If your paranoid...

Hi,

tonight at midnight the new harry potter book comes out and already i have seen so much discussion about the book i was a bit worried about spoilers. I want to still be able to browse the internet but avoid seeing spoilers. I came across this:

http://userscripts.org/scripts/review/10689

(Just click install script)

you need to have firefox and greasemonkey installed for this to work:

here is greasemonkey : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748

and firefox is here: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

the script will simply replace all the keywords with "[ Text Removed ]"

thankyou to knetch for the script and greasemonkey for allowing it to work.

ENJOY YOUR READING

Redundant Software #1

This is the first post of this nature of mine so i will explain it:

i will ocasionally post a useless bit of software for your interest

I randomly came across this:

Embedded Video

http://3dmailbox.com

I downloaded and tested it and found the only thing it was useful for was comedy within a 5 minute stretch. After that i became incredibly bored with it

Robot Prevention

Most sites that require registration to access certain areas have robot prevention techniques that are quite simple in terms of their functionality to the user but can provide certain problems whilst browsing.


I myself get confused with colours such as green and red and sometimes have difficulty reading these images. It is also not clear how i should type them as some sites do not say if it is case sensitive. This is all very picky and doesnt affect the opinion of the site but i really do not like having to guess at letters and characters that i usually get wrong. When i do get them wrong the page usually refreshes clearing certain fields on the registration form. If this happens more than 3 times i usually give up with the site.

However there is one thing i really disagree with and that is this:

I apologise for the quality of the picture but you can see the box in the middle. Suddenly im having to do maths  to get into a site which is rediculous. whats more is that i am unsure how to type the answer in. Do i type it in words, or perhaps numbers themselves.

Soloution

I do have a soloution however and that is this:


What is this?
answer: apple

a robot would have great difficulty deciding what this is but we can do it in an instant. This however is still confusing becuase people may type in hand or use capitals so apropriate images must be used and the case in which to enter them clearly shown

Screenshots

As the internet grows more and more freeware games are cropping up and the competition for my interest and time grows stronger. One of the factors that makes me choose what game to download and what game to ignore is how it presents its screenshots.

Screenshots are the window into the actual gameplay of the game and make my decision easier to make but only if they are done correctly, there are a couple of issues that i am seeing on an ever-increasing basis:

1. Screenshots are NOT Screenshots.



This is a classic example of a screenshot not being a screenshot. To me screenshots should be actual ingame pictures i should be able to see:

• who the player is
• the GUI
• other people,objects etc.

The above is not a case of this there is no aparent GUI in view i can only see one ship which may not be mine. I have no idea what the actual gameplay is this is a pure graphical screenshot that is, to be put frank, showing off.



This is a proper screenshot as it shows ingame footage and all of the things the other one lacked. This is also from the same game as the first and shows that it can be done.

2. Screenshots are impossible to find.

screenshots should be the easiest thing to find on a website a nice clear "screenshots" hyperlink takes me straight to the place i want to be. On many games, more commonly in MMORPGs, the screenshots link is placed in a flash file which is nested in another catorgory ranging(from experience) in name from:

• Community
• Game guide
• Media
• Features
• Gallery
• and many more...

The point is. If i cannot find them then i will not download it because all that happens is the website with its flashy nature shows off pre-rendered graphics and i download the game to find its actually a waste of my time.


SO ALL COMPANIES OUT THERE PUT A DIRECT LINK ON THE HOMEPAGE OF YOUR SITE!

How much is 1 gold?

In the gaming world today many RPGs or MMORPGs have a need to make monsters drop random amounts of gold. This looks incredibly simple but is actually quite complex and not perfect. Take this example:

here i feature a screenshot from a popula MMORPG called "Diablo 2":

(level 3 assain by the name of "moo" if you must know)

In the above example i have killed 2 monsters with my character and they have dropped identical piles of gold in graphical terms. They are however 3 gold in difference. This is where the problem(well nigle really) lies. although it is not neccesary for this to be fixed it can cause a few scenarios where the user does not know which pile to pick up first.

The above probably works by setting a numerical range to a certain resource eg:
in the example above 1-50 = gold1.

this causes the above problem.

I currently cannot think of a solution :(

Rating Systems - Seven (7)

Ocasions arise when we all need guidance about what to watch on tv or what to buy or what to read. We have a number of resources freely avalible to give us this advice but sometimes it can be less than helpful.

One example of this is a Rating system or Poll about what people who went to a website thought of somthing. Below is a picture of the gateworld.net website poll system for an episode of a tv show:


This at first looks quite easy to get advice from but is actually verry unhelpful. The score is an average of all the scores from ANYONE thats voted. This gives only 1 number which is usually the same and in this case it is. I am unable to determine between episodes that i want to watch and ones that i might want to skip.

There is however a soloution which gives you more info in a graph style:


This shows you the number of people who voted for each score and is much easier to get information from. It is also fast at telling you the information you want. More sites should display their results in this way. Some already do.

NOTE: I am aware that if you click the view results button under the gateworld poll you can find more detailed data