Intergalactic Exterminator

I never put the download link at the top, but since this is so ridiculously exciting, I'm going to cut to the chase and give you the link right off the bat:

http://www.mediafire.com/?ceqxtgz12s922g6

You can read the rest of the post if you want to.  But you'd rather play the game.  If you don't know how to install the game, you should continue reading.  Otherwise, you should just experience the sheer ecstasy of the game for yourself.

So recently, I rediscovered a game from my childhood.  It's not just some game.  It was probably the game that I played the most when I was little.  It's even cooler that nobody else knows of or has played this game, because it was discontinued shortly after release due to lawsuits.

It's pretty much a Centipede/Millipede game where you shoot the bugs coming down while dodging all the enemies and projectiles.  However, it has significantly improved graphics over the original games, although leaving the beautiful concept the same for the most part.

There are a lot of upgrades to get during the game, including a wide arsenal of weapons, increased fire rate, and wingmen to aid you in your quest.  The difficulty setting can be toggled between Easy, Medium, and Hard.  It's actually pretty hard to beat the game on anything except Easy without using "Continues" (which you get infinite of, only resets your score).  There's even a cheat system built into the game so you can go crazy with infinite weapons and lives if you get stuck -- but bear in mind that if you beat the game after activating cheats, the name in the high-score table will always be "CHEATER!" which doesn't really look good.

If you want to see pictures, I'm sure you can Google/YouTube for them, but I guarantee that you cannot find the full version of the game anywhere on the Internet.  I've searched far and wide online before realizing that my only way of reliving my childhood was to dig up the old CD-ROM from the heaps and piles in the basement.

Since this is a ridiculously old game, it only works on Windows XP and earlier.  Which means that unless you are running an ancient machine, you cannot actually play the game.  Never fear -- you can always install a Virtual Machine.  I won't go into detail how to do that (maybe I'll make a post on it later), but I recommend using Oracle VirtualBox.  Google that and you should be all set.  I'm sure there are numerous tutorials on how to install it.  And just in case you don't have an image of Windows XP, the Internet is indeed full of surprises.  I like this website that starts with "thepi", has "ratebay" in the middle, and ends in ".se".  I'll leave it up to you to figure out what that means.  You can get a Windows XP image really easily from that.

Now after you download the file "Intergalactic Exterminator.iso", you are probably wondering how to use this .ISO file without a CD-ROM.  Never fear -- you can use DAEMON Tools Lite to emulate a CD-ROM drive.  Again, I don't really want to go into detail on how to use other people's software, so you can just Google that, too.  Sorry I'm really being unhelpful.

Then, you just install the game, and enjoy!  It's such a simple game, but it's so much fun, and can evoke a huge range of emotions: frustration, elation, contentment, intensity, ferocity, etc.

I think you'd be scared to hear that I have actually memorized every single level and [nearly] every single detail in the game.  I know every single enemy, how many hits they take to kill, how many points they give, their movement patterns, etc.  I know this game.  Extremely well.

I could easily write a walkthrough for the entire game many times over, but I think that's unnecessary.  You'll find out the ways to beat all the levels.  If you don't you can just beat them the normal way.  Most of them have little tricks that make it way easier to win.

And if you get bored of this game (for some insane reason), the demos are really cool, too.  But it's too bad that they also got discontinued and I didn't get to buy them.  It's so sad that eGames, Romtech, and Hamumu all nearly nonexistent now.  Hasbro did a really bad thing back then, forcing them to take these great games down just because they were improvements on their old deprecated game.  I think that this game had great potential.  For it's time, it was a legendary arcade game for PC, but was shut down before it could reach it's golden age of glory.

Download it here (if you missed it above somehow):

http://www.mediafire.com/?ceqxtgz12s922g6

Ruzzle Solver

So today, my friend challenged to a game called "Ruzzle."  He claimed that it was a new popular game that everyone was playing.  I've never heard of it, so I decided to check it out.

It turns out it's just a relabeled Scramble with Friends, which was popular around a year ago.  I find it quite funny that a game can resurface like this, just under a new name.  There's no new content, except for advertisements.

Around a year ago, when my friend first introduced me to Scramble with Friends, it was sort of fun, but I figured out something very important: I suck at the game!  So, I did as any normal person would do.  I got sick and tired of always losing to my friend.  I decided to go for the fame and the glory.  I made a bot.

Now, I decided to write a blog post (which I haven't done in quite some time) because I uploaded it to MediaFire, where I store all my uploaded files.  Since I'm slightly OCD about this, I want everything on MediaFire to be linked with something on this blog.  (And perhaps because I wanted to share this awesome secret with other people, although I'm sure that there are other Ruzzle solvers out there.)

Anyway, what this program does is find all of the words in the puzzle and output them, sorted from highest to lowest in letter count.  It doesn't take into account the "Double Word Score" or "Triple Letter Score" bonuses, but I imagine if you just type the longest words, they'll contain most of these bonuses anyway.  And they are huge freakin' words so they'll still give you massive points, right?

Most of my released programs are pretty "refined," or at least look like they are finished and and don't have random buttons and stuff lying around, but I decided to just leave this one in it's current state.  Needless to say, don't press the buttons that have weird names -- even I'm not sure what they do anymore.

To use this is extremely simple:

1. Type the letters on each line into the only TextBox without spaces, so just go from left to right, and then from top to bottom, as the prompt suggests.  There should be 16 letters in the TextBox when you're done, and nothing else.
2. Press "Go!!!" and a Notepad (or whatever your default text editor is) should pop up, containing the aforementioned list of words.
3. Input them into the game as fast as you can.
4. Win games.

UPDATE:  For some reason or another, I recently updated it to have three output options (you can check any or all of them).  The link at the bottom is also updated.

• Sort:  outputs the sorted list, as it used to
• Tile: outputs the words for each tile as a starting location, starting with the top-left one, going across and then down.  Each sub-list is sorted on word length.
• Filter (5+):  same as "Tile" except that it only includes words that are 5 letters or longer to reduce the clutter when going down the list, since there's no way to input all the words in only two minutes.

Now, while I didn't release any source code because it is so messy I'd be embarrassed if anyone saw it, there is one very small customization that you can do.  The program uses a dictionary, or rather, list of words that it searches for during run-time.  It's possible for you to swap out word lists by just copying a new one into the same directory as the executable, and naming it "DICT.txt".  One thing to keep in mind, though, is that I do not know what the Ruzzle word list actually is, so an oversimplified word list will not get you all of the massive points, and an over-complicated word will probably give you words that Ruzzle will not accept.  Maybe you can find the official word list, but I'm too lazy to find it right now.

Have fun beating all your friends at Ruzzle.  It's easy to trick them into thinking you're a pro at this game!  I've done it twice now!

Just follow the link to download the file.  Extract it and run the executable.  It's easy as that!

http://www.mediafire.com/?mkuqtv8446bj3ia

SparkNotes Compiler-Extractor

Ever find yourself in an English class in which the the text you're supposed to read is borderline incomprehensible?  Or if you're "that guy" who always needs to read supplement texts AFTER reading the original to make sure you have complete mastery of what you were supposed to read?

Either way, you probably read the SparkNotes.  Maybe you want to print them out and bring them to school so you can have a look at them in class.  Maybe your teacher is so magnanimous that he/she lets you use your notes on tests and/or quizzes.

If you fall in any of those categories, then you can find use in the SparkNotes Compiler/Extractor.  (If you're in middle school, you might not need this, but once you get into high school, SparkNotes will become your good friend, especially if you take higher-level English courses.  Or if you're just completely lazy.)  This way, you don't have to manually copy-and-paste the text (and waste a lot of time) for every SparkNotes page for every book that you're supposed to be reading.

I'd say that this program is pretty self-explanatory, but I'm the one who wrote it, so I'd think it's easy to use no matter what, right?  Here's a quick run-through of how to use the program.  You might want to just download and try the program first, and come back and read the rest of this post if you don't get it.

When you download the file ("SparkNotes Compiler-Extractor.zip"), you should extract the ZIP archive to wherever you want.  In your unzipped folder, you should have 6 items (in no particular order):

• SparknotesCompiler.cs -- This is the source code for the program.  You can open it, read it, change it, and basically do anything you want with it except sell it!
• c_SparknotesCompiler.bat -- Run this file to compile SparknotesCompiler.cs if you make any changes to the source code.
• SparknotesCompiler.exe -- This is the actual program.  Run this program.
• SparkNotes.dotx -- This is a word template I created just for these SparkNotes.  You just open the HTM document generated by Sparknotes.exe, copy all the text, and paste it into this template.  There's more to it, so read on.
• SparkNotes.bas -- This is a Word macro for fixing up the formatting in your document.  You'll find out more about this further down the post.
• styles.css -- This CSS file is needed for the generated HTM files to display correctly.  NOTE: The HTM files that are generated must be put in the same folder as the styles.css file!

Now you can compile/extract a SparkNotes!  First, run SparknotesCompiler.exe.  The first prompt wants you to complete a URL.  Let's compile Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, for example.  To get SparkNotes's URL for that certain book, just Google it: "SparkNotes Heart of Darkness".  Probably the first one will be a link to it.  You can either click it or just use the web address that you see: "www.sparknotes.com/lit/heart".  All you have to fill out is the end of this URL, so type into the program: "lit/heart" and press [ENTER].

NOTE: If you get a URL like "http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/heart/section1.html", then just take out anything after the book's (probably abbreviated) name in the URL.  Also, don't include the forward-slash at the end, like the program tells you in case you didn't read it because you don't like to follow directions.

If you're just a normal user, then I recommend you just leave all the files extracted in the same folder, meaning that you shouldn't move them around and separate them.  You can move the entire folder if you want, just not the individual files.  That way, it helps keeps styles.css in the same folder as your HTM files.

When the program prompts you for a name, you should just enter the name without a path, such as "Heart of Darkness" or "Heart of Darkness - Conrad" or something like that.  Do not include the ".HTM" extension at the end; only put in the name.  Any characters not allowed in a normal file name are not allowed here.  The program will crash if you try something funny.

Now the program will start listing a whole bunch of URLs that it has finished getting the data from.  It'll tell you how long it took.  If you want to view the generated file right now, then press [ENTER] when the program is done (and gives you the prompt).  Otherwise just close it and maybe look at your SparkNotes later.

If you want a Word document version, then you have to do some work yourself (don't worry, it's pretty easy -- I already did most of it for you!).  First, you open up a new document based on SparkNotes.dotx by double-clicking it.  Then, you copy and paste in the text from your HTM document.  Remember to paste in the good-looking stuff that you normally read, not the HTML source code.  I'd fix up the formatting at the top a bit so that the book's title and author's name take up less space, but that's just my personal preference.  Next, you should change the name in the header (on the second page) to display the correct book title and author name in the corresponding places.

Here's something you might learn now: Word macros.  If you don't know what they are, it's OK because I already made it for you.  Because this post is already so long, I won't post the actual code here.

Here are the instructions for Word 2007.  If you have a different version of Word, it's probably pretty similar.  First, go to "View' on the ribbon and click "Macros" --> "View Macros" on the right.  Or, Alt - W - M - V is the Office 2007 shortcut for you.  Then, type in the name of the macro we're going to use.  For this one, I recommend something like "SparkNotes".  Then click the "Create" button.  It'll bring up this code screen.  But don't be afraid!  Click "File" --> "Import File..." and navigate to the folder where this program is.  Select "SparkNotes.bas".  Save and close the code window and go back to your Word document.  Go view your macros again.  This time, select "SparkNotes" and click "Run".  It will format your document for you.  I think that you only have to do this once, because it will save the macro with Word.  How useful!  You don't have to save this word document with the rest of the HTM files, styles.css, and the other files because Word has it's own independent formatting now.  It has no dependencies on other files!

If you're OK with a Word document (which you probably are), then you're fine.  If you want to make a PDF out of it, I recommend that you get CutePDF Writer.  It's a great, easy-to-install, free tool.  You can save/move the PDF files anywhere you want, just like the Word documents.  Just remember to keep the 6 downloaded files and the generated HTM files together!

That's all... it was pretty easy, wasn't it?  You didn't need those instructions -- you probably think I am insulting your intelligence right now!

If you didn't find the link in that massive bulk of text above, here it is again:

"SparkNotes Compiler-Extractor.zip"

FarmVille Bot

FarmVille is this "popular" game on Facebook.  In a nutshell, you're a farmer, and you just have to plant and harvest crops to level up.  It's a surprisingly addicting game.  However, the one turnoff is that it takes so long to individually click each field (those who play the game know what I'm talking about).  It can take up to 30 minutes if you have a large enough farm.

This program uses several of the C# classes I posted on my blog earlier:
C# Mouse
C# InputBox
C# FileSystemDialog

It also a class I made up for this program called the Location class.  If you want to look at it, then just download the source code (at the bottom of this post).

I developed a pretty easy to use tool for working on your farm (it works best if you have just a massive square of fields).  Refer to the image below:

What you have to do is tell it how many rows and columns of fields it has to work on and where the four corners of the rectangular region you want to harvest are.  TOP means the top-most field, LEFT means the left-most field, RIGHT means the right-most field, and BOTTOM means the bottom-most field.  I'm pretty sure you could have figured that one out.  To set these values, you have to select one of the boxes, and press space when your cursor is over the respective field.  The program will automatically rotate the selection counterclockwise, so I recommend starting at the TOP box and then going LEFT, BOTTOM, and RIGHT.  Also, I think it's best that you go to the market and select any crop so that you have your actually mouse pointer when you're setting these values.

The program will not click on the field indicated in the exceptions box.  Click "Add" to add an exception to the field given by the row and column in the rectangular region.  Keep in mind that the left-most field is at row and column 0 (ZERO).  For example, you'd use this to skip over the square that my guy is standing in at the center.  By the way, it's best that you fence in your character using hay bales so that he doesn't have to walk over to the fields to work on them.  It saves a lot of time.

Just hit the "Go!" button to begin the operation!  Watch as the program does all the work for you.  However, you can't minimize the FarmVille window until the program is done clicking on all the fields.  If it misses a few fields, you can probably click them yourself and then tweak the corner locations later.  If it totally fails, then you can just minimize the FarmVille window (or show desktop using the Windows Key + D) and then try again.

In the File menu, you can save your farm.  The program will automatically load the file called "Default.fvm" if it exists, so you are going to do the same farm over and over again, save it as "Default.fvm."  You can also load existing farms.  Also, just in case you forgot to save your farm, it creates a file called "LastFarm.fvm" automatically.  It will be overwritten the next time you exit the program, so make sure that rename this file to something else if you want to keep it.  Keep in mind that the program can only read and write .FVM files.

A hint to those who have irregularly shaped farms (that aren't rectangular or square).  You should divide your farm into as few rectangles as possible, and make a save file for each of those rectangles.

You can download the program here ("FarmVille Master.exe").
You can also get the C# source code here ("FarmVille Master.zip").

Have fun winning at FarmVille!

No Fear Literature - ALL

Remember the old post on No Fear Shakespeare?  If you do, then that's great!  If you don't then you should go read it (see No Fear Shakespeare - ALL).  Well, I found out that SparkNotes has "No Fear" titles not only for Shakespeare plays, but also for a few other books, such as the scary The Scarlet Letter or the terrifying Beowulf.  It's called No Fear Literature!

Since I already had the code for compiling all of the "No Fear Shakespeare" plays, all I had to do was make a few modifications to the code to make it compile the other plays.  It was a bit more of a pain getting these five works because the formatting of these URLs was much less standard between each other.  However, it could be done, as we see now!  (If you're still expecting the code, it's so un-standard, meaning that you have to tweak it for nearly every book, that I don't think anybody actually wants it so I probably will never release it.  Besides, every single "No Fear" book has been compiled now.)

As of now, SparkNotes only has six "No Fear Literature" books (I'm too lazy to actually finish A Tale of Two Cities because it would require quite a lot of code-tweaking).  If you actually need (or want) the "No Fear Literature" version of this play to be compiled, then leave a comment and I'll try to get around to uploading it as soon as possible.

Remember: THE TEXT IS NOT MINE!  IT'S ALL FROM SPARKNOTES!

If you like these "No Fear" compilations, please tell your friends and link them to this blog!  That gives me more web traffic, which increases my happiness!

If you haven't already, read the bulleted list in No Fear Shakespeare - ALL before downloading the files.  There are a few things in there that you should know.

Here's the link you've been waiting for:
http://www.mediafire.com/?b2n498laiyznz

No Fear Shakespeare - ALL

It all started with Hamlet (see No Fear Shakespeare - Hamlet for more details).  I figured that since I could make one of these, I could do the rest.  All it would take would be a more general program and some "skillz" at using Microsoft Word.

Again, I'm sorry, but no source code will be released at this point.  It's a bit neater than it was when I was extracting Hamlet, but it's still difficult to explain.  Maybe I'll just release it in its unpolished form sometime.  But it doesn't really matter because the program has already done its job.  All of the No Fear Shakespeare plays have been extracted and converted into these files.

Here's a quick overview of what I did, if you care.  First, I saved an example of a No Fear Shakespeare webpage from some random play (probably Macbeth).  Then, I played with the HTML until I knew what I needed to extract and what other things to keep and what to delete.  I wrote a C# program to extract this stuff and compile a .HTM file (a.k.a. just a webpage).  Then, I copied all the text in this formatted .HTM file and pasted it into a word template I made just for these No Fear Shakespeare plays, preserving the source formatting.  It still didn't look great, so I created a VB macro in Word to touch up the text.  Since I was using my slow laptop, it took a while to paste and format such large volumes of text.

Now you can go download all of the files, and here are some things you should know first:

• You can get specific Word 2007 (.DOCX) or .PDF files by going into the different folders for the different plays.
• The .DOCX files are smaller, but you'll need something to read it, but I think the .PDF files seem more professional.
• You CAN edit the .DOCX files, but you CANNOT edit the .PDF files.
• "No Fear Shakespeare WORD2007.zip" contains only the .DOCX files for each of the plays.
• "No Fear Shakespeare PDF.zip" contains only the .PDF files for each of the plays.
• "No Fear Shakespeare HTML.zip" contains only the HTML files for each of the plays.  HTML is by far the smallest format, and is the best if you are reading on the computer (printing the HTML file makes it really small and the formatting is kind of funny).  You MUST all of the .HTM files in the same folder as the "No Fear Shakespeare  Macbeth  Act 1, Scene 1_files" folder and the ""No Fear Shakespeare  Macbeth  Act 1, Scene 1_files.htm" file because they contains all the scripts used in displaying the .HTM files correctly.
• "No Fear Shakespeare ALL.zip" contains all of the files.  You still have the keep the .HTM files in the same long-named folder with the scripts.

Remember, THE TEXT IS NOT MINE!  IT IS ALL FROM SPARKNOTES!

All of these files are kind of long (they're full plays with Modern English translations), so printing them out will use a lot of paper.  But it's still better than buying the No Fear Shakespeare book from SparkNotes (in my opinion).

If you liked this, don't forget to tell your friends!  Please link them to this blog first instead of giving them a direct link, because it increases the traffic on this site, which makes me happy!

Have fun reading Shakespeare (if that's possible).  Believe me, the No Fear Shakespeare version is countless times easier to read than the real thing!

So, without further ado, here's the link to download those files:

http://www.mediafire.com/?jrmympa4hhmu9

No Fear Shakespeare - Hamlet

We all know how much of a pain it is to read Shakespeare.  Thank goodness SparkNotes came up with their "No Fear Shakespeare" series.  It basically translates all the old English gibberish to modern day English!  SparkNotes even makes it free to view online.

The problem is that viewing online requires you to have an Internet connection with lots of distracting link and an annoying background.  SparkNotes gives you the option to purchase the "No Fear Shakespeare" book from places like Barnes and Noble or as an iPod app, but it costs MONEY!

So I decided to write a program to extract all of "No Fear Shakespeare - Hamlet" into a document viewable document on your computer!  No more pesky advertisements!  No more annoying background!  Just plain text on a plain white background for your reading pleasure (if reading Shakespeare could be a pleasure).  You can even print it out and use it, as if you had the REAL "No Fear Shakespeare" version, but just so you know, it's a lot of paper!

Sorry, but the source code will not be released right now, not because I care about other people stealing my ideas, but because it's very unrefined, and my extraction method was rather crude.  One thing that everybody can learn is how to download HTML code using C#:

WebClient wc = new WebClient();
string html = wc.DownloadString("put_website_url_here");

If it's not obvious enough, put the website URL as a string in the parameter of the DownloadString(...) method.  Then you get all of the HTML code as a string.  In a nutshell, I used that code example to get the HTML for all the parts of "No Fear Shakespeare - Hamlet" that I needed, put it in the correct SparkNotes format, and exported it to a Word document.  Then, I used CutePDF (it's free!) to convert that Word document into a .PDF file.

I don't even know how legal this is, so I'm going to make this loud and clear:
THE ACTUAL WORK IS NOT MY OWN!  ALL I DID WAS COMPILE IT INTO AN EASY-TO-READ FORMAT.

I'll even include an MLA citation:
Crowther, John, ed. “No Fear Hamlet.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2005. Web. 1 Dec. 2010.

I didn't do any formatting, so sometimes the line breaks are at very inconvenient locations and the overall layout of the document may not be super-visually-appealing.  Sometimes the spaces between words get screwed up.  The line numbering is also kind of sporadic.  If anybody wants to, then please download the Word document and make the necessary changes, such as getting rid of "Original Text" and "Modern Text" so it doesn't appear so much.  It may also be nice to make the font size on the headers bigger.  It'd be great to make sure the page breaks are in nicer places.  If you're bored, I'd appreciate it if you would be willing to help fix up the document.  Or, if you're reading off the Word document, you can fix up the document as you read.  Another thing: I don't really know how to add bookmarks for the Acts and Scenes in Adobe Reader, so if you want to do that, thank in advance!  If you do actually help fix up the stuff, leave a comment or email me.  UPDATE: I fixed some of the formatting.  It looks less crude and more professional now!

Alright, thanks for reading all my blabbering (but that's OK if you just skipped down here).  You can download either the Word document or the .PDF file at the following link:
http://www.mediafire.com/?9q04an5o3hhoi

If you're going to use this or tell your friends, please link them to this blog page first so I get more traffic!  Thanks a ton!

UPDATE:  I have uploaded all of the No Fear Shakespeare plays!  Click here to see No Fear Shakespeare - ALL

* Note: Just because I don't like Shakespeare doesn't mean other people can't enjoy his works.  So please don't hate on me for hating on Shakespeare =P (besides, he probably wrote his plays to torture 21st century high-schoolers anyway!).


*** Disclaimer: You may NOT distribute the stuff for money.  You didn't make those files yourself, and you definitely didn't write the content.  If you started selling this and Sparknotes took off their free online version of "No Fear Shakespeare," then we'd all be screwed!