No more hotlinking!

Other | Posted by Zhooibaal
Feb 08 2008

I was browsing my site stats yesterday and found out that the greatest part of the bandwidth this site uses up is due to hotlinking. Hotlinking without permission is bandwidth theft and therefore forbidden. Unfortunatly I can’t find the website anymore that had it all explained how you can even take legal action against hotlinkers and scrapers because I flushed my cache to test the hotlink protection I installed and ofcourse I forgot to bookmark the page. Anyway, anyone who tries to hotlink now will get this image:

no hotlinking! NOT ANYMORE!

This way other people will be able to see where the original picture that was supposed to be there came from and the other webmaster is being called a cheap son of a pig and he might be offended. Ofcourse I don’t give a shit about him/her being offended, because that’s the point of the little text.

Celebrate Carnival

Other | Posted by Zhooibaal
Feb 07 2008

First off, for anyone who doesn’t know what Carnival is, check this page. I directly linked it to the part where the Dutch form of Carnival (called Carnaval here) is discussed which is obviously the most important section of the page for obvious reasons.

Anyway, I’ve been celebrating Carnival and I (as well as my mom and a female friend, yes, female) have taken a few pictures. Not a lot, just a few and I decided to post them here for the entire world to enjoy. There’s nothing shocking to be seen in these pictures, but I think they are all well worth a look.

First off with the pictures that I have taken and seriously, this is all of them, not nearly as many as I had planned to take.
CarnavalCarnavalCarnavalCarnavalCarnavalCarnavalCarnavalCarnavalCarnavalCarnavalCarnavalCarnavalCarnavalCarnavalCarnavalCarnavalCarnaval

It’s just a shame that I don’t have the pictures that my mom has taken yet… But I’ll post those as soon as I get my hands on them, but for now, here are the pics that Leonie has taken (her being the girl in pic number 13 above).

Carnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by LeonieCarnaval by Leonie

And that’s it for now.

S40 based Über Zombie Nokia Theme

Other | Posted by Zhooibaal
Feb 07 2008

You might remember Über Zombie

If you don’t remember, I suggest you download and play it before you read on.

Anyway, About half a year ago I got this pretty new little phone. A Nokia 6300 and I think it’s pretty cool. The only downside being the dull default theme. So after all this time I found out how I can create my own theme and I created an Über Zombie theme. Here are some shots taken from the theme editor.

Über Zombie ThemeÜber Zombie Theme
Über Zombie ThemeÜber Zombie ThemeÜber Zombie Theme

Ofcourse everyone who has ever played Über Zombie loves it, so those people will probably also love this theme, so I’ve been so kind to put it up for you all to download. Just click here to download it. It should work on any Symbian S40 based Nokia cell phone. On www.nokia.com you can pbobably find whether you phone is S40 based or not.

MyMiniCity

Other | Posted by Zhooibaal
Dec 16 2007

Pingwing now has it’s own little town on the internet called Pingwing and it currently has a population of 1. This can be increased if anyone clicks the following link.

link

This is going to be the best city on the net!

X-Rotor series Gyrotor

Other | Posted by Zhooibaal
Nov 28 2007

Well… What about that? A post? No way!

Well, this is the deal for today: I got myself a Gyrotor. The full name of the contraption is X-Rotor series Gyrotor and was made by Silverlit Electronics. As you can see in the image below, the Gyrotor is a helicopter. A radio controlled helicopter to be exact, which is really fun to play around with.

Gyrotor

As you can see it looks pretty cool, this is the exact model that I had (yes… had). I haven’t taken any pictures of it myself, but this gives you quite an impression of what it looks like. Besides looking cool it flies pretty well. The controls are responsive and it’s not too hard to keep it floating around, but that’s all it does, fload around. Because you don’t really have an option to make it fly forward or backward, you don’t have very precise control of it’s actions. The only options you have are up/down (throttle) and left/right (turning), but you don’t have a forward/backward control. This means that you can only make it fly forward or backward by increasing or decreasing the throttle while turning, which makes it pretty tough to fly it in tight spaces allthough the Gyrotor is primarily designed to fly indoors.

There is however still one cool little feature left: the nose light. It has a blue and a red led in it’s nose which both blink while the Gyrotor is being operated, but all in all that’s about the best feature this helicopter has…

The box said that the flying time of one charge was about 5 minutes, but in fact it was about 10 minutes, which is good. But the charging time was also considerably longer than stated on the box which was about 40 to 45 minutes instead of 25.

But the worst of it all was that after 2 days and a little flying the thing broke. The rotor someone got detached from the engine. So I returned it and got a new one, but also this one broke after very little time as well… This time the rotor got severely unalligned causing the helicopter to dramatically fly to left and crash badly and then it wouldn’t fly properly anymore.

All in all, this product is pretty crappy and you shouldn’t buy one. It’s pretty fragile for it’s price and claim to be very durable, this product sucks. Only the remote seems quite durable and functions really well and it has cool leds on it, but that’s it, stay away from these things (and probably any other mini helicopters like it) and spend a little more on a better quality helicopter with better control options and have fun with one of those. The Gyrotor was a funny gadget for the little time that it lasted, but I think I’m going to save up some money to get a helicopter that won’t just fall apart.

Site partially broken

Uncategorized | Posted by Zhooibaal
Nov 13 2007

I have a few updates planned for the near future and I’m actually planning on posting a little more often in the future. But as before, I do need stuff to write about if I’m going to post anything and that stuff to write about appears lacking to say the least. Anyway, that’s not what this short post is about.

Ever since I moved to the .eu domain from the .us domain, the site has been partially broken. It was untill about 2 weeks ago that I noticed that something was wrong. Images on older posts were not showing up and I noticed that the links to them were wrong. They were referring to directories that didn’t exist or the relative links were broken.

I have now fixed all those broken links and all should be ok now. Except for 4 posts. 4 posts still contain pictures that aren’t showing up, but that’s because they are simply missing. I should have them around somewher, probably on SlashDev, but I currently have access only to Centurion.

Which brings to even another points… I still have to make a page for Centurion and edit the pages for SlashDev and Tiger…

Xinput Driver for Microsoft Common Controller

PC, PC gaming | Posted by Zhooibaal
Sep 19 2007

This is just a quick note for anyone who is trying to get his/her xbox 360 (or compatible) controller to work on Windows XP SP1 or SP2. It doesn’t matter whether you have Home or Professional edition, or 32 or 64 bit for that matter. The driver that you can download from Microsoft.com does not work. Whatever you do, it keeps giving you a message that only says “the installation did not complete”.

There is, however, a solution for this problem. There are two of them to be exact that don’t involve any hacking or cracking or anything nearly that hard to do.

  1. Download a driver package from Microsoft Hardware
    Just choose the kind of hardware, which is “controllers” in this case, then choose the kind of controller, then your operating system (Windows, Windows, Windows or Windows) and last you choose the language of your operating system and there you go, you get a download that is considerably larger than the one you get from Microsoft.com when using a search and I guess that that has a reason.
  2. Use Windows Update to get the driver, worked for me.

I haven’t actually tried option 1, but various forums informed me that this works, but simply using Windows Update is still the easiest way to aquire Microsoft drivers.

Anyway, I hope this helps anyone who might stumble across my blog while searching for a solution to get his/her xbox 360 controller to work on Windows XP.

I’m not sure why you can also download a Vista driver from the list on Microsoft Hardware, because Vista has native support for these controllers, beit wired or wireless.

FOJ Community Mod video

PC, PC gaming | Posted by Zhooibaal
Sep 02 2007

My friend Michiel “NecroDOME” Gijbels (the same guy as I made Über Zombie with, together with even another one) and I have been fooling around with the Flatout Joint (FOJ) Community Mod for Flatout 2 and all this jumping, crashing and flying around resulted in the following video which I uploaded on Youtube for you all to watch:

FOJ Community Mod video

The video is a bit long, but it contains some pretty neat crazy jumps and crashes. All footage is from 2 player sessions. I was using “DooM” as my ingame nickname and Michiel was using “1337 z0r” as his nickname.

The New Stuff Chronicles #6: Meet Centurion

PC, The new stuff chronicles | Posted by Zhooibaal
Aug 24 2007

Here we go with the 6th episode of the New Stuff Chronicles. In the previous episode I informed you about Fluffy and now it’s time for another computer to be announced. Only big difference is that it’s a desktop instead of a laptop this time.

Meet Centurion:

Like Tiger I named this one after a part of it. Tiger was named after it’s mainboard which is a Tyan Tiger MPX, but Centurion is named after it’s case: a Cooler Master Centurion 534.

Here are the specs:

Type: desktop
Name: Centurion
Model: self built
Operating system: Microsoft Windows Vista Business
Processor: Intel Core2 Duo E6550
Motherboard: Asus P5K
Memory: 2.0 GB DDR2 800
Video: nVidia GeForce 8600GT
Sound: Integrated High Definition Audio
Harddisk: 1x WD Caviar 500GB (7200RPM)
PSU: Spire 500W ultra silent with blue light
Optical: 1x Lite-On DVD+/-RW-DL
LAN: 1x integrated gigabit ethernet (1000mbit)
External connections: 6x USB 2.0 on the back, 2x USB 2.0 on the front, 1x firewire (IEEE1345) on the back, 1x firewire on the front, 1x PS2, 1x eSata, 7.1 HD audio jacks, 1x gigabit LAN, 2x DVI
Extra: Broadcom 802.54g wireless network adaptor

Like my other PCs, Centurion will soon have it’s own page on this site alongside Slashdev, Tiger, Fluffy, Stoomketel and Oud Brik.

Centurion’s purpose is to replace Slashdev as my main gaming PC back at home, while Slashdev will be relocated to my appartment in Heerlen where it will replace Tiger which will get a new role as home server. “Then why not put Centurion at your appartment?” you might ask. Well, the answer is simple: gaming power is too inviting to play games. While Slashdev is still more than adaquate to my gaming needs, Centurion is quite a bit more powerfull. I just needed a machine that is a little better on desktop performance than Tiger is and I want to use Tiger as a server. I also want a good gaming PC back at home where I am during the weekends so I can play any game I want while I’m there.

That’s about all I have to tell about Centurion at this time.

Über Zombie

Other, PC gaming, Videogames | Posted by Zhooibaal
Aug 24 2007

Über Zombie

Well, this has actually nothing to do with my previous post in which I announced an upcoming update about some stuff, but this is interesting as well.

This post is about a computer game that I made together with two friends in 48 hours and 10 minutes including sleeping hours. It is called Über Zombie and it’s all about killing as many zombies als possible without getting killed yourself. You can play the game with up to three people on one pc using the keyboard and two gamepads/joysticks. There is no story whatsoever, but who needs a story for a pointless zombie slaughtering fest anyway?

The graphics are created by me with the exception of the blood particle texture, which was made by Michiel “NecroDOME” Gijbels. All sounds were created by me and cost nothing but a few plastic bags. The programming credits go to Michiel and Frank “Mad Woody” van Gent. Here are a few screenshots as well as some video’s that were recorded using FRAPS.

It all started with the idea of creating a complete computer game in two days. It turned out that it took about 10 minutes longer than that, but that doesn’t matter, the point is that we have proven that it is very well possible to create a very fun and challenging game in just two days. Here is the first screenshot that was taken. It’s a very early graphical test:

Über Zombie early test

Now I have a video for you. This video shows an early test as well, but not as early as the first screenshot. In this version it was allready possible to shoot zombies, but not much more than that:

Über Zombie Alpha

Now come a few less early shots, but still not the final version. In this version all players look the same, and the zombies aren’t spawned properly in the map, but the basic gameplay in the same as in the final version:
Über Zombie beta Über Zombie beta

The next video is an almost final version video. The players have different colors so it’s less confusing with which one you’re playing, but the zombies aren’t spawning yet how they should be spawning:

Über Zombie beta

And last, but not least: 3 final version screenshots and a final version gameplay video:

And now some linky linky:
Download Über Zombie from Necrodome.homeftp.net
Visit the Über Zombie page on GGE