Geek and a Half

May 14th, 2006 by Jake

I’ve constantly used my old LinkGen script on shift-one.net for flash videos and other miscellany things that browsers only let you view and not save. The problem is, though, that I required myself to login before accessing that script, which is a pain in the ass.

So, I decided to rewrite it. It was originally going to be AJAX, but I decided that it was too simple for AJAX, so I just did it in JavaScript. It turned out much better than I thought, really, and I learned quite a bit about JavaScript (that I’ll definately be using on sites I develop in the future). It dynamically creates the link, there’s no button to generate it, it’s done on-the-fly, and it even warns you if your link doesn’t start with http:// or ftp://. I was leaning more towards Web 2.0 when I wrote this (no page reloads, everything’s done dynamically).

The main use I’ve gotten from this is downloading flash videos from websites like eBaum’s World and GPrine.net. To do this, simply visit a page with a flash video on it, view the page source, find the embed src tag and grab the URL to the video (Flash videos usually end in .swf), visit the LinkGen site (link below), right-click, and hit Save Target As. If you want to watch it, open the .swf in your favorite web browser. Voila! Your favorite flash videos and games at your disposal with no load times.

You can find my nicely redone dynamic LinkGen script here: http://lg.spikex.net/ (LinkGen.SpikeX.net)

May 10th, 2006 by Jake

Along my usual scan of digg the other day, I was introduced to something I was a bit skeptical about at first. The digg post linked to a third party mod site for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas for the PC. Apparently, you install this mod, and it then enables you to play the game like you normally would (there are gamemodes, as well), with the exception that you can have up to 100 people playing on the one big GTA:SA map. It’s currently in uber-beta mode (v0.1), but it works, and I’m amazed.

I took some screenshots for those curious or skeptical, like I was. (Sorry for the small screenshots, Fireworks screwed up my batch processing job creating the thumbnails.)

     

 That was a server with 80 people on it. They have already implemented chat, radar, driving and being a passenger in a vehicle, shooting, buying things, giving cash, etc. Basically anything that works in the regular SA game works here. Stats are not applicable in the game (you have max Stamina), and, to the dismay of some, they have turned off most of the cheats for the game. Some have managed to get around this, but the server admins don’t usually tolerate cheaters.

They have also written a dedicated server console (for both Windows and Linux) so anyone can host their own server (LAN Play works, too). The servr config file is very self-explanatory, and the documentation, though it doesn’t cover every aspect, is well-written in the areas it does cover.

 And now, the most important part:

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