lead me to notice the spam count.

And now for something completely different…

Hopefully, within the next two weeks, I’ll have some interesting updates for the XNA engine I’m writing. Work has stopped as other things have taken priority – hopefully it will resume shortly. Maybe within a month I’ll have an interesting app for everyone to play with. Only time will tell.

Finally; last.fm!

• Intel Core i7 260
• GeForce GTX 260
• 4GB DDR3 1333
• ASUS P6T Deluxe
• 2×250GB SATA HDDs
• 850W Modular Powersupply
• HUGE Case with 2 25cm fans

It is fast. I am happy.

I’ve been working on Sigurd again although I’ve taken a break in recent days. Schools is starting up on the third and HCCS (which I totally forgot about) saw a massive influx in users and my code seems to have having problems coping with the load. Sadly, I’m not surprised. I rely heavily on the Facebook API to gather user information and the direct-PHP API is slow as balls on my host. I should fix it but I really don’t have the motivation at the moment. -_- Also need to finish summer reading, the books were decent this year Ishmael and The Power of One. No objections – just lazy.

On an entirely unrelated note – this website lacks any semblance of decent design. I, and I’d assume many others (from reading comments and what not), instinctively looked that the bottom of the page for the horizontal scroll bar to center all the images. This, however, was not there. Further, if you look at the taskbar on the image of the Windows computer at the top you’ll notice an interesting page loaded in IE. [Reddit]

Never just accept.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1656880303867390173

I split it into two classes. One to parse the site, and one to build the image. The image class is a php GD interface. The UTStatsDB parser is a different class. You enter the ID of the player you want, and the URL of the site pages, and it gathers some data about the player. A download link to the classes will be at the bottom of this post. First, heres and example of how to use them:

$thisID = 7;
$statObj = new statsParser($thisID, ‘http://www.fostats.com/fostats/playerstats.php?player=’, ‘http://www.fostats.com/fostats/index.php?stats=players’);

// Check stats
$mRank = $statObj->playerMissionRank;
if ($statObj->playerMissionRank == 0)
$mRank = ‘N/A’;

$wRank = $statObj->playerWarRank;
if ($statObj->playerWarRank == 0)
$wRank = ‘N/A’;

// Build Array
$text[0] = ‘Player: ‘ . $statObj->playerName;
$text[1] = ‘Total Kills: ‘ . $statObj->playerKills;
$text[2] = ‘Total Deaths: ‘ . $statObj->playerDeaths . ‘ KDR: ‘ . round($statObj->playerKills / $statObj->playerDeaths, 2);
$text[3] = ‘Mission Rank: ‘ . $mRank . ‘ War Rank: ‘ . $wRank;
$text[4] = ‘Overall Rank: ‘ . $statObj->playerOverallRank;
$totalText = 5;

// Make the image
$imageSys = new imgEditor(‘bgimg.png’, ”);
$imageSys->setFont(‘main.ttf’);
$imageSys->setSize(12);
$color[0] = 255;
$color[1] = 255;
$color[2] = 255;
$shade[0] = 150;
$shade[1] = 150;
$shade[2] = 150;

for ($iLoop2 = 0; $iLoop2 < $totalText; $iLoop2++)
$imageSys->addShadowText($text[$iLoop2], 5, 19 + (20 * $iLoop2), $color, $shade, 1);

$imageSys->outputToFile($thisID . ‘.png’, ‘./built_sigs/’);

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 United States. If you wish to use my work for the public (generate sigs/images for the public/more people than just yourself you must include “Generated using classes by Matt Razza” in the image you generate (or page if it’s just a stats page)). If it’s just for you, it’s not needed.

Download: Here

See the classes, and example code in action:

Global Warming is a threat to our current way of life, and could turn out posing a major crisis down the rode. The earth is warming and it most likely has some link to the emissions we put in the atmosphere. However, our emissions (CO2) are not the primary cause of the earth’s warming. This is a standard climate change we are witnessing, not a major human-caused problem. Reducing or even eliminating our emissions would be a great thing, it would slow down the warming and maybe not make them as extreme as they are going to be – doing this will not stop global warming. There is no evidence that proves this warming is caused by man and man only. There are no ice samples old enough that prove this. I understand people’s fear and the fact they want to act because they should. This should be taken care of. I just do not want people in my school telling me that I am waisting oil and melting the planet because I forgot to recycle a can. I do not need people thinking and telling me that if I do not take an interest in this and help presser officials with letters and e-mails like “they” are I am a bad person. I do not care what you are doing to fix this problem, I hope it’s something, but I do not need to hear about what you’re doing. Writing letters and driving hybrid cars does not make you a better person then me. You can think your perfect and smell your farts and live in your fake world but please, for the love of god, don’t tell me about it.

Another note: I recently got a cell phone, LG VX8300.

ServConv: A new version is out (build 99), download it here.