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We live in a very exciting time for electronic gaming, computers are regularly packing more than 4 cores, video cards have never been bigger or better, and some of the best games of last year had enough content to occupy over 300 hours of your time.
Even more exciting is the power that console systems now offer, it would seem that pretty soon consoles will catch up with desktops, and all of this amazing power will be available for a fraction of the cost that it traditionally was.
Game designers are working to release new titles faster and faster, while simultaneously increasing the available content, improving character dialogue, bringing actual musicians for in game music, and even consulting real military personnel and historians to make sure that every little detail is just right.
Even more impressive is the rate at which games are blending online multiplayer and single player experiences.
It used to be just about fragging your friends or strangers in set matches, Unreal Tournament style, now it is about building communities of people who play in similar ways, trading in game items, dropping in to games to assist each other in co-op campaigns, and of course fragging your friends and strangers Unreal Tournament style.
However, for all of its polish and innovation, there are some games that I find myself thinking about from time to time, and even though Skyrim was a great experience, it has nothing on the lasting appeal of these 3 titles.
Rodent’s Revenge is a puzzle type game released in 1991, created by one man Christopher Lee Fraley and distributed in the Microsoft Entertainment Pack, it was an exciting game that had you as a mouse surrounded by deadly cats trying to push blocks to trap the cats, turning them into cheese which you can then eat for additional points.
With 50 levels and only 3 lives, it displayed the kind of difficulty that many older gamers will remember was very common in the 80’s and early 90’s.
I really enjoyed this game for a few reasons, which I will be kind enough to list below.
1. This game is really freaking hard.
Like really dang hard. You only get 3 lives and no continues, and when a cat touches you, you are dead.
Not only are there cats to look out for but there are balls of yarn that will bounce around at random and kill you, sink holes that you can fall into that will trap you until a cat comes around and eats you, and mouse traps that will, predictably, also kill you.
2. You need to be really creative in order to win.
You only have on offensive weapon in the war against the cats that is pushing blocks in order to trap them. No friendly predator missiles or magic shouts, only the ability to linearly move blocks in such a fashion that you protect yourself while herding those dang cats into a single square.
I feel like I should mention that at the higher levels there are immobile blocks that you cannot push, serving to disrupt your plans at the last second and getting you eaten.
3. There is no tutorial!
I remember the first time I played this game I had no instructions and no idea of what to do or what was going on.
There is a help file that explains the finer points of the game, but who reads those anyways?
No, it was up to 5 year old me to learn how to play an excruciatingly hard puzzle game trial and error style until I earned success.
That seemed to be a running theme of early games; good players were not made, but evolved by survival of the fittest until only the strong and skilled remained.
The real title of this game is “Conway’s Game of Life”, but I have only ever known it as Life.
This is a really interesting game that doesn’t even feel like a game at first.
You have a huge 2 dimensional grid and you place squares until you are ready to start the game and you press start.
After you press start your participation in the game is pretty much over, you watch your squares (which represent members of a population) live, reproduce, and die.
What I love about this game now and I didn’t understand when I was young is that this game is basically math.
The rules for the game are as follows:
Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbors dies, as if caused by under-population.
Any live cell with two or three live neighbors lives on to the next generation.
Any live cell with more than three live neighbors dies, as if by overcrowding.
Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbors becomes a live cell, as if by reproduction.
And with these very simply rules you can create a staggering amount of combinations doing all sorts of things, like the “Glider” which reproduces itself while simultaneously traveling across the map.
There are many known types of Oscillating patterns like the “Pulsar” which repeats an interesting pattern and will never fully die out.
There are many subtle yet captivating elements found in this game, from a simple smattering of pixels you can create infinite combinations and patterns’, watching complex systems emerge from the chaos is simple and satisfying, and you don’t need to be a mathematical genius to appreciate the game’s simple beauty.
SkiFree shipped with my ve
ry first desktop computer, a Packard Bell running Windows 3.1 for WorkGroups, so it will always be very dear to my heart for one simple reason.
It was the first game that I was actually afraid of.
SkiFree follows the trials and tribulations of an anonymous skier on his last journey down the mountain, depending on which direction you choose initially the game’s play style might be a tight series of slaloms, where you race for time, or an open expanse of mountain filled with ramps that you can hit for style points.
In either case, once you reach the end of the course the game gives you a score but does not stop.
Why? It is never explained, but I always imagined your skiing hero had some hot babes down at the shack that he really needed to get to, so he couldn’t stop to accept his prize in the competition that he was apparently a part of.
However you will never make it to the bottom of the hill, there will never be any hot babes.
There will be however, an abominable snowman.
Once you cross a certain distance after the finish line the snow monsters will emerge and will chase you relentlessly, if you hit a tree, fall down, or do anything other than ski as fast as your tiny pixel skis will take you, you will be caught by the snow monster and he will eat you.
After the feast he will pick his teeth with one of your bones and jump up and down on the screen in such a way as to mock you for even trying.
I hated that monster but I loved the game.
All of these titles have a place in my heart and even though my current PC is four hundred quadrillion times better than the machines they were designed for I continue to play them.
I appreciate their charm even though they do not have 32 Bit True Color, or any Anti-Aliasing options, no multiplayer, and no plot or “end” in the traditional sense.
I made up that back story about the skier, the game itself never gives you even the slightest hint for why there is snow monster on the mountain or why you are skiing, but I think that makes it even more fun.
These are games that never took themselves too seriously and got right to the point, they were about having fun and occupying your time.
More so than anything these games are truly unique, which is why decades later they are still considered fun enough to write about.
Have you ever setup your smart phone to connect to a POP3 and/or SMTP server only to get errors? You looked through your email providers’ documentation and spoke with their tech support only to have them tell you that the problem is not on their end.
Frustrating as it is, they are often right. The true culprit is typically your carrier. Often times they either restrict or obstruct certain ports. How to find if your Smart Phone is able to use these ports; you ask?
Luckily for Android users, there are some nifty free apps you can download and install to perform some port checks for you. The specific one I would like to point out is the Android Net Swiss Tool (this was tested using a Galaxy S3).
It’s very easy to use and comes in really handy when you’re wondering if the hot spot you are connected to or your phone carrier is obstructing specific ports.
Once you have Net Swiss Tool installed, tap the icon. You will see on the top a drop down list where you can choose Portscan TCP. You have two options on how you can define the ports. The first and easiest method is to tap on the Port List button. The second is to manually input the port numbers in the blank text box. When you manually type the ports you want to test, separate the port numbers by spaces not commas. Also pay close attention to the Timeout setting. Some servers may take longer then usual to respond back to a port check. If you’re Timeout setting is set too low, the app will assume the port is closed if it has not received a reply back within a short period of time.
Tap the Test bar and you will see whether the port is open or not.
You will need to keep in mind that it will test the current backbone your phone is using at the time. Meaning if you are connected to WiFi, it is testing the ports through that WiFi. If you are away from any hot spots, then your phone is testing through your phone carrier’s backbone.
Here’s a short tutorial on how to link your Microsoft Access database to your Microsoft SQL Server database. (Note: Screenshots from Microsoft Access 2010)
1. First, you will need to create an Access database or open up an existing one.
2. Next, you’ll want to click on the External Data tab and then ODBC Database icon which will start a wizard.
3. Select Link to the data source by creating a linked table and click on OK.
4. In the Select Data Source window, type in the DSN Name and click on the New button.
5. In the Create New Data Source window, select SQL Server and click on the Next button.
6. In the Create New Data Source window, type in the file name and click on the Next button.
7. In the Create New Data Source window, click on the Finish button.
8. In the Create a New Data Source to SQL Server window, type in the name of the database for the Description and enter the fully qualified domain name for the Server.
9. In the Create a New Data Source to SQL Server window, check With SQL authentication, type in your Login ID and Password and click on the Next button.
10. In the Create a New Data Source to SQL Server window, you can leave the options as is or change them. Click on the Next button.
11. In the Create a New Data Source to SQL Server window, you can leave the options as is or change them. Click on the Finish button.
12. In the ODBC Microsoft SQL Server Setup window, click on the OK button.
13. In the Select Data Source window, click on the OK button.
14. In the SQL Server Login window, enter the Login ID and Password.
15. In the Link Tables window, select the table(s) you want to link and click on the OK button.
16. In the Select Unique Record Identifier window, choose the fields that will uniquely identify the record and click on the OK button.
17. You have now created a linked table in Microsoft Access!
In my previous blogs, I showed you how you can tighten up the settings in SmarterMail to help prevent too much spam from ending up in your Inbox:
Content Filtering, the other Spam Crime Fighter
But what happens if legitimate email messages are being marked accidently as spam, and you know it’s from a legitimate email address? Fortunately, there is a way to rectify this problem by using the Trusted Senders feature in SmarterMail. This feature allows you to whitelist email addresses or domains, thus bypassing the spam/content filtering rules you have setup. And here are instructions on how to set it up:
1. Log into SmarterMail with the email account you want to apply this setting to.
2. Click the Settings icon (2 cogs) on the menu to your left.
3. Expand the My Settings folder and click on Trusted Senders.
4. Click on the New button.
1. Enter the email addresses/domains you want to whitelist, line by line.
2. Click on the Save button, and you’re done!
If you want this setting to be applied to all the email accounts in your domain, log in with the postmaster account instead, and use the Trusted Senders under Domain Settings.
For those of you who use Joomla on your web site, here are some tips to maintain the security of your Joomla web application.
Every application is susceptible to exploit. Therefore it is very important to maintain an updated application and install all the latest security patches.
This link will take you to the known vulnerabilities within Joomla. It is a comprehensive list, so you should carefully read through it. If you find that you meet any of these criteria, there should be a link next to the criteria to help you patch up the exploit.
To those who have already had their Joomla site hacked, try downloading a tool to help you clear your site. I found this web tool that will audit your site and clean up your files: http://myjoomla.com/
Now, from my experience the most common exploits to a web site start from the users own personal computer. If your computer contracts a trojan or malware where a key logger is installed, your account login credentials will be recorded. No matter what security patches you have implemented in your web application, it will be compromised because an unauthorized party will have direct access to your web site.
You should always have an antivirus software installed on your computer and the latest updates installed.
Here is a list of updated applications for the Winhost Control Panel App Installer:
A tip for DotNetNuke, mojoPortal, MonoX installs: the wizard for each CMS works fine if you install it to an empty database. Please also remember that nopCommerce 2.7 and above requires Windows 2012/IIS8/.NET 4.5 Framework.
Did you know that Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome like to display your passwords in plain text? No? Well, they sure do.
If you want to see what I’m talking about, follow the steps below.
Open Firefox.
Click on the Firefox Menu at the top left corner.
Select Options, then click on Options.
Click on the Security tab at the top.
Click the Saved Passwords… button. This will open up the Saved Passwords box. Now click on Show Passwords Button.
Example Below:
Surprise!
Did your jaw just hit the floor? I know mine did the first time I saw what Firefox was hiding from me all this time.
Now let’s open up Google Chrome and click Settings.
Once you get into your settings, scroll all the way to the bottom and click on Show advance settings…
Look for the section Passwords and forms and click the Manage saved passwords link.
Select the site where you saved your password and click Show button.
Okay, I’m done with the surprises.
So how did Firefox and Google Chrome get my passwords in the first place?
To get the answer you must also answer this question: Have you ever seen the following notification in your web browser?
Mozilla Firefox:
Google Chrome:
Whenever you clicked on the shiny button “Remember Password” in Firefox or “Save Password” in Chrome, the site username and password are saved within the web browser – and as you also saw – displayed in plain simple text.
Anyone can walk up to your computer and take a quick look at your web browsers history/settings. Just imagine you’re at the office and you step away from your computer and a nosy/curious coworker gets the chance to take a look. That is why it’s important to always lock down your computer before you step away from your desk.
Additionally, say you’re unlucky enough to have some malicious software installed on your computer which happens to allow the hacker gain remote control of your desktop. The hacker will only have to wait until you are away from your computer to check your saved passwords.
What if you sent your computer out to a repair shop and they “just happened to” take a look at your saved passwords? It only takes a few seconds for them to snoop around on your computer and do who-knows-what with your credentials. There are a lot of different ways these passwords can be intercepted. This just happens to be one method of interception that can be avoided.
So what’s the work-around and how do I keep my passwords safe? Fortunately there are plenty of third party plug-ins people use with their web browsers. Perhaps you can recommend what plug-in works best for you in the comment section below.
I found a plugin called LastPass. With 254,540 users and 827 reviews just for the Firefox plugin alone seems to be a great alternative. Best thing about this plugin is that it also works with the Google Chrome web browser.
2012 has been a great year for us, and we’re glad that you have been along for the ride.
As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, we have some exciting things on the horizon for 2013, and we look forward to bringing you cool new products and services, and continuing to be your hosting provider of choice!
Because we know that you do have a choice – lots of them, in fact – when it comes to hosting, and we work hard to be the best choice. The only choice!
Thanks again for a great year, and here’s to 2013.
