GeekwithEnvy

Richard Vincenti Jr

iTunes 11 Possibly Right Around the Corner

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iTunesScreenShot

According to MacRumors, iTunes 11 may be launching in the next few days. A German music distribution service Feiyr, sent out an email to artists asking them to prepare for the next release of iTunes. iTunes 11 will feature a new interface that relies heavily on graphics. In the email the artists are being asked to add more photos and to make sure they are of a high resolution.

iTunes 11 has undergone some delays and was supposed to have been released earlier but hopefully the extra time will make the new version that much more stable.  Hopefully, this new version will impress us as most iTunes releases don’t. This version will include integration with Facebook and Twitter. As always we will keep you up-to-date on the latest.

How To Play Diablo II LOD on Windows 8

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Many of us are enjoying the recent release of Diablo III but some of us still love to play Diablo II Lord of Destruction, and with Windows 8, that can be a little problematic.

Diablo II Lord of Destruction is an outstanding game that became an instant classic when it was released on June 29th in North America. Even over a decade later, Diablo fans still play Diablo II LOD on Battle.net and in single player mode. However, the operating systems we use have changed quite dramatically over the years and with each new version usually comes a new set of problems for gamers who enjoy playing classic titles.

DII LOD Cover Art Diablo II Lord Of Destruction
Diablo II Lord of Destruction Cover Art (Blizzard Entertainment®)

If you have attempted to play Diablo II LOD on Windows 8 you will notice many issues, including some serious lag. Here are a few steps you can take to make sure your Diablo II LOD experience in Windows 8 is just as good, if not better, than it was back in 2001.

This quick “how to” assumes that you have already installed and patched the latest version of Diablo II LOD on your system. If you need patch information you can obtain it through Blizzard’s official patch site.

Before launching the game, right click on the game’s shortcut and select “Properties”, then select the “Compatibility” tab.

Once on the Compatibility tab, select the following options:

  • Check “Run this program in compatibility mode for” and set the value to “Windows XP SP 2/3”
  • Check “Reduced Color Mode” and set to “16-bit (65536) Color”
  • Check “Disable display scaling on high DPI settings”
  • Optional “Run this program as administrator”

Once you dial in these settings click Apply and then OK.

The next step is crucial if you want to reduce or eliminate all of the glitching and lagging that is known to plague Diablo II LOD on Windows 8.

Obtain an 3DFX Glide Wrapper, this is a little application that will allow you to use the Glide interface with Diablo II LOD. I have found that GLIDE3-to-OpenGL Wrapper by Sven Labusch seems to work the best out of any I have tried so far.

Download the files from Sven’s site and read the “ReadMe.txt” file. This will contain the most current instructions for installing and setting up the wrapper. Be sure to re-run the video test after the wrapper is installed and set it to use Glide.

** Note: You Will Also Need to apply compatibility settings to run the Diablo II Video Test (D2VidTst.exe) * *

 

That’s it! Hopefully you will be successful in your attempts to get Diablo running smooth. Just follow the directions closely and have fun!

The Ticking Time Bomb of The U.S

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Many of us carry on with our day to day lives completely oblivious to the world outside of our own. Can you really blame us? Human society is built in such a way that we feel increasing pressure to get certain things done. This sense of urgency has has increased over the years as our world has become smaller thanks to technology. We worry about issues at work and at home and in doing so we seldom pay attention to anything else. Thankfully there are a few people who, in their field of study, feel increasing pressure to pay attention to the things we don’t.

We live among giants, supermassive volcanoes threaten our world. In The United States, one such super volcano  sits uncomfortably close. Yellowstone National Park is a bizarre and yet beautiful place with all of it’s world class geological features. Yellowstone is in many ways a natural amusement park filled with geysers, hot springs, mudpots, and fumaroles. We drive in by the hundreds of millions to witness the power of nature every year and many of us don’t even realize were walking around on top of a giant monster.

How is it that we could almost completely miss seeing such a massive volcano? Well, part of the issue is their size, they are so large that they blend in with the land surrounding them. Yellowstone’s caldera is thought to be about 35 by 45 miles wide and only from high up in the sky can we really start to bring the massive volcano into perspective and begin to appreciate it’s size.

Yellowstone Caldera
Yellowstone Caldera Map (Credit: U.S. Geological Survey
Department of the Interior/USGS)

 

When can we expect an eruption? Well, as of right now we have no idea. Our best scientists can only guess when it comes to the likelihood of an eruption of one of these supermassive volcanos. The other major concern is how big will the eruption be. A caldera-forming eruption would be the most devastating and would likely have an impact on the entire world. The entire human population would experience long lasting negative effects including major impacts to our food supply. Crops would likely suffer if a significant amount of ash were to enter the atmosphere and surronding lands. The temperature of Earth would change dramatically altering the climate and causing damage on a scale that we are only beginning to understand.

YellowStoneAshMap
YellowStone Ash Impact Map (Credit: U.S. Geological Survey
Department of the Interior/USG)

Although currently unpredictable, we can try to make an assumption of when a super volcano may erupt based on it’s past activity. In the case of Yellowstone, we see eruptions occurring at 2.1 million, 1.3 million, and 640,000 years ago. If we used this data to predict the next potential super volcano caldera-forming eruption, we would see a favorable timeframe in approximately 90,000 years from today. However, Yellowstone isn’t the only super volcano in the world.

Yellowstone is one of many super volcanoes around the world. Here is a list of a few more known super volcanoes.

  • Lake Toba in Sumatra, Indonesia.
  • Aira, Japan
  • Long Valley California, U.S.A
  • Valles caldera, New Mexico, U.S.A
  • Lake Taupo, New Zealand

 

Magma Eruption Size Chart
Magma Eruption Size Chart (Credit: U.S. Geological Survey
Department of the Interior/USG)

So, should we worry about these sleeping giants among us? The short answer here is, no. However, knowing that they exist is important and scientists are hard at work trying to understand the geological processes that lead up to such a massive eruption, in hopes of providing us with an early warning. Currently, there is no way to prevent a volcano from erupting, especially a super volcano. We can only  hope that time is on our side and that when the next eruption happens, it’s relatively small and we have a chance to evacuate and prepare.

 

For more information about Yellowstone volcanic activity please visit the official USGS website.

 

Featured App: Daily Wallpapers for Windows 8

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Customization has got to be one of our favorite features of anything and Windows 8 is no exception. As always, Microsoft has provided us with some pretty cool themes to choose from and all of them feature stunning photography but sometimes we can’t seem to find a picture that fits us best. Well, now theres an app for that!

Daily Wallpapers, as it’s name suggests, offers up new images everyday for you to use as wallpaper for your Windows lock screen. Check out the daily images, find something specific or check out images that are trending, all within an easy to navigate UI. The app also allows you to preview your lock screen before applying, which is a plus. You can also pull images from your camera or hard drive and now the app offers support for Facebook and SkyDrive.

This app is available through the Windows Store for Free here.

Daily Wallpaper Screen Shot

Do we Really Need Certain Apps for our PC?

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With both OSX and Windows now featuring an app store we can now get many of our favorite applications all in one place and with peace of mind when it comes to security. I have been using Windows 8 for some time now and one of the apps that I use is the Netflix app. The app has been somewhat buggy as of late, but over all it seems to get the job done. I finished watching an episode of Mythbusters and then went off to run some errands. I came home later and jumped onto my Macbook and started working. Square modern app icons.

A hour or so had passed and I decided that I wanted to watch another episode of Mythbusters. I started to head to my web browser when I suddenly stopped and wondered if there was a Netflix app for OSX, something similar to what Windows 8 has. I quickly opened the App Store and searched for Netflix, only to find that it doesn’t exist. I thought that it was kind of strange considering OSX has been around for a while and it seems like it would be useful.

I quickly began to realize that the lack of a OSX Netflix app isn’t actually that big of deal. I only need to click a bookmark in my web browser and I have access to all of the content and features that any app would have. Then I started to question the need for apps like these in the first place, at least for your laptop or desktop. What’s the difference between an app on my desktop vs a link on my desktop that takes me to Netflix? Where is the benefit? With new web browsers that harness the power of our machines more than ever by making use of our GPU and extra processing power, why bother with an app? I am looking for any opportunity that can save disk space and the lifespan of my SSD.

What makes the web based app more appealing is the fact that it’s often more reliable. I mentioned earlier that I have been dealing with quite a few bugs since I have started using the new Netflix app, but when it comes to the website, I have had virtually no issues. Some of this could be due to the website being around much longer than the app and therefore less buggy. Why bother with the app at all when we seem to be moving toward a cloud based world? If we are trying to create a much more seamless experience then why leave the browser that we spend so much time using, just to open an app? The answer isn’t so clear at this point, which is why the pros don’t seem to know either. This is basically the wild west era of the OS and everyone seems to be trying a little bit of everything and then waiting to see what consumers end up doing.

We can always look at things from the other prospective, which seems to be a movement away from the web as we know it today. Maybe we just make everything an app, including all our favorite websites and instead of downloading them, we just launch them from the cloud. Perhaps, we can just get rid of the web address altogether and then just use google to search for apps instead. Who knows how strange things will become and how practical any of this actually is.

One thing is for certain, we are in the middle of a long evolution that will leave us with a much different computer experience than currently we have today. We are stuck in a phase between old and new and it feels weird but I think were headed in the right direction, it’s just going to take another five years or more before we can fully adapt this new way of doing things. It is ultimately up to us, the consumers, to figure out what we want. If we don’t buy it, it won’t continue to exist and so we ultimately decide what works and what doesn’t. So what do you think?