Monthly Archives: August 2008

Sid Meier’s Pirates! Game Play Video

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Sid Meier's Pirates! Firaxis Games

Sid Meier is one of the biggest names in the computer video game industry. One of the best selling series is Civilization. There are other successful games. One of them is Sid Meier’s Pirates. The PC version of the game was released on November 22, 2004. It’s a nearly-4-year-old game. And English game developer Feral Interactive has recently announced they will bring this game to Mac OS. So what kind of game is it?

At first, you play a character as a boy who was born in a relatively affluent family. One night, a group of pirates comes to the house and kidnaps your family. Somehow, you slip away before they get you. Ever since, you’ve sworn to yourself that you will become a great sea pirate, sailing the Atlantic Ocean, and find your family.

Anyway, the following is a game play video that we have created. Again, the audio quality is not the best. At least, it’s there. So watch it away if you like.  Continue reading →

Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare Game Play Video 2 – Rocky Ride

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Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare

For those who cannot wait to play Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare on their Macs, here is another game play video to raise your expectations on the game. I have several Medal of Honor and Call of Duty games including Medal of Honor Allied Assault: Breakthrough and Call of Duty 2. All of them include at least one mission with a rocky ride. That is, you are ordered to shoot enemy soldiers while your colleague drives a jeep. How about Call of Duty 4? Does it have a rocky ride mission? Yes, it does.  Continue reading →

12 Mac Icons for Boot Camp/Windows Partition

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Mac OS X Core 2 Duo 2.8 GHz 24 inch icon

Just 15 to 20 minutes, we introduced a tutorial showing how to use USB devices and customize the icon of the Windows partition. The following package contains 12 icons that we created in conjunction with such tutorial. Original graphics used in creating these icons comes from Microsoft PressPass – Image Gallery. (See References for the link.)

  • Number of icons: 12
  • Total download size: 5.4 MB
  • Price: Of course, our Mac OS X icons are all free.  Continue reading →

    • Tutorial: Customizing the Icon of the Windows Partition

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    Mac OS X Core 2 Duo 2.8 GHz 24 inch icon

    It’s been a week since we welcomed a new employee with an aluminum framework. Accordingly, we have done several accomplishments with his help. We installed a Windows partition through Boot Camp and then installed Windows XP. We played PC games including Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Farcry, The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth, World in Conflict, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion… Thanks, iMac! Hmm… There is something missing on our desktop. (See Screenshot 01.) What is it!? Ohh… I know what it is. It’s the icon of the Windows partition. It’s a generic icon that comes with Mac OS. And we want to install a customized icon on this partition. How?

    Windows partition customized icon Leopard tutorial
    Screenshot 01 – Source: MacHouse

    All I need is a removable device. Preferably, I need a USB device. What device and why? I need a device through which both Mac OS and Windows OS can read data without an additional driver. Let’s see what I have.

    1. USB memory stick (See Screenshot 02.)
    2. Olympus IC recorder (See Screenshot 03.)
    3. VST USB Floppy Drive (See Screenshot 04.)
    Windows partition customized icon Leopard tutorial
    Screenshot 02 – Source: MacHouse    		   Windows partition customized icon Leopard tutorial
    Screenshot 03 – Source: MacHouse    		   Windows partition customized icon Leopard tutorial
    Screenshot 04 – Source: MacHouse

    I also have a cheap MP3 player, which I could use because it has internal Flash memory accessible with a USB cable. This time, I won’t use it, though.

    Windows partition customized icon Leopard tutorial
    Screenshot 05 – Source: MacHouse    		   Windows partition customized icon Leopard tutorial
    Screenshot 06 – Source: MacHouse    		   Windows partition customized icon Leopard tutorial
    Screenshot 07 – Source: MacHouse

    Let’s first use a USB memory stick, which we reviewed some 15 hours ago. I created 12 icons just for this operation. So let me copy an icon from No. 10 as shown in Screenshot 05 and paste it on USB MEMORY. (Also see Screenshot 06.) Then? I just need to switch to Windows.  Continue reading →

    Product Review: A-DATA USB Flash Drive PD9 16 GB (for Mac & Windows): Using USB Memory on Mac OS X Leopard and Windows XP

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    A-Data USB Flash Drive PD9
    Mac product review

    More than 15 years ago, Apple introduced System 7. It was an unprecedented operating system, compared with its predecessor System 6.0.8, that came with many new software features. One of them is RAM Disk. RAM Disk allows the user to create a volatile, virtual disk where you can store data. Mac OS X doesn’t support RAM Disk. But there are several freeware/shareware solutions for creating RAM Disk under OS X. One advantage of using a virtual disk is its fast Read/Write speeds. One major disadvantage is… Of course, it’s volatile. If a Mac suffers a sudden system error, you can lose entire data stored in a virtual disk.

    If you don’t want to allocate a small share of fast, random access memory, there’s a different way of creating a virtual disk at low cost. How about using a USB memory stick? Prices for USB memory sticks are quite affordable these days. You can find a 16-GB USB memory stick for $50 to 60. And we purchased A-DATA USB Flash Drive PD9. In fact, it’s our first experience in using a USB memory stick. And our initial, innocent questions were

    1. Are Read/Write speeds different, depending on whether you use it with USB 1.1 or 2.0?
    2. Does the disk format matter when it comes to the Write speed?

    One major reason why we wanted to test a USB memory stick is to find a good data storage medium for swapping data between Mac OS and Windows through Boot Camp. And the USB memory stick can be a good candidate because its memory is not volatile. And many USB memory sticks are compatible with both Mac OS and Windows without an additional hardware driver.  Continue reading →