Ask something - We can help.

[TomatoesInTheHead]

Btw, there's also a difference between Alt+### and Alt+0### (with numbers larger than 127), Alt+0255 gives me the letter "ÿ" (y with diaeresis), unlike Alt+255. Alt+169 gives me the "®" (registered name sign), Alt+0169 gives "©" (copyright sign), and so on.
The version with a zero in front seems to be ANSI (the non breaking space is 160 there; characters may depend on the local codepage, so could be cyrillic or whatever), while the version without a zero in front is DOS ASCII.

[Nikolas]

Say... does anyone know anything about keeping books clean and tidy for a long time?

I'm opening a publishing house, and as such I have many books (around 2000 right now). I have them in my studio, in the first floor, right in front of me on wooden shelves... And most are semi-covered by some plastic cover (in bunches of 10-20).

But I'm worried that they will deteriorate if they remain there for too long... I'm also worried for any kind of insects that might attempt to eat the paper.

Does anyone know how to prevent the above from happening, or if I'm being silly? Google didn't give too much by 'book maintenance'...

[arj0n]

In any case make sure your studio does have a (relatively) constant temperature around 18˚C and a humidity level of 50% or 55%.
You might want to check for insects like booklice (attack paper) or silverfish (attack (starch in) glue) once in a while.

Sealing all the 200 books can prevent them from being attacked by insects but that's quite a job... And it's not really necessary too.
Just checking once or twice a year will be enough I guess.

[bicilotti]

Say... does anyone know anything about keeping books clean and tidy for a long time?

I found this link: http://www.amazonsellercommunity.com/forums/thread.jspa;jsessionid=66BC92C12D5A13C283B29B6D55BA8C6E?messageID=2031669&#2031669

Take it with a pinch of salt; I feel it could be interesting for you because they are discussing the "how to store books" from a seller perspective (and not the usual shelves good for "consumers")

[OneDollar]

I'm building an arcade cabinet with some people from work (Windows XP PC, CRT monitor, wooden cabinet shell, joysticks, buttons and a card that converts them to keyboard inputs).

What I want to do is create a program that acts as a graphical frontend to let you choose which game you want to play. This has to be controlled entirely with the keyboard (no mouse) and when a game is chosen it will need to load the correct key mapping file to the card (done through a command line program with arguments) then launch the game. Ideally it'll also have fancy graphical effects (the vision I have in my head is of the song select menu in DDR games - cycling through screenshots of games with arrow keys and loading more info about them when one is selected). Also once the launcher is built it will need to be easy to add/change games, so probably storing info about the games in XML or something and loading that when it starts.

Anyway, my actual question: what should I build this in? AGS is out because it won't launch external programs. I've looked at Flash which is a possibility, but that also has some restrictions on loading programs. I've done lots of scripting but very little real programming, so what would you recommend?

[bicilotti]

Well, it seems something C++/Allegro (or some other Csomething/SomeOtherLibrary) could do, or Python/Pygame (or Haskell/OpenGL!). Being a curious individual, I would see in this challenge an opportunity to learn something, so hooray!
Let us know what you will choose.

[Khris]

Actually, thanks to the ags shell plugin, it's possible to run cli commands from within AGS.
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=30948.msg397988#msg397988

[InCreator]

What is that square noise barcode-like thing I see appearing everywhere lately, like next to app adverts and event posters etc?

I imagine it's some sort of cypher which phone cameras or scanners could read and gather info from.

But how it's called and how it works, exactly?

[Atelier]

It's a QR Code.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code

[Khris]

It's a QR code.

You can download an app for smartphones that pulls the code off of a picture you take with the camera. It usually contains URLs.

[OneDollar]

Being a curious individual, I would see in this challenge an opportunity to learn something, so hooray!

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking though for everything I've looked at it seems like there's a big pile of basics I need to learn before I get anywhere near graphics programming, file IO and launching external programs. I was wondering what language people would choose to do this in, to save me learning a bunch of syntax then discovering I'm blocked from launching things outside of specific directories etc.

Actually, thanks to the ags shell plugin, it's possible to run cli commands from within AGS.

Ah, thanks, I didn't know about that. I'm going to try doing it in another language for learning purposes, but it's useful to know I can fall back on AGS if it doesn't work out.

[bicilotti]

Being a curious individual, I would see in this challenge an opportunity to learn something, so hooray!

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking though for everything I've looked at it seems like there's a big pile of basics I need to learn before I get anywhere near graphics programming, file IO and launching external programs. I was wondering what language people would choose to do this in, to save me learning a bunch of syntax then discovering I'm blocked from launching things outside of specific directories etc.

Well, you are used to AGS, so C++ syntax won't feel entirely new. Take a look at this allegro tutorial: it is pretty short and sweet and by the end of it you will know if you like allegro or not.

edit: but if you want to dive into something new, take a look at this programming languages popularity page and choose something exotic (I always wanted to learn Ruby).

[Ryan Timothy B]

It's a QR Code.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code

Half the girls I've heard talk about the QR Code they all call it a "Blackberry thing" because it's the phone they use. It gets me kinda upset. lol

[Oliwerko]

How do you do the contrasting text effect in photoshop? I have two-colored background - cyan and black. I want the text cyan on the black parts and black on cyan parts.

Now I know how to do this manually (i.e. rasterizing the text, selection based on background, fill with the other color). But is there a proper function for it so that when I move the text around the image it keeps adjusting itself to the underlying color?

[Ali]

Make the text cyan and set the blending mode to Difference.

- Ali

[Stupot]

Rasterizing the text.  Is that where you just type "mon" at the end of each sentence, mon?

[bicilotti]

Rasterizing the text.  Is that where you just type "mon" at the end of each sentence, mon?

This thread is always interesting, entertaining and useful. Cheers to the man who opened it, mr. Stupot!

[Ghost]

Fool On The Hill is the third book now that presents me with this little puzzle- a strange speech pattern:
"I an I and my lady" / "I and I thinks there is..."

In all three cases the speaker is of normal intelligence but poorly educated; in at least one book he's hinted to be of mixed, non-white origin. Is that a common speech pattern for a certain peroid/group? I never came across it in more recent works, and the interwebs are not too much of a help. I understand that it just means "I", but am curious about the origins.

[bicilotti]

Fool On The Hill is the third book now that presents me with this little puzzle- a strange speech pattern:
"I an I and my lady" / "I and I thinks there is..."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rastafarian_vocabulary#I_words

^-- rastafarian vocabulary it seems. Does that match the background of those characters?

[Ali]

So THAT was a case of rasterizing the text? This thread has blown my mind.