Digiwar - the Yeep-blog

Just working with it for a few minutes and already I have 3 problems with it. First of all, openening a high-definition movies causes it to start fullscreen. At least, not really. It’s not on top of the taskbar and what’s more, it assumes people use the standard taskbar size (I have it double sized). On my laptop my taskbar covers the play, stop, etc, buttons.
Second thing is that the maximize/restore window icon seems reversed. When you have the square icon, it means that if you click it the window will maximize. The icon will then turn into the restore window icon (the two little overlapped squares). Clicking it will result in the window taking it’s size before you maximized it. On Quicktime, the icons are reversed. Maximize restores the window en restore maximizes the window.
Then the third thing. When I clicked on a second HD movie link, it shortly opened then both instances of Quicktime crashed.

Not a very good first impression.

[Last played: The Crown - Crowned In Terror]

So I wanted to have Quicktime 7 because some movie trailers need it for the best quality. So I downloaded the installer. Actually I didn’t download the Quicktime installer, but the iTunes installer, because Apple bundled the products. I really hate that. I don’t need iTunes, hell, I don’t even want iTunes. I have WimAMP and no iPod, so what do I need iTunes for?

Then I started the installer, because I did want Quicktime. Now, I have Microsoft Anit-Spyware running and it warned me 3 times. First iTunes wanted to install itself in the startup group. It would have been nice for the installer if it had asked me if I had wanted that!! Then it wanted to install an iPod service. I don’t even have an iPod! Why would I want to have a service running for an iPod? And then Quicktime wanted to add itself to the startup group.
Bad installer!

Even worse: With one installer you install two different applications, but you need to uninstall them seperatly! Bad design, but good for me, because I uninstalled iTunes and kept Quicktime.

[Last played: The Crown - Crowned In Terror]

But this time it’s the kind of article I like

[Now playing: In Flames - In Search For I]

Just like Tim says.

[Last played: Perfect Circle, A - Judith]

Linked on some sites as a humorous article, I think this article could be more true then many people would think if Microsoft hadn’t become the industry leader.
Many people complain about the negatives sides of Microsoft’s monopoly. I think there are only good sides. When they got their monopoly, computers where still too difficult for most people to use. At this moment however, computers have become more simple, hardware is cheap and internet is available for everybody. Now is also the time the Microsoft monopoly is under more attack then ever. Apple is going Intel and Google makes more and more web-based versions of applications we’d normally use in the desktop, making the OS pretty irrelevant. But to get where we are today, it was necessary for Microsoft to have their monopoly. Why? Standarization. Using their monopoly they forces the market into certain avenues. Maybe not the best ones from a technical viewpoint, but there are standards now. It’s just like the article described, without Microsoft the computer market would’ve been much more fragmented with most companies using their own technologies, not necessarily compatbile with other companies standards.

[Last played: Strapping Young Lad - Detox]

This morning I tried installing Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 Standard Edition for some testing and development work. But at some point the installer told me: “Error 1402: Could not open key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Classes\Msxml2.DOMDocument.4.0\CLSID. Verify that you have sufficient access to that key, or contact your support personnel.”. A little Google told me more people had the same problem, but I couldn’t find a solution (at least not on the first 2 result pages).
So I had a look at the registry. Everything seemed fine.
Since the error complains about Msxml2.DOMDocument.4.0 I figured this had something to do with MSXML 4.0, so I downloaded the installer and tried installing it. An lo’ and behold: The same error message. Then I decided it was time for drastic measures. I went into the registry to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Classes and deleted every MSXML entry that ended with 4.0. Then I tried installing MSXML 4.0 again and it worked! Then I tried installing Virtual Server 2005 again and it worked!
Yet another weird problem solved…

[Last played: Machine Head - Desire to fire]

On The Escapist there is an article about feature creeps in games. What the author says is that games are getting to complex because they try to cram in as much new features a possible without even fixing some of the older features that are broken. I partially aggree.

One thing he writes is: “Games today are built by and for gamers who have at least a decade of play behind them, with all those hard-earned assumptions and skills. […] I just mean basic literacy issues, like knowing that shooting crates is good but shooting barrels is bad, or that weapons in first-person shooters usually have an alternate fire mode.”

These are bad examples of feature creeps. Shooting barrels is a strategic possibility and a potential danger (the enemy can shoot barrels too). The fact that shooting barrels will cause them to explode is something you will learn very early in the game and will probably not forget easily. I can’t imagine how you can’t pick up on this after the first time you encounter this situation. I think this is the same as learning that touching fire is a bad idea. You do it once and never forget it. Same thing with the crates. It’s not part of the essential gameplay (at least it shouldn’t), so if you find out it’s handy, otherwise you’ll find out sooner or later. But all of these features should be mentioned in the manual of the game. Which is what the alternate firemode will always be. You do read the game manual don’t you?

I do aggree when he brings up the point of cutting story or bringing low quality content because of the focus on new features. Unless the new feature is essential for the gameplay, it should be secondary to the whole experience.

The last thing he says is that he wants to have more prequels. New games with the same features. Now this might sound like a nice idea, but I know I for one won’t pay money the same thing, only with different models and textures. If I buy a new game, I want it to look better and have more stuff. But there has to be a balance. Don’t add new features just for the sake of new features. Don’t turn a cool action game into a partial card game because “cards are hot” at the moment. That’s stupid. The new features should have no impact on the usability, like visual or audio upgrades, or it should have a function in the game. Like the gravity gun in Half Life 2. It’s fun but also very useful in creating a shield, or using trash for a weapon. And not like adding fighting combo’s to an action game where you only suck the blood out of people, chop them up into small parts or just shoot them.

A word of warning

As promised a write-up on how to edit the POP3 accounts in Outlook 97. But before we get to the goods a notice. First I must warn you that there are basically two types of Outlook 97. There is the original one (which I’ll refer to as the “gold” version) and there is one with Service Pack 1 or higher, or the Internet Mail Enhancement Pack (which is s seperate download, but later also included in SP1). There is a very important difference between these two versions. Outlook 97 gold only supports one (1) POP3 account. You can’t add more! The SP1 version allows you to add mor then 1.
Another thing you should know is that I’ve never been able o find out how to add a new POP3 account to Outlook 97 (either version). I can edit the settings of an existing account, but if I add all the right registry keys, Outlook for some reason won’t recognize the account. So in this article, only stuff on how to read an account and edit it.

Services

Unlike in Outlook Express, Outlook 97 installs each POP3 as a seperate service. A service, in this case, is a sort of plug-in for Outlook 97. Other services include Personal Folders and Exchange Server Mail. Because a POP3 account is considered a service it’s layout is much more complex. To make things even more interesting, Outlook 97 stores it’s settings on WinNT in a different key then on Win9x. In WinNT the Outlook root key is Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows Messaging Subsystem while on Win9x it’s at Software\Microsoft\Windows Messaging Subsystem. Both are under HKEY_CURRENT_USER. Fortunatly, after that everything is the same.

Profiles

Then we find another difference from Outlook Express. Outlook supports profiles. Meaning you can have a profile for at home and one for in the office (for example). Each profile has it’s own services. So if you want to search through all the POP3 accounts, you’ll need to search all the profiles. Lucky for us, profiles aren’t that complicated. Under the registry key mentioned above there is a key called profiles and underneath that key are keys whose name matches the name of the profiles. Most of the time there will be only one profile and it will be called “Outlook”.
If you want to know the default profile, there’s a string value with the name “DefaultProfile” in the profiles key. It’s value is the name of the default profile, which also corresponds to the name of the registry key.

The settings

Now the fun begins. Underneath the profile key there are a bunch (or a whole damn lot) of keys with GUID names. Their names mean nothing at all! The GUIDs can be anything for as far as I know. If you want to find a POP3 account you’ll need to enumerate all the keys and see if they have an entry with the name “001e3d0b” (this name is also a GUID, just a shorter function, but it does mean something!). This should be a string value and it’s value is the name of an Outlook 97 service. In the case of a POP3 account this value should be “MailServiceEntry”. If you find a key, with this entry with the value, you’ve found a POP3 account!.

If it is a POP3 account you can also find the following settings:

• 001e3001: The name of the account as it’s shown in Outlook 97.
• 001e6600: The POP3 server name.
• 001e6606: The POP3 username.
• 001e6611: The SMTP server name.
• 001e6605: The e-mail address this accounts uses for sending.
• 001e6607: The display name of the mail account (who the mail is from).
• 00036601: The connection type. This is a binary value with a size of 4 (basically a DWORD). A value of 1 means connect like Internet Explorer connects, 2 means using a dial-up connection and 0 or anything else means LAN connection.
• 001e6631: If the connection type is 2, this contains the name of the dial-up connection to use.
• 01023d01: This is the Template GUID (more on this below).
• 01023d02: This is the MailEntry GUID (more on this below).

All of these are string values, wiht the exception of the 001e6631 value, which is a 4 byte binary value (not a DWORD value!!) and 01023d01 and 01023d02 which are 16 byte binary values.

Related GUIDs

As stated above you’ll also find a Template GUID and a MailEntry GUID.
If you are just changing some POP3 values, these are not interesting, if you want to add an account they are. However, since we can’t add new accounts to Outlook 97 they are not interesting (but they will be in Outlook 98). Basically they refer to another key underneath the profiles key which has some info required for the Internet Mail Service. Have a look at them if you’re interested.
Even when adding new accounts they don’t contain settings we’ll change, they just need to be present and filled with the correct information.

In closing

Well, this should be enough for you to change POP3 accounts in Outlook 97. If someone finds a way to add new accounts AND have Outlook 97 recognize the new accounts let me know, I’m interested.

Next up: Outlook 98.

[Now playing: Pantera - Planet caravan]

Right, as of now, this weblog is being hosted from GoDaddy servers. The problems have been solved (although I doubt support had anything to do with it, since I’ve still not heard from them). Everything has been moved and everything is now set! Expect an article about configuring Outlook 97 soon!

[Now playing: My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult - Blue Buddha]

Some time ago I wrote about combining RSS and an agenda. Guess what? It’s here!
I’m still checking it out, so I’m not sure all the features I wrote are there, but now we have something!

[Last played: - ]

This blog is not dead, far from it. I actually have a host of ideas on posts (the Outlook config series), but things are a bit on hold because I’m trying to switch hosting providers.
I’m trying to switch hosting because my current hosting provider looks dead. There are no responses from support or on the forums and there hasn’t been a bill since june. So I got a feeling the site will disappear any day now without a trace.
As a new hosting provider I selected GoDaddy. They seemd good, but so far it has been a let down. I signed up for a Windows hosting package so I could also play a little with ASP.NET, but the PHP install on their Windows hosting is crippled beyond use. They call it “secure mode”. WordPress won’t run on it, so it’s no good to me. After 3 days of support mailing they tell me to just switch operating systems in the control panel. Seems easy enough to me. I switched to Linux/PHP hosting. I won’t have ASP.NET, but at least I have a reliable PHP hosting. Well, the change was supposed to take 1 to 24 hours (which is what the control panel said, the support guy said 24 to 72 hours), but it has been over 5 days now. I e-mailed support again and they told me there was no problem (can you figure that one out? You tell them you have a problem and they just tell you “No, you don’t”). Anyways, now they’ve assigned my problem to a lead support engineer and I hope to get an answer soon. If I hadn’t already paid for the whole year I would’ve left already.

What else is new? I got a PSP and have been playing Mercury and Untold legends almost non-stop now

[Last played: - ]