Awgust oh nein

 I went to the GamesCom this year (which is 2oo9, which makes it GamesCom 2oo9 - yay, now I can find this article by searching for "GamesCom 2oo9" ...) and I took .. some photos. Initially I thought and I hoped I'd do more but there really wasn't that much that appealed to me, visually. Except for the booth babes who sometimes surprised me by turning away whenever I produced my camera. I thought it was their job to let the conventioneers take pictures of them - among other things. Whatever. Maybe they didn't want ME to have a photo of them in scantily clothed fashion. Again, whatever. Maybe I lost it, "that certain sight" that helped me see things, special things, and take photos that I like, photos that I once in a while courageously tag as "cool". Or maybe I never had it ... [...]
(show me)(don't show me)

On top of that I'd like to add a quick memo to myself: gaming conventions only look cool when read about in an article. Or the "internets". IMHO. Actually being there can turn out to be very boring quite fast - especially if you have to wait in line all the time. And by "all the time" I mean several hours for a single line and several times for the really interesting venues - like the booths that displayed God Of War 3 or Modern Warfare 2. And then it's not even new stuff, levels you already know from the past E3. Or just a video trailer. You don't really get that when you read the articles or see videos about the games that were shown there. You don't actually find a video in the iNet that shows how long you wait in line to see such a game. Well, this is certainly true for most conventions. So, whenever I might find a portal again that is capable of throwing me into this strange and fascinating dimension of odd time progression I might re-read these lines and reconsider my chances of actually having fun ...

Well, to return to the major point of this psoting, I would upload said sparse photos if I hadn't found out recently that my new PC monitor (which is now my primary monitor out of two monitors in a dual monitor setup), you know, the monitor I used to edit images in photoshop for the last few weeks, has a major green tint. Major! Yes, in retrospect I screwed up so many images in that time that I don't even want to open photoshop anymore. I don't even know if it's the monitor, the DVI cable or the graphics card that is the source of the problem. I feel like I'm in school again where this constantly happened to me. I'm so fucking tired.

Anyway, to round shit up let me tell you what to do if you have a Wii™ game (most assumably a WiiWare or Virtual Console title) that loads up the preview image / animation for its channel in the Wii™ Main Menu but reboots the console when you click on start. Tales Of Monkey Island: Chapter 1: Launch Of The Narwhal (or TOMI 1 for short) has been one of these games for me. Technically you could say, the console needs to be updated, but don't be afraid of bricking because properly updating is far from difficult. Just never use out-of-region updates for your specific region, you know, the ultimate ever-true rule of Wii™ homebrewing. In fact, there are a ton of links and forum threads out there that relate to this topic. But anyway I went off-topic.

I found this very interesting site that explains the "mechanism" behind the different IOSes a bit which is what made me realize that I need certain IOSes for that game to run on my console. After I googled around to find out which ones I needed, I got them and installed them via the WAD Manager and now the game runs smoothly. Well, as smoothly as it can run. The Wii™ obviously doesn't seem to be the primary platform this game was created for (don't enter the Pause Menu at the docks after the green cloud appeared) ... hm, maybe I'll do a review for that game. Just maybe.
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Problem Solver

 Many problems have accumulated over the past weeks and now I solved them all in almost one single day. Also there was some need for a memo or two to myself. Most of it was PC related though so ... meh! [...]
(show me)(don't show me)

[···] Problem: the printer idled although there were jobs in the queue. And cancelling (= deleting) them actually worked, that's not an expected reaction to my orders so I list it as a symptom ;^p

My solution: in my particular case the printer was just paused. I don't know what caused it - I definitely didn't do it, neither manually nor intentionally. But entering the printer folder with the Windows Explorer and resuming it via right-click did the trick.

If you came here by Google or so and exptected or need a more sophisticated solution try one of those that I found during my research:
- You could re-install the drivers of the printer or re-install the printer software.
- You could shutdown the PC, reconnect all cables and reboot. For this guy this seemed to work:

<<
Ich hab in den Gerätemanager reingeguckt. Es lief alles okay. Dann hab ich den Drucker einmal den Strom genommen und den PC heruntergefahren. Dann hat er wieder funktioniert. Ich habe allerdings vorher auch schon den PC neu gestartet. Na ja, hauptsache es funktioniert wieder alles :cool: !
>> Source: Computer Hilfen.de

[··.] Problem: the Nintendo Wii can connect to my router but the Nintendo DS can't (Error #51099).

My solution: none.

It never will be able to because my router features 8o2.11g and 8o2.11g only - I just keep forgetting that and repeat looking it up in a two-year-interval:

<<
The Wii can connect to any router supporting 802.11b/g but the DS only supports 802.11b, if the router is set to only 802.11g mode the DS will not even see it. The Wii also supports more secure encryption like WPA - PSK (TKIP), WPA - PSK (AES), WPA2 - PSK (AES), and the not so secure WEP. The DS only supports WEP however, the router would have to be set to use 802.11b/g mixed or just 802.11b and only WEP to allow both to connect. [...]
>> Source: Tech Forums of Nintendo.com

It's because the NDS is so much older and the guys at Nintendo developed the Nintendo Wi-Fi service. The real solution stays the same: if I really want to make it work I have to buy the USB Nintendo Wi-Fi Dongle and convert my PC into an access point. And 3o bucks are too expensive for that, IMHO.

[·.·] Problem: I tried to play the PAL version of Klonoa on my Wii which should work but I was encountered with a black screen - no error at all (which is a well known error, well known to the homebrew scene and to me as well - I'm just describing it).

My solution: I will just say, the "Error #002 fix" solved this problem for me. Which is odd because as I said I got no error code at all. You may find out yourself how to do that fix.

[ Woody's Checkpoint: # top # ]

[·..] Problem: Two or three days earlier my Wii didn't start Boom Blox which I already had played months ago at that point.
My solution: so it seems I keep forgetting how to start my games. Which is why I want to write down a memo to myself: start NTSC games with an english system language. No need to change the TV Hz settings.

[.··] Problem: Wad-titles for the Virtual Console can be installed on the Wii and are displayed properly but they print this error to screen: "This channel can't be used.".

My solution: you might convert them to the proper region (either that or directly no region at all) and if that doesn't work (black screen after hitting "Start") then it can't be helped. Get the proper region right from the start the next time.

And if you can't even install them with the WAD Manager due to "-1020" errors then I fear you have to downgrade the console to 3.2 - personally I think that's not worth the effort.

[.·.] Problem: I wanted to watch a certain video file on the big TV screen, for once because it's a (hopefully) cool movie but also because my PC is too weak - it's an HD video. The size of the file is 4,3 GB but I can't copy it to my external hard drive to watch the video on my PS3 because the HDD is formatted in FAT32. FAT32 doesn't support files bigger than 4 GB. NTFS does so but the PS3 doesn't support NTFS.

My solution: use your PC as a media server. I utilized this PS3 Media Server application. Normally I would defend the elegance of the external HDD approach but for one video this nasty I chose to make an exception.

You could also use the Windows Media Player 11 - I know it works, I used it myself on my old Windows setup. But it's hard to install, IMHO.

Strangely enough the first time I tried to play the video file my PS3 said it was corrupted. But my stubbornness proved useful as the file could be played on the second attempt - although not fluently yet, not at all ... maybe something for the next weeks. I guess if the video is too hi-res to just play it on the PC itself, the CPU might be overwhelmed by the additional task of streaming it. So, no solution possible for this video file :^(
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