Download and Install

To download the map you’ll need to download the zip file attached below and copy the two cs_Library* files into your counter strike maps folder. If you’re using Steam the path in Windows will be
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\<YOUR STEAM USERNAME>\counter-strike source\cstrike\maps
If that folder doesn’t exist make sure you have Counter-Strike Source installed and run it once to create the folders. After you copy the cs_Library* files, restart Counter-Strike and select the new map from the menu.

Click This Picture to Download the Map

<– Click Freddy Cougar

*Disclaimer I did not create this map (I’m not that talented and don’t have that much time) but I think it is a amazing display of engineering, creativity, and persistence and would love to see someone else make even more awesome maps or modify this map for other games (Left 4 Dead especially). If you are reading this and you have other Counter-Strike maps inspired by real places please let me know it the comments. I’d love to see it!

If you already have MythTV set up you can grab the theme from here. Just extract the folder from the tar.gz to the /usr/share/mythtv/themes/ folder and it should show up in MythTV frontend under setup -> appearance.

Greetings 1n73r.net readers! I am excited to be here for my first post where I will be creating and posting Windows 7 themes for you.

In case you don’t know, when Windows 7 was released it came with a great feature for creating customizable themes. These themes include the Desktop Background, Sounds, Window Color, and Screen Saver.

Within my work place it is no secret that I love to find great wallpaper and I end up changing it quite often. Now I get to share them with you!

First off I thought I would share with you my Winter 2009 Theme Pack. All you need to do is download the linked file to your computer (this will only work if you are using Windows 7). Next double click on the icon that downloads and it will open your Personalization window and automatically install the theme. Let me know if you have any comments, questions, or suggestions.

Right Click on the link below and click “Save As” to download the theme pack. Enjoy!
Winter 2009 Themepack

USB Ultimate Boot CD (UBCD) prerequisites:

* ubcdfix2 (does the USB conversion) <--I found that this file doesn't download so you can get it from the link above
* UBCD ISO
* USB flash drive (fat32 formatted) Sorry there is no download link for this.
* A windows host PC to perform the build

UBUD How-To:

1. Download and launch UBCDfix2.exe, a UBCD folder is created
2. Download the UBCD ISO and move to your UBCD folder
3. From the UBCD folder, click fixubcd2.bat and follow the onscreen instructions. I ran into one problem where it said I needed to run the program again because I was using Vista but really I didn’t have to. So if it gives an error in Vista go ahead and try rebooting anyway.
4. Reboot and set your computer to Boot from the USB device

I hope this helps with any problems you may run into when you find yourself without a blank CD.
Let me know in the comments if there are any other tools that you always keep with you on the road for fixing those random computer problems.
Also, has anyone tried UBCD4Win? It seems like it could be interesting for Windows specific (a.k.a. virus/spyware) problems.

I want to start with something that has been around for a long long time but I have just recently started using it. Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking website. What does that mean? Think of it as a myspace/facebook/last.fm of bookmarks. What you do is you bookmark things in your browser, just like you normally would, but the bookmark is actually stored with del.icio.us instead of locally on your computer. Once you bookmark something you can see who else has also bookmarked the same thing, and then see what else they are bookmarking. You can also create networks of people and keep up to date on the things they are bookmarking. It makes finding new things a little bit easier. It is also great because you have access to all of your bookmarks where ever you are.

The next thing I found is by a company called Cooliris and it is a plugin called Previews. The first noticeable thing it does is it adds a extra button you can click when you hover over links in your browser. The picture below shows it better than I can say it.

If you click/hover over that question mark blue book thingy it will bring up a window showing where the link goes. But it does it all without leaving your current window.

You can still browse just as you normally would inside the smaller windows and you can also join the window to your current Firefox session by clicking the tab button. You can also skip to the next link on the page or email the link to someone. Not that emailing links to people is new, but doing it without leaving your current browser window is pretty new to me. You do have to sign up with a Cooliris account for email, which is a obvious downside, but that is only if you want to use the email feature.

As if my right click menu wasn’t crowded enough, it also gave me a couple new features to highlight text and do a google, google image, wikipedia, or dictionary search all without leaving my page.

If you are doing a Google image search outside of Previews and want to view all the results as a slide show Previews can do that too. Simply do the search and hover over one of the image results then click on the play button.

But slide shows is where my next plugin comes in. This next one is called PicLens and it is also made by Cooliris. This is the coolest browser plugin I have ever seen. It makes me want to buy a touch screen display just to have this running at my desk at all times. Cooliris has a pretty cool video of the plugin in action and I will try to capture what it does in a couple screenshots.

The first thing that happens is you get this new icon.

Then whenever you click the icon to launch Piclens you get a full screen 3D wall. Each icon represents a story, picture, video, or search result. You can then click on each picture and it will play the video, show a summary of the story, or display the picture.

The categories are on the top left side and the search is top right.

You use the bottom blue bar to scroll through the wall.

When you click on a video it starts playing automatically.

You can also double click to make it go full screen or play a slide show.

I really can’t describe how smooth and great looking this plugin is. I also can’t explain how much memory the thing eats! Seriously, don’t try to fold proteins or play Unreal Tournament 3 in the background while this is running.

One other reason I thought Piclens was so cool is they have a WordPress plugin; yes I installed it. The plugin adds a link to the bottom of each post and you can click on it to view all the pictures in that post without needing to install Piclens. That is pretty cool but it isn’t super useful seeing as there aren’t a whole lot of pictures to look at on my blog. What it is good for is viewing something like a gallery. Thanks to some cleaver people they found a way to do it with Gallery2.

I installed the needed items on my gallery and you can have a look at it here. What you do is just go to the gallery and click the play button that shows up on any image when you mouse over it. Piclens will then load up and show the current image using the 3D wall.

All you need to do to make Piclens work with your Gallery2 installation is upload this xml.php file the file here to the root of your Gallery2 installation and then edit the theme.tpl file for whatever theme you are using. Make sure you rename the xml.php_.txt file to just xml.php. I am using carbon as my theme so I found the file in gallery2/themes/carbon/templates/ folder on my server. To edit the file you need to find the line that has

{if $theme.pageType == ‘album’}
{g->theme include=”album.tpl”}

and add

<link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” title=”MediaRSS:{$theme.item.title}”
href=”/gallery2/xml.php?g2_itemId={$theme.item.id}” />

on a new line right after the first text.

That was it. It works fine for me on two computers with Firefox 3.0 and Internet Explorer 7 but please let me know if you find that it doesn’t work in other browsers or other operating systems (I am too lazy to turn on my mac).

Please also let me know in the comments if you have found any other browser plugins that I may not know about.

The first one is real simple. This is how you can easily disable Aero before running a program. In many cases you would want to do this before running a 3D intensive game. All you have to do is find the shortcut, right click and go to properties, click the compatability tab and check the box that says “Disable desktop composition”. That is it. Aero will disable itself

next time you launch the shortcut and enable itself when the program is done.

The next tip it two-fold. First there is a quick tip on how to backup your DVD’s with 1 click. Sure that 1 click is going to take you a few hours to complete, but all you have to do is click once. The second part is a bit more involved but shows you how to backup your DVD’s and play them easily on a PS3. Sure you could always put the DVD in the PS3 and play it but who wants to get up? This uses a great tool, which I have yet to use, called PS3 Video 9.

Next up is another two parter and this is all about extracting things you never knew you could extract out of Windows. If you want to use a icon that a certain program uses. You can use IconsExtract or if you want to extract all the drivers you are using, to save as a backup, you can use DriverMax.

One of the last useful updates I have is a visual tweaker for Vista. It is called Vista Visual Master and has a lot of very useful tools. It gave me the ability to use custom themes again after I installed SP1 and that is worth a download itself.

Here are a few that most people probably won’t find very useful but I am going to give them a try for various reasons.

To remove passwords from Excel documents you can either buy a tool called Excel Password Remover or you can run one of many macros that will remove the password for free. I want to link to the full article so you can see all the comments with the macro options.

The last two I have are random but I know I will need them one day. First is a way to disable cached domain logins in Windows. This also may work to increase the number of logins available when off the domain but I need to test with that. To do it all you have to do is open the registry and find:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersionWinlogon

Once you find that just change the cashedlogonscount to whatever value you want. Note that 0 disables this ability.

This last one will come in real handy when making my classroom images. A tool called CleanHandler will clean up those autoplay options that pop up in Windows when a cd/usb stick are plugged in.

I feel pretty good after that update so I will leave you with that.

First up is replacing your task manager with process explorer in Windows Vista. In XP it is usually as simple as going to options and clicking on replace task manager. In Vista there is a bit more of a trick to it if you still have UAC ruling your life. UAC is the first thing I turn off in Vista so there wasn’t any problem for me. Head over to the How-to Geek for further instructions and screenshots.

The next tip is all about drivers. First you could always see what drivers you have installed at the command line, but that isn’t very fun. I guess you could see what drivers are installed and export the list to a text document, excel spreadsheet, or something else. Or you could just transfer the drivers directly from one machine to another. This is great news if you are moving from one computer to another, or if you are just having problems with your computer and want to do some troubleshooting.

Downloadsquad makes the list of useful tools with the Revo Uninstaller. I have never heard of it before but already really like it. Not only can it uninstall your programs and search for left over files and registry entry’s, but it also has built in shortcuts like the on screen keyboard, msconfig, system properties, etc. And because the new version is free AND portable I can keep it on my usb key and take it with me when troubleshooting machines.

Downloadsquad also showed me a Universal Extractor that could be very useful for extracting files that 7-zip can’t already open. I haven’t tried it yet but I defiantly want to keep it in my bag of tricks.

You would think this post would be done now because there is already so much stuff. But I have been procrastinating for a while now on these tools.

Inventgeek had one of the best do-it-yourself articles I have sen for a while. How to make your own thermal paste from diamond dust. I really want to give this one a try on my PS3 but it is going to have to wait just a little bit. I am still a bit nervous about putting it back together. The opening up doesn’t scare me at all. It is only the reassembly.

The last two articles go back to the How-to Geek. If you support machines like I do you probably use the Group Policy Editor quite a bit in Windows XP. This tip shows you how to add it to the control panel. There is also one for adding User Accounts Utility (userpasswords2) in the control panel.

Last but not least. How to Remote Control Leopard with TightVNC brought to you by Lifehacker.

Well I am officially caught up with the articles I wanted to add here. Now I think I will try some of them out and maybe play some more video games.

Let me know in the comments if you know of some other great third party plugins that you use in pidgin.

*BTW* Turns out the current track plugin doesn’t work under Vista Ultimate x86. I am going to look into this a bit more.

It doesn’t look like the plugin is working under Windows XP also. That is OK though. The author of that plugin had a link to MisicInfo plugin which does a similar thing but doesn’t support as many players.  I got it working with Winamp 5.5 under Vista without a problem.  Enjoy!