Software on Terry Nguyen

My Programming Blog Is Full of Lessons as I Expected

Mon, 11 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

After starting to commit to a more regular tweeting, blogging, and status updating life, I’m finding out more and more as to why I left behind the whole “Minecraft tutorial” life. Making things that I feel look clear and very easy to follow seems to take absolutely forever for me! I always hated watching YouTube videos where I couldn’t tell what was going or articles that couldn’t clearly direct a lowly newbie towards successfully completely whatever task I wanted to get done. I didn’t want to make the same problems either, but in trying to do so, I ran into so many issues! Here’s one of them; it’s fairly recent too.

Screenshot an Entire Page in Firefox

Thu, 07 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

I always wondered how people do this without an addon or plugin, and I finally know how! I’ll never remember it though, so here’s a blogpost on it.

Press “SHIFT” and “F2” buttons at the same time to bring up the developer console.
Type “screenshot –fullpage” into the box or “developer console”.
Press enter! It saves to your default Downloads folder. You can see the file path at the top.
"

Defend Da Taco Shack

Sun, 03 Nov 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Here’s my entry for the 0h Game Jam of 2013! You are a lone warrior of with a nice tan who must defend a taco shack from flying burritos! Use the spacebar to shoot and hope you have a slow computer because there’s no frame limit on this thing! I’m tired, so hit up the download for more information and the game itself.

Requirements

Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 SP1 Redistributable Package (x86)

Monaco's Save File Location

Thu, 03 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

If you’re looking for Monaco’s save file so you can back it up, give it to a friend, or just upload it somewhere online, then you should probably stop looking for it in the “steamapps” folder. Make sure that you’ve backed up your old save file if you want it for some reason, and disable Steam Cloud if you’re planning on stuff in a new save file in its place.

Replacing Steam's Message Notification Noise

Mon, 27 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

While Steam’s transition to a newer updater and launcher may bring us closer to a more stable Steam than ever before, it is not without its shortcomings. Users that replace their message notification noises are finding that their changes are being overwritten upon every launch of Steam. While Steam’s prudence in maintaining the consistency of the program files is indeed useful, it is also a pain for anyone looking to introduce custom content. While not a solution, I did make a workaround for myself.

Learning Maya - My First Steps - Day 1

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 00:00:00 +0000

It’s the start of a brand new semester, and with that, comes changes at the Academy of Interactive Entertainment (AIE) in Seattle. With our two-dimensional group animation projects behind us, we can now proudly march forward towards learning how to work in three-dimensional space. I’ve picked up some things that are not only about my workflow in Maya, but also about other people’s workflows and how they learn the software.

Write a Visual Novel - Day 2: Inspiration!

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Finding the inspiration to actually write something was arguably the hardest part for me as a writer. Back when I was young, naive, and ambitious (i.e. two years ago), I wanted to write a novel. It was November and NaNoWriMo had just begun. I had no plot, no plan, no clue, and no real desire to actually complete that thing. Completing an entire novel just wasn’t something feasible for me. Try as I would, each successive attempt would be equally met with self-depreciation and dissatisfaction.

Write a Visual Novel - Day 1: Why?

Wed, 21 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Keeping in mind that this isn’t actually the first day that I’ve worked on the visual novel, I think it’s best if I bring everyone up to speed. The point of trying this self-designed programming exercise is to ease me into programming and learn something in my spare time. I have always wanted to design and build programs, but because of the fact that I get easily discouraged by a lack of results meant that I’ve never been able to do so. By gradually building up my knowledge, I will be better prepared in the future to take on programming classes and assignments as well as having fun in the process by designing a visual novel.

Resetting Windows 7's Volume Mixer

Mon, 19 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

If an application has appears to have sound activity in your volume mixer but isn’t actually heard on the device it’s outputting to, maybe the mixer needs a good nudge. Here’s one thing you can try to get that sound to actually make it all the way to your ears.

What might’ve happened is that though the Volume Mixer might not reflect this, it is muting an application, which means it’ll never make it to your ears. If this is true, then toggling it in the mixer won’t make a bit of difference because it’s essentially stuck this way.

WhatPulse - Track Your Usage!

Tue, 31 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

WhatPulse is a nifty little application that sits in your system tray or notification tray that keeps track of your mouse and keyboard. Statistics such as mouse movement distance, key press frequency, and total clicks and keys are recorded and publicly displayed on your WhatPulse profile. I should stress that this is in no way a keylogger and simply records statistics about your keyboard and mouse usage, nothing more.

Pros

WhatPulse is cross-platform and is available on Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux.

HWMonitor

Mon, 23 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

HWMonitor is a great way to view an array of values from sensors from your computer components. Available as a standalone and portable application as well as an installable program, HWMonitor is lightweight and fairly user-friendly.

Pros

Very little setup is required to get this thing up and going; even less with the portable executable!

From the makers of CPU-ID, the best possible attempt is made to identify and provide names such as “AMD Radeon HD 5700” which is better than “GFX”. Paying customers can designate custom names.

Skype on Dexpot

Tue, 17 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Skype is rather fickle when it comes to running alongside an installation of Dexpot. When you have more than one virtual desktop, it tends to refuse to launch on more than one virtual desktop. Though this isn’t exactly ideal, one way to workaround that issue is to force Dexpot to replicate it throughout all or certain virtual desktops.

Dexpot users who enable the Desktop Pager plugin will be able to right click on Skype in the pager and tell it to copy Skype to all or certain virtual desktops. Other users will be able to right click on Skype’s titlebar (i.e. the bar at the top of any window) and perform the same set of actions to copy Skype to individual or all virtual desktops. This also solves the problem regarding Skype and Dexpot when Skype stops functioning properly when opened in more than one virtual desktop.

Teracopy

Fri, 13 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

For a while, I’ve been using CodeSector’s Teracopy to handle day to day file operations in place of Windows. It’s widely acclaimed to speed up file operations by optimizing buffer caches or something like that, but I’m fairly certain that mileage will very from person to person. Nonetheless, I find Teracopy to be very useful and recommend it to power users. It can also be installed for less than computer-inclined users who want something powerful yet easily usable, provided they don’t start messing with some of the deeper functions.