the hard and dark side of modding Last night’s better part I spent with ↑Resource Hacker, prying open certain system files and having healthy looks at their contents. Having looked long enough made me start to understand how WinXP’s graphical user interface (GUI) works. Then I found the two articles ↑Windows XP and skinning and ↑The skinning primer: A comprehensive look at Windows customization by Brad Wardell. Both are excellent reads and give you a true understanding of how Windows creates the graphics of the interface you see on your screen—if you use Windows, that is. If you want to … Continue reading
Monthly Archives: March 2007
resistance against aero glass “Less is more.” —Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (↵1959) Upgrading your hardware for tilting your windows “threedimensionally” on your desktop, as ↵Madotate did for Win2k already years ago? For having simulated plexiglass frames around your windows? Well, I ↵did not buy one of the new Sony LCD-televisions, exactly because they have a physical plexiglass rim, in turn cheaply metal-framed—sharp edges, corners, and all. A true masterpiece of design. If you opt for a mid-sized device and place it on the floor, the upper needle-pointed corners are exactly at the height of little children’s eyes, and … Continue reading
↑Wired reports: “Earlier this month, French Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres inducted three game designers into the prestigious Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Order of Arts and Literature) as chevaliers, or knights: Peter Molyneux (Populous and Black & White), Eric Viennot (Missing) and Antoine Villette (Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare).” … Continue reading
↑Being not truthful is an installation by ↑Ralph Ammer which allows a ‘spectator’ to interact with a projected animation by gestures. Watch the video [↑24MB | .mov or ↑9MB | .mov] to see sheer magic and have the thing explained. … Continue reading
Walking, running, flying, and teleporting around a vast flat world, almost free to explore, surely is one of the key features which make up “↑Second Life“‘s (SL) attractivity. Another key feature is the high moddability of your personal avatar. You not only can change clothes by drag and drop, but your whole appearance as well. For example every single female avatar I met so far had the looks of a gorgeous top model, see ↵people. Even at the top notch graphics settings I am running SL at those avatars and their outfits look pretty much perfect. So I deem … Continue reading
“↑Second Life“ still appears as a practically empty world to me, but now I’ve found numerous places where people congregate, and where you are sure to run into them. I even found people worthwhile talking to … see above. She thinks: “Why is that guy with the generic avatar and poor collision detection sitting so close to me with his arm through the table?” … Continue reading
The ↑Open Source Annual ↑2007 has been succesfully presented at the CeBit 2007. LUTTERBECK, BERND, MATTHIAS BÄRWOLFF, AND ROBERT A. GEHRING (eds.). 2007. ↑Open Source Jahrbuch 2007: Zwischen freier Software und Gesellschaftsmodell. Berlin: Lehmanns Media. From now on it is available at bookstores and ↑can be downloaded for free in several formats. On pages 59 through 72 you’ll find my contribution “↑Die Deutungsoffenheit der Quelle“ [The source’s interpretative flexibility], which—as ↑all the other contributions—can be downloaded separately: KNORR, ALEXANDER. 2007. “↑Die Deutungsoffenheit der Quelle,” in Open Source Jahrbuch 2007: Zwischen freier Software und Gesellschaftsmodell edited by Bernd Lutterbeck, Matthias … Continue reading
With the second screen my desktop enlarges to 2560×1024 pixel, using the LCDs’ generic resolution—taking screenshots works flawless. Now I can view the uneven twins, my ↵website and the ↵weblog, as they were intended. … Continue reading
Michael Mosel, a student at Marburg University, CC-licenced his paper “↑Film noir Computerspiele—marketing gag oder reales ‘noir gaming’?“ [“Film noir computer games—marketing ruse or real ‘noir gaming’?” | .pdf | 907KB] and ↑published it online, as his brother ↑notified us at ↑PlasticThinking. MOSEL, MICHAEL. 2006. Film noir Computerspiele—marketing gag oder reales ‘noir gaming’? Thesis for the seminary Film Noir by Burkhard Röwekamp, Institut für Medienwissenschaft, Fachbereich 09: Germanistik und Kunstwissenschaften, Philipps-Universität Marburg. After giving a nice introduction into the subject of “film noir”, the paper deals with the games “↑Max Payne“ and “↑Grim Fandango“. Until now I only was … Continue reading