Walker News » Leisure

Pah! The First Voice Activated Game For iPhone and iPad

Walker — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 17:26:45 +0000

The first voice control game made first debut on Apple App Store. It’s called Pah!, a scrolling shooter game, selling at $0.99 for iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch running iOS 3.0 or above.

That’s right, say “Ahhh” to control the ship and shout “Pah” to shoot the asteroid. Obviously, you can’t play this game anywhere. For example, it will be darn funny when playing the game in a toilet. Also, stop playing it during epidemic or cover up mouth to prevent slaver spreading all over when you shout Pah!

Play This Little Piano Flash Game

Walker — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 06:29:18 +0000

I stumbled upon this little flash game at here. A piano can play nice rhythms if you are good in music :-)

Although I neither a pianist nor I play a piano in my life so far, there is no problem for me to start playing this flash game in no time. Guess what, there are “music notes” of few popular Chinese songs written on the site I found :-)

Therefore, you should able to play this flash-based piano easily as I do. For your convenient, I just duplicate two of them here.

To test it out, use your computer mouse (not that animal called mouse) to click the flash piano once. Then, start to press computer keyboard with reference to that alphabet-based “song book” (below).

Music notes for this flash piano :

In some cases, you might have to turn off the Chinese input, if the flash piano not making any tune.

If you create a new tune with this flash piano, please leave me a comment of the “music note” for sharing :-)

痴心绝对

OPQQQRQPPOPPSP ONOOOQQOOMNNQN
MLMMMRRQSO MLMMMRROOMP
OOPQQQRQPPOPPSP ONOOOQQOOMNNQN
MLMMRRQSO MLMMMRROOONO

Classical Wedding Song

HKKK HLJK HKNNMLKJKL
HKKK HLJK HKMOMKILMK
NMLII JKLL NMLII JKLL
HKKK HLJK HKMOMKILMK

Besides using computer keyboard, you can also click on the flash piano keyboard. The layout should much like the piano toy made for children, I think.

Similar to the Touch Piano from Nokia HK, this little flash piano (about 230KB) is compatible with touchscreen-based Nokia 5800 XpressMusic too (by touching the little piano keyboard to “make” it dance :-)

[ The origin of this flash game is believed developed by 100CN, a Beijing-based software development company. ]

Now I Can SSH To Gmail Server And Read Email In Text Terminal!

Walker — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 13:39:10 +0000

For the first time, you can now make a SSH connection to Gmail server and read email in text console, if you never feel happy with the graphical user interface (GUI) applied in Mac OS, GNOME/KDE of Linux, or Microsoft Windows OS.

No, this is just a JOKE, not a true (technical) news :-D

For those who have Gmail account and Gmailed recently, you know that’s Gmail theme. If you’re not happy with Google plain-white theme design, you may now customize the feel and look of your Gmail with the predefined themes in Gmail Settings page (on the new tab named Themes).

For “black black-theme saves energy” believers, you can set Gmail theme to Terminal or Contrast Black to save monitor from consuming extra electric-power.

Beside the static theme, there are some dynamic themes where your Gmail account will periodically change graphics that match with your selected theme and the city/country you’re travelling to. For example, this dialog box pops up when I selected the Graffiti or Planets theme:

^{Gmail dynamic theme will automatically change graphic to match with your selected theme and location you are currently staying at.}

If you are bored looking at the email account that never change the look and feel or you are in the mood of having something different, Gmail theme could be your answer!

So, have you Gmailed today, or thinking of switching to Gmail (just for the theme function)?

(Note: If you find Gmail takes time to load after using the theme, then it’s likely caused by the problem of (dynamic/graphical) theme. In that case, remember to fall back to the default plain-white theme. Optionally, inform Gmail team that you feel suck of the theme loading time :-D).

Translate And Configure Raiden III Setting

Walker — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 16:48:00 +0000

Finally, I’ve found a friend who can read Japanese to translate the Raiden-III configuration program, i.e. config.exe.

Besides the settings page, he has also help to ‘decrypt’ the Direct3D error message that pop up in my Dell Latitude D410!
Double-click the config.exe program, which is part of the Raiden-III game settings, allows users to define the screen mode (window or full-screen mode) and keyboard or joystick settings for 1st / 2nd player.

The default keyboard settings for 1st player is quite convenient to myself, i.e. the Z key meant for shooting, X key meant for releasing bomb and the Arrow keys are use to move the Raiden jet-fighter in up/down/right/left direction

Now, if the Windows running on PC / laptop failed to open the classic Raiden-III, you might have seen an error message dialog box similar to this:

Depending on the locale available on Windows (using AppLocale on XP or the Vista Ultimate MUI pack), you might see some Japanese words or some weird characters that follow the word Direct3D. My friend translated that for me as “failed to initialize Direct3D”.

According to the official system requirement for playing this classic Raiden-III are as follow:

Windows 2000/XP
Pentium4 (1.7GHz and above) or Celeron (2.0GHz and above)
At least 512MB of RAM
DirectX-compatible graphic card with at least 64MB of RAM and support hardware texture acceleration for texture and lighting (e.g. ATI Radeon 9000 or later nVidia GeForceFX)

Is that enough? Take a look of the Raiden-III trailer that I’ve just found in YouTube:

What Is The 4D Number Of Election

Walker — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 16:26:33 +0000

I believe that everyone who can read has used a dictionary at least once. So, it’s not that difficult to understand what an ordinary dictionary meant for.

But, have you ever heard about 4D number or lotto game dictionary? I bet most of you not even if you’d bought 4D number or lotto game before!
This unusual dictionary is neither describes nor explains the literal meaning of terms related to lotto game. In fact, the dictionary translates words into a numeric number (usually 4-digit) that used to bet for 4D number and lotto game alike!

This lotto dictionary is well-known as “dream book” among the Chinese community. Most of these veteran players believe that every dreams they have or incidents that happen around them are the indication of luck to strike on the game, with the 4-digit number that represent the dream / incident!

For example, I found this interesting dictionary called Magnum 4D Treasure Chest – Translate your dreams, incidents, encounters and inspirations into lucky 4D numbers!

If you’re interested to know what are the lucky numbers that represent “election” related incidents, here is the result of Treasure Chest – there is about 13 numbers represent respective incidents related to the “election”!

Have you got one for today? I wish you Good luck!

Caution: Please be assured that the banker is always the winner!

Collection of Google Holiday Logo

Walker — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 14:48:16 +0000

Do you still remember how many holiday logos that have been used in Google.com? Do you love or miss some of them? Do you ever know where could you find the collection of Google Holiday Logo?

Of course, the best place to look for is at Google.com! At here, you can review / recall all (I believe is ALL) Google Holiday Logos since year 1999 up to the date.
Logo of Google Beta (1999)

Google Logo for 25 Years of TCP/IP & Happy New Year on Jan 1, 2008

Google Logo for USA Election on Nov 7th, 2000

Google Logo for Picasso Birthday on October 25, 2002

Google Logo for February 14, 2003 – Happy Valentine Day

Here are some of my favourite:

Google Logo for Albert Einstein Birthday on March 14, 2003

Google Logo for Vincent van Gogh Birthday on March 30, 2005

Google Logo for Leonardo da Vinci Birthday on April 15, 2005

Google Logo for National Teacher Day on May 3, 2005

Google Logo for Martin Luther King Jr. Day on January 16, 2006

Google Logo for St. Patrick’s Day on March 17, 2006

Google Logo for Earth Day on April 22, 2007

The Flags of the World and 159 Google Country Flags

Walker — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 08:58:47 +0000

According to web tracking statistics, WalkerNews.net is mostly visited by people living in these countries.

I believe that many of you who are reading this post is at least able to identify your own country flag (don’t tell anyone even if you don’t)! But, do you ever know how many countries are in this world and their flags?

For those who are living in Europe, do you really able to identify all the Europe countries flags? Do you ever know that there is a flag dubbed as “flag of the world”?

Don’t worry; I don’t know all the flags too. But Google at local domain (scroll down to the bottom of page) and Flags of the World (FOTW) have the answer for us! If the you can’t read some of the countries name described by Google, please refer to the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) at IANA

(See also the previous post on how to switch between Google at local domain website.)

If your interest is not limited to country flags, the FOTW is definitely a good resource to enhance your (flag) studies! According to the site,

…Flags of the World (FOTW) is the Internet’s largest site devoted to vexillology (the study of flags). Here you can read more than 35,000 pages about flags and view more than 66,000 images of flags.

…Flags of the World is produced and maintained by an Editorial Staff of unpaid volunteers and the contents of these pages are offered freely to the Internet community.

The official flag of FOTW designed by Mark Sensen. To follow the history, proceed to this About of FOTW flag hyperlink.

If you’re looking for download mini country flags, Google has a list of 159 countries in the world where its localized version is, or download this 101KB zipped file.