Installation Errors

During installation of Dark Corners of the Earth, Windows 7 pops up the below compatibility issue. It says the program name is “Windows Media Technologies.”

This error can be completely ignored and has had no impact on the game or videos. It is simply trying to install an older version of Windows Media Player.

Windows 7 Compatibility Assistant

Game Crashes during Prologue

Of the multiple times this game will crash, this is likely the first one that people will encounter. Be sure to read below about other crashes.

During the opening prologue, the game tends to crash as you open the trap door in the library. Thanks to the Wikipedia, there is a simple solution.

As soon as you open the trap door, immediately hold forward to move down the ladder.

It worked for me the first time, but I would suggest saving around the corner before you try.

Crash at trap door

More Cthulhu Crashes

Windows 7 has other crashing issues with DCoTE also. Avoid hitting ALT+Tab. There is another instance like the trap door crash where you have to slide a cabinet to expose a hidden safe. The game tends to crash here also. One GameFAQs user says the fix to this is to (temporarily, at least) “Turn the resolution to 800×600 and Anti-Aliasing to x2.”

Widescreen Monitors

Widescreen resolutions have long been the bane of enjoying old games. Sadly, Call of Cthulhu does not support widescreen resolutions, but it does do high resolutions.

If you select 1920×1080, for instance, it will do a stretched high res picture. I would recommend doing a 1600×1200 and the aspect will be correct with black bars on the side.

Solid Tip: Password protection in Word and Excel has been around since Office 2000.

You have multiple options for restricting access in Word or Excel. In fact, Word 2010 has three different places where you can enter passwords.

Microsoft Excel 2007 and 2010 (Method 1)

Click Review, then click Protect Sheet or Protect Workbook. You can hover over the two options for more details about the difference between the two. Each dialog box will have a password box. You can select individual actions that people without the password can do to the document.

Microsoft Word 2007 and 2010 (Method 1)

Click Review, then click Restrict Editing. The restriction options will pop up. If you want to simply lock your document and be done with it, click the checkbox under section 2 and hit the button under section 3. You will then be prompted for a password.

If you enter the password in the boxes above, it mentions that “malicious users can edit the file and remove the password.” This method does not encrypt the password and anyone could open the document in a script editor and view the password info stored as XML.

If you select “User Authentication,” then only the Windows users that you specify in the restriction options will be allowed to modify the file. You can add users under “Exceptions.”

Word 2007, 2010 and Excel 2007, 2010 (Method 2)

When saving your document or sheet, there is a “Tools” button next to the “Save” and “Cancel” buttons. Click on “Tools” and then “General Options.” This box will pop up:

This method allows you to use an encrypted password for opening the document and also for editing. If you lose the password with this method, you are out of luck.

Word 2007, 2010 and Excel 2007, 2010 (Method 3)

The third method for blocking changes to your Word document are under the main program menu. In Word/Excel 2007, you hit the round pizza button > Prepare > Encrypt Document. In Word/Excel 2010, you hit the “File” tab > Permissions > Encrypt with a Password.

If you lose the password with this method, you are out of luck. If you just want to protect the document or sheet against accidental changes, you can use the options next to this one, called “Mark As Final.” This simply sets the file to a read-only state.

STD HRC and IRC Reference

While the terms HRC and IRC are slowly phasing out, many TVs still allow the option of setting up your tuner to one of these 3 formats.

Additionally you might have the option to select analog vs digital. You want digital if available, but it likely won’t matter as analog cable is going the way of the dinosaur and if you have a “digital cable box,” all your programming is coming into the house digitally already (and then converted to analog by the box).

What’s the Difference

Older cable trunk lines suffer from signal degradation over and distance and require amplifiers to maintain signal strength. This amplification introduces noise into the cable signal. HRC and IRC are formats that the cable companies use in an attempt to clean up signals and improve audio/video quality. They slightly alter the frequency in order to make interference less noticeable, but most people would be hard pressed to tell the difference.

Modern cable installations run fiber optic lines and do not require signal improvements. Today, most cable systems use STD.

Cable signals are sent through lines with a frequency, measured in MHz (megahertz) like cordless phones or computer CPUs. HRC and IRC try to eliminate interference, which comes in the form of “beat noise”- a term describing “concentrations of energy in the frequency domain.” Ya, that’s not too technical! We don’t care about all that. We just need to know which one to use…

Which do I Choose?

This is an official position from Brighthouse Networks and also our Solid Recommendation:

Always select STD (standard) if your TV offers this setting. Choosing the others could result in reception problems or missing channels.

If you have cable TV and live in a major city, or if you have satellite television like DISH Network or DirecTV, then you want to always select STD standard.

If you live in a rural community that is running an older cable system, then you might benefit from trying HRC or IRC. Results will vary as it is not an exact science, but you should take notes of the number of channels found and your opinion of quality between each. After comparing, choose which one you like.

For you worry warts- your TV set does not care which format you choose and it cannot hurt anything.

The reveal trailer, highlighting a refreshingly different concept of war in the near future, examining what happens when man places too much faith in war machines and technology.

Hopefully, this can breath some new life into a brand that is taking a nose dive for cookie-cutter first person shooters. Looks intriguing in concept. If there is one thing that CoD games can get right, it’s grandiose plot lines.

It’s just a global variable right?

Nope. Variables change. Constants wouldn’t be very constant if they kept changing, would they? This is the most important aspect of a constant is that it cannot change once you have defined it. If you simply want a global variable that you can transform throughout your program, you do not want a constant. That being said, you can access a constant anywhere without regard to scope.

You will find that constants can be very helpful at the top of scripts/classes as default or configuration values. They do not take the overhead of other methods of accessing global variables and you don’t have to worry about them being changed elsewhere in your code.

Tips for Creating Constants

// Valid constant names
define("FOO",     "solid");
define("FOO2",    "solid state");
define("FOO_BAR", "solidlystated");
 
// Invalid constant names
define("2FOO",    "solid");
 
// Check for, then set a constant
defined("FOO") or define("FOO", "solid");

These examples are similar to those seen in the PHP manual website.

• PHP constants are case-sensitive
• By convention, use all uppercase characters
• By convention, use underscores as spaces
• Constant names can only start with letter or underscore
• Numbers can be used after the first character
• Constant name must be quoted when defined
• Constant names cannot be reserved PHP keywords

Difference between a Constant and a Singleton

Singletons are a pattern of programming that most developers write with one hand, while shaking a fist at in the other hand. Singletons are frowned upon for various debatable reasons, but those are outside the scope of this article (pun intended).

Singletons get their name from the idea that they only exist as a single instance of a class, allowing you to reliably access them to manage consistent data. Some applications, especially larger ones, use a singleton class to manage data that could normally be handled with constants. Of course, there is a major difference- singletons are mutable at run-time.

A singleton is useful because it’s a globally accessible class (with variables and methods) that, when done right, only allows one instance to be created.

Global Constants Versus Class Constants

Class constants also exist in PHP, giving you the immutable power of a constant with the scope of a class. Instead of using define(), you simply assign a class constant with the keyword const.

Solid Tip: Until PHP 5.3, const could not be used in the global scope and had to be used in a class.

As of PHP 5.3, you CAN use const globally, and it will work fine, but your IDE will insist that it is an error (As of this article Dreamweaver CS5 still thinks this is an error outside a class). Don’t defy convention. Use define() for your global constants and, if you must, use const inside classes. You can access class constants in the following manner:

// inside your class
class MyFOO
{
    const FOO = 'solid';
 
    function somefunc()
    {
        echo self::FOO;
    }
}
 
//outside your class
$myfoo = new MyFOO();
echo $myfoo::FOO;
 
// Note that FOO could be defined as a global also

Const is a language construct and not a method, having many other minor differences compared to define(), such as the values it can be assigned. Most notably, it cannot be assigned inside a conditional block.

// Invalid before PHP 5.3 outside of a class
const FOO = 1;
 
// Invalid EVERYWHERE
const FOO = 1+1;
 
// Invalid EVERYWHERE also
if(...){ const FOO = 1; }

Tips for Retrieving Constants

It is good habit to use defined() along with define() (as seen in the final example below). If you have already defined a constant, PHP will throw a Notice. You could also wrap other conditionals around define() to suit your needs.

The bullet points up top remind you that constant names must be quoted when being defined. Don’t get confused when trying to echo the constant back to the screen, though. If you put a constant inside a quote, then its just an uppercase word in quote (maybe someone is shouting).

defined('FOO') or define('FOO', 'solid');
 
echo "FOO state"; // echoes FOO state
echo 'FOO state'; // echoes FOO state
echo FOO." state"; // echoes solid state

Hopefully, these tips and examples have helped you decide whether constants are what you are looking for, or cleared up any confusion about a couple of the alternatives. Got a question or concern about something I did or didn’t cover? Let me know with a comment below.

There are some legacy (old) queries floating around the internet regarding the topic, but WordPress has continuously changed over the years making some of them obsolete. These newer queries take advantage of the WordPress 3.x database.

What’s most exciting is the fact that the database now keeps an updated count of your tag/term usage. Whenever an article gets published, it updates the count for the post tags in it. It also correctly handles that count in regards to draft and future published articles.

Solid Tip: These queries use the default ‘wp_’ database table prefix. Be sure to modify if you changed it.

Get Tag Count

SELECT term.name, term.slug, tax.count FROM wp_term_taxonomy tax 
LEFT JOIN wp_terms term ON term.term_id = tax.term_id WHERE tax.taxonomy = 'post_tag' 
ORDER BY tax.count DESC

Get Category Count

SELECT term.name, term.slug, tax.count FROM wp_term_taxonomy tax 
LEFT JOIN wp_terms term ON term.term_id = tax.term_id WHERE tax.taxonomy = 'category' 
ORDER BY tax.count DESC

Legacy WordPress 2.x Queries

I did not write these queries, but they are still useful for examining dates.

/* Get all tags and their last usage date */
SELECT name, slug, count(history.tagId) AS total, tagdate FROM
(SELECT rel.term_taxonomy_id AS tagid, substr(p.post_date_gmt,1,10) AS tagdate FROM wp_term_relationships rel
INNER JOIN wp_term_taxonomy tax ON tax.term_taxonomy_id=rel.term_taxonomy_id
INNER JOIN wp_posts p ON p.ID=rel.object_id WHERE taxonomy='post_tag'
AND post_status='publish' ORDER BY post_date_gmt DESC) AS history
INNER JOIN wp_terms t ON t.term_id=history.tagid GROUP BY history.tagid ORDER BY total DESC
 
/* Get history for every tag */
SELECT  t.name, substr(p.post_date_gmt,1,10) AS date FROM wp_term_relationships rel
INNER JOIN wp_term_taxonomy tax ON tax.term_taxonomy_id=rel.term_taxonomy_id
INNER JOIN wp_terms t ON tax.term_id = t.term_id
INNER JOIN wp_posts p ON p.ID=rel.object_id WHERE taxonomy='post_tag'
AND post_status='publish' ORDER BY post_date_gmt DESC

The last query can be simply modified to show you the history a single particular tag also.
Simply add AND t.name = 'zucchini' between lines 4 and 5. This would pull a list of dates that ‘zucchini’ was used as a post tag.

What is progressive enhancement? More importantly, why should you care? Wikipedia can define terms way better than I can, but it’s exactly what it sounds like. It’s about progressively enhancing your website where those enhancements are available, which usually refers to JavaScript.

Why Should You Care?

This whole concept came about because of the technique of “graceful degradation,” a technique to make web pages break less instead of work better. Both techniques are answers to developers cutting corners and not building things the right way from the ground up. Progressive enhancement is about doing it the right way.

I can’t say I blame anyone for it or even that I am not guilty of it. After all, you can get a site or project 90% of the way there for 50% of the time and effort. That last 10% is a high cost, low reward situation that is always the first thing to go when deadlines loom or clients make demands. Nevertheless, you can still ruin your pages for various groups of people.

While progressive enhancement technically includes cascading style sheets (CSS), I am not here to make the argument that you should write your pages as semantic HTML without a style sheet at first. It is still a good idea, though, and occasionally looking at your pages without CSS during development can show you any glaring issues with your document structure.

Adobe Flash is now more of a consideration than ever in this era of iPhone dominance. I can’t count how many sites I have not been able to view a page on my phone because it “requires” Adobe Flash. Progressive enhancement would mean that content is made available without Flash, then later “enhanced” with Flash on devices and browsers that display it.

The top offender is how developers and designers treat JavaScript. As a developer, you cannot take for granted whether or not visitors have JavaScript enabled or speculate on what their reasons are regarding it.

The problems caused by cutting corners with JS are all over, from missing content blocks (failed AJAX calls for example) to forms that cannot be submitted.

Solid Tip: Take advantage of the noscript tag. It will make your life easier and your pages more accessible.

How About Some Example?

I have been developing a nice new complete application UI from scratch.

There have been multiple instances from the very beginning that have been obvious forks in the road where it would be very easy to take the easy way out and skip “progressive enhancement,” such as with sorting and paginating table results or showing modal box pop-ups for tidbits of information.

Take my nifty pagination bar below. It encompasses the all the functionality a user could want in navigating results, and it does so without any JavaScript. That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t take advantage of JS. You should always make things as easy for users as possible.

In this case, I use the <noscript> tag that holds a Submit button. This allows the viewer to use the page select drop down without JavaScript. For everyone else who has scripting enabled, the page form will automatically submit on change.

Over the last 6-7 years, JavaScript frameworks have become popular, making it dangerously easy for people to abuse JavaScript with nifty effects and widgets that fail hard without JS, such as flyout navigation menus and accordion boxes.

A lack of proper learning is to blame. Most novice designers simply copy the tutorial for existing pieces and change just enough to get it working on their own page. If another method of navigation is provided, users can be cut off from sections of your site. This is another situation where the noscript tag would be helpful. Non-JS links could be placed inside to accommodate users.

A good menu, however, will be built as plain HTML first, and then progressively enhanced to make the user experience better. Take the Newegg.com navigation menu, for example.

Build First, Then Enhance

While we could put on some smoking jackets and have some in-depth poetic discussions around all that “progressive enhancement” means, the above situations are a simple problem. Some people will read about the topics and continue to take the quick and easy route, never spending the extra time to build up the basics and follow up later with enhancement. Usability and accessibility should come first.

As with anything in life- if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right.

Yet another piece on our long-running series: The Logitech G27 Racing Wheel for Casual Racing Gamers. Here, I cover setting up your G27 racing wheel to play Formula 1 2011 PC. Developed and published by Codemasters, F1 2011 is a sequel to F1 2010 and features simulator-type open-wheel racing among all official F1 teams and drivers of the 2011 season.

F1 2011 races include dynamic weather and day/night cycles to add to single- and multi-player racing. The Logitech G27 quality sequential paddle shifters design are your only choice of gearbox, but that’s simply part of Formula 1 cars. No H-shifter usage here.

Force feedback and shift lights are always welcome, but I feel that both left me disappointed as a casual racing gamer. The force feedback effects were anemic by default, and turning them up in the game options felt like someone constantly banging a hammer on my car chassis at all times.

As for shift lights, the gears change so fast, they are either off or flashing at the red-line all the time.

Solid Tip: Looking for G27 drivers or Logitech Profiler software? Get it here.

F1 2011 G27 Settings

• Plug in the wheel, of course
• Open the Logitech Profiler
• Select New > Profile
• Add F1_2011.exe as a new game
• Open Specific Game Settings
• Check ‘Use Special Force Feedback Device Settings’
• Raise ‘Overall Effects Strength’ to 150% (optional)
• Check ‘Use Special Steering Wheel Settings’
• Set ‘Degrees of Rotation’ to your liking
• Set ‘Report Combined Pedals’ unchecked
• Launch Game
• In game, go to MYF1 > Driving Controls
• switch ‘Keyboard’ to ‘Logitech G27′ preset

While F1 2011 has a G27 preset in its control options, it does require some extra tweaks to enjoy before playing. As always, I have you make a G27 profile above for your wheel. Not required, but it gives you more control. With a profile, you can have better force feedback response and customize your degrees of rotation.

Button Mappings

You can edit your buttons (and pedals if you are nuts) under Edit/Customise Profile. Once you change a button, the preset for the G27 will change to the word “custom.” This is normal.

The gearbox is set to automatic by default. Switch it left to Sequential to enjoy your paddle shifters. This setting is directly tied to the intrusive “Driving Assists” section also. For example, turning off all assists forces your gearbox to manual and easy forces it to auto.

Solid Tip: The gearbox setting can only be set during a race, and not in the game’s normal options menu. Don’t ask me why.

FFB off by default

You will want to enter the Force Feedback options before you race and turn it on. FFB is off by default. Additionally, the default effects were pretty weak. If you increase the sliders in the pic shown below, the result is unpleasant. That’s why I recommend the optional setting up above for Overall Effects Strength.

Driving Assists

All driving assists are fully on by default. This means you will have a big glowing line on the track everywhere you go, your car will shift itself, and you never have to break. That last ‘assist’ is the most maddening to your fun level. Your first inclination might be to turn all that junk off. Just remember that this isn’t Need for Speed, and will be much harder.

This menu is available in a race, not at the title screen. It is also where you set your transmission to auto or manual.

Mass Effect 3
Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Borderlands 2
Assassin's Creed 4
Battlefield 3 LE

MechWarrior Online gets back to tactical fundamentals where smaller mechs can and do matter- a place where its not simply the biggest mech with the most lasers, PPCs, and LRMs.

Be sure to register for this free-to-play game at http://mwomercs.com/

View the Mechs in Action

Mass Effect 3
Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Borderlands 2
Assassin's Creed 4
Battlefield 3 LE

My latest usage of these functions was to assign tasks to users of the application and give them one full work week to complete the task.

Therefore, I needed my PHP code to calculate one full work week and return the date that would be their deadline.

This script counts through days, ignoring weekends and US holidays (optional). My database holds both federal and banking holidays (we have a lot of banking clients), but other users may just want federal holidays or not at all.

Therefore, the holiday function is separate. If you do not wish to include holidays in your calculations, simply remove all the dates from the array down at the bottom.

Using this script

This script is a single PHP class that uses public static functions, meaning that they can be called directly from anywhere, without having to instantiate an object. This PHP code has been tested in both PHP 5.2.0 and PHP 5.3.9.

Download this script: WorkDays.class.php

Some Useful Examples

All methods count today! If today is Wednesday and not a holiday, then WorkDays::getNextWorkDay() will return today’s date.

 
// Get next available work day from now, as a timestamp
WorkDays::getNextWorkDay();
 
// Get next available work day from now, as a formatted date
WorkDays::getNextWorkDay(NULL,"Y-m-d");
 
// Get next available work day from a specific day, as a formatted date
WorkDays::getNextWorkDay("Wednesday July 4th, 2012","Y-m-d");  // returns '2012-07-05'
 
// Get one extra work week from now, as a timestamp
WorkDays::getExtraWorkWeek();
 
// Get one extra work week from a specific day, as a formatted date
WorkDays::getExtraWorkWeek("2013-06-07","D M d, Y"); // returns 'Thu Jun 13, 2013'
 
// Get 3 extra work days from now, as a formatted date
WorkDays::getExtraWorkWeek(NULL,"Y-m-d");
 
// Get 6 extra work days from Christmas Day 2012, as a formatted date
WorkDays::getExtraWorkDays("2012-12-25","D M d, Y",6); // returns 'Thu Jan 03, 2013'

The Script

<?php
 
class WorkDays
{
	/**
	* @static getNextWorkDay()
	* @param string|int $date OPTIONAL a date string or Unix timestamp 
	* @param string $format OPTIONAL desired format of return value
	* @return int|string either a Unix timestamp or formatted date
	*
	* Gets next available work date (COULD BE SAME DAY)
	**/
 
	public static function getNextWorkDay($date=false,$format=false)
	{ 	
		$time = is_string($date) ? strtotime($date) : (is_int($date) ? $date : time());
		$holidays = self::getHolidays();
 
		for ($i=0; $i<5; $i++, $time+=86400)
		{ 
			if (in_array(date('w', $time), array(0, 6))) continue;
			foreach ($holidays as $h)
			{
				if ($time>=$h && $time<$h+86400) continue 2;			
			}
			break;
		}
		return ($format) ? date($format,$time) : $time;
	} 
 
	/**
	* @static getExtraWorkWeek()
	* @param string|int $date OPTIONAL a date string or Unix timestamp 
	* @param string $format OPTIONAL desired format of return value
	* @return int|string either a Unix timestamp or formatted date
	*
	* A shortcut to call getExtraWorkDays() with 5 days as a param 
	**/
 
	public static function getExtraWorkWeek($date=false,$format=false)
	{ 	
		return self::getExtraWorkDays($date,$format,5);
	}
 
	/**
	* @static getExtraWorkDays()
	* @param string|int $date OPTIONAL a date string or Unix timestamp 
	* @param string $format OPTIONAL desired format of return value
	* @param int $numdays OPTIONAL number of additional work days to add to date
	* @return int|string either a Unix timestamp or formatted date
	*
	* Gets the date after a specific number of work days. accounts for weekends and holidays 
	* Includes today by default
	* If you want to skip today, provide tomorrow's date as the argument
	**/
 
	public static function getExtraWorkDays($date=false,$format=false,$numdays=1)
	{
		$time = is_string($date) ? strtotime($date) : (is_int($date) ? $date : time());
		$count = 0;
		$finaldate = "";
 
		$holidays = self::getHolidays();
 
		$range = ($numdays > 5) ? ($numdays * 2) : 10;
 
		for($i=0; $i<$range; $i++, $time+=86400)
		{
			if (in_array(date('w', $time), array(0, 6))) continue;
			foreach ($holidays as $h)
			{
				if ($time>=$h && $time<$h+86400) continue 2;
			}
			$count++; 
			if($count == $numdays)
			{
				$finaldate = $time;
				break;
			}
		}
		return ($format) ? date($format,$finaldate) : $finaldate;
	}
 
	/**
	* @return mixed
	*
	* Returns an array of holiday dates
	**/	
 
	public static function getHolidays()
	{
		$holidays = array();
		$harr = array(
		"2012-01-02","2012-01-16","2012-02-20","2012-05-28","2012-07-04","2012-09-03",
		"2012-10-08","2012-11-12","2012-11-22","2012-12-25","2013-01-01","2013-01-21",
		"2013-02-18","2013-05-27","2013-07-04","2013-09-02","2013-10-14","2013-11-11",
		"2013-11-28","2013-12-25","2014-01-01","2014-01-20","2014-02-17","2014-05-26",
		"2014-07-04","2014-09-01","2014-10-13","2014-11-11","2014-11-27","2014-12-25");
 
		// OPTIONALLY fill $harr from your own database table.
 
		foreach ($harr as $hitem) {
			$h = explode('-', $hitem);        
			$htime = mktime(0, 0, 0, $h[1], $h[2], $h[0]);
			$weekday = date('w', $htime);
			$htime += $weekday==0 ? 86400 : ($weekday==6 ? -86400 : 0);
			$holidays[] = $htime;
		}
		return $holidays;
	}
}
 
?>

If you have any questions about using these methods or want to see an addition for your needs, leave a comment below.