Things wot I've learnt

So, I managed to be a real little bandwidth whore and downloaded the Vista Beta 2 and installed it on my main PC, replacing 2003 Server finally.

However, after everything was up and running, it was all a big sluggish, so I installed the latest nvidia drivers (88.61).
This still didn't solve anything.

3D performance was okay, but playing movies and just generally using the default Vista glass enabled theme was deathly slow.

After a little bit of messing around, it turns out that installing nforce drivers 87.45 afterwards (by updating the drivers via device manager) makes things work fabulously.

Exxxcceeellent.

Today I learnt that the chocolate around Magnum ice cream is just like Mr. Hanky:
even if a small piece falls on your white shirt, and you simply shake it off, it leaves a nice brown stain where it stood.

Tastes better though.

Some time ago, before the days of me hating just about everything around me, I read in the back of a British computer magazine - PC Zone - an article written by a guy who was on a flight watching Robocop, and they had changed all the naughty words into some rather stupid ones, "performed" by "impressionists".

eg:
"...he's an AIRHEAD" (in a totally different tone)
"...silly mother fudders"

On my recent self-deportation exercise, I ended up on Emirates, which is awesome in that you get video on demand, and the movies are semi-recentish.

I started watching Lord of War, and got presented with the usual "been modified for content and to fit your screen" message.

Then came one of those gangsta stand-off scenes where one person has offended another, so the offendee pulls out a gun, prompting offenders side-kick to pull out their gun as they stand and snarl at each other.

The beauty of this scene was:

"FORGET YOU!"
"NO! FORGET YOU!"

I think I DOS'd the onboard server rewatching that a bazillion times laughing like the schoolgirl I am.
*sigh*

So.

Seeing the GameTrak controller on TV inspired my "brain" to come up with a whole range of "WOW, NOW I CAN xxxxx" along the lines of:
1) actually be capable of placing objects in 3D editors... _where I want_
2) hold a sword properly-ish (at least until the Revolution Wii comes out)
3) etc.

Alas, upon plugging it into my PC, it _seemed_ to work, but in RealWorld Golf, it kept saying "please plug a GameTrak controller in", but everytime I moved, it went away... so I thought, aw sod, there's a broken wire somewhere...

But no!

It was all down to USB power "management".

So, to switch it off:
a) Go to device manager
b) expand the "Universal Serial Bus controllers" section
c) for each "USB Root Hub", double click it, and go to the "Power Management" tab.
d) Turn off/uncheck: "Allow the computer to turn off the device to save power"
e) Proceed to "play" RealWorld Golf.

See, when I got my Mac Mini, and I saw how wonderfully it went to sleep, and how quickly it woke up (bless it), I figured I'd try turn my Windows box into a bundle of joy through the first world-ness of power management.

My bad.

And everytime I moved, it woke the device up, hence it was detected again...

Note: this fixed quite a few USB issues I was having. Idiot.

Stop interferring in other peoples lives and live yours instead.

Because I have no talent and/or patience to learn complex 3D packages, I decided I'd make my own, because, you know, it'd probably be faster than me learning how to read manuals.

So once I had my disgusting prototype up, I needed a way to render the movies.

Enter the RenderMan.

Unfortunately, due to my insane "special place" thing for it, the movie maker was in Delphi, and there weren't any Delphi bindings for RenderMan... so I had to make my own.

Sadly, not understanding the full RenderMan spec, I converted what I could in the C header, covering all my needs, nuking some of the more require-thought functions.

So, here's a semi-complete Delphi RenderMan binding with an example.

Right.
So I went ahead and bought an XBox 360 controller for my PC, seeing as I've never had a joypad for my PC, and figured this would be good practice for when the 360 is actually affordable.

Anyway, got home, booted up my Widows 2003 server that I won, and sure enough, on boot it detected the controller, but couldn't find the driver. So I promptly went through the usual double questioness of the MS site, and got the English drivers from here:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/C/8/AC8CA87C-4F5B-49D6-9E0A-C0BBA2E96663/XBOX360Eng.exe

But alas, oh woe and all that, the installation dialog said I *have* to have XP with either service pack 1 or 2.

However, it did create the following folder:
C:\Program Files\XBox 360 Controller for Windows Software

The interesting part in it is:
C:\Program Files\XBox 360 Controller for Windows Software\XBox360\Setup\Xbox-360-CC-x86-ENU.EXE

Drop to a DOS box, go to C:\Program Files\XBox 360 Controller for Windows Software\XBox360\Setup\ and run:
Xbox-360-CC-x86-ENU.EXE /X:extracted

After it says it's extracted all the files, go to device manager, find the controller icon with the question mark over it, update the driver, and point it to:
C:\Program Files\XBox 360 Controller for Windows Software\XBox360\Setup\extracted

After it's done its thing, you'll now be able to play games using your spiffy new controller.

But.

Rumble doesn't work for now, gotta figure that out still, but -hey-, it's a start...
[EDIT] Turns out I'm not the only person rumbleless:
http://www.mattbrett.com/archives/2005/11/xbox-360-controller-for-windows-review/