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I thought that it was time for a blog post which is actually useful for other people. It seems that most people reach this site via search engines by searching for solutions to their problems.

So, if you are still looking for a good icon editor for Windows which supports alpha transparency and doesn't cost a cent, you should definitely take a look at IcoFX. I've been using this program for some years now and I'm very happy with it.

I can't say much about the editing features such as brushes, pencils and the like because there is one particular feature of IcoFX which makes all these tool useless: PNG import.

That's right. You can simply create your icon in your favorite graphics editing software, save it in PNG format with full alpha transparency and import it into IcoFX.

You can then either use the import feature to import more graphics in different resolutions and different color depths into the same icon file or you can use the editor's built-in convert functionality to create new "sub-icons" from already existing icons.

IcoFX can also export icons as BMP, JPEG, PNG, GIF or JPEG2000 and extract icons from DLL files like shell32.dll or EXE files.

The built-in resource editor allows it to replace icons in program files.

What are you waiting for? Go, get it.

Related Link: IcoFX - The Free Icon Editor

I am thinking about pre-ordering a copy of Mass Effect 2. Besides the few annoying bugs that Mass Effect has, it's a really nice game and I had a lot of fun playing it. As Mass Effect 2 continues the story of Mass Effect, it is certainly worth the money.

So what will I get when I pre-order? This is a really interesting question which is easy to answer if you live in the US and order your copy at GameStop. Unfortunately, I'm living in Europe and this is the point were it's getting complicated.

If you order your game at GameStop, you'll get the following bonus items:

1. Terminus Assault Armor
   • Increases sprint speed by 10%
   • All weapons have +1 magazines of reserve ammo
   • Increase shields + 15%
2. Blackstorm Projector
   • Fires a singularity projectile that draws in nearby enemies, and then explosively hurls them away.

If you order your game at Amazon, you'll get the following bonus items:

1. Inferno Armor
   • negotiation bonus 10%
   • all power damage 10%
   • increases storm speed by 10%

Let me summarize this a bit:

People who pre-order at GameStop (which is not that easy if you live outside the US) get the awesome looking, heavily shielded, high tech assault armor and a portable "black hole" launcher.

People who pre-order at Amazon get a "negotiation bonus" so they can better cry for mercy and "increased storm speed" so they can run away faster.

Something is telling me that someone wants us to order our games from GameStop. Unfortunately, I can't.

Thanks Bioware.

Update: I just realized that my Anti Virus software is going to expire soon, so I won't be able to afford any new computer games anyway.

This is a message to all trolls and wannabe tech experts out there who think that "reinstall Windows" and "buy a new computer" is a problem solution:

Shut the f*** up!

I'm going trough 39 pages filled with utter crap, posted by brain-dead monkey zombies to find a fix for another common problem in Mass Effect that the folks over at Bioware are either unable or not willing to fix.

General protection fault!
History: GMatrix2D::Swap() Address = 0x114de3dc (filename not found)
Address = 0xc62feb3b (filename not found)

It seems that every single idiot who somehow managed to find the power button on his computer has his own opinion that he has to share with the rest of the world, no matter how incredibly stupid it is.

Do you guys have any idea how annoying it is to read through a post with about 2375 bullet items of things you tried just to find out that the last line is something along the lines of but it didn't help!!!!11 XD lol rofl haxx?

And please keep your useless works for me posts to yourself or I'll take this as an invitation, come to your place, take your PC and carry it back to me so I can finally play the game.

I would also like to mention that Uninstall your Antivirus. XD lol rofl haxx is a stupid idea, especially when you spent a lot of money for professional Antivirus software and license updates. If the problem is caused by Antivirus software, I expect the software developers to get in contact with each other to find a fix.

If someone who comes across this blog post has any serious and meaningful suggestions to fix the problem described above, although I think that this is just another example of Bioware's poor coding, please don't keep it to yourself and write a comment.

Thanks.

I'm in the process of bringing my MyMiniCity Dynamic Signature script to SourceForge. While creating the download archives, I came across a very simple and yet very interesting question:

How do I create a ".tar.gz" file using 7-Zip on Windows?

On Linux, I would simply run:

tar cfz archive.tar.gz folder

When using 7-Zip on Windows, this process is a little bit more complicated.

As a GZIP compressed archive can contain only one file, 7-Zip won't offer you GZIP compression if you try to compress a folder or multiple files at once. When you choose TAR, you can't select any compression algorithm.

The trick is, that you have to create a TAR archive first. You can then put that single TAR file into 7-Zip and it will finally offer you the ability to compress that file using GZIP.

The result is an archive with the .tar.gz extension which is exactly what you wanted to do.

That's another example how something that needs several mouse clicks on Windows needs a single line on a Linux shell.

If you are in the same situation like I was for a few months now and you get a "Code: 80048823" error when trying to sign in to Games for Windows LIVE on your Windows PC with your correct username and password, this article might contain the solution you are looking for.

If you were wise enough to choose a long (> 10 characters) and cryptic password so script kiddies can't just take over your LIVE account, Microsoft's pathetic fail software which they call the Games for Windows LIVE client simply can't handle your password and will give you meaningless error messages.

Login to your LIVE account through https://login.live.com - which was obviously programmed by people who know a lot more about programming than those who created the Games for Windows LIVE client software - and change your password to something that is no longer than 10 characters.

There you go. That's it. You should be able to login again.

Thanks to Microsoft for creating a software which asks for credit card information but doesn't support secure passwords.

Valve did about 200 times better with their Steam platform and this proves that Internet browsers are not the only type of software that Microsoft fails at.

I'm giving up. I spent the last few hours trying to login to Games for Windows LIVE. If you don't know what this is:

Games for Windows LIVE is Microsoft's pathetic failed attempt to compete with Valve's Steam platform and their "achievements" by bringing their XBOX Live platform to the PC.

The last time I managed to login to Games for Windows LIVE, I couldn't even have a custom profile picture without signing up for an expensive premium membership. On Steam, you get this for free.

But that's not enough. When you play a game which supports Games for Windows LIVE and you have this thing running in the background, it will most likely create a new player profile and all your previous savegames will be gone. If you are lucky, you "just" have to manually copy all your savegames to the new profile and it might work.

Games for Windows LIVE also grants you access to "downloadable content" (DLC) for games such as Fallout 3 and Mass Effect. I'm buying my games on Steam, including those that support Games for Windows Live. I can't see why I have to buy DLC through Games for Windows LIVE when using Steam. As a matter of course, the otherwise useless Games for Windows LIVE client has to run in the background for DLC to work. This means that people like me who bought their game on Steam need to have two programs running in the background to run a simple computer game.

But since all I get when logging in is "Code: 80048823", I can't use any of the DLC. I changed my password since their crappy support websites which are spread across at least 20 different domains told me to do so. While looking for information regarding "Code: 80048823" on different Microsoft websites, I encountered several redirections, at least one "500 Internal server error", one endless redirect loop and a lot of "404 File not found" errors.

Talking about downloadable content, it's certainly worth mentioning that the only currency supported by Games for Windows LIVE is Microsoft Points. You can buy Microsoft Points in a store in the form of a points card (I've yet to find a store here in Germany where they sell those) or you can use a credit card. That's it. If you don't have a credit card (not that uncommon here in Germany) and you can't find a store, you are out of luck.

That's the reason why there are online shops which sell the scanned codes from the cards. I was lucky enough to find a shop which accepts payment through PayPal and direct debit.

I therefore come to the conclusion that

Games for Windows LIVE sucks

Update: The solution to this problem can be found here: Games for Windows LIVE "Code: 80048823" solved

Okay. How does Bioware get their customers to pay for this shit they call computer games? Seriously.

I finished Star Wars: Knights of the old Republic last week and that was the game that had the most annoying bugs I ever encountered in a computer game so far.

Examples:

• Triggering a cut scene while the active character is in "stealth mode" causes the game to crash
  
  Since the game can't find the person who is supposed to talk, it throws an exception and dies. Perfect. I did save before triggering the cut scene. But as this game fails to fully restore from savegames (see below), something like a "stealth" variable obviously got messed up and I actually had to activate stealth mode to make the script think that I'm not in stealth mode anymore.
• Motion blur effects cause weird graphic glitches on ATI cards
  
  Bioware blames ATI for this problem. Okay. Then please tell me why all my other games don't have this problem with motion blur. To me it seems that the guys at Bioware decided to realize this feature in a way that simply doesn't work well on ATI cards. They should be well aware that NVIDIA is not the only mayor graphics chip manufacturer on this planet, right?
• The game fails to restore properly from savegames and fails to restore certain information when moving from one zone to another
  
  On Tatooine, the sand people are not supposed to shoot at you if you are dressed as one of them. I saved before entering their enclave. A cut scene is supposed to play when you enter their enclave. But instead, the sand people turned hostile and started shooting at me. Loading the previously saved game caused my entire party to die within 2 seconds. The game didn't restore the friend/foe status and so the automated turrets outside reduced my entire party to dust. I had to zone in and out of their enclave about 10 times until the game finally decided that it should play the cut scene.

Okay. Star Wars: KOTOR is pretty old. I can't expect old games to run perfectly on today's systems.

So I decided to give Bioware another chance and bought Mass Effect on Steam. The game is really, really nice. It looks nice. It is fun to play. But... Bioware obviously didn't learn.

• The games locks up during conversations
  
  It seems to be a Bioware tradition that their games have to lock up during conversations. But instead of just crashing, Mass Effect causes 99% CPU load and therefore causes the entire operating system to freeze. The only chance to regain control of the computer is to push the reset button.
• Conversations have no voice overs
  
  I landed on a planet called Feros. On this planet, 50% of the conversations lack the sound output. Unless you enabled subtitles (which you won't need unless you are deaf), you have to read the characters lips or just guess the question to give the correct answer. This totally kills the atmosphere of the game.

Hey Bioware. Did you ever hear the word software testing? How much time did you guys spend to test your game on different systems? Did you test it on different systems at all or did you just test it on one of your development machines before rolling it out into the stores?

Let me guess. The next thing you will do is to blame Creative for not playing your sound files on their cards, right?

Games are meant for entertainment and relaxation. Your games cause me heart attacks.

Thank you, Bioware.

Someone recently noticed that there is a "runonce.exe" running on his system and he was curious what this file is doing on his system. We both knew that there is a registry key called "RunOnce" which causes a program to run once after the next restart.

There is obviously a Microsoft program called "runonce.exe" which is used to re-run the setup program for a software to make additional configurations after the program was successfully installed. This makes some sense.

When you ask Google about this file, you might be sent to a site which has the following explanation for this file:

runonce.exe is the Microsoft Run Once wrapper.

This makes perfect sense, but this is only what you get when your primary browser language is English. Here is what you get when you use a German browser:

runonce.exe ist die Microsoft laufen gelassene einmal Verpackung.

This translates back into something like:

runonce.exe is the Microsoft throw-away pack which ran away.

And this is the reason why you shouldn't let a software do your translations. Microsoft is doing it with their knowledge base articles, support websites are doing it, online shops are doing it.

Here is my suggestion:

TRANSLATE YOUR WEBSITES BY HAND OR DON'T TRANSLATE THEM AT ALL!

Seriously.

Do her that all understood or must I it again explain?

It seems I managed to install Drupal and create my first content. So far so boring.

I noticed that posting tweets on Twitter is a nice and quick way to let people know what I'm currently doing but it won't let me go into details because of the 140 characters limit. This is why I needed a weblog, also known as blog.

From now on, you will have yet another place to read about the life of someone you don't even know and there is probably no reason why you should spend another second on this rather useless website.

But maybe, one day in the future, this blog will be filled with tons of information and solutions to "not so common" problems I encountered while working as a web developer.

And maybe I'll write a few words about furries and why they are not what you think they are. But that's another story.