iPod Touch 2G Untethered Jailbreak 2.2.1 in Windows 7 64-bit

Well I had quite the night, I spent at least three hours trying to figure out how to jailbreak my iPod. Pretty quickly I found the tutorial at techlivez where it had me download QuickFreedom. When I tried to install LibUSB through QuickFreedom, I got the message, "WARNING: Because you are installing LIBUSB on a Vista 64-Bit computer, you need to take some extra steps to get LIBUSB working. After finishing all 3 steps, reboot and open QuickFreedom again." I am actually using Windows 7 64-bit, but between Windows 7 and Windows Vista, they run similarly enough to be considered the same to most hardware and software.

Well I went ahead and followed the steps which include opening up "C:\Program Files (x86)\QuickFreedom\Files\vista\1) ADD HARDWARE WIZARD" (This folder may be different for you, but it should be pretty easy to find.) and in the README!!!!.txt, I followed step one and step two. Step three has me open the start menu and type "hdwwiz.cpl" which brings me to Device Manager. That seemed very wrong, so I tried again. I searched video after video on youtube, website after website on Google, with no avail. I asked quite a few people too, everyone that had jailbroken their iPod Touch had done it with Windows Vista. In this video, 'QuickTether' says that if you open Control Panel and just search for add hardware, you will also find a link that says "Install drivers for older devices with Add Hardware wizard," On Windows 7, this has been removed.


If you happen to be attempting to jailbreak an iPod Touch 2G with firmware 2.2.1 and you are using Windows 7 64-bit, well it pains me to say, but the solution was right under my nose the entire time. Instead of typing "hdwwiz.cpl" just type "hdwwiz" and you'll come up with "hdwwiz.exe" If you watch this video, then everything else will be the same and it should work for you pretty quickly. I wasn't able to get my USB devices to work after the first start up, so as soon as you get to the normal bootloader, quickly press the up or down arrow key to deselect Ready Driver Plus and select Windows 7 then press F8. After pressing F8, select something like "Disable Driver Signature Checking" (I don't remember exactly what it is now) and everything should work normally.. At least it did for me.

Left 4 Dead review

I didn't buy Left 4 Dead until a couple of weeks before the release of Left 4 Dead 2, when you could get the package with both for about 65 bucks, so I played about 30 hours of it and that's it but I still got over half the achievements and completed all the campaigns, so I can at least say something about the game. When I bought Left 4 Dead, I wasn't expecting it to be as good and fun as it really was, I figured all you ever do is shoot zombies, that's gotta get annoying after a while (and it did, but I got my moneys' worth so I'm happy).

Left 4 Dead has several different game play modes, first of all Single Player which is the worst of all of them because your only friends are three computer players who don't know how to play worth crap. You can play Easy, Normal, Advanced or Expert difficulties and single player is only worth playing on easy to get an idea of how the map is, so that when you are playing multiplayer you don't suck so bad. If you can beat single player on advanced or expert difficulty, you either have no life, you are cheating, or you are extremely good at FPS games (which implies that you have no life)

The next mode to look at is Campaign. It is almost like single-player, but it's co-operative online, so instead of having three computers for friends, you can play with anyone online. I would start out playing expert though or you'll find yourself getting vote-kicked an awful lot. Campaign is where most of the achievements are it seems, and it's also the place where you'll probably make the most friends :)

Survival mode is kind of fun, but it's also a little lame. All you do is try to stay alive in hot spots as long as possible, and defend from attacking zombies. If one person out of your 4-man team screws up, it can ruin it for everyone which means it may be hard to find a nice team. At first it seemed like I was always the person messing everything up, but I've gotten better.

Versus mode: my most-hated mode and most peoples favorite mode! I am not much of a multi-player versus mode in any game. If you don't play 24/7, you usually suck, and if you suck it's not fun, especially when it takes a long time to be as good as everyone else!

Anyways, I think this is a really really great game, but if you are thinking about buying it: get Left 4 Dead 2 instead. You won't miss anything.

Windows 7: Syncing files between networked computers

Do you have two computers? Okay, if you do, have you ever created a file on one computer then moved it over to the other computer to edit it? Then when you were emailing the completed file, you forgot to copy the file back to your main computer, so you emailed a blank file on accident! I did the same thing once, I didn't exactly turn in a blank file, but I turned in the wrong version, so I had an incomplete project. When I got my grade back on this (it was a computer science project) luckily I wasn't missing a whole lot so I got an 83/100 but it was horrible!

Well the good new is, if you ever find yourself in the same position, and you have Windows 7, I have found a solution for you. My first attempt at a solution was to just use a USB Key, and yes that does work perfectly well but if you are like me, and you use two computers at the same time, then you have a problem because all of your files are on one USB Key so you would need two copies of each file. So I decided I would stick my USB key into my desktop machine, then just share it over the network and map it on my laptop. This also works perfectly well until you run into the next problem: what if you aren't connected to the same network as your desktop and you left your USB key at home? Yes I do realize that I'm either very stupid or a complete nerd at this point with all the problems I've run into, but I'm one of those people that can't live without whatever conveniences are available.

My final solution comes down to this, and I had no idea this was a feature of Windows 7, but if you go to Control Panel, then click the little arrow next to Control Panel in the address bar, the first option should be All Control Panel Items. If you scroll down a little bit you'll find Sync Center. With this you can set up network drives to sync automatically so they can be available offline. Now, if you have two computers, one is running Windows 7, you accidentally leave your USB key at home in your desktop while you are taking your laptop to school, and you need to work on a project you left on your USB key, you can do so without trouble! Hopefully this will benefit more than just me.

using namespace std; in C++

Lately I have been into C++ quite a bit, I've been reading some books and this Fall 2009 semester I'm taking a Computer Science class at Red Rocks, all about C++. The language, and the way that it works cannot function without certain standards, otherwise you get something like HTML where if you forget to include a closing tag (like but no ) then it still works, but if you forget those tags, somewhere down the line you will have a huge problem and you can't figure out WHAT the heck is going on. Well C++ has it's standards, something called ISO http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_14882#Language_standard but this set of coding standards doesn't include certain things that could be vital to your program running correctly or not.

A particular problem that I have found, is the statement “using namespace std;” What this does is opens up the entire scope of code you place it in to the standard library, and it restricts the names you are possibly able to use. For example, did you ever know that copy, list, sort, and max are all std names? Once you include the 'using namespace std;' at the top of your file, you've added all of those functions to the global namespace and you can't ever make a variable or function with that name anywhere in your code. So this doesn't seem so bad, worst case scenario you just go and change those names. It may take you a little while (a long time if your code is long at all) to find out what went wrong, and you might not receive an error message, but you can just go back and use different names. So now you go get a library using a different namespace, called nonstd so at the top of your source file you have 'using namespace std;' and 'using namespace nonstd;' We've already deduced that the std namespace has a function called copy, but this nonstd namespace also has a function called copy. It will be hell to find out what is going wrong.. and further more how will you fix it?

Okay, so it's true that anyone who is able to write their own library and publish it so you can use it will be careful NOT to ever use any names that conflict with the std namespace, but that's what namespaces are for! One useful thing about namespaces is that two different libraries can use the same name without being conflicting. The thing is the names will conflict if you use the 'using namespace std;' declaration in your source file. While I was researching this topic, I found this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1452721/why-is-using-namespace-std-considered-a-bad-practice-in-c Here, sbi answered a question, scroll down a little to see it: “It took most of us very few weeks to get to used to write the prefix and after a few more weeks most of us even agreed that it actually made the code more readable.” Here he was talking about a project where it was agreed that using directives would not be used at all, and this is the result of that.

So what is the solution to not using the using-directives? Well the simple way is to type std:: in front of everything, as so: std::cout, std::cin, std::endl, etc. But that takes a little effort. Better than using namespace is using std::cout, which solves a couple of the problems I talked about previously. However, if you do run across two namespaces with the same name, and you need to use both names in your code, then you will have to type the namespace::function.

So as a short conclusion, don't use 'using namespace std;' in your code, it has some bad effects in the long run. In small projects for a beginning C++ class at school it's probably okay since you usually won't write any excessively long source files with lots of naming conflicts.

Dare 2 Share

This past weekend I went to a conference in Denver called Dare 2 Share. I'm sure several people know the feelings of going to big conferences like this, whatever the cause is, you feel all fired up about that for at least a week afterward. Well that's what Dare 2 Share is; I find that Dare 2 Share can give me enough fuel to run on for about a month, just like church on Sunday will keep you fueled for a couple of days, and a nice little fellowship session with a few of your Christian friends will get you fueled up for a couple of hours.

The main focus of Dare 2 Share, is to give teenage students like myself the fuel they need to share the gospel with their friends. This year they had a 'Blaze' theme, and there were some nice analogies. To start a fire you need three things: a spark, fuel, and oxygen. If you already have the fuel and oxygen, just a little spark can do a lot. The way I see it is, you need oxygen to breath, just the same as you need to read the bible, so the bible represents the oxygen. The fuel is an event like Dare 2 Share, or an inspiration, something that really motivates you to share your faith. Once you have those two, it just takes a spark. When you see a friend of yours, and you know they are going to hell, that's your opportunity to make a spark, start a fire, and change that persons life.

In my own time, after Dare 2 Share, I was trying to find a video on YouTube that my youth pastor had shown to us after Dare 2 Share a few years ago, well I didn't find the exact video but I found something very similar, also from Dare 2 Share http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nddtcwF3flY Imagine if you knew someone that you could have, and should have witnessed to but you didn't, and the time came to pass; it's too late. Imagine what would happen if you knew someone that died, and they happened to go to hell. Would they write you a letter like the one in that movie?

I want this specific post to kind of provide a little bit of fuel for everyone that reads it, but let me know what you think of it. http://vi3gamehkr.blogspot.com for those of you reading this from Facebook.

Need for Speed: Undercover

So this past week, with a snow day and all I found Need For Speed: Undercover on Steam for only 10 bucks. According to my usual spending habits, I went ahead and coughed up a couple to try this out. Well after playing it about 25 hours total over the past week, I am now writing my official review on it. I'm probably going to post the review below on a couple of other sites as well.

I've always liked racing games, Need for Speed: Underground, and Underground 2 weren't too bad in my opinion, I played them on the Gamecube, so I never had compatibility issues of course, but they definitely were fun. Since then the only racing I've done is Mario Kart: Double Dash and Mario Kart Wii (plus a little Mario Kart DS, I love Mario Kart) So I went ahead and downloaded and installed Undercover, the very first thing I noticed is it ran with an average of 10 fps at max settings (and mind you, I'm running an AMD Athlon X2 64, with 3GB RAM and an NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT. I played it on Windows 7 Professional) so I turned the settings all down to low and achieved about 30 FPS. Even with this I still received a few spikes, especially when rounding turns and making jumps.

So really my only criticism's are here: the game seems to be poorly coded, the graphics are nothing extreme but my 9800 GT is hardly able to handle it! The other thing is, in being a racing game where you are usually moving at about 200 MPH or higher, you would expect the collision system to be made JUST FOR high-speed races right? Well I notice that when hitting things like light poles and cones at anything over 150 MPH, it appeared you went right through it and then both the sound, and the action of the cone falling over were delayed. But as far as that collision thing goes, I guess I am just picky!

The game has several achievements, and if I had any friends that were actively playing NFS, it would be fun to try to get the different achievements before them, and beat them in private races! The storyline is fairly short (I beat it within 14 hours of playing!) but you can still redo all the races and try to "Dominate" all of them by getting a really good time. The career mode does die down a little quickly though. Now it's fun to hop on a few times a week for about an hour to race against other people online, but the game's replayability level is very low. Overall the game is fairly easy and probably geared toward any casual gamer, and for the hard-core gamers like myself there is always online multiplayer!

If you are thinking about buying this, go ahead and do so if you can get it for 10 or 15 bucks, it is worth the small price. If you think you are a hard-core gamer though, you should probably check out some other racing game.

The Effects of Thinking and Having a Strong Will in School

In my past two years of school I have discovered several things in high school, some of which include the will to think, the act of thinking, and the positive effects of both. I've noticed among some of my friends (I refuse to name any names because I know these people have the ability to do a whole lot better) that many people go to school, sit through a lecture, neglect their homework and barely pass. Hopefully you have heard the expression, “in one ear, out the other” because I'm going to talk about that a little bit. When you sit through a lecture, and you don't take notes, is it very easy at all to remember what you heard? I know that everyone is different, but this is how I see it and the best method I've found to work for myself. In one of my classes, we sit through a lecture then we do the homework. When I don't take notes, I don't remember anything the professor talked about, what I remember is all the random crap that ran through my mind while I was sitting through that lecture such as what kind of food I wanted to eat after class or what I was going to do that weekend. On the days I take notes, I don't ever look at those notes again but I still remember a lot more about what was talked about in class. The reason is, writing notes is considered a 'hands-on activity' and hands-on activities activate the brain so you have to think about what the professor is talking about. When you think and activate your brain, you are more likely to remember what you thought about.

I feel like in school, you are not there to learn about and remember the dates of history, the rules of grammar and English, and the equations of math, but you are there to learn how to learn, and to learn how to logically think. When's the last time you took a history test and remembered any of the dates you had memorized for that test a week later? Now you at least know what you are looking for if you ever wanted to recall those dates and you would know where to look! A person who graduated from high school with A's and B's could know just as much about something as a 2nd grader, but the graduated high school student would be able to learn a lot more about something than the 2nd grader. I'm not writing a research paper here so I don't have a way to prove any of these things but these are my theories and I want to know what other people think about this.

My adventures in switching from Windows to Ubuntu Part 1

So this weekend I decided I'd finally switch over to Ubuntu for most daily computing tasks and I'll tell you how that's been :)

Thursday night I stuck the CD in and installed Ubuntu 8.04 because it was LTS. Well bad choice because that edition is now over a year old and my monitor and graphics card are... less than a year old, so I was running 800x600 resolution the entire time. Friday afternoon I just went in and installed 9.04 instead since that's the newest currently available. Instantly, 9.04 already had my graphics card and monitor recognized so I could run 1600x900 immediately, and I installed my graphics card drivers in a breeze.

Some things to note, Ubuntu isn't like Windows at all (obvious) but in some ways is better. I really like Windows a lot because I know where everything is at and I have my own little shortcuts set up for optimum speed in my daily computing. There are some minor cracks in my little system though, I run into out-of-date software constantly, and every once in a while there's that darn security issue. I noticed instantly that updating software with Ubuntu is very easy. I didn't even have to open Firefox to download my graphics card drivers! Well I had to open firefox to find out HOW to do it without opening firefox but now I'll be able to update those drivers with a click of a button, as with all the other software I installed.

Next weekend, hopefully I'll be able to get my sound working. I know I should probably (definitely) get a legit sound card but with Ubuntu, you make work what you have with as little money as possible :D

About Me

About me.. hmm.. Well I guess you could say I'm a semi-hard-core gamer but I get work done too. I probably average about 15-20 hours of games per week during the school year and over the summer I think I was getting around 50+ hours per week. I don't do consoles, I'm solely a PC gamer, I'm currently running a Compaq I bought with my 'summer savings' running an AMD Athlon Dual-Core 7550 at 2.5GHz+, with 3GB RAM, a 320GB hard drive and my favorite part: NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT!

I'm a hard-core Windows boy, I've always used Windows but recently I've considered switching over to Ubuntu. I started out on an old Compaq (need I remind you, my laptop is ALSO a Compaq.. Not that they are my favorite, just what I can afford) running Windows 3.1, playing whatever games I could find at the time, and learning QBasic. To keep on track with the current subject, Windows, I later did some things with Windows 95 and then later, Windows 2000, and soon enough I was on Windows XP which is when my history really picks up. I had somehow got an old junk machine with Windows 98 and I got this baby to run Windows XP (with 128MB RAM and a <1GHz pentium 3 processor) but I never used that as much. My first GOOD computer was my Compaq laptop which I got in 2008, and it came with Windows Vista. I installed Windows 7 on it in January right after the public beta was released. From there I've always used Windows 7, the Beta, the RC, and now I'm running an RTM version I got from my school :D That concludes my Windows history.

I've been interested in programming for almost as long as I've been into computers, but I've never really kicked off the ground with it unfortunately. I started going through a QBasic book my dad gave me a long time ago and I found something online called DarkBASIC which is made specifically for creating games. This interested me a lot but I was always hindered by the computer's onboard Intel graphics chipsets... Then I got addicted to a game for 3 years . . . Then I got back into programming and started learning C++. By this time I had worked at WaterWorld for a whole summer and bought a nice laptop with the money I made. I had gone about half way through a C++ book before I lost interest to something else: XNA Game Studio. This is Microsoft's game studio for creating PC, Xbox 360 and Zune games. I pretty quickly picked up on C# by going through the book, Head First C# and got to making a project in XNA. Then the summer came and I worked at WaterWorld and also got interested in World of Warcraft. . . And then the school year came and I'm back :)

This semester (Fall 2009) I'm taking two extra classes at Red Rocks Community College, college algebra and computer science I: C++. Both are pretty much review of stuff I already knew unfortunately, but I am definitely gaining knowlege of the college environment and making friends. By this point I've started practicing C++ again obviously, and along with the class at Red Rocks, I'm casually going through the book, C++ Primer.

My typical week consists of 2 days of Hope, 2 days of Red Rocks and then Friday and Saturday to work on homework half the time and just do whatever the other half of the time. In this case, whatever being: Playing WoW, or maybe Unreal Tournament 3, working on teaching myself some C++, playing with random things on my computer (8 hours of fiddling with random things and reading random articles could save you 8 hours of waiting for the damn slow computer in the next 2 years...) . . . (Although most of the time it's the last two hours that benefit you... the first 2 hours you screw your system up and then the next 4 hours you fix it.. then the last 2 hours you make it even better) Then Sunday is my day to either sit back and relax, maybe enjoy a movie or something... or my day to frantically work on all the homework I've neglected the rest of the week!