I’ve been playing quite a bit of AOE2 of late; and one recurrent problem while running the (now dated, but still going strong) game on Windows 7 (or Vista) has been an issue with map colors. The colors on the map look muddled, grainy and ugly on 7 and Vista, kind of as if they have been inverted. After a bit of research into the issue, I finally arrived at a working solution.

No, updating the graphics driver or Direct X does not work. First, what you need to do is navigate to the ‘age2_x1.exe’ or whichever exe file is associated with the game for you, right click on it, go to the ‘Compatibility’ tab and select ‘Run in compatibility mode for Windows XP (SP2), ‘Disable Visual Themes’, ‘Disable Desktop Composition’ and ‘Disable Display Scaling on High DPI Settings’. This might just do the trick, if you’re lucky. But if you’re not, like me (which is quite a high possibility), read on.

For some people, minimizing the game just after it starts up and then maximizing it again sets the colors straight. But it didn’t for me; what worked for me instead was to open up Process Explorer with Ctrl+Alt+Del after starting the game up, ending the process ‘explorer.exe’ and switching back to the game with Alt+Tab. This did the trick, and should work for most people.

This solution can also be automated without the need for having to go through the process of terminating explorer.exe before starting the game and rerunning it each time the game ends; this can be done by creating a batch file with the instructions fed to it. To do so, create a new notepad file with the following content:

taskkill /F /IM Explorer.exe
EMPIRES2.EXE
Start explorer.exe

{if you have the regular AOE2, or)

taskkill /F /IM Explorer.exe
age2_x1.exe
Start explorer.exe

{for AOE2 Expansion}

Then save it as a batch file, say ‘AOE_fixed.bat’ and then copy it to the folder where the EMPIRES2.exe or age2_x1.exe file exists. Then you may create a shortcut for the batch file on the desktop or elsewhere and then double click on it to launch the game whenever you want. Cheers

Original post at: http://smnitb.blogspot.com/2010/02/running-aoe2-smoothly-on-windows-7vista.html

The open source community Codeplex has got a portable and light weight application that reads out text. So it is basically a very useful and light weight application that can be used to read text aloud through a robotic voice. Its called Clipspeak. Some interesting features are:

1. Record the audio to MP3 (turn text to MP3 OR ebooks to audio books)

2. Copy paste text to be spoken. Stop ongoing speech.

3. Change voice parameters.

[Download]

Are you concerned about your website taking long load times. This could be your internet connection or really a fault with your website. To find out Pingdom tools is the best place. It analyzes your load speed on a standard internet connections. Anything less than 12 seconds is fine. If you have something more than that, it could be a reason to worry.

Pingdom tools gives you a list of objects in a particular order (default in the order they load) and their load times. This helps you find the area of fault. A graph generated is something like this:

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Sometimes the website host goes down without you noticing it. This may lead to a significant drop in the visitor count. You can get notifications of your site going down right at your desktop. Pingdom desktop notifier alerts you when this happens. Later take some action to get your host working again.  It uses the Pingdom uptime monitoring service and is very easy to use. Runs on windows XP, Vista and seven.

It also has several other alert features. Some limited features are available on a free account. Bigger websites can use the paid versions (30 day free trial).
size: 3.6mb
[Download]

Struggling with image manipulation softwares to cut the background off your photographs was the old method. It is not something you should do when you have Instant mask with you.

Instant mask is fairly easy to use and removes the background from pictures effectively. It works best when the background is of some distinct color or has a clear sharp boundary with the subject. It offers you a free version with lesser features and an Instant mask pro version with full features. The pro version can be bought or the trial can be used for 14 days before buying.

Again, Instant Mask offers a freeware version with sufficient features also.

[Download]

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