A few weeks ago I stumbled across this recipe for making a cookie in a skillet http://www.sophistimom.com/one-pan-skillet-cookie and shared it with a few people because I though it looked cool. My wonderful wife then put “skillet” on our shopping list because she knows I can’t resist cookies, and yesterday we tried out the recipe. It was easy and tasted wonderful 🙂
Below are some pics of the treat.
[album id=29 template=dopefish]
I recently started playing Battlefield 3 and remembered that I have a Fraps license so I installed it and started recording some stuff. Unsurprisingly the performance made a big dip when I recorded. A glance at my PC told me the harddrive was at fault, probably bringing the whole system down due to IO.
Since my PC has more than enough RAM I decided to set up a 5Gb Ramdisk to see if that helped. It did, when writing the video files to the ramdisk I hardly had any performance hit. Unfortunately 5GB isn’t going to last long while recording 1920×1080 @ 40FPS (a few minutes footage at most).
Here is my little cmd file to create a 5GB ramdisk as drive J: and format it for usage:
1 2 3 | imdisk -d -m J: imdisk -a -t vm -s 5G -o rw -m J: format J: /A:64k /V:Ramdisk /FS:NTFS /Q |
So my next thought was to see if I could write a script to move files off the ramdisk when they were done being written to by Fraps. This obviously was going to cause IO load … the reason we were having performance issues in the first place, so I was skeptical about if this was going to help any. Especially since I also had to move the files away quick enough so that the drive wouldn’t fill up completely with the next file Fraps was writing. I wrote a little powershell script for this (yeah, a *nix Sysadmin writing scripts in powershell …)
Here is my little powershell script to copy the finished files from my ramdisk to a normal HDD (please excuse possible ugliness, I’m a powershell noob):
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 | $source = "j:\*.avi" $target_dir = "f:\fraps\movies\" while ($true) { $files = gci $source foreach ($file in $files){ $srcfile = echo $file.fullname $dstfile = echo $file.basename if ($srcfile) { try { move-item "$srcfile" "$target_dir$dstfile.avi" -ea stop "$srcfile Moved" } catch { "$srcfile in use, cannot be copied right now" } } } sleep 5 } |
The last little problem I noticed is that the 5GB ramdrive wasn’t big enough (Fraps seems to create some dummy files and fills them up). Forcing Fraps to make smaller files by toggeling the recording fixed that though -> pressing F9 twice fast will drop a few frames though. I used my Logitech G13 for that, just had a key mapped to press F9 quickly every 60 seconds. The shortest gap I could get working reliably is 50ms.
This all probably sounds awfully complicated, but it works and solves my problem. Fraps is great software, but it would be immensly helpful if you could set the file size in the settings (instead of it defaulting to 4GB). Or, even better, if Fraps could rework their IO system to work more efficiently.
So to sum everything up:
– create ramdrive
– start script that copies files from the ramdrive to a normal HDD
– set fraps to store videos on the ramdrive
– start game, press F9 to start recording and then press the G13 key to toggle the F9 periodically
A few weeks ago we traveled a bit west and visited the Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, I’ve finally gotten around to sorting through the pictures and uploading a few (well, actually a lot).
[album id=28 template=dopefish]
I didn’t get around to editing and stitching the panorama photos together yet, or doing anything interesting with the GPS data of our hikes yet. If I get that done I’ll probably update this posting.
Searching for a linux command line rcon tool can be a bit of a pain: dead links, outdated versions not working anymore, stuff written in php …. yeah. The only version I could find was stuck in a cache of an old webpage. So here is my mirror of the http://www.asyserver.com/~cstrike/rcon.c file that currently gives you a “404, File not found” error. Hopefully this will help anyone trying to find a working version via google and is frustrated with the results. Download, compile, happiness ensured.
http://www.dopefish.de/files/rcon.c
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 | /* # This is a simple linux command line utility to execute rcon commands # Just change the YOUR_PASSWORD_HERE to your rcon password (unless # you want to enter it every time) and possibly change the default # IP address from 127.0.0.1 (localhost) # # once downloaded on your linux system, compile it with: # # gcc -o rcon rcon.c # # note, it should work on non-linux too, but may require changing the # socket stuff (i.e. windows will definitely need to add the winsock # initialization line) # # written by [ASY]Zyrain # */ #include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <sys/socket.h> #include <sys/types.h> #include <netinet/in.h> #include <arpa/inet.h> #include <errno.h> #include <string.h> #define DEBUG 0 #define SERVERDATA_EXECCOMMAND 2 #define SERVERDATA_AUTH 3 #define SERVERDATA_RESPONSE_VALUE 0 #define SERVERDATA_AUTH_RESPONSE 2 int send_rcon(int sock, int id, int command, char *string1, char *string2) { int size, ret; size = 10+strlen(string1)+strlen(string2); ret = send(sock,&size,sizeof(int),0); if(ret == -1) { perror("send() failed:"); return -1; } ret = send(sock,&id,sizeof(int),0); if(ret == -1) { perror("send() failed:"); return -1; } ret = send(sock,&command,sizeof(int),0); if(ret == -1) { perror("send() failed:"); return -1; } ret = send(sock,string1,strlen(string1)+1,0); if(ret == -1) { perror("send() failed:"); return -1; } ret = send(sock,string2,strlen(string2)+1,0); if(ret == -1) { perror("send() failed:"); return -1; } if(DEBUG) printf("Sent %d bytes\n",size+4); return 0; } int recv_rcon(int sock, int timeout, int *id, int *command, char *string1, char *string2) { struct timeval tv; fd_set readfds; int size; char *ptr; int ret; char buf[8192]; size=0xDEADBEEF; *id=0xDEADBEEF; *command=0xDEADBEEF; string1[0]=0; string2[0]=0; tv.tv_sec = timeout; tv.tv_usec = 0; FD_ZERO(&readfds); FD_SET(sock, &readfds); /* don't care about writefds and exceptfds: */ select(sock+1, &readfds, NULL, NULL, &tv); if (!FD_ISSET(sock, &readfds)) { if(DEBUG) { printf("recv timeout\n"); } return -1; // timeout } if(DEBUG) printf("Got a response\n"); ret = recv(sock, &size, sizeof(int), 0); if(ret == -1) { perror("recv() failed:"); return -1; } if((size<10) || (size>8192)) { printf("Illegal size %d\n",size); exit(-1); } ret = recv(sock, id, sizeof(int),0); if(ret == -1) { perror("recv() failed:"); return -1; } size-=ret; ret = recv(sock, command, sizeof(int),0); if(ret == -1) { perror("recv() failed:"); return -1; } size-=ret; ptr = buf; while(size) { ret = recv(sock, ptr, size, 0); if(ret == -1) { perror("recv() failed:"); return -1; } size -= ret; ptr += ret; } buf[8190] = 0; buf[8191] = 0; strncpy(string1, buf, 4095); string1[4095] = 0; strncpy(string2, buf+strlen(string1)+1, 4095); return 0; } /* This is set to 1 when we've been authorized */ int auth = 0; char string1[4096]; char string2[4096]; int process_response(int sock) { int ret; int id; int command; ret=recv_rcon(sock, 1, &id, &command, string1, string2); if(DEBUG) printf("Received = %d : id=%d, command=%d, s1=%s, s2=%s\n", ret, id, command, string1, string2); if(ret==-1) { return -1; } switch(command) { case SERVERDATA_AUTH_RESPONSE: switch(id) { case 20: auth = 1; break; case -1: printf("Password Refused\n"); return -1; default: printf("Bad Auth Response ID = %d\n",id); exit(-1); }; break; case SERVERDATA_RESPONSE_VALUE: printf("%s",string1); break; default: printf("Unexpected command: %d",command); break; }; } int main(int argc, char **argv) { struct sockaddr_in a; int sock; int ret, i; char password[512]="YOUR_PASSWORD_HERE"; short port = 27015; char address[512] = "127.0.0.1"; int arg; auth = 0; if(argc<2) { printf("Syntax: rcon [-P\"rcon_password\"] [-a127.0.0.1] [-p27015] command\n"); return 0; } for(arg = 1;arg<argc;arg++) { if(argv[arg][0] != '-') break; /* done with args */ switch(argv[arg][1]) { case 'a': strncpy(address, argv[arg]+2, 512); break; case 'p': port = atoi(argv[arg]+2); break; case 'P': strncpy(password, argv[arg]+2, 512); break; default: fprintf(stderr, "Unknown option -%c\n",argv[arg][1]); return 0; } } a.sin_family = AF_INET; a.sin_addr.s_addr = inet_addr(address); a.sin_port = htons(port); sock = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM,0); // TCP socket ret = 0; ret = connect(sock,(struct sockaddr *)&a,sizeof(a)); if(ret == -1) { perror("connect() failed."); return -1; } else { if(DEBUG) printf("Connected to Server\n"); } if(DEBUG) printf("Sending RCON Password\n"); ret=send_rcon(sock, 20, SERVERDATA_AUTH, password, ""); if(ret == -1) { perror("Sending password"); return -1; }; while(auth==0) { if(process_response(sock)==-1) { printf("Couldn't Authenticate\n"); exit(-1); } } if(DEBUG) printf("Password Accepted\n"); /* Now we're authorized, send command */ /* built command */ ret = 0; while(arg < argc) { if(strlen(argv[arg]) + ret < 4096) { strcpy(string1+ret, argv[arg]); ret += strlen(argv[arg]); string1[ret] = ' '; ret++; arg++; } else { fprintf(stderr, "cmd too long to send\n"); return -1; } } // string1[ret] = '\n'; //ret++; ret--; string1[ret]=0; if(DEBUG) printf("Sending Command: \"%s\"\n", string1); ret=send_rcon(sock, 20, SERVERDATA_EXECCOMMAND, string1, ""); if(ret == -1) { perror("cmd send"); return -1; } // process responses until a timeout while(process_response(sock) != -1); return 0; } |
Warning: this is mainly me just ranting about Microsoft stupidity and a warning for anyone using junctions.
About a month or two ago I built myself a new PC (old one was dying) and installed Win7 on it. Since I was previously still on WinXP there were a few things to get used to, but all in all I enjoyed the update. There were of course some strange Windows pitfalls involved, moving your users directory to a different drive really isn’t straightforward, but works if you use junctions to link the directories.
Since Virtualbox drops the guests in a subfolder of the users directory I decided to move my users directory to one of the larger mechanical disks in my system, to keep the windows drive (a SSD disk) with plenty of space.
Now fast forward to yesterday, where some software I installed decided to clear out most of my Start->All Programs folder, leaving me with lots of installed softawre, and no Start Menu links. After trying some stuff out I finally caved in and used System Restore to get my Start Menu working again. System Restore actually worked fine, I got my Start Menu back … unfortunately it also corrupted my profile, and while googling to find out how to fix it I found a whole lot of people with the same problem.
Junction + User directory + System Restore = corrupt user, non repairable. Hello Microsoft, this is all original system software, no 3rd party stuff, breaking my user is totally uncool.
So after trying all kinds of crazy tips I found I gave up and followed the official instructions (a.k.a. You are fucked, haha bye bye user registry). And right now I am copying stuff from my old profile to my new one and setting up all the software that had stored stuff in the registry. This time my Profile stays on C: without any junctions, it’s easier to repair Virtualbox if it breaks over the images being in a non-standard path than worrying about windows corrupting my whole profile if I touch System Restore.