About Moth
Programmer, Electronic Engineer,
Web, Game & Graphic Designer.
Website: http://www.mothdesigns.co.uk
Moth has written 23 articles so far, you can find them below.
Windows 8 build 7979 review
Since the release of Windows 7 in October 2009, Microsoft has been working on new technologies, culminating in the release of (codename) Windows 8, expected in late 2011/early 2012. With fierce competition in the form of Google Android and Apple’s Mac OS and iOS, Microsoft must fight hard to stay relevant in a rapidly changing industry. So rapid, in fact, that predicting the success of Windows 8 isn’t at all easy at this stage, in comparison with the Windows 7 pre-release beta which showed genuine inspiration and truly outstanding performance improvements over it’s predecessor, Windows Vista.
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What we’re looking at today then, is a near-to-beta build of Microsoft’s next OS, which seeks to fulfill a long term goal of Microsoft (since the early eighties) and that is to unify the mobile, desktop and enterprise versions of their OS. Up until now there have been various re-iterations of Windows CE, the desktop Windows NT, and various server flavours of Windows, tailored for different processor architectures. With ARM support, Windows 8 seeks to unify all phones, tablets, desktops, servers and datacentres with a single kernel, offering a single udate pack with possibly even a single service pack.
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Microsoft commented last year that Windows 8 will be their ‘riskiest bet’ – it’s becoming easy to see just why.
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Puppeteer Updated!
Puppeteer is a freeware audio mixing, scratching and beatboxing tool similar to eJay. Over two thousand music samples are included for you to mess around with, in addition to voice samples of celebrities like George W Bush, Tony Blair & Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Puppeteer can be used on it’s own to create party music, or as a valuable tool for live DJ performances – don’t forget that netbook!
Thar be Pirates!
Thar be Pirates! is a multiplayer map for Settlers II Â 10th Anniversary.
Supporting 2-5 players in an arid environment, with a large number of resources in the  middle area, players 1 and 2 fight downhill, players 3 and 4 fight uphill. You’ll need a lot of  foresters and catapults to avoid being forced back to the start position.
Fully tested in Single player Skirmish mode and multiplayer LAN and Online
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Download
Win7 ‘Show Desktop’ removal
Windows 7 is great, but it has an annoying ‘Show Desktop’ button in the far right. For people who use multiple monitors (like myself) Aero-peek is a horrid hindrance, not helped by a small button in the lower right, which is all too easy to mouseover by mistake….
Read on after the break for a one-click tool to remove this chunky waste of space.
VBS Boot Benchmark
Here’s  a handy little VBS script that will shut down Windows, restart your PC and display the total time taken. This is very useful for boot-speed benchmarking.
Simply save as plain text with a .vbs extension:
Simply save as plain text with a .vbs extension:
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/* A quick vbs that will measure and report Windows boot-time.
by Rufus Pearce -Â www.mothdesigns.co.uk */
Option Explicit
On Error Resume Next
Dim Wsh, Time1, Time2, Result, PathFile, MsgResult, MsgA, AppName, KeyA, KeyB, TimeDiff
MsgA = “Please close all running applications and click on OK.”
KeyA = “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\RestartTime\”
KeyB = “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\RestartTime”
AppName = “Reboot-Time”
Set Wsh = CreateObject(“WScript.Shell”)
PathFile = “”"” & WScript.ScriptFullName & “”"”
Result = wsh.RegRead(KeyA & “Times”)
if Result = “” then
MsgResult = Msgbox (MsgA, vbOKCancel, AppName)
If MsgResult = vbcancel then WScript.Quit
Wsh.RegWrite KeyA & “Times”, left(Time,8), “REG_SZ”
Wsh.RegWrite KeyB, PathFile, “REG_SZ”
Wsh.Run “cmd /c Shutdown -r -t 00″, false, 0
else
Wsh.RegDelete KeyA & “Times”
Wsh.RegDelete KeyA
Wsh.RegDelete KeyB
TimeDiff = DateDiff(“s”,Result,left(Time,8))
MsgBox “Your computer reboots in ” & TimeDiff & ” seconds”, VbInformation, AppName
end if
wscript.Quit
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This script has been tested on Windows 2000, P, Vista & 7
Vista Taskbar for Windows 7
When Windows Vista was introduced, I liked the new refined start-menu. Coming from XP,, it was refreshing and it felt all new not having the big green childish ‘Start’ button – prior to that, all we had was a plain grey rectangle.
With the release of Windows 7 in October 2009, Microsoft revised the taskbar again, yet did not retain the Vista-style as a legacy option. This article will explain how to achieve exactly this. (more…)
Moth’s Playground
Moth’s Playground – a DM map for Prey
I wanted to make a map via spontaneous brush-placement, rather than sketching it out on paper or doing any kind of pre-planning. Here’s the result, which I’m quite pleased with.
A small-to-medium sized DM map in a big loop, which should hopefully mean more forced confrontations and ambush tactics.
This map is Beta – I welcome your feedback, and will endeavour to change item placement and stomp some bugs.
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Recommended players: Â 3 to 8
Supports DM and Tournament game modes
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ZIP Archive (2.6MB)
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Screenshots:
Snow comes to Cardiff
December 2010 snow storms hit the UK hard, and Cardiff was no exception.
Here are some panoramic photographs (approx 7000 pix width) taken of notable scenes… (more…)