In a best-effort to emulate the answer to life, the universe, and everything, I hereby present Jaker’s Blog 4.2. Why the revision change? Well, the site got a much-needed update for WordPress (making the dashboard look pretty).

More importantly, a problem that has been existing for an unknown period of time has been resolved. Turns out a plug-in I was using injected some unwanted code into my website, causing some users to possibly become infected with spyware (the lucky exploit, to be exact). As soon as I discovered this, I quickly determined it’s cause, removed it, and made the blogosphere happy again.

If your machine was infected by this because of myself, I apologize. It was not my intent to have my website a space for malware to grow and spread. Besides, that was sooo version 4.1 !!

~Jaker

I noticed in the WoW 3.1 patch notes:

Horde characters may now obtain the quest “CLUCK!” from Chickens. While Farmer Saldean won’t be selling Special Chicken Feed to the Horde, perhaps “Westfall” William Saldean in Brill might…  

This is funny to me, only because I had found a “bug” with this in the past and make several GM reports (all which came back with nothing–it seems as though my message finally got through).

The bug? I’d be in Brill, and find a chicken. Just as the quest is done, I’d spam this poor chicken with /chicken until it replies with “The chicken looks at you quizically.” Normally you’re supposed to right-click on the chicken. Instead, as Horde, the chicken would turn into an “enemy”–you could only attack it, and the local guards would run to the chicken and kill it.

Now–this action makes sense, programatically. The quest was is meant for Alliance, so the chicken gained the Alliance faction.. Hence why I call it a “bug”–the game’s logic was flawless. The chicken’s existance in Brill, however, was not.

~Jaker

If Microsoft is still obsessed with getting Windows 7 out this year, they are definitely on track for doing so. So far I’ve been quite impressed with how Windows 7 has been shaping up. I’ve been using two machines as my test rigs:
The first machine is one of the most important machines in my apartment–the media center. While I do some testing of Windows 7 on this machine, it’s main focus is the Media Center application (and it’s ability to play whatever media I throw at it).
The other machine is the MacBook Pro, which is more or less ironic (it’s a circus to get all the correct drivers installed on that thing).

The latest build on both of these machines is 7057 (although I’ll be testing 7068 shortly). While the build work absolutely great, there’s a slight problem when logging in–I’m presented with this annoying notepad window of my desktop.ini file.

Fortunately there’s a quick workaround for that:

1. Click Start and type shell:common startup (then press enter)
2. When the All Users startup folder window appears, right click on the desktop.ini file and select Properties
3. Check the “Hidden” checkbox, and click OK.

Reboot, and you’re set!

Another item I’m looking into is Media Center’s ability to play non-native file types (right now, I’m focusing on matroska files). I’ve done some registry editing so Media Center at least acknowledges that the files exist, but it won’t play them. I’ll be testing this more on build 7068.

~Jaker