Babel NodeJS Starter project

This is a starter skeleton NodeJS that I built for my use. I hope you will find it useful as well.

The ES6 files that you write will reside in ES6 folder:

Do note that you will need to append the suffix "-ES6" to your file. For example

hello-ES6.js

gulp watch will pick up the change and transpile it to ES5 in ./dist folder.

the gulp file resides in the ./gulp folder.

Issue 'gulp build' to rebuild all files. 'gulp clean' removes the entire dist/ directory 'gulp watch' will compile files that are newly created or modified - this is the option that you would want to issue when coding as it will run in the background and automatically pick up any changes.

There are some sample ES6 files in ES6 folder and a sample index.js file to test the transpile.

The requirements for this are :

• NodeJS
• Gulp
• Babel

In this cloned repository: issue

'npm init'

Node will download the required modules.

The location of the code is:

https://github.com/rebooting/ES6Sample

Monogame 3.4 SDK templates( Visual Studio 2013) not found after installing

I've installed Monogame SDK under a normal user account. The installer prompted for an administrator account and correctly detected that VS 2013 is present. 

Once done I was unable to find the templates in my normal user account, turns out that the templates were installed in the

  Documents\Visual Studio 2013\Templates\ProjectTemplates\Visual C#

directory. Copy the files into the same directory structure in the normal user account and the project templates will show up.

Windows GIMP 2.8.14 + Wacom bug

The current version of GIMP for Windows has a Wacom bug, if you're using the tablet to paint, you may find that the brush lags heavily.

The bug is identified in libcairo2.

To work around, you can install an older version of GIMP, copy out libcairo-2.dll, libpixman-1.0.dll and libpng15-15.dll and overwrite those in 2.8.14


Bug is here:

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=736220

Android Studio - Failed to load JVM DLL message

If you have a fresh installation of Android Studio, you may find it  not able to start with the error "Failed to load JVM DLL" dialog; despite having a proper JDK and JAVA_HOME installed.

You will need to install Visual C++ 2010 x64 runtime found at:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/confirmation.aspx?id=14632

That should resolve the launcher problem.

Workaround for Linux+Wine to fix games screen that is too big for display

If you've set your game(World of Warcraft for me) to run at a lower resolution than your current  desktop resolution in Linux, you may find that there will be a viewport showing part of the game and you have to pan around with your mouse.

It's a little ... annoying.

It happens to both my ATI card and Nvidia card running proprietary drivers.

This hasn't always happened. Version 1.0 of Wine for example doesn't exhibit this behaviour.


The workaround is a little clunky; before running the game, use xrandr  to check the available modes and then use xrandr to set the game resolution

e.g. launching a terminal and running xrandr:

chocobo:~$ xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 1920 x 1080, maximum 16384 x 16384
DVI-I-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
VGA-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DVI-I-1 connected primary 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 477mm x 268mm
   1920x1080      60.0*+
   1680x1050      60.0  
   1280x1024      75.0     60.0  
   1152x864       75.0  
   1024x768       75.0     60.0  
   800x600        75.0     60.3  
   640x480        75.0     59.9  
HDMI-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

It shows DVI-I-1 connected on my setup, so if my game runs at 1024X768, I'll run the command

xrandr  --output DVI-I-1  --mode 1024x768 


The desktop will resize to this resolution.

Start your Wine game. It should fit the viewport on your monitor.

Once you exit, set the resolution back to the default desktop setting:

 xrandr  --output DVI-I-1  --mode 1920x1080

2D Maze generation: Java code using Growing Tree algorithmn

Ported the maze generation Python code found in
http://pcg.wikidot.com/pcg-algorithm:maze to Java as a coding exercise.

""You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike."
-Adventure"

You can find the code on Github :

https://github.com/rebooting/Growing

Updating Rift to use Glyph Launcher on Wine

From July onwards, Rift game will be launched from the Glyph Launcher.

If you are using Wine to run Rift,  the Rift Launcher will attempt to install Glyph and may crash out. The fix is quite simple:

Set Wine to emulate XP. The installer will run successfully. I did not have any luck using Vista as suggested by some.

Add a new shortcut to the GlyphClient.exe found in C:\Program Files\Glyph\GlyphClient.exe to your PlayOnLinux drive and launch it.

It should find Rift and you can go ahead and patch or play it!