Niri | Blog

MaximumPC has posted a must-read for all PC geeks about BSoD. You know what BSoD is right? Blue Screen of Death. This might look familiar unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last decade and a half.

Check out their awesome article then go lay down or something.

If you’re running Vista there’s a quick tweak you can do with the CMD window which your eyes will thank you for. Vista ships with a new set of fonts and the new fixed width font is Consolas which is an easy to read, clean looking font.

Consolas used in CMD window.

By default you cannot use it in your CMD window but a quick reg hack will add that ability. First run the following command either from a CMD window or a RUN window:

reg add "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Console\TrueTypeFont" /v 00 /d Consolas

That’s all it takes to use Consolas as your option in your CMD window. Well, not quite. You have to log off and log back in for the changes to take effect, but no restart required.

CMD Properties with Consolas selected.

There you have it. Pretty simple, but much easier to read than the default system font and Lucida Console is so last year.

Haws is reporting on an article found over at Arstechnica.com:

Academic researchers have found an exploitable hole in a popular form of wireless networking encryption. The hole is in a part of 802.11i that forms the basis of WiFi Protected Access (WPA), so it could affect routers worldwide. German graduate student Erik Tews will present a paper at next week’s PacSec in Tokyo coauthored with fellow student and aircrack-ng team member Martin Beck that reveals how remnants of WPA’s predecessor allow them to slip a knife into a crack in the encryption scheme and send bogus data to an unsuspecting WiFi client.

As Jeff suggests you might want to switch your router’s WiFi security over to AES which is not hit by this exploit.

I’m a huge Bejeweled fan and if you haven’t heard of Bejeweled you’ve been living under a rock, with no Internet. (Remember you can get the Internet everywhere now so you have to spell that stuff out.)

For the uninitiated, or those who plainly do not care (so why are you still reading?!), Bejeweled came out in it’s first edition some eight years ago. The brainchild of Jason Kapalka and a few of his friends over at PopCap the game was first called Diamond Mine and was purely a Flash-based game back then.

Bejeweled 2: Deluxe

I got really addicted to Bejeweled 2 which featured more polished graphics over the crude, low-gfx first version. Today I play Bejeweled 2 on my XBox, my iPhone and occasionally fire it up on my PC when I need to refresh my brain. (For those days I run out of Brawndo!)

If you want to know how popular Bejeweled is world wide consider this; in the eight years it’s been around, addicts like myself have dropped around $300 million – and more than 6 billion hours – on the first and second game. Consider those numbers for a while. Now, on to Bejeweled Twist!

According to developers PopCap’s been developing Bejeweled Twist for 3 freakkin’ years. This better be a smashing hit because Twist will have some amazingly large shoes to fill.

Get set for a vivid sensory rush as you spin and match explosive gems for shockwaves of fun. Rotate jewels freely to set up electrifying combos, outwit obstacles, and blast high-voltage gems. Rev up with a strategic challenge or just relax in the gem-spinning zone. Any way you play, you’ll find endless ways to win!

Check out the video from the official web site

Some screen shots of the new gem.

Bejeweled Twist

Bejeweled Twist

Bejeweled Twist

System Requirements

OS: Windows XP/Vista
Memory: 256 (minimum); 512+ (recommended) MB RAM
Processor: 1.2GHz MHz or faster
DirectX: 8 (minimum); 9.0c+ (recommended)
Internet: Internet connection is required to register both the download and CD-ROM versions of the game

So what are you waiting for?! Head over to PopCap and download the new demo.

Norway consumer body challenges Apple over iTunes.

So a Norwegian consumer agency has decided to go after Apple planning to take it to court over not being able to use iTunes store downloads on music players other than iPods. I don’t think they’ll get very far with this but they’re hoping other countries will follow suit and do the same thing.