Scott Hanselman

The Elder Scrolls IV - Oblivion is amazing. Buy it. This is the game that the Xbox 360 was made for. This is the Halo 2 launch game that the 360 was missing. It's hardcore enough for the RPG-familar, and casual enough for my wife and I who play thirty minutes at a time. That's my review. There's nothing more to be said.

Ah, but the originals. The original Elder Scrolls - Arena is available for free download on the 10th anniversary side.

However, Window's DOS Support, particularly its extended memory support, leaves something to be desired, so you can (have to) download a DOS Emulator.

"DOSBox emulates an Intel x86 PC, complete with sound, graphics, mouse, modem, etc., necessary for running many old DOS games that simply cannot be run on modern PCs and operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows XP, Linux and FreeBSD. However, it is not restricted to running only games. In theory, any DOS application should run in DOSBox, but the emphasis has been on getting DOS games to run smoothly, which means that communication, networking and printer support are still in early developement."

In order to get Arena running on my Home PC I needed to change the following values in my DOSBox.conf file:

core=dynamic
frameskip=2
cycles=20000 #YMMV, so use CTRL-F12 to find the right value for you
output=opengl

You'll also need to "mount" your ARENA folder in DOSBox when running:

mount c c:\arena
c:
arena

Very slick, the emulator maps/emulates a SoundBlaster! Ah, SET BLASTER=A220 I7 D1 H5 T6, we hardly knew ye. It's so funny, though, how we remember the graphics being SO awesome at the time...gaming now and then...

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

About   Newsletter

Hosting By

In my recent "Utilities you didn't know you had" podcast, I realize now I totally forgot about REG.EXE.

I was reminded while browsing James Manning's blog

From CMD.EXE, this tells you where VS.NET 2005 is installed:

C:\>reg query HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0\Setup\VS /v EnvironmentDirectory

Here's the same thing in MSH (gp is the alias for get-property):

MSH C:\>$(gp HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\8.0\Setup\VS).EnvironmentDirectory

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

About   Newsletter

Hosting By

My thirteenth Podcast is up. This episode is about exploring and debugging problems like my recent Trojan/Virus.

We're listed in the iTunes Podcast Directory, so I encourage you to subscribe with a single click (two in Firefox) with the button below. For those of you on slower connections there are lo-fi and torrent-based versions as well.

Our sponsors are CodeSmith, PeterBlum and the .NET Dev Journal.

NOTE: Spread the word on this coupon discount, folks: If you use Coupon Code HM100 you can get $100 off CodeSmith Professional. We use CodeSmith here at Corillian and I'm a huge fan. It's intuitive use of ASP.NET-like syntax and powerful advanced XML techniques add up to immediate value to the dev. We've used it to code gen domain objects from XML, write sprocs and generate Data Access Layers. I recommend you give it a hard look. We'll be doing a Code Gen show next week. Feel free to spread the coupon code around, it's HM100.

As I've said before this show comes to you with the audio expertise and stewardship of Carl Franklin. The name comes from Travis Illig, but the goal of the show is simple. Avoid wasting the listener's time. (and make the commute less boring)

• Each show will include a number of links, and all those links will be posted along with the show on the site. There were 16 sites mentioned in this thirteenth episode, some planned, some not.
• The basic MP3 feed is here, and the iPod friendly one is here. There's a number of other ways you can get it (streaming, straight download, etc) that are all up on the site just below the fold. I use iTunes, myself, to listen to most podcasts, but I also use FeedDemon and it's built in support.
  • Some other clients are Doppler (also suppose Windows CE), FireAnt, Nimiq, and PrimeTime Podcast.
• Note that for now, because of bandwidth constraints, the feeds always have just the current show. If you want to get an old show (and because many Podcasting Clients aren't smart enough to not download the file more than once) you can always find them at http://www.hanselminutes.com.
• I have, and will, also include the enclosures to this feed you're reading, so if you're already subscribed to ComputerZen and you're not interested in cluttering your life with another feed, you have the choice to get the 'cast as well.
• If there's a topic you'd like to hear, perhaps one that is better spoken than presented on a blog, or a great tool you can't live without, contact me and I'll get it in the queue!

Enjoy. Who knows what'll happen in the next show?

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

About   Newsletter

Hosting By

My Coding4Fun MSDN Column "Some Assembly Required" is back after a hiatus. This article is about interfacing with a MotionJPEG Stream and AirLink AIC250 Network Camera extending Andrew Kirillov's brilliant Motion project.

I took Andrew's application and ported it to .NET 2.0 and made it a ClickOnce application. Then I extended his implementation of MotionJPEG to get around some of the [psycho] quirks in the AIC250's Web Server.

I hope you enjoy "Everyone Loves Babies! Webcams and Motion Detection." I use it to have video calls with my wife and son while at work.

UPDATE: Andrew has updated his original article with a Motion Alarm, as well as the ability to save arbitrary video streams.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

About   Newsletter

Hosting By

My twelfth Podcast is up. This episode is about 10 Windows Utilities you may not realize you already have.

We're listed in the iTunes Podcast Directory, so I encourage you to subscribe with a single click (two in Firefox) with the button below. For those of you on slower connections there are lo-fi and torrent-based versions as well.

Our sponsors are Xceed, PeterBlum and the .NET Dev Journal.

NOTE: Xceed is a new sponsor and I'm stoked about it. Do take moment to check them out. Xceed is the home of the brilliant Martin Plante and you should subscribe to his blog and not just because of his (honest) criticisms of podcasting. He is leaving Xceed in two months, but they part as friends. Martin is an expert in all things System.IO, IMHO, and particularly System.IO.Stream. Their Data Manipulation Suite is top notch.

As I've said before this show comes to you with the audio expertise and stewardship of Carl Franklin. The name comes from Travis Illig, but the goal of the show is simple. Avoid wasting the listener's time. (and make the commute less boring)

• Each show will include a number of links, and all those links will be posted along with the show on the site. There were 14 sites mentioned in this twelfth episode, some planned, some not.
• The basic MP3 feed is here, and the iPod friendly one is here. There's a number of other ways you can get it (streaming, straight download, etc) that are all up on the site just below the fold. I use iTunes, myself, to listen to most podcasts, but I also use FeedDemon and it's built in support.
  • Some other clients are Doppler (also suppose Windows CE), FireAnt, Nimiq, and PrimeTime Podcast.
• Note that for now, because of bandwidth constraints, the feeds always have just the current show. If you want to get an old show (and because many Podcasting Clients aren't smart enough to not download the file more than once) you can always find them at http://www.hanselminutes.com.
• I have, and will, also include the enclosures to this feed you're reading, so if you're already subscribed to ComputerZen and you're not interested in cluttering your life with another feed, you have the choice to get the 'cast as well.
• If there's a topic you'd like to hear, perhaps one that is better spoken than presented on a blog, or a great tool you can't live without, contact me and I'll get it in the queue!

Enjoy. Who knows what'll happen in the next show?

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

About   Newsletter

Hosting By