When I tried to convert some of my old .wmv video files on my Mac, I didn't find any easy and free solution. There is a lot of video conversion software for Mac around the Interwebs, some of those apps are quite good - but there's one thing they've all got in common: They cost money. So I continued searching and spent hours till I found my personal free solution: ffmpeg. It is extremely powerful, and free! And it is a Shell-based conversion tool. 

In general, I love to work with the shell. But it can get really exhausting, and it got exhausting in this special case. So I decided to create a very small AppleScript, also available as a Droplet-App for Finder. Thus you just need to drag the desired file onto the script/droplet, and it will do the job for you. Quite comfortable, I think.

So what do you need? I'd recommend you to get Homebrew, my favourite package manager for mac: http://github.com/mxcl/homebrew. Once installed, just type "brew install ffmpeg" to let Homebrew do the complete install of ffmpeg for you.

Now that ffmpeg is installed on your system, feel free to grab my very very very simple ffmpeg converter Droplet / AppleScript. Extract the package and drag the droplet ont your Finder bar. To convert any video to a hq mp4, just drag and drop the file onto the droplet icon in your finder menubar. Have fun!

Download: ffmpeg Applescript & Droplet v0.1

I proudly present my "Plants vs Zombies + 2" game trainer. The trainer is capable of breaking the DMA of "Plants vs Zombies" and injecting its own code. I could locate only one static address to patch the money, but I could also detect the specific writing pointer for the amount of sunpower. So I isolated this one and injected my own assembly code into a codecave. And here it is, my PvZ +2 trainer, featuring the following two (what an astonishing amount - lol) hacks:

- Infinite Amount of Sunpower
- Infinite Cash

Download:  Plants vs Zombies +2 Trainer Win32
Download:  Plants vs Zombies +2 Trainer Winx64

Hopefully, there is more to come in further versions of the trainer. Till now, I haven't spent that much time in searching through the memory of the game. If you are interested in seeing the opcodes and the assembled code to inject, feel free to read on here.

YAEC is an abbreviation and stands for "Yet Another Evil Clickbot". Nevermind the word "Evil", it does not suggest anything except for the fact, that you can do some pretty "mean" things with YAEC. How mean? For instance, you can cheat in browser based games with the help of this nifty application. I developed this small application in a quite short period of time and due to boredom and because of the "SpeedClick" Application on Facebook.

What actually is YAEC? 

YAEC is a clickbot. This means it is an application that will fetch your mouse cursor (just as if it was magic!), move it to a specified position on your screen and will simulate mouse clicks, just as if you clicked by yourself, but YAEC does that automatically. In YAEC, you cannot only specifiy the position you want the cursor to move to and perform the clicks, but also the delay between each simulated click, the duration of time you want the clickbot to run and also the delay before it starts moving to the specified position and before it starts clicking.

YAEC is very self-explanatory. For instance, you can just press the "Sample"-button and some sample data will be inserted for you. Using the "How To"-button, YAEC will tell you a hint how to analyze the x and y position on your screen where you want the clickbot to perform clicks. 

When is it useful? 

Just too mention a very light example: Imagine you want to play a JavaScript based Game in your browser where you have to prove how many clicks you can do within a certain period of time. Then you could just let YAEC do the work for you. It will click automatically, and if you specified the value of 0 for the delay between each click, YAEC will click extremely fast.

Download 

YAEC 0.2 Win32

YAEC 0.2 Win64

Immer wieder werde ich mit Computer-Problemen konfrontiert. Und genaugenommen ist die Sache, dass es ständig Problem gibt, doch das Spannende an der Computertechnik. Manchmal ist das Problem beziehungsweise die Situation aber schon sehr unterhaltsam. So war es auf jeden Fall neulich wieder, als ich einem verzweifelten PC-Nutzer helfen durfte:

Egal welchen Browser man unter Windows XP öffnete, es wurde immer der Internet Explorer gestartet. Dabei waren weder die Verknüpfungen falsch, noch bei der Installation der anderen Browser etwas schief gelaufen. Die Lösung war wesentlich trivialer, aber dennoch irrsinnig:

Blyawon, Pront0, Sallewasgeht, Hobil und ich haben einen Blog gelauncht: Derwebblog.de. Der Blog ist sehr vielseitig und deckt zahlreiche Themenbereiche ab. Wir schreiben überwiegend Artikel über Webprogrammierung beziehungsweise Webentwicklung und Design, bloggen aber auch aktuelle Webnews, Nachrichten aus der Politik und aus der Gesellschaft.

Als erfahrene Internet-Kenner bemühen wir uns täglich darum die aktuellsten Nachrichten aus den oben genannten Themenbereichen in knapper, verständlicher Form zu formulieren. Auch schrecken wir nicht vor Tutorials und Anleitungen zurück, die auf “Computerkenner” zugeschnitten sind. Aufgrund der Vielzahl an Teilnehmern dieses Gemeinschaftsprojekts deckt jeder “Blogger” seine Kompetenzbereiche ab und bereichert damit das Internet um hoffentlich nützliche Informationen.

Die offizielle Website http://cbaur.de meines Unternehmens "Christoph Baur Software-Entwicklung und IT-Dienstleistungen" ist nun vollständig. Dort präsentiere ich meine Angebote beziehungsweise meine Dienstleistungen, als da wären:

• Webentwicklung mit Design, Umsetzung von Designs, CMS-Lösungen (Joomla und Wordpress) und Entwicklung von individuellen Webanwendungen
• Mac OS X-Programmierung, iPhone-Programmierung/iPod Touch-Programmierung und iPad-Programmierung
• PC-Programmierung auf Basis des .net-Frameworks mit C# oder Java
• PC-Reperaturen in der näheren Umgebung
• Beratung bei computertechnischen Fragen

In den letzten Tagen habe ich alle Seiteninhalte vervollständigt und Referenzen beziehungsweise Portfolios veröffentlicht, wo sinnvolle vorhanden. Jetzt ist die Seite vollständig fertiggestellt, es kann nun darin "gestöbert" werden. Wer Webseiten, Anwendungen für Apple-Plattformen und für den PC braucht, der ist bei mir an der richtigen Adresse.

Schaut doch einfach mal vorbei auf http://cbaur.de und informiert euch ein wenig, falls ihr Interesse habt.

Kleine Anmerkung: Aktuell nehme ich keine weiteren größere Aufträge entgegen, da ich zur Zeit stark ausgelastet bin, was Projekte betrifft! 

Besides all my current projects I decided to take care of Bumuckl.com in terms of unity and web standard. I thought it was time to get cracking to get a new floor finish for my website. You might not think that there have been any major changes, and you're probably right. It still looks kind of the same. But, indeed, it took me 5 days with 6 hours of struggling around everyday to redevelop the whole template in a clean way with neat CSS, to remove bad components and to adapt all the components views. On the whole, it was a pretty exhausting work to optimize Bumuckl.com. And now, as it is done (one might think so), I really do feel happy. But be aware, this is not finished yet. I still will have to remove old CSS classes and to shift the current way of implementing graphics to CSS sprites. 

What? Web 2.0? Where is it?! 

Yep, it is there. I am now aiming at using this website rather as a Weblog than as a puffy website with tons of messy content. So I switched all the section and category list-views to blog-views and tried to give the comments-function a neat look. Provisorily I removed the "Lua Wikis" menu item because i would have never finished to translate the whole PGELua Wiki. If you need help, just use the forums. If you need any functions regarding PGELua, go to luaplayer.org.

That's all I've got to say. Have fun and, hopefully, I could teach you in some way.

"Presheet" is just a single .css-file for styling websites and contains presets, as the name PREsheet says. To be more precise, first several standard browser settings are reset and then new basic styles are allocated. Furthermore there are lots of predefined classes and IDs that will help you in your task of creating a new webdesign. I assume that you'll never again have to struggle with complex div-boxes and floating, as there are simple but powerful classes implemented that will work out properly for you. The Presheet file might be small and simple, but it implements a very nice and handy system. I am not sure how far webdevelopers do like the "system", but I am sure that it is an effective way to create xhtml strict websites in no time in a very comfortable way. And with xhtml strict I really do mean xhtml strict!

I assume not to compare it to real CSS-Frameworks like YAML, Blueprints or 960grid, because it surely ain't a CSS Framework. It is a useful preset. 

Learn more at library.bumuckl.com: http://library.bumuckl.com/?view=presheet 

Download: Presheet 0.1 

Ok, zugegeben, der alte Hoster, den ich für mein Webhosting hatte, war spitze (http://www.xenonserver.de), aber irgendwann steigen die Ansprüche. So war es bei mir zumindest: Ich wollte mehr. Darum habe ich mich kurzerhand dazu entschlossen, bei hosteurope.de einen VServer zu ordern. Deshalb war die Site gestern auch für einige Stunden nicht erreichbar, denn ich habe die komplette Site mit Datenbank auf den neuen Server umziehen müssen. In den nächsten Tagen geschieht dann das selbe mit allen Subdomains, parabella.org und dumpspot.net.

Danach ist die Sache allerdings noch nicht gegessen, die Domains müssen alle noch transferiert werden. Daher kann es in den nächsten Tagen nochmal zu einem Ausfall der Website kommen. Ich bin selber gespannt, wie die Sache verläuft! 

...just for fun! 

frozen sniper, the creator and admin of the prestigious Uber Sniper Clan (former known as the "Elite Sniper League") had the idea, to open up more such clans as there could be similar clans for other classes in TF2 (for example Scout and Spy). In correspondence to those clan we came up with the idea to start a Gaming Community called UGC- Uber gaming Community. At the moment there is only a special group on Steam where we are trying to collect members and increase the groups size. As soon as we think it makes sense, we'll also launch a special website. But first of all, we need a huge amount of members. We started two days ago, let's see if it will work out for the community!

As we wrote on the Steam-group: "When you take a look at this page, you might think that we are just an ordinary community that offers servers for people to play on...but we are not. In fact, Uber Gaming Community is a "clan community" that offers several kinds of clans to you. All these clans are supposed to be "Prestige-Clans", or you might also say "Skill-Clans". That means you will only be able to get into the clan of your choice, if you can fulfill the requirements and succeed in a test-match. Help us to make this community bigger by joining this group and applying for the membership in one of our Uber Gaming Clans. Invite all of your friends! The more members this community has, the more this community will do for you. We are aiming at getting our own servers once we've got enough members and, of course, to establish new clans!

Uber Gaming Clans available at the moment:

USC - Uber Snipers Clan (former known as ESL - Elite Sniper League)

Clans to come when this community counts more members:

USpC - Uber Spies Clan (at least 200 members required)
UScC - Uber Scouts Clan (at least 400 members required)

Being a member of this community also gives you the permission to show your membership by adding the tag "UGC" to your nickname. Members of any Skill-Clan might also want to add their respective clantag (USC, USpC, and so on). We also offer a Forum for the members of the Uber Snipers Clan. Once we've got enough members, UGC will also get a professional website with Forums for all members! Stay tuned, invite your friends, have fun!

Current Uber Snipers Clan Forums: http://www.uscclan.tk"

Let's see if it will succeed. Anyways, it is just a fun-thing. Breaking the 1000-members checkpoint would be awesome though! And, of course, feel free to join :D 

Das Jahr 2009 ging zu Ende und ein neues Jahr bricht an! 2010 bringt neue Chancen, neue Erfahrungen und hoffentlich auch neue Projekte mit sich! Ich persönlich habe mir einiges an Projekten vorgenommen:

• PGELua for Windows
• Webprojekt "Marksman" 
• irgendwie in die Anwendungsentwicklung für Mac einsteigen (dazu braucht man aber eben einen Mac)

Ich wünsche euch allen auf jeden Fall ein frohes neues Jahr und hoffe, dass auch ihr alle wieder tolle Sachen auf die Beine stellt!

English: Google was so very kind to send out a lot of new invite-waves that give its recipient the ability to invite more people to Google Wave. I myself received 16 invites that I might forward to other people. You can be one of those people! Since I've got so many invites left, just respond to this news (that means you have to write a comment). Don't forget: you have to be registered with your valid email-address since I am going to send these invites to the email-addresses stored in my database!

Deutsch: Google hat vor kurzem jede Menge neue Invite-Waves versendet, die ihrem Empfänger ermöglichen, neue Leute zu Google Wave einzuladen. Ich persönlich habe 16 Invites bekommen, die ich nun auch gerne weitergeben würde. Du kannst einer von diesen glücklichen Leuten sein! Um dich für einen Invite zu bewerben brauchst du nur einen Kommentar ("write a comment") auf diese News verfassen. Achtung: Du musst registriert sein und eine korrekte Email-Adresse angegeben haben, denn ich werde die Invites an die in meiner Datenbank gespeicherten Email-Adressen senden!

I have 7 5 Google Wave invitations left, and of course I cannot just let them be. I am certain there are people around who really need a Google Wave invite. And especially those people should have the chance to get one, so I dedided to start a small "competition":

In order to get one of those seven invites, you have to register at bumuckl.com (There is OpenID and Google Account support, that means you might sign in immediately). Then just login and move to the Forums where you navigate to Webdevelopment->Other category. Open up the Topic "Google Wave invitations application" and reply to it.

What to write? The actual competition is to write your ideas for robots and gadgets. The best ideas will be rewarded with a Google Wave invite. Don't be shy, I won't steal any of your ideas. It is just to see how much you tinker with Google Wave and how important an invitation is for you. If you do not want to post your ideas publicly, then you can also just write a personal message to me (bumuckl). Go to the Topic here:

Bumuckl.com Forum: Webdevelopment: Other: Google Wave invitation application 

No matter if Google Wave is still not even in beta-phase, it has already been possible to develop extensions and addons. In general Google Wave differentiates between Robots and Gadgets. One on its own or both put together form a so called Google Wave extension. To be more precisely, a Robot is an application that runs on an external server (at the moment only on appspot.com) and works as a participant of a Wave (therefore you have to add a robot to your contacts list). In contrast to the Robot, a Gadget runs on the client and has to be installed. 

Since Google Wave offers a wide range of innovative project development, I'd like to introduce you into the Google Wave Robots. Instead of a huge tutorial on how to create one, I just want to give you a fully working Testrobot. As Google suggests, it's a real Eclipse IDE project. Make sure you've got a Google Wave account, Eclipse IDE + Java ee Package and Google Wave SDK addons installed.

A huge tutorial on how to set up all this stuff and creating your first robot will follow!

Download: Google wave Testrobot