Gaming Hacks

Grok Headline matches for Gaming Hacks

Gaming Hacks, comprehensive, fascinating
and eclectic

Gaming Hacks, comprehensive, fascinating
and eclectic 12/31/2004 08:23 AM
Cory Doctorow: I just finished reading Simon Carless's Gaming Hacks, one of the latest O'Reilly Hacks books, and I can't remember when I've had more engrossing fun with a technical book.

Like all the hacks books, Gaming Hacks is arranged around 100 "hacks" -- tricks you can use to get more from gaming. They proceed from the simple to the hellishly complex, so there's something here for everyone.

That's even more true than is usual in the Hacks series, though, because of Carless's incredible, comprehensive, eclectic view of the kinds of hacks that might interest a gamer. Here are some of my favorites:

• How to hack an old Atari 2600 controller: rehabilitate your old paddles without WD40, then splice them into a modern PC (also: how to download, play and write "homebrew" games for the 2600 and other boat-anchor platforms that are produced by console aficionados who enjoy the challenge of programming for 8-bit, minimal-RAM game environments)
• Roll your own "machinima" -- movies made by recording the action taking place in a game environment, then dubbing in studio-recorded voices
• Learn to read enough Japanese to play grey-market games imported from Japan
• Create your own scripts for automating repetitive "grinding" tasks in massively multiplayer games
• Etiquette for joining adventuring parties in MMOs
• Detect and foil cheaters in networked first-person shooter games
• Build a killer home theatre audio setup to maximize your game platform's 3D sound
• Build a portable device out of an old console, like the NES
• Overclock your console
  

This gives you a flavor for the book's subject-matter, but it doesn't convey wonderful prose style: Carless writes like a great, fetishistic geek, like the Car Talk guys or the folks on The Screensavers, like someone who's really, really enthusiastic about his subject matter and wants to wise you up to all the truly awesome wonders awaiting you.

Combine that with a stupendous introduction by sf-writer-turned-game-writer Marc Laidlaw, who wrote the Half-Life series for Valve, and a slew of highly knowledgeable co-authors who contributed various tips, and you've got the perfect mix of informative, enjoyable and fascinating. This book is staying on my shelf. Link

CES Gaming Preview: Xbox 2 and PSP
Mysteries, and Portable Gaming

CES Gaming Preview: Xbox 2 and PSP
Mysteries, and Portable Gaming 01/01/2005 04:24 AM
Abcnews.go.com - Fri Dec 31, 06:48 pm GMT

Two little CSS hacks

Two little CSS hacks 03/11/2003 10:46 AM
Workarounds to vertically align nested blocks and to emulate the CSS's min-height property in MSIE.

BSD Hacks

BSD Hacks 07/27/2004 02:44 PM

Mac OS X Hacks Put to Bed

Mac OS X Hacks Put to Bed 03/11/2003 11:41 PM
Mac OS X Hacks was just sent to the printer, which means it'll be appearing in online bookstores and on your local brick-and-mortar bookstore shelves in a couple-three weeks. Whew!

IM hacks way up in first quarter

IM hacks way up in first quarter 03/23/2005 12:56 PM
The number of combined IM- and Web-based attacks increased by 300 percent in the first quarter, Websense says.

Google Hacks

Google Hacks 03/30/2005 05:47 PM

TiVo Hacks Put to Bed

TiVo Hacks Put to Bed 10/28/2003 11:06 PM
My month of a thousand hacks ended this morning as I put TiVo Hacks to bed (read: sent it to production).

Raffi, my young TiVo Jedi friend, good on you, mate! I've learned more about my TiVo over the past month than I'd ever wanted to. Now where'd I put that screwdriver...

The book will be in brick-and-mortar bookstore shelves sometime in August, but you can of course pre-order it from Amazon.

The MIT Gallery of Hacks.

The MIT Gallery of Hacks. 01/04/2004 05:52 PM
The MIT Gallery of Hacks. Good-natured creative pranks by MIT students. The pinnacle was possibly 1999's Great Droid, with the Great Dome made to resemble R2D2's head to mark the release of some film or other at the time. In the spirit of the tradition, students left detailed instructions for the safe removal of the decoration.

New: Firefox Hacks

New: Firefox Hacks 03/30/2005 11:47 AM
O'Reilly released Firefox Hacks, which includes coverage of migration from Internet Explorer, anonymous browsing, increasing security, creation of tags and widgets, and more.

"Life Hacks"

"Life Hacks" 03/30/2005 05:17 PM

Wireless Hacks

Wireless Hacks 10/30/2003 11:48 PM

OCSmart Hacks 1.0

OCSmart Hacks 1.0 08/03/2004 08:01 PM
Extends services of any Cocoa application, with tear-off menu support and more.

New: O'Reilly's PDF Hacks

New: O'Reilly's PDF Hacks 09/16/2004 09:41 AM
O'Reilly's PDF Hacks by Sid Steward shows how to use a variety of PDF tools--not just Acrobat--to create, rearrange, customize, and present information as PDF.

New: O'Reilly's IRC Hacks

New: O'Reilly's IRC Hacks 09/07/2004 10:25 AM
IRC Hacks, by Paul Mutton, starts with the basics of IRC clients, then delves into the protocols and services beneath the surface, and culminates with building autonomous IRC clients.

Developers eye PSP hacks

Developers eye PSP hacks 04/05/2005 05:24 PM
Blog: Keep your multiplayer racing games and widescreen movies. For some people, Sony's PlayStation Portable won't be really cool...

phpAdsNew Hacks

phpAdsNew Hacks 08/16/2004 10:15 PM
phpAdsNew 2.0.2 CVS 2004-08-16 Released

PSP Hacks and the Mainstream

PSP Hacks and the Mainstream 04/07/2005 01:03 PM

Excel Hacks

Excel Hacks 05/06/2004 06:58 PM
for all you dorks who were geeking out in the Excel Pile thread

Gmail Hacks

Gmail Hacks 06/26/2004 07:45 AM

Lots of Gmail hacks are already showing up. I surely do love programmers that are curious enough to figure out how stuff works to write mini utilities to let us utilize our time more wisely. [G-mailto]

Looks like NEWS HACKS get to run the CIA
again

Looks like NEWS HACKS get to run the CIA
again 06/27/2004 05:58 PM
CIA Puts Harsh Tactics On Hold .. Washington Post report .. information

washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8534-2004Jun26.html< br />track this site | 4 links

Mac OS X Panther Hacks

Mac OS X Panther Hacks 08/11/2004 06:15 AM
I finally got round to reading my copy of the wonderful O'Reilly Mac OS X Panther Hacks book, which, like all of the hacks books, is clever, informative, well-organised and useful; this one has the additional merit of having been co-written by my pal Rael Dornfest, who edits the line, and is witty, silly and very imaginative indeed. The hacks assembled in the text range from surprising things you can do with iTunes and iCal to hacking AppleScript to making OS X cooperate with perl and Python, but my favorite of all is the iOscillate: an iSight camera mounted to the top of a de-bladed oscillating desk-fan, so that the fan sweeps the iSight back and forth in a steady, 180-degree arc, covering all those seated around a table or in a conference. The hack is truly worthy of the appellation "hack" -- it's ingenious, funny, and actually useful in a seriously bent way. Link

Firefox Hacks

Firefox Hacks 02/01/2005 09:08 PM

Firefox Hacks: Coming in March. I ache with anticipation.

Firefox Hacks is ideal for power users who want to maximize the effectiveness of Firefox, the next-generation web browser that is quickly gaining in popularity. This highly-focused book offers all the valuable tips and tools you need to enjoy a superior and safer browsing experience. Learn how to customize its deployment, appearance, features, and functionality.

New: Excel Hacks

New: Excel Hacks 04/09/2004 04:01 PM
O'Reilly's Excel Hacks offers 100 tips and techniques that include hacking pivot tables, designing charts beyond the basic types, specifying dynamic ranges, using XML, and more.

Mac Mini Hacks

Mac Mini Hacks 03/19/2005 02:07 AM
The Mac Mini is opened with a Putty knife as instructed by Apple however this method is leaving peoples Mac Mini in damaged conditions in many cases including scratches, seperation gaps and other...

[[ Visit http://www.macmegasite.com for full article ]]

New: Flash Hacks

New: Flash Hacks 07/13/2004 10:03 AM
O'Reilly's Flash Hacks, written by Sham Bhangal, contains 100 tools, tricks, and techniques for Flash, including scripted and timeline-based visual effects, page turning animation, and more.

New: "Panther" Hacks

New: "Panther" Hacks 07/16/2004 09:59 AM
O'Reilly's latest "hack" book digs down into Mac OS X "Panther" internals.

OCLC Hacks

OCLC Hacks 02/01/2005 10:09 PM

OCLC is is loosening up and having some fun in a Google Labs kind of way!

OCLC Research Software Contest

“In celebration of libraries and their heritage of technological innovation, OCLC Research is sponsoring a software contest to encourage innovation in the use of web-based services for libraries.

Prize

• $2,500 in cash
• Visit with OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc., in Dublin, Ohio
• Potentially have your code incorporated in OCLC services for libraries

The challenge

OCLC is providing a set of bi bliographic records extracted from WorldCat plus a set of services:

• Research Works
• Terminology Services

You may also use Open WorldCat, either by simply incorporating links to publicly accessible records or by enrolling in Open WorldCat's Partner Access program. Contact us if you wish to discuss enrolling in this program for the purposes of this contest.

Your mission is to write a program that does something interesting and innovative with the WorldCat data using at least one of the OCLC-provided services. You must submit a working prototype.

Part of your job is to convince us of why your program is interesting and why it will help libraries and/or library users; other than that, you're free to implement whatever strikes your fancy.”

And they were smart enough to ask Jon Udell to be a judge – good call! I hope we see some really cool stuff come out of this, in more than just a proof-of-concept way. Makes me wish I could actually program. Entries are due by midnight on May 15. If you’re entering, good luck!

Hacks.O'Reilly.com

Hacks.O'Reilly.com 03/11/2003 09:43 AM
The full-blown version of O'Reilly's Hacks Series site is now up at hacks.oreilly.com. In addition to info about the current crop of books (Linux Server, Google, Mac OS X), there are listings of published hacks, some complete hacks, and each has its own discussion forum.

Gotta Hack? Got a non-obvious solution to an interesting problem? Throw your hack into the ring and it just might be in a Hacks book-to-be. Not a hacker yourself but have a hack or Hacks book you'd like to see? Suggest it and perhaps it will be so written.

Spidering Hacks

Spidering Hacks 11/01/2003 12:57 PM
The latest book in the O'Reilly Hacks series, "Spidering Hacks," (written by Kevin "Morbus Iff" Hemenway and Tara "ResearchBuzz" Calishain) is out. It's the site-scraper's bible, with 100 tips and tricks for sucking in data from the Web.

Spidering Hacks takes you to the next level in Internet data retrieval--beyond search engines--by showing you how to create spiders and bots to retrieve information from your favorite sites and data sources. You'll no longer feel constrained by the way host sites think you want to see their data presented--you'll learn how to scrape and repurpose raw data so you can view in a way that's meaningful to you.

Written for developers, researchers, technical assistants, librarians, and power users, Spidering Hacks provides expert tips on spidering and scraping methodologies. You'll begin with a crash course in spidering concepts, tools (Perl, LWP, out-of-the-box utilities), and ethics (how to know when you've gone too far: what's acceptable and unacceptable). Next, you'll collect media files and data from databases. Then you'll learn how to interpret and understand the data, repurpose it for use in other applications, and even build authorized interfaces to integrate the data into your own content.

LInk (via Ben Hammersley)

Google Tricks and hacks

Google Tricks and hacks 12/30/2003 01:29 AM

New Edition of Google Hacks

New Edition of Google Hacks 01/07/2005 12:15 AM
BeSpacific Jan 7 2005 3:56AM GMT

Spidering Hacks in Print

Spidering Hacks in Print 12/11/2003 04:55 PM
I just received my editor's copies of Spidering Hacks by Kevin and Tara. Turned out rather well, if I may be so bold. The book covers all things spidering, from methodology to code, tools to ethics; take a gander at the TOC and browse the representativ e hacks online.

It's always nice when a tech book adds to the discussion around the tools it represents and gives something back. Andy Lester, author of WWW::Mechanize and contributor of three hacks to the book adds it to the documentation for his module.

WinZip Vulnerable To Hacks

WinZip Vulnerable To Hacks 09/04/2004 04:41 AM
Techzonez Sep 4 2004 8:42AM GMT

EU data mining hacks available for U.S.

EU data mining hacks available for U.S. 09/04/2004 06:57 AM

Google hacks are for real

Google hacks are for real 08/06/2004 09:40 AM
Google hacks are for real, regardless of what some uber-hackers may think or say. They can produce passwords, user IDs, credit card numbers, Social Security numbers, bank account numbers and routing codes, and more. They can also be used to troll for vulnerabilities. One quick example: using one of the simplest Google advanced operators in combination with another operator, I quickly found a number of Microsoft IIS 6.0 Authentication Manager pages exposed to the Internet on Army, Navy, state, and federal agency sites. In fact, finding the sites proved to be much easier than alerting them to the vulnerability.

New: Digital Photography Hacks

New: Digital Photography Hacks 05/27/2004 09:12 AM
O'Reilly's Digital Photography Hacks, by Derrick Story, collects 100 techniques for "getting the shot."

Sims 2 hacks blowing up

Sims 2 hacks blowing up 01/06/2005 07:46 PM
Cory Doctorow: Hacks for Sims 2 are spreading like wildfire:

Entire neighborhoods of Sims are being mysteriously graced with eternal youth, while some characters are finding all their needs fulfilled by a single shot of magic espresso. Others no longer need to empty the toilet after potty training their toddler. Some Sims are being abducted by aliens when they glance through their telescope -- every time, instead of just occasionally, which is normal.

All this mayhem is the work of a community of experimenters wielding hex editors, custom programs and reverse-engineering skills who began mastering their own Sims 2 worlds immediately after the game's release last September. The hackers share their weird science with one another through public websites and forums.

Link (via Waxy)

Coke Machine Hacks

Coke Machine Hacks 12/22/2004 01:30 AM
Xeni Jardin: HOWTO doc on hacking Coke vending machines by way of the drink selection buttons on the front display. Link (Thanks, Jason Sutton). Mirror one, Mirror two, and Google cache (Thanks, Dan, Jackson Baker and Scott M.)

Update:: Reader Chris Vincent says,

Just thought I'd point out that most of the content on those sites (including the Coke machine article) is verbatim from the Anarchist's Cookbook, a legendary collaborative document that can be found all over the internet. Everything from social engineering to fun explosives to (obviously) Coke machine hacks can be found there.

Another interesting bit of information, this time about Pepsi machines (not from the cookbook, just something I found out about last week):

New Pepsi machines have a "code", a special sequence in which you can push the buttons on the face of the machine, which causes the LED screen to report the number of cans sold and the total cash value. I'm not sure what that code is, and it may be configurable on a per-machine basis. I'm sure somebody out there can shed more light on it than me.

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Gaming Hacks

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