Tech Smartly

In my search for speedy usage of my computer, I’ve stumbled on several different programs. I’ve found 2 different programs, called Enso launcher and Launchy. Both of these two programs are different, are a designed based on different principles. Enso has come out with a beta of its launcher, which I find to be much better, and fixes several of the problems that I had. However, it is still incomplete. Where you would expect something to happen, instead it gives you a message box explaining how the feature will be implemented later on. This makes it rather difficult to compare the two, since Enso launcher is rather lacking in abilities. For example, you can’t copy and paste, although if you know what you’re doing it’s not that much of a problem. Despite this, Enso launcher is still usable as it is, as it is still used every day by me. Launchy, on the other hand, is complete and is not in a beta of any form. For the intents and purposes of this article, I will be comparing the beta of version 2.0, which I think is much better, if lacking in some features.

Enso

Enso launcher is product made by Humanized. Humanized bases all their products on having a “humanized” interface. Everything they do is done to make everything as efficient and humanized as possible. I think their philosophy is best explained on their about page. Enso itself is a very neat product. It’s visually appealing, and uses a nice pallet of colors. It’s very slick, and I can see a lot of thought was put into this aspect. It uses the caps lock key to toggle input, which you must hold down. It can be a bit hard at times to do this, especially if you’re a touch typist, but it works well enough. You can change it to other predefined keys. However, you will not be able to use the defined key for its normal use, it’s sole purpose is for the Enso launcher. You are told to try it, that even though it’s new, you’ll get used to it. I’ve been using this for a two weeks, and it’s still a bit awkward, but I can use it to a degree that is sufficient enough for me to use it without much thinking. It’s different, that’s for sure, and whether or not it’s better seems more like what you’re comfortable with, rather than hard data. This is my personal opinion, as I’m sure a study could show that one is better than the other, but I don’t think that will happen any time soon.

The way you use Enso launcher, is that you press and hold caps lock to type a command. The most common commands are:

open: open an executable

go: Change to another open window

learn as open: Highlight something, use this command, and put in whatever you want the program to learn. For example, highlighting “www.techsmartly.com”, using the command, and typing in techsmartly will make the program learn that the command “open techsmartly” will open this website. If you still don’t quite understand it, think of it as binding a key in the console if you’re a gamer.

open with: Like the open command, but you say which program you want to open the file with.

These are the most frequently used commands for the average user. There’s also a tutorial video that explains everything much more in depth if you install it, so don’t worry if you don’t understand.

The main reason I prefer the beta 2.0 version over version 1, is that it learns what you use. This is a feature that was sorely lacking in the first version. This is why, despite missing many useful features, I much prefer version 2.0. Also, the way commands are typed in is different. in the original, you typed “open Firefox”, and it would open it. Now, you type “o”, let go of caps lock, and a little box shows up. Then you can type “fi” and enter, and then Firefox opens up. Despite being more complicated on paper, it is much easier to actually do. It requires fewer keystrokes. It’s only a bit difficult to learn if you’re used to the old stay. It’s quite intuitive, since after all it is the philosophy behind all Humanized products.

Like every program, it has its downfalls. First of all, no copy and paste. It’s still not implemented, so you’re going to have to type everything out. Luckily there’s that learning algorithm to help you. Another problem is that you can’t scroll further down the list of suggestions other than what is already listed. Lastly, you can’t type anything that’s incredibly long. Most importantly though, is that it seems to crash quite a bit. I’ve had it crash several times, but luckily it starts again. It also opens up a web page where you can explain what you were doing when it crashed, and it sends info about what was happening. You’re able to see all the info that’s being sent, so there are no worries there(hopefully).  These are several glaring problems that I’ve had with this program. It is not enough to render it unusable, and it is still a beta. There is also no linux version, for all your linux fans and users out there. However, a Linux version is in the pipe works, although I’m unsure if it’s for the first enso launcher or the the second version of the enso launcher.

It’s a great little app, and I use it quite a bit.

Launchy

Launchy is, just like Enso, a launcher. Like Enso launcher, it’s main goal is to speed up your computer usage. However, less focus is put on the interface itself. The end purpose is the same, but everything else is different. Launchy has a lot more options than Enso. You simply type the name of what you want, and it finds it for you. You do not have all the commands given in Enso launcher, meaning it is only what it is, a launcher. However, it doesn’t only have to launch what i has already indexed. Unlike Enso launcher, you can tell Launchy to index a certain folder, so that everything inside can be launched as long as you know the name. You can write the name of a song, and it will open it. However, you need to know the actual filename, not the anme of the song.

You can’t go to another window in Launchy. Enso is very powerful if you know how to use it. Launchy is also powerful if you know how to use it. However, they are powerful in different areas. Enso can also have more commands if you know how to code. Launchy has a lot more customization, as well as the ability to index everything. It is also quite simple of you like to use default everything (putting all your videos in my videos, music in my music, etc). If you like to tweak and customize to your liking, you can also do that. With enso, you can’t do so. You can’t make it index anything else, and the amount of options is quite flimsy. You can change the skin in launcher, but you can’t do so with enso. Fortunately, Enso does most things “just right”. It has that feelings that disillusioned mac users think about OSX. Of course, following in traditional Mac footsteps, if you don’t like the way it does things, tough (bring on the hate mail!).

A small footnote in today’s ever increasing processing power; launchy has a smaller memory footprint. Enso takes up about 33 megabytes of ram, while Launchy takes up only 12. This is while it’s idle. For those that have very little computer resources, like some of my friends, launchy may be the best choice if there is some indecision between the two.

Which one?

Both are great launchers. Both are free, so can try both and see what you like. I personally prefer Enso launcher, but some people may prefer Launchy. It depends on how you wish to use it, as well as a myriad of other factors. Although I would recommend people to try enso if asked, the real answer would be to try both, that way you can’t be wrong. I’ve since stopped launchy from starting up automatically, and I use only Enso Launcher now, but there’s no risk in trying both, or maybe others as well. Remember, the keyboard is almost always faster than the mouse.

For those that don’t use windows

Unfortunately, Launchy and Enso launcher are not out for another other than windows. For linux, you can choose between Katapult, and gnome do. For Mac, you have Quicksilver.

Ok, so this isn’t really about Portal. But don’t leave yet! I’m here to talk about another not so well known game, a physics sandbox, in the same genre as phun. It’s called OE-CAKE. OE stands for octave engine, and CAKE stands for…I don’t know, I don’t speak whatever language the site is in. I would assume it stands for casual something or another, but the language is so foreign to me, it appears as squares on my computer. But anyway, it is a nice engine which allows many simulated objects. Think of it as the sand game, or the now popular powder game, except without the wind. My favorite part of OE-CAKE, is that it can simulated water effectively. There are many “elements” to choose from, including water, snow, rice, mochi, and fire. It has the standard elements, as well as some new elements that I’ve never seen before.

As far as the physics go, it’s better than most I’ve seen so far in this sort of style. The water behaves like you would expect it to, none of that slow spread out sort of thing common in all other games of this type. Everything is different in some way, not just in terms of color. There is pressure in the game, meaning you could create a cup filled with water, create a small hole, and watch the water spurt out. It eventually turns into a trickle until there is no more water which can go out. There is, however, no simulation of tempurature. You can’t heat or cool down anything, apart from touch this and turn into that. Also, cooling down water does not turn it into snow, which is what you would expect it to do (ok, technically ice). However, it seems to be a very solid engine, in which you can do many different things.

A cool thing you can do is to take a picture, and drag it onto the game to create a replica of that picture in whatever element was chosen. Most elements will create a blurry replica, but a few will create on that is pretty good quality. It will most likely lag your computer since most picture are big enough to create enough of whatever element was chosen to do so.

On a forum I also read about many keyboard shortcuts that I didn’t know about, mostly because the website from which the game came from was in…Chinese? Korean? Japanese? One of those three. Either way, The user xen on the forums posted a bunch of keyboard shortcuts, as well as a couple of interesting things that are not apparent from the start. Here is his post verbatim:

———–

This thing has quite a few keyboard shortcuts!

Here’s what I’ve got so far: (some of the symbol keys may be different for you, I’m on a UK keyboard layout)

q = Water
w = Wall
e = Elastic
r = Rigid
t = Tensile
y = Snow
u = Not sure, it unselects the current tool button but doesn’t change the tool (might be a bug)
i = Inflow
o = Outflow
p = Powder
a = Same as u
s = Spring
d = Dense
f = Fuel
g = Gas
h = Heater
j = Jet
k = Rice
l = Light
z = Delete
x = Rigid Axis
c = Cooler
v = Viscous
b = Brittle
n = Same as u
m = Mochi
@ = Fire
. = Pouring
, = Drain
; = Gravity
# = Hairline
- = Splash
= = Bubble
Space = Pause
Del = Clear (Crashes if the pour emitter is on and not water)
1 = Points
2 = Crosses
3 = Circles
4 = Blurred Circles
5 = Blob
6 = Blob and Texture
7 = Shader

Now the fun stuff…

Shift + any of the above keys makes the pour emitter use that material instead of water (for fire pouring on a UK keyboard layout just hit ` (left of 1)).
/ changes the pour emitter to a ‘rain’ emitter
[ and ] change gravity strength

Still haven’t worked out how they did the dragon’s fire breath though.

———–

Quite a bit of stuff to do! Lastly, I’ll explain what I’ve found so far about all the different elements.

Delete: Do I really need to explain?

Water: It’s water. It acts like you would think water would act. It sloshes around, with some things floating on it, and sometimes water floating on things. When it touches fire, it turns into gas.

Wall: Creates an immovable barrier that can be deleted.

Rigid: Creates a solid but movable and green object

Spring: behaves like a rope would, except it springs back to the original length when stretched out. Melts when in contact with fire.

Elastic: Similar to spring, except it also tries to preserve the original shape. Melts when in contact with fire.

Brittle: Like elastic, but breaks when it is bent out of shape.

Rigid axis: like rigid, except it stays at the same spot and can turn around in circles.

Mochi: I don’t really know what it is. My best guess would be that it is some sort of cheese, or something. Can’t think of any real world alternatives, but it’s similar to half melted cheese, I guess.

Rice: it behaves like rice, however that would be.

Powder: Behaves like powder. I think everyone has played with sand at least once, I don’t really have to explain something as fundamental as that.

Gas: It’s actually steam, from water. It acts like water in a 0 degree environment.

Viscous: Sort of like really slow moving water, sometimes it doesn’t even move at all.

Tensile: I would assume this would be oil, and it has very high surface tension. it tries to stay together.

Dense: Like water, but most things float on top of it.

Light: Like water, but often stays on top of anything.

Fuel: Like rigid, but it burns away slowly when it touches fire.

Fire: It behaves like water, but it burns stuff.

Heater: Like a wall, but with all the properties of fire.

Cooler: Exact opposite properties of Heater.

Inflow: Water is created from it. I don’t know if it can create anything else.

Outflow: Anything that touches it disappears.

Jet: It took me a while to find out what it was. When it comes in contact with snow or mochi, it will go in the direction that it came in contact with until it slides off. It also seems to work somehow with other things, but I still have to experiment with that.

Snow: This is more like the snow that is all slushy and almost waterlike. If it so much as touches water, it itself becomes water.

Of course, we all want to know what it looks like before we want to download it, so here is a video showcasing the things it can do, but not everything!

Very nice game, I really do enjoy it. Get it over at the Prometech Software website. It is for both windows and mac. Linux users…Maybe wine? I don’t know, someone can try it and tell me.

I just recently bought the id pack on steam, which includes every game ever made by id. The famous doom, wolfenstein 3d, commander keen, all of those famous games were in the pack. Even all of the quake games and mission packs, and expansions were included. Unfortunately, having a 24 inch monitor at 1920 to 1200 meant that many of the old games looked terrible. They still look terrible anyway in today’s day and age, but it is incredibly stretched out when on such a high resolution. Of course, what is there to expect of a game that ran on DOS? However, I’m here to talk about doom 3, a much more recent game which came out in 2004.

First of all, the graphics of the game are pretty nice, just don’t expect Crysis. I really do like the ambiance in the game, as the sounds never stop. Wherever you go, there will always be ambient noise which can be rather unsettling. Also, there are many different audio clips that play when an enemy is about to attack. As far as I know, there is never a moment in the game where the sound is ever distracting, or does not fit the game at all. However, in a game, it’s not the tech that is most important, it’s the amount of fun that is obtained from the game. Different people think different things about what makes a game fun. To each his own, unless fun is derived from how the game looks on maximum settings.

Fun is the one thing this game seems to lack in certain departments. One of the most glaring and obvious problems is the flashlight. You’re left alone in dark corridors, never fighting with anyone else, shooting things in the dark. Many times in the game, you’ll be left fighting in places like this:

Now in this situation, what would you do? Of course, you would take your gun out and shoot him! ok…switch weapons…What’s this??

Edit: This is why you don’t hotlink! Warning for all future bloggers.

Bam Bam Bam! Is he dead?

I think you see what I mean. I don’t have a problem with having a challenging game. I do have a problem with artificial difficulty. Come on, do we have to shoot in the dark? I understand making the game scary, but if it requires clamping down on the user’s control in a limiting way, then obviously it’s going to frustrate the player. The usage of darkness is very good, but the way the player interacts with darkness is frustrating. Luckily, someone made a mod that allows a smaller flashlight that works with the machine gun and shotgun. The constant switching between the flashlight and the gun meant that the player had to choose between being ready to shoot, or knowing where to shoot. Whenever I walk up to the door, I’m always thinking about what I should have ready. It doesn’t make a difference however, as there is always an imp ready to jump on you as soon as the door opens. This brings me to another aspect of the game that it relies too heavily on.

Boo. Did I scare you? if yes, this game is not for you. This game relies heavily on cheap thrills. Every room you go into, there is bound to be something that is going to claw/bite/throw fireballs at you . This ties in with the flashlight problem, as you always have to keep your gun ready for every time something pops out to kill you, but you can’t see it. At least this game is realistic enough to provide some light when you shoot your gun. The scare tactics are used so much that they almost become a parody of themselves. For example, when there is armor laying near a wall, sometimes it turns out to be a door which the constructors of the place seemed to build only to house an imp. A small jump in fright, then I proceeded to mow it down with my chainsaw. In the small compartment that opened up, there was more armor. The exact same thing happened again! This had never happened before, was totally unexpected, and I ended up laughing at what had just happened.I heard that the expansion relies much less on this type of thing, but I have not tried it it yet.

This game is great in so many aspects, but it fails in so many others. This game seems to rely heavily on horror and tense environments. And it does well with things such as the ambiance and the way everything looks. It falls flat however, when the scare tactics start to become overused, and the player becomes desensitized to all the monsters that pop up. It would be much effective if it happened much less. It feels like it’s trying too hard. I have the feeling that if it was a game that was playtested and polished extensively, such as what Valve does, these issues would have been fixed, and given much more polish. Everything would combine effectively to create a great but scary game that would not have been so imperfect.It was a good job, but could have been much better.

edit: Well, I just learned what hotlinking is, and why not to do it. Seems like the pictures are down.

edit 2: pictures are back up.