A huge increase in stuff

Remember how I've been starting to talk about how many pageviews I'm getting? Well, it's not just that I'm all proud of myself for getting nearly 500 views* (which I am, by the way), but it's mostly because there's been a huge, huge, huge huge huge, kinda big increase in the amount of views I'm getting. Let me show you what I mean:

In August. Three views. Notice the large increase in the following months.

Now, in January. 3 views. The difference is, that's one day. Today, January first, I have gotten the same number of views I did in the entire month of August.

So, yeah. I just wanted to share that, because I think that's kind of neat. And the Bible is still in production. Although I haven't been working on it as much as I would have liked. But I have a good reason!

I didn't want to.

No, I was busy.

No I wasn't.

Yes I was.

Okay, whatever.

~FIN~

*EDIT: 500? I have no idea what I was talking about. 400 is obviously what I meant.

How To Play Riven On Mac OSX

I apologize in advance if I've accidentally already made a post like this one.

If you're a Myst-loving Mac user like me, you'll be very frustrated that you can't play most of the Myst games on modern Macs. When it comes to Riven, unless you're willing to wait for realRiven (StarryExpanse.com), there's only one option:

Thanks to the work of a few dedicated individuals, there is now a simple application which allows you to insert your Riven disc(s), and it then installs it so you can play it any time. It's very good, it works with Lion, Snow Leopard, Things, Stuff.
Anyway. So I tried installing it a few months ago, but, much to my dismay, when it finished processing all the discs, the files would self-destruct without warning. So I thought, well, I'll just copy the files over manually. It can't be that hard. I did so, and it was able to play. However, I hit yet another roadblock. Whenever it got to the point where my five-disc version would ask you to insert disc 1, the game crashed. So I decided, arr, the loot belongs to us, matey! In other words, I gave up and pirated the DVD version. It was so much easier. I have no idea why I didn't just do that in the first place. From there, I did the automatic install, and it worked perfectly. Summary: don't use CDs. Use the internet.
Anyway, I'd recommend this method for anyone who doesn't want to spend time looking for their disc(s), trying to get the formatting right or whatever you might have to do. Or, if you have a MacBook Air like me, or any other computer lacking an optical drive, do it as well! So, here are the necessary links:

Riven X:

Click me!

Riven DVD Edition Torrent:

Download!

And, if you've been in a coma for the past 10 years:

Shame on you! (just kidding)

Infinite Screen Sharing

You know when you have two mirrors directly opposite each other, making an infinite display of whatever's around the edges? Well, today I did just that, but the technology way.
First, I went on to my computer, and shared the screen of another computer. I then shared the screen of My computer with THAT computer. Since each computer is staring at the other's screen, over and over and over, you get an infinite loop. I now present, infinite screen sharing, from the other computer's perspective:

So, yes. If you have two compatible computers with screen sharing enabled, you can try this any time. It won't harm your computer in any way; it's just a cool trick you can do.

Machinarium

Hello. I realize it's been a while since I've posted, and one reason for that is that I have a computer anew. But enough about that. Since it's what I often do, I'm just going to talk about some random application or game that I like. And today, it has nothing to do Myst or Riven!

So, about this game. It's a point and click style adventure about this robot thingy. You must save your friend who is also the opposite gender, because apparently robots still have sexual attraction. Anyway, the whole thing is hand-drawn, and it solves a lot of the annoyances of other point and click games such as King's Quest. To name a few, you can't make the game unwinnable, and the implausible holding enormous amounts of stuff in your pockets theory is fixed by the robot eating everything, because apparently he's hollow. It also has a lot of neat ambient music, and the puzzles are usually not arbitrary. However, there are certain times that it seems like they put in a puzzle just for the sake of having a puzzle, unlike Riven where the team spent months trying to make everything seem real. That's not to say I don't like this game. It is a good game, but I'm afraid I still don't like it as much as the Myst series. Although Myst 5 wasn't that great. Anyway, yeah. It is a good game. If you're interested, you can play a demo or buy the full version here:
http://machinarium.net/demo/

OnyX

Now here's a fun little Application.

OnyX not only lets you access hidden settings like changing the look and feel of the dock and using screensavers as your desktop wallpaper, it also has many functions which let you make your computer work better. Of course I only got it for the fun little settings (my computer works fine), but these can be very useful for general cleaning up, which you can use if you feel the need to. Anyway, here are some screenshots of my computer OnyXed:

In this image, I've changed the look of the dock to 2D with transparency effect, made the 'shell' screensaver my desktop background, and hidden the 'spotlight' icon.
I was going to do one that showed what you could do with the login screen, but I realized that you couldn't take screenshots unless you're logged in. So that's all you get.

More Uru

After installing Myst Online on Mac, I decided to extract the files using a program known as Riveal (warning: extremely glitchy!). This is a piece of software which, aside from OSX MO:UL (Myst Online: Uru Live), works quite well to extract the data files from all the games in the Myst Series, as well as BioShock and BioShock 2. Anyway, during my explorations in the extracted files, I came across an interesting song which I thought I'd attempt to post for no particular reason whatsoever. But, since I can't, I'll just tell you how to get it.
1. Get Myst Online.
2. Get Riveal.
3. Extract the MO:UL data.
4. In the folder "sfx", find a file known as "ahnySphere04-Amb01_Loop.
5. Open using a program which supports .ogg files (I'd reccomend using VLC.).

That's all for now.

Myst Online: Uru Live Again On Mac

The following is how to get Uru Live working on Mac:
First, install XCode. You can download it here:
http://developer.apple.com/xcode/
but I'd recommend getting it off the Snow Leopard disk (if you have it) because the download is extremely large and you have to have some useless membership-mig to do it at all.
After you've installed XCode, you should be able to properly run a program known as MacPorts.
You can download MacPorts here:
http://www.macports.org/install.php
Once you've successfully downloaded and installed MacPorts, you should restart the computer. Afterwards, go to Applications, Utilities, Terminal. Type in the following line of code:
sudo port install mystonline-cider
It will give you a little warning about sudo (administrator privileges in terminal) and will ask for your password, depending on your settings. Once you've entered your password, terminal will start downloading the Uru Client.
Once it's done (sometimes it just pauses with no warning whatsoever, don't worry that it's failed) Uru Live should be in Applications, MacPorts, MystOnline (cider).app.
Open it, then it should start downloading the game itself (will pretend it's "updating").
This, for me, took several hours, but if you have broadband it shouldn't take much longer than half and hour to forty-five minutes. Once it's done, just enter your account information! (if you don't have one, just go to mystonline.com/play/)
It may take a few minutes "updating" once it's played the Cyan Intro video. Don't worry, this is normal. It isn't actually doing much of anything at this point.
After all that, it should work! Please note that the game suffers from occasional and serious lag, depending on the speed of your computer and internet. Don't worry. It usually goes away.
See you in the Cavern!

Thanks to TrapperDave, OptyMyst, and Night something for being in the photo.