AI First Reactions

So far I must admit I have been really impressed with some of the changes in game play. The AI in SC2 is incredible. If you think you will win against the computer on EASY you are mistaken. There is no more of the defend the ”First rush”, tech up and kill the computer.

Star Craft 2 Units

While a lot of our favorites are back there are a quite a few that are no longer with us. Most units that have been removed have been recycled, given new names or new abilities. It will be interesting to see if during the single player campaign if there will be any mention of the changes. Blizard if you are reading this I REALLY hope you will explain the changes! Some of the units that are no longer with us are:

Terran

• Medic
• Fire Bats
• Drop Ship

Protoss

• Shuttle
• Dragoons
• Reaver
• Corsair

Zerg

• Lurker
• Wraiths
• Science Vessel
• Goliath
• Vulture

NOTE – As I find more units that are missing I will post them here. Also note because this is a BETA units are constantly getting added and removed.

New Game play Dynamics

There are several new things to worry about in SC2. There is explosion damage that can now slow down units. There are also some units that can now jump or teleport to small ledges. A third thing I have found is there is also destructable wall or rocks. These destructable items are typically located at the back of your base. You might have noticed that things like shuttles and “hidden” units like lurkers have been removed. This will definately make changes to the game play.

Good Starcraft 2 Links

http://www.starcraft-source.com/

Basically the long and short of it was the start menu wasn’t working because the profile permission’s were messed up. There had been a virus on the machine and the UAC system file plus numberous other system files were messed up.

Disabling the UAC ended up being the only way I got the Vista start menu to work. I first did my usual array of top secret virus scans and removed 8 trojans. Next I had a feeling there was some hard drive corruption. I ran an intensive chkdsk scan I was able to fix the bad sectors on the hard drive. I also ran System File Checker scaner (sfc /scannow) and it died at about 86%. There is some mentions that you can check the logs and start manual copying files from the Vista DVD using a PE disk but felt that was just too much work for the price I was charging. Even then you are never garunteed that the machine will work 100%.

So if you are experiencing the Vista startmenu doesn’t work issue it is most likely due to hard drive corruption that happened after a virus had it’s way with your computer.

While sometimes this error can be seen because of bad ram or a hard drive that has some corrupt files, it typically means that there is some issues with the windows folder permission from a previous patch. It can also be caused by security suites like Norton 360 preventing Windows patches from executing propperly!

The trick is to rename the following folder:

C:\Windows\System32\LogFiles\WMI\RtBackup

The problem, however, is that because the permissions on this folder are wrong, you can’t rename it yourself without some additional help. You’ll need to download the Unlocker utility:

http://ccollomb.free.fr/unlocker/

1. Downloaded and installed unlocker
2. Right click on it, select properties > Compatibility tab > tick “Run as Administrator” and click OK.
3. Now, run Unlocker.
4. Go to the Windows Start menu. In the run box at the bottom of the menu, type in: C:\Windows\System32\LogFiles\WMI\ and press Enter.
5. Windows will now open the folder that contains the dodgy RtBackup folder. Right click on RtBackup, and select “unlocker”.
6. You will get a message reading:
7. “No locking handle found. However Unlocker can help you deal with this object. Choose the action you want to perform on this object.”
8. Select “rename” from the dropdown menu in Unlocker, and type a name for it (e.g. RtBackup.bak).
9. Click Ok.
10. You will now get an error message from Unlocker saying, “The object could not be renamed. Do you want to perform the requested rename operation at next reboot?” Click “Yes”.
11. Reboot Vista.
12. Unlocker will now rename the RtBackup folder as Windows starts up, and Windows will recreate the original RtBackup folder with correct permissions, which allows the Event Logger service to work

Now Vista SP1 might work but I am assuming you will still get the “An internal error occurred while installing the service pack. Error code: 0×80070490” error.

You will need to download the “Windows Readiness Tool” You can find it here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947366

Download and install the version that you need. ie. 32bit or 64bit.

Once that installs (it will most likely take quite a while), Use Windows Update to keep installing the updates. Eventually you will get to Windows SP1. You should now find that it now installs just fine. You should no longer get the error:  An internal error occurred while installing the service pack. Error code: 0×80070490

Finish the rest of the updates.

1.) First Open the picture that you want to work on.

2.) Make sure Actions window is viewable. If it isn’t you can open it by going to Window file meu, and selecting actions

3.) Click on the Folder Icon at the bottom of the Actions window. Create a new action set. Name it Skin

4.) Click on the new action icon and create a new action called “Skin Softening”.

5.) Click on the Record button. Photoshop will now record EVERY action you do. Don’t mess up!

6.) Hit Ctrl+j to copy layer

7.) Click on Filters Menu

8.) Click on Convert to smart filter

9.) Click on Filter Menu

10.) Click on “Blur” then “Surface Blur”

11.) Select radius of 3 pixel and a threshold of 15 levels

12.) Click Filter and select “Noise”. Then click “Add Noise…”

13.) Pick 2% for the amount, Gaussian and Monochromatic

14.) You will now need to make a mask from the red channel.

15.) Click on the channels section.

16.) Hold down “Ctrl” and click the red channel. This will select everything in the red channel

17.) Click back to the layers section

18.) Click the layer mask icon to make a mask based on the red channel

19.) You can now click the “Stop” button in the “Actions” section.

Now that you have the action most of the work is now done for you. You can apply the action to any other picture you want to soften the skin. You can REALLY make the picture pop by:

1.) Holding down the “ALT” key and clicking on the mask layer you created. This will show the mask in grey scale.

2.) Using a black brush blacken out the eyes and hair as you still want those parts to be crisp. The person will kind of look like a zombie

3.) If you find at any time that there is not enough skin softening you can always click on the noise and blur layers and change the amount. I normally keep the setting the same but I adjust the “opacity” amount by click on the icon at the far right of the layer.

1. On the Review tab, in the Proofing group, click Set Language .

2. A language box should show up. Click French (Canada). If French will be the default language click the “Default..” language

Click “OK”.

That’s all there is to switching Word 2007’s spell check to Canadian French.

When I rebooted I started some more vista updates and then opened Word knowing I’d be prompted to activate the product again. Again the same issue happened. This got me thinking… Can updating Windows effect activating Office?? Really??

Guess what the answer is???

YES!

As soon as the updating in Windows Update was done I quickly hit “Activate Now”. Office activated within a second.

So now you know. If you are applying updates and needing to activate Office just activate Office first and then finish things off.

1. Copy the picture you are working on to a new layer using CTRL+J
2. Rename the new layer to “Soft”
3. Go up to “Filter” Menu
4. Click Other
5. Click “High Pass”
6. Adjust the sharpening mask just a bit so that the thinks like the eye outlines are there and maybe a bit of skin details
7. Click Ok
8. Remove the color in the shark mask by going into “Image” drop down
9. Click Adjustments
10. Click “Hue/Saturation”
11. Take the saturation glider and move it left to “–100%”
12. Click Ok
13. Still working on the Highpass layer Click on the Layers Tab and select a new blend mode
14. Select “Soft Light” or “Overlay”. Softlight usually works best.
15. You will notice that the screen is no longer grey and your picture looks a bit crisper.

Now I am going to stop right here. You have probably looked back up at the title and said “I thought this tutorial was on smoothing the skin not sharpening the detail!”. Stick with me. We need to inverse the sharpening.

1. Hit the shortcut “Ctrl+i”. This will now smooth out the picture instead of sharpening things

You will notice things like the skin look great. Pores and blemishes are not so apparent. Things like the eyes and the hair are not crisp enough. To resolve this we will use the color range selection tool to select mostly just the skin. To access the “color range” tool go to:

1. Select Drop down
2. Color Range…
3. Click on the skin with the eye dropper
4. Select “localized Color Clusters”
5. You will need to experiment but you will most likely need to decrease your range quite a bit and the fuzziness should be about 34%.
6. Click the “+ Eye Dropper” button.
7. Click on the skin areas. If you are finding that it is selecting too much at a time decrease the range value.
8. Make sure to only click on the skin. Do not click on the hair, eyes, mouth or the contour of the nose.
9. Click on the the “- Eye Dropper”. Click on any hair or other features other then skin that might have been selected.
10. Click "OK”
11. There should be a selection created on the picture
12. Click on the “add layer mask” button right beside the “FX Layer” button

This will have create a pretty good starting location for your mask. The next few steps will be making sure all the area’s that you don’t want softened are completely black. You might need to “whiten” the areas that might need more softening.

1. Make sure you are still on the Mask of the “Soft” layer.
2. Make sure that your brush colors are black and then white.
3. Click on the brush tool
4. Make sure that the front color is black
5. Make sure that your brush opacity is at 100%
6. Using your brush go over the hair and the eyes.
7. Use a large brush for the hair
8. Use a smaller brush for the eyes and other detail work.
9. Switch the forground color to white
10. Switch the opacity of the brush to 60%
11. Go over the skin to make sure all of it is selected. Avoid the outer area of the nose and mouth.
12. You should now have a good mask.
13. Check to see if the skin is soft enough

If the skin is still not soft enough there is some other techniques you can use now that you have a good starting point.

1. Click the Background layer
2. Hit “Ctrl + J”
3. Move the newly created layer to the top of the layers.
4. Rename the newly created layer to “Soft 2”
5. On “Soft 2” we need to apply the “High pass again”. See above how to do that.
6. It remembers your last selection.
7. Bump up the number quite a bit higher like 4.8 pixels.
8. Click Ok
9. Again remove saturation like we did before.
10. Click “Ctrl+i” to inverse the picture.
11. On the layer tab select “Blend Mode” and select “Softlight”. If you use overlay instead of “Softlight” it will make the softening even more apparent.
12. While holding down “Ctrl + Alt” grab the mask from the “Soft” layer and drag it onto the the layer you were just working on.
13. Both layers should now have the exact same mask layer.
14. Only the skin should have the second softening effect applied to it.

I usually at this point like to group all the layers except for the original layer. To do this:

1. click on “soft” layer.
2. Holding down the shift key click the top most layer.
3. Hit “Ctrl+G” to group them.

If the softening is too much click on the group opacity slider and take it down a bit. Play with it till you think the results are perfect.

One server1 make sure that you have robocopy in the same folder as the script or in the Windows path. In my case I put it in the C:\Windows\system32 directory. You can download robocopy from here.

This script will make sure that there is no pre-existing mapped drive. It will connect to server2 and map z: to the share we want to copy. It will then call robocopy and move all data from itself to the external server share. The “/sec” switch is key for retaining the security of the file permission. The script will create a log file that you can check things after you are done.

net use z: /delete

net use z: \\server2\data


robocopy.exe C:\data\ z:\ /sec /S /XO /R:3 /W:5 /LOG:C:\MANAGEMENT\LOGS\robocopy.txt

Hope you enjoyed this post on how to sync two folders and copy the NTFS permissions with robocopy.

How I setup my Netbeans templates

Let’s first start with HTML Files:

1. Click on HTML Files and hit rename button.
2. Rename it to “HTML 4 File”
3. Click the “Open In Editor”

There are two extra lines I add. The “reset.css” and “default.css”. files.

<#assign licenseFirst = "<!--">

<#assign licensePrefix = "">

<#assign licenseLast = "-->">

<#include "../Licenses/license-${project.license}.txt">

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">

<html>

  <head>

    <title></title>

    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=${encoding}">

    <link rel="stylesheet" href="css/reset.css" type="text/css" media="screen">

    <link rel="stylesheet" href="css/default.css" type="text/css" media="screen">

  </head>

  <body>

    TODO write content

  </body>

</html>

The next template we will need to create. It will be for HTML5. Don’t worry it’s not very hard to do.

We are going to have to create a folder. From here on in I will refer to it as the the custom template directory.  You can put the template directory anywhere.The code you will need to paste will be at the bottom of the steps list.

1. Open My Computer
2. Go to: “C:\Users\<user>\.netbeans\” *Note* replace <user> with your profile username
3. Create a folder called “custom templates”
4. Copy the code at the end of this section and paste it into an brand new file.
5. Save the file as html5.html in the Custom Templates folder.
6. Inside Template manager make sure you are in the “Other” folder
7. Click “Add…” button.
8. Select the HTML5.html file you just created. Press Ok.
9. Single click the new template.
10. Hit the “rename” button.
11. Rename the template “HTML5 File”
12. You now have create your first customized template

<#assign licenseFirst = "<!--">

<#assign licensePrefix = "">

<#assign licenseLast = "-->">

<#include "../Licenses/license-${project.license}.txt">

<!DOCTYPE html>

<html lang="en">

  <head>

    <title></title>

    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=${encoding}">

    <link rel="stylesheet" href="css/reset.css" type="text/css" media="screen">

    <link rel="stylesheet" href="css/default.css" type="text/css" media="screen">

    <link rel="stylesheet" href="css/html5.css" type="text/css" media="screen">

    <!--[if IE]>

    	<script src="javascript/html5.js"></script>

    <![endif]-->

  </head>

  <body>

    TODO write content

  </body>

</html>

We are next going to create reset.css, html5.css, html5.js. Copy this code and save it into blank files in the template folder. Save each file accordingly:

reset.css

/* RESET CSS FILE */


html,body,div,span,applet,object,iframe,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,p,blockquote,

pre,a,abbr,acronym,address,big,cite,code,del,dfn,em,font,img,ins,kbd,q,s,

samp,small,strike,strong,sub,sup,tt,var,dl,dt,dd,ol,ul,li,fieldset,form,label,

legend,table,caption,tbody,tfoot,thead,tr,th,td

{border:0; outline:0; vertical-align:middle; background:transparent; margin:0; padding:0; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;}


* {margin:0; padding:0; }

a img { border:0; }



/*

This is called the clearfix "hack" to prevent container from colapsing

in on itself when all the elements inside are floated elements.

Make sure to add --[ class="container" ]-- to any object that you

don't want to colapse.

*/

.container:after { visibility: hidden; display: block; font-size:0; content: " "; clear: both; height: 0; }



/* start commented backlash hack \*/

* html .container   { height: 1%;     }

.container          { display: block; }

/* close commented backlash hack */



/* Easy way for me to float items */

.floatleft 	{ float:left;       }

.floatright 	{ float:right;      }

.floatmiddle 	{ margin: 0px auto; }

html5.css

header, section, footer, aside, nav, article, figure {

	display:block;

}

html5.js

// For discussion and comments, see: http://remysharp.com/2009/01/07/html5-enabling-script/

(function(){if(!/*@cc_on!@*/0)return;var e = "abbr,article,aside,audio,canvas,datalist,details,figure,figcaption,footer,header,hgroup,mark,menu,meter,nav,output,progress,section,summary,time,video".split(','),i=e.length;while(i--){document.createElement(e[i])}})()

Now that these extra file are created, we are going to create 3 new templates in Netbeans.

1. Open Netbeans Template Manager
2. Click “Add…” button
3. Select each file and click ok
4. Rename the file to something a bit more descriptive

The only thing you will have to remember going forward is that in the templates I have taken for granted that you will you my folder structure convention. You will have to create both a “css” and “JavaScript” folder in the same location where the file is. In both of those folders you would need to use the template to easily create the needed CSS or JavaScript files.

Now that you have those templates created you could just as easily create templates for things like jQuery. I hope this post will help eliminate the mundane and boring setup we all go through on each file we create!

How to customize your Netbean Template Files

You won’t believe how easy it is to edit the template files. Here’s the steps:

1. Open Netbeans (Duh!)
2. Click on the “Tools” drop down menu
3. Select “Templates”
4. This will open the “Template Manager” window

Once this Netbean Template Manager is open the only confusion I can see you running into is finding where the HTML and CSS Templates are located. As you will see from the screenshot the files are located in “Other” while PHP files are located in their own section.

To edit the template file just click to select the template and then click the “Open in Editor” button. Once you have made the necessary changes just click the save button or hit “Ctrl+S”.

Again please check out the next article where I share my customizations that I recommend to help save time.