Chris’ Blog about Stuff… ( )

Over the past few weeks I’ve been working on a package for Windows Vista/Windows 7 that will enable pIqaD (Klingon writing) support throughout the operating system.

I have created a new Klingon local, a pIqaD keyboard layout, a Unicode pIqaD font and a registry script to link the font into the system. This package enables pIqaD to be used in any unicode aware application without having to make specific font changes. Check out these screen shots:

You can download this package right here: pIqaD Installer

Installing this should also enable the language bar so you can switch to the Klingon keyboard (it’s called OL in the language bar, MS won’t let you change everything). If you download this package and try it out, please comment on this thread and let me know if you’re successful or if you have any errors.

DISCLAIMER: While I’m 99% sure this won’t do anything harmful to your system, it is a “beta” version. If you do decide to install it and your PC blows up or something else happens, please don’t send me death threats. I will try and help in anyway I can, but somethings are beyond my control.

If your using Windows XP and want to add pIqaD support, check out this post on the Klingon Language Institutes Wiki (also by me).

   <- Once the font is installed you should be able to read this too.

I have created a Klingon theme for S2U2, a slide2unlock app for Windows mobile devices.

The pIqaD numbers are correct and actually work really well for the clock. You can get S2U2 from the S2U2 Homepage. Once it’s installed the theme can override the S2U2 graphics files.

Download Klingon.zip (For QVGA devices (240×320))
Download KlingonVGA.zip (For VGA devices (480×640))

You’ll need to make sure these S2U2 settings are right:
Date Format: Option 1
Time Format: Option 1
Clock Font Folder: clock\

Checkout this thread over at The Klingon Empire forum for full instructions.

Qapla’!

It looks like Bethesda has released a new viral website for Fallout 3 called Prepare for the future.

It’s full of videos talking about Vault-Tec technology as well as video and screenshots from the game itself. It was pretty entertaining and filled my Fallout 3 bug for a while. Only a couple more weeks and we get to play this great looking game.

I had to do this today, so I thought I would blog it so I can remember how to do it next year.

Instructions are after the jump.

Google’s new browser, Chrome, came out today. I decided to install it and give it a shot. I’m glad I did. It’s a fresh face for a browser and it’s fast. Quicker than the Firefox 3 browser I was using a few minutes before hand. It installed quickly, imported my Firefox settings and then started right up. I would recommend checking it out: Google Chrome

I bought one of these sweet looking devices about a week and a half ago. At first I thought it was wonderful, but as I began to use it more and more I realised that it was severly underpowered and wouldn’t be able to handle what I wanted it to do. Quickly I was using it as an extremely expensive MP3 player. So I decided I’m going to send it back. It’s not worth the money and it will never be able to do what I need it to do.

So what am I going to do instead? Well, first I got a Zune. It’s an 80gb MP3 player for less than many others. So that’s all my MP3 functions taken care of. Next I need to deal with the “anywhere Internet” part of the device. For that I’m going to get a Nokia N810. It’s half the price of the Samsung and does everything I want it to. It’s also running Linux so I can hack the hell out of it.

So, in a few weeks I should be doing a review of the N810.

Well I had to reinstall Vista last night after some random file infected my XP partition with a virus that managed to spread into my Vista install. After cleaning it out Vista still worked, but bits were borked. I grabbed my install disk and started again.

Now I have a nice clean Vista that is running pretty well. I don’t have any problems with Vista personally, and seeing it run like this again reminds me that it’s a pretty decent OS for what it does. Vista will happily (for the most part) run applications from 10 years ago without much work on the users part. Doing that in Linux requires at least a recompile, and that’s probably going to fail on something. You may end up spending hours fixing code.

While Vista may not be perfect in what it does, it’s so much better that what came before.

So anyway, I get to enjoy a nice new computer for a few weeks. We’ll see how long it takes for me to be blogging from Linux again.

So you may know, or may not know, that I have a tablet PC. I love my tablet, and I love it even more now that it has Vista on it. The new onscreen keyboard is great. You can see it hiding in the screenshot of my desktop in the last post. I’ll point it out for you just in case:

It likes to hide most of the time. It casts a small shadow on the desktop and is bearly noticable. When you hover your mouse over it though, it pops out and looks like this:

Then when you click it, it slides out from it’s nice little hiding place. If you have ever used XP Tablet edition then you’ll know how annoying the little popup writing area is. Half the time it pops up somewhere you don’t want it to, or it docks to the top or bottom of the screen automatically and just causes problems. So here’s what the new one looks like:

I really like the drop shadow on it. My machine doesn’t support Areo so these little things make me feel like I’m not using XP anymore. Having used XP since Beta 1, all those years ago, I’m a little sad to see it go, but on the other hand I’m glad that I’m going to get to play with yet another one of Microsofts creations. Hopefully this one will be better than the last.

I got an official invite to take part in the Pre-RC1 install of Vista today. So I’ve downloaded it and installed it. Here is my nice Pre-RC1 vista installed on my laptop as my primary O/S:

Yes, I have strange tastes in wallpaper, and for Jeff here is the current process list:

I’ll probably post some kind of review of this build of Vista between now and RC1, but I will say this, it’s WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY better than beta 2, so if you have only used that (or an older build) make sure you give RC1 a shot. If it’s better than this build it’s going to be really nice.