In my attempt to develop my first iPhone game, I thought I might use a game engine that will make the process as simple as possible. I started searching the internet for available iPhone game engines and stumbled upon Unity 3D. The games you can produce with Unity seem to look awesome.

I started the download of Unity 3D for the iPhone. Below you will find a link to download Unity 3D iPhone.

• Unity iPhone Download Link

For most of you, if you’ve come to this page you may have already downloaded Unity iPhone and are now looking for tutorials to get started developing with Unity. If you’ve already launched Unity and had a look at the interface then you may have already started to become discouraged as it appears very daunting at first look.

As I am developing my very first game I will be posting tutorials so that other people will have a chance to learn. In this first tutorial I will briefly cover the Unity iPhone interface as well as how to set up the correct settings for building for the iPhone so that hopefully you will not run into too much trouble getting started.

Unity iPhone: The Interface

The Unity iPhone interface has 7 sections. Starting with the very top is the toolbar and then on the left top is the scene view and below that you have the game view and below that are the play controls for the game view. To the left of the scene view is the Hierarchy view and below that is the project view. Next to those on the right is the Inspector view. I will be going over each of these views and explain what they are used for. Please also note that this is default layout for Unity iPhone and that you can move the views around as you want.

The Toolbar:

To the very left of the toolbar, you will see 4 controls. These are called transform tools. The transform tools are used to interact with game objects in the scene view. From left to right they are: The Hand Tool, The Move Tool, The Rotate Tool and the Scale Tool. Clicking on the individual tool activates that tool.

The next section of the toolbar are the Transform Gizmo Toggles. These controls affect the scene view display. You can toggle the handle position to either center or pivot. Center will position the Gizmo at the center of the object’s rendered bounds. Pivot will position the Gizmo at the actual pivot point of a Mesh.

The last control on the toolbar is the Layout control. With the layout control you can choose from a list of pre-designed layouts to use with Unity. They each have their own pros and cons, you will have to pick the one that most suits you. I like to use Tall. You can also create a new layout and save it.

That pretty much covers the toolbar. Hopefully I have explained it well enough for everyone to understand. If there is something I left out please feel free to ask questions. Now on to the Scene View

The Scene View:

The Scene View is used to select and position environments, the player, the camera, enemies and all other GameObjects. Maneuvering and manipulating objects is done via the transform tools on the main toolbar at the very top using the transform tools.

As you can see from the screen shot above and subsequent screen shots, all views have their own tool bar. The Scene View toolbar has 8 different items that can be manipulated they are as follows.

• View Selector – The View Selector as its name implies allows you to select the which view you would like within the current window. You would use this to switch the current window to any of the other available views.
• Draw Mode – Here you have a few options: Textured, Wireframe, Textured & Wireframe and Occlusion
• Render Mode – RGB and Alpha are your 2 options within Render Mode
• Lighting – Enabling Scene Lighting will override the default Scene View lighting with whatever lights you have positioned to create your final light setup.
• FX – Game Overlay will enable items like Skyboxes and GUI Elements in the Scene View.
• Ortho – I haven’t figured out what this control does yet… If anyone has any idea, let me know and I’ll add a description.
• Aspect – This control allows you to set your Scene View aspect ratio. There are some useful pre-defined aspect ratios for both the iPhone and the iPad.
• Layers – This control allows you to toggle on and off layers to show in the scene view.

That concludes the overview of the Scene View. As I said before I am still in the learning stages so I am doing the best I can to get the terminology right. You’ll have to excuse any obvious mistakes.

The Game View:

The Game View is rendered from the Camera(s) in your game. It is representative of your final, published game. You will need to use one or more Cameras to control what the player actually sees when they are playing your game.

The Game View has 5 controls. I will cover each of them below

• View Selector – Just as with the Scene View the View Selector allows you to select the which view you would like within the current window. You would use this to switch the current window to any of the other available views.
• Aspect Ratio – Allows you to preview how your game will look on the chosen device.
• Maximize on Play – This control will maximize the game view to full screen when you press the Play button on the Play controls.
• Gizmos – This will show the gizmos in the game view.
• Stats – This will show some game stats within the game view.

That’s it, all there is to the Game View. Hopefully I haven’t confused anyone too much just yet. We are almost done. Just 3 more views to cover and then I will go over the settings that are required to build your project for Xcode.

The Hierarchy View:

The Hierarchy contains every GameObject in the current Scene. Some of these are direct instances of asset files like 3D models, and others are instances of Prefabs — custom objects that will make up much of your game. You can select and Parent objects in the Hierarchy. As objects are added and removed from the scene, they will appear and disappear from the Hierarchy as well.

The Hierarchy View also has a View Selector that allows you to change the view within the current window as well as a Show Prefab toggle that allows you to show Prefabs.

The Project View:

This is where you store all the assets that make up your game, like scenes, scripts, 3D models, textures, audio files, and Prefabs. If you right-click on any asset in the Project View, you can choose Reveal in Finder to actually see the asset itself in your file system.

Important Note: You should never move project assets around using the OS since this will break any metadata associated with the asset. Always use the Project View to organize your assets.

To add assets to your project, you can drag any file from your OS into the Project View, or use Assets->Import New Asset. Your asset is now ready to be used in your game.

Scenes are also stored in the Project View. Think of these as individual levels. To create a new Scene, use Command-N. To save the current Scene into the Project View, use Command-S.

The Project View also has a View Selector and a Create drop-down that will allow you to Create assets from within Unity such as scripts, prefabs, animations, etc…

The Inspector View:

Games in Unity are made up of multiple GameObjects that contain meshes, scripts, sounds, or other graphical elements like Lights. The Inspector displays detailed information about your currently selected GameObject, including all attached Components and their properties. Here, you modify the functionality of GameObjects in your scene.

Any property that is displayed in the Inspector can be directly modified. Even script variables can be changed without modifying the script itself. You can use the Inspector to change variables at runtime to experiment and find the magic gameplay for your game. In a script, if you define a public variable of an object type (like GameObject or Transform), you can drag and drop a GameObject or Prefab into the Inspector to make the assignment.

Unity iPhone – Xcode Settings

Unity iPhone has some basic settings that need to be set in order for you to build your project properly. Unity will export all of your game content into code that Xcode can understand. When your project finishes building within Unity, a script will auto open Xcode and start the compiling process. For this reason we need to make sure that the information that we would usually put into the info.plist file within Xcode is properly setup within Unity. You can get to the settings by going to Edit -> Project Settings -> Player.

The settings will be available within the Inspector View on the right hand side of the Unity application.

You should at this point be familiar with the settings that need to be set for your Unity app to compile properly within Xcode. If you don’t know what to put into this section then I suggest you spend some time with Xcode and on the Apple Developer site. If anyone needs an explanation for the above settings I will be more then happy to add to this tutorial but I think they are mostly self explanatory.

Well, this concludes the first tutorial for Unity iPhone. I hope you found it useful and please bare with me as I learn my way around this awesome game engine.

So… you’ve installed the latest SDK and XCode from Apple’s developer site only to find out that the only base SDK’s you are left to develop with are 3.2 and 4.0. What about if you have an iPhone 2G as your only development device? The iPhone 2G only goes up to iOS 3.1.3 and if you are stuck with the lowest base SDK of 3.2, you will not be able to push your apps to your iPhone.

This is exactly what happened to me. I downloaded the beta SDK for the 4.0 iOS when it came out. Little did I know that when you install that, it removes all SDK’s prior to 3.2.

Luckily for us, Apple is kind enough to keep previous versions of Xcode and their SDK’s available for download. Here is a list of available downloads.

• iPhone SDK 2.2.1
• iPhone SDK 3.0 with Xcode 3.1.3 – Leopard
• iPhone SDK 3.0 with Xcode 3.2 – Snow Leopard
• iPhone SDK 3.1 with Xcode 3.1.4 – Leopard
• iPhone SDK 3.1 with Xcode 3.2.1 – Snow Leopard
• iPhone SDK 3.1.2 with Xcode 3.1.4 – Leopard
• iPhone SDK 3.1.2 with Xcode 3.2.1 – Snow Leopard
• iPhone SDK 3.1.3 with Xcode 3.1.4 – Leopard
• iPhone SDK 3.1.3 with Xcode 3.2.1 – Snow Leopard
• iPhone SDK 3.2 Beta 4 with Xcode 3.2.2 – Snow Leopard
• iPhone SDK 3.2 FInal with Xcode 3.2.2 – Snow Leopard

You have to be logged into the Apple developer site http://developer.apple.com to download the above listed SDK’s. I downloaded the 3.1.3 Snow Leopard SDK since I already have 3.2 and 4.0 and 3.1.3 includes all of the above mentioned SDK’s as well as 2.0 and 2.1.

Once you’ve downloaded the SDK of your choice it should be in the form of a DMG, go ahead and mount that and open up the resulting volume. You should get something that looks like the image below.

At this point you will need to open up the Packages folder rather then running the installer because all we want are the SDK’s. When you open up the Packages folder scroll down a bit until you see the SDK’s. You should see something similar to the screen shot below.

You’ll see that there are device SDK’s and simulator SDK’s. You don’t have to install the simulator SDK’s if you don’t want to because all we are really after here is to be able to push our apps to an iPhone with an iOS earlier then 3.2. Double click on one of the iPhone SDK’s and you will be presented with an installer screen like the one below.

Click on Continue and and you will get to the next screen similar to the one in the screen shot below

On this screen you need to click on the drive you want to install the SDK to. In most cases it will be your primary Hard Drive. If you have your Developer tools installed on a different drive then you should select that one instead. Next you need to click on Choose Folder and you will be presented with a Choose Folder dialog similar to the screen shot below.

If you are like me and installed Xcode in the default location then you should have a developer folder in the root of your Hard Drive. Click on the Developer folder and then click choose. You will see a screen similar to the one below.

You can verify on this screen that you’ve selected the proper folder. It should have a blue circle around the Hard Drive and if you’ve picked the Developer folder it should say the following on the bottom “You have chosen to install this software in the folder Developer on the disk Macintosh HD. Click Continue and you will be presented with a screen similar to the below screen shot.

This is just a confirmation screen, from here you just need to click on Install. You may be prompted with a password screen. Enter your password to continue with the installation. You should see a screen similar to the one below.

Depending on the SDK you are installing this part can take up to 5 minutes to complete. When the installation is done you will be presented with a screen similar to the one below.

Click on close. At this time your installation of the SDK is complete. You can verify that the SDK installed successfully by launching Xcode. Once Xcode is launched open an existing project or start a new one and go to Project -> Project Settings. You should see a screen similar to the below screen shot.

Click on the drop down towards the bottom where you can choose your base SDK and if all went well you should see a screen similar to the below depending on which SDK you installed.

Pick your SDK of choice and enjoy. Hopefully this tutorial has helped someone with their project. I spent many hours the other night researching how I could install older version SDK’s and once I found an easy method I thought I would share it with the rest of the world. If for some reason you don’t see your SDK listed here then it may have been installed in the wrong folder. If you can’t get it working feel free to ask me for help. I’m always willing to help out a fellow developer.

Variables in PHP, just like any programming language, are used for storing values, such as text strings, numbers, or an array of values. Once you have declared, a variable, it can be used over and over again throughout your script.

Variables in PHP must be declared with a ‘$’ symbol. So a variable named test would be declared as $test. The ‘$’ symbol is also needed every time the variable is used after it is declared.

A simple variable declaration should be done as followed :

Now let’s make one variable with a string, and another with a number value :

• Note – A string, like the echo statement, can use either single or double quotes, but it must end with whichever it starts with.

There is a lot of freedom when using variables in PHP. First of all you do not have to declare the variable before it is used. The first time you use the variable it will be declared. You also do not have to declare the data type (string, integer, float) of the variable. Once you use the variable, PHP automatically changes the data type to whatever value is stored in the variable.

You can also change the data type of the variable multiple times in your script. Example :

• Note – This can be done as many times during your script as you’d like.

With all the freedom that comes with PHP variables, there are some rules when it comes to naming them :

• PHP variable names must start with a letter or an underscore.
• PHP variable names can consist of only alpha-numeric characters and underscores: a-z, A-Z, 0-9, and _
• A PHP variable name cannot contain spaces. If a variable is more than one word use an underscore in between them such as ‘$my_variable’ or use capitalizations like ‘$myVariable’.

Now let’s make a simple PHP script that can show us the effects of using variables :

So what’s going on here? First we set a variable to equal the string ‘Hello World!’, then another variable to equal the number ’23′. After that we used the echo command to print on screen what was stored in the ‘$hello’ variable. The second echo statement prints a string followed by the ‘$fav_num’ variable.

• Note – In the second echo statement, to connect the string to include the ‘$fav_num’ variable, we use a period in between the two. This is known as concatenation, or to concatenate.

When you open your newly made script in a browser it should look something like this :

That pretty much covers the basics of PHP variables. Try to write some scripts with what you’ve learned to get used to using variables. A good thing to try also, is naming the variables something that isn’t recommended, just to see what the error looks like that PHP would likely spit out.

As usual if you’ve got any questions, just comment below.

Before we doing any coding, let’s talk about what PHP is. PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) is a widely used scripting language that is designed for web development and can be embedded directly into HTML.

What makes PHP so different from client-side languages like Javascript and HTML is that PHP code is executed on the server, and then sent to the client as HTML. The amount of things that PHP can do versus HTML and with HTML, make the possibilities of what a web page can do grow exponentially.

One of the strongest features of PHP is its ability to connect to a wide range of databases. Those features will be touched on in later, more advanced tutorials.

This tutorial and any further PHP tutorials will assume that you will be using a server that supports PHP, and that you know HTML. If you don’t know HTML then I strongly recommend not reading this tutorial until you’ve learned it.

Now let’s begin writing your first PHP script.

• Note – There are several programs you can use for writing PHP, but if you don’t have a specific program such as Adobe Dreamweaver or Panic Coda, you can simply use your computer’s most basic text editor.

First off, create a new file and save it as helloworld.php. Yes the infamous ‘Hello World’. If you don’t know what I’m talking about and plan on learning other programming languages later, then get used to seeing ‘Hello World’ as your first tutorial.

I’ll start by showing you the code, then explaining it piece by piece after you’ve looked through it. I’ve found that’s the best way to work with stuff like this.

Yup, that’s it.

We start by creating a blank html document with all of the standard tags. Only one thing, there’s something new in the body tag.

Whenever you write PHP code, you have to start with “<?php” and end it with “?>”. This lets the server know where the PHP code is within the HTML file.

• Note – “<?php” tags can be placed anywhere in the HTML document.

The only line within the PHP tag is “echo ‘Hello World’;”. The ‘echo’ command tells PHP to write on the screen whatever text you put within the following quotes.

• Note – You can use either single quotes or double quotes for ‘echo’, but whichever one you open with, you must close with as well.
• Note – You can also put HTML code within the quotes following ‘echo’. This will become very helpful later.

The last thing in the line is the semi-colon, which has to be placed at the end of every PHP line, to let PHP know that the command is done, and to move on to the next line. Without the semi-colon, the page would result in an error.

Here’s what your page should look like after opening it in your browser :

That’s really all there is too it. Thanks for taking the time to read this tutorial and I hope you enjoyed writing your very first PHP script. If you have any questions, please comment below.

Now I’m sure everyone has been having fun making their own DVD covers, with the help of  a tutorial we added a while back, but now Blu-rays have taken over, and DVD’s are slowly becoming something your grandparents just found out about.

So what am I doing about it? Creating this NEW tutorial that will show you how to make your own Blu-ray covers too. This way you don’t have to look at the one’s you get from the store all the time. Or you can just make covers for your own movies.

To get started you’ll need to download this Blu-ray cover template :

• Blu-ray Cover Template

Now unzip the file you just downloaded and open bluRayCover.psd in Photoshop. Once it’s open your document should look something like this :

The first thing you’ll notice is the red and blue guide lines. These are just here to help you for now, and will not be visible when you are finished.

• The red lines give you the recommended boundary for your content. The background of your cover should fill the entire document, while your other contents stay within the red lines.
• The blue lines tell you where the spine of the Blu-ray is.

You’ll notice that this document has six layers. If you can’t see the layers, you should click on ‘Window’ at the top of Photoshop. This will bring down a drop-down list. From the list click on ‘Layers’. Once that’s selected, your layers window should be visible in the lower right corner :

• The first layer you’ll see is a folder. This contains all the guide lines you see on the document. You’ll want to hide this layer once you’re done.
• The next three layers are also folders. Each containing common images you’d find on a Blu-ray cover, like the Blu-ray logo, or country codes. These can make your cover look more convincing.
• Next is a layer titled, ‘Keep This Layer’, which you’ll want to keep to put your own images and content on.
• The last layer is the background. On this layer you’ll want to put whatever image or color you’ll be using for the background of your cover.

Now lets begin making our cover. The first thing you’ll want to do is select the ‘Keep This Layer’ layer by clicking on it.  I’m going to add some text on this layer, which you can do by selecting the text tool – from Photoshop’s tools, usually located on the far left. After selecting the text tool, click anywhere on the document where you’d like to add text and start typing.

If you want to edit basic attributes of your text such as size, color, and font, you can do so in this window :

From here on you can add as much content as you’d like to your cover, though I stopped at just using text. Here is my finished product :

To show or hide any specific layer such as the Blu-ray logos, or the country codes, just click the small eye next to the layer you want to hide. If there is no eye then the layer is hidden, and clicking the blank spot will cause an eye to appear, making the layer visible.

One layer you’ll want to hide when your done is the layer titled, ‘Hide This Folder’. So just click the eye next to it when you’re finished with your cover. This will hide those ugly red and blue guides.

So once you’re done we can save it.

1. File -> Save For Web & Devices
2. Preset on the top right, select JPEG High
3. Click Save and choose a filename and location.
4. Click Save

After the Save has completed you can close Photoshop. It will ask you to Save the file, be sure to NOT save the template so that you can use it again for future covers. Now all you need to do is open the JPEG file you did save and print it. You’ve just made your first Blu-ray cover.

If you have any questions, or if I’ve left out an entire section of the tutorial because I’m so tired right now, feel free to comment and let me know.

Well, I’m at it again, after developing the ISOx360 and Wii Tools, I thought about what else might be a useful tool for all of the fellow Mac OS X users out there. One thing that came to mind was that most of the HD content that can be found on the internet is usually in MKV format.

I wont cover the MKV format in-depth, just know that it is a container and not a codec, similar to how an AVI can be encoded as a divx or an xvid, an MKV file can use many different codecs. Most commonly MKV files contain the H.264 / X.264 codec for Video and the DTS / AC3 codec for audio.

The other thing you need to know about MKV files and HD content is that a typical 720P MKV file using an H.264 codec has a max bit-rate of about 9000, currently the AppleTV can only support 720P content with a Video bit-rate of up to 5000. If this limitation didn’t exist we could easily transcode the file to an MP4 / M4V container, but because of the Video limitation, we need to re-encode the file at a lower bit-rate. Don’t worry about quality, I haven’t seen any noticeable decrease in quality when re-encoding.

So, enough with the tech talk, you’re probably wondering, the title of the post is Convert MKV to MP4 on a Mac, so I’ll get on with it. The application that I’ve developed makes this an easy 1 step process. You load the MKV file, choose a save location for the new MP4 file, pick a few options and click convert. When its done, you can copy the MP4 file to your AppleTV / iTunes and enjoy great quality HD content.

Note: My application will also remove subtitles and convert any DTS audio track to AC3 so that you can keep all the surround sound. The thing is, to enjoy the surround sound, you’ll have to use the optical output on your AppleTV and have a receiver that can correctly decode the audio, along with a nice set of surround sound speakers.

You can download a trial of the application below, it will work exactly 10 times before it is rendered useless at which point you will have to purchase it, but don’t worry I kept the price cheap, only $14.95.

Download :

  Click to Download the MKV2AppleTV Trial (9.4 MiB, 338 hits)

Purchase:
Click to Purchase an MKV2AppleTV License

At the request of one of my readers, I am making a short tutorial on how to burn activate.iso on Mac OS X. This is a fairly simple process, however I will cover it in as much detail as possible.

Tools Needed:

The activate.iso file ( Download )
Disk Utility (  Applications -> Utilities -> Disk Utility )
A Blank Dual Layer DVD

The Tutorial:

Download the activate.iso file from the above list of tools. Once downloaded, you need to extract it, since it will be in a compressed zip format.

Open Disk Utility ( Applications -> Utilities -> Disk Utility ) – you should see a screen similar to the below

Click on Burn, you will see a browse window similar to the image below, browse to the location where you downloaded and extracted the activate.iso file. Highlight activate.iso, then click on Burn.

After clicking on Burn, the browse dialog will disappear and you will see a new window, similar to the following image. At this point you will need to insert your disk. When Disk Utility recognizes that a blank dual layer disk has been inserted, it will enable the Burn button. All you need to do now is click Burn.

After the burn has completed you will most likely need to reboot your Mac to remove the disk since for me anyway OS X did not recognize that there was a disk in the drive after the burn completed and therefore did not let me eject the disk while I was in the operating system. So what you need to do is reboot your Mac and eject the disk using the eject button before your Mac boots back up completely.

So that’s it for the tutorial, nothing special, just use good old Disk Utility to burn and you’re all set.

So apparently there are some tutorials floating around that show you how to convert wave 4 games to wave 3 games. What most of them don’t tell you is that by doing this, you are setting yourself up to get banned from Xbox Live.

Patience truly is a virtue here. I know everyone is eager to play Tekken 6 and a few of the other wave 4 releases. I honestly don’t see problem with it as long as you play those games offline. Is it really worth the risk of getting banned ?

For those of you that absolutely must play wave 4 games, I have listed the tutorial for you below on how to convert wave 4 games to wave 3 games, but again please don’t play on Live with these games because there is a very good chance that you will get banned. What this hack does is it uses a wave 3 video file and since the sizes between the wave 4 and wave 3 video files differ, you will receive CRC errors in abgx360.

Here’s the tutorial:

You’ll need the following software:

• Xbox Backup Creator 2.9 ( Download Windows )
• abgx360 ( Download Mac | Download Windows )
• The wave 3 to wave 4 pack ( Download )

NOTE: You can use either Xbox Backup Creator or abgx360 to patch the wave 4 game to a wave 3 game. I’ve put together 2 tutorials. One using Xbox Backup Creator to patch and then abgx360 for verification. The other one is at the bottom and uses abgx360 for both patching and verification.

Using Xbox Backup Creator

1. Under Action, change it from extract to inject
2. Click on PFI Sector and choose the ISO of the game and then choose the PFI file provided with the wave 4 to wave 3 packs.
3. Click on Video Section and choose your game ISO and then choose the provided video file
4. That’s it for Xbox Backup Creator

Using abgx360

1. Open your ISO
2. Put check marks in the following on the Options Tab
   Check/Create .dvd file
   Check Stealth
   Verify is Stealth Passes
   Check/Fix Video padding
   Use Colors
   Check for updates
   Check Game Partition CRC when needed
3. On the Manually Patch or Extract Files Tab make sure nothing is selected.
4. On the AutoFix Tab Check Mark the following
   Adjust angle 359 for iXtreme < v1.4
   Fix C/R Table if data is invalid
   Adjust angles that deviate more than 3 degrees from their CCRT targets
   AutoFix Threshold – Level 3
5. On the Misc Tab
   SplitVid: Add it if it doesn’t exist or isn’t valid
   Images: Extract images when using HTML output
6. Click on Launch
7. abgx360 will most definitely present you with CRC errors because the game is no longer stock.
8. When abgx360 has completed you can go ahead and burn your game using the regular burning method

Using Only abgx360 to perform the hack and verify

1. Open your ISO
2. Put check marks in the following on the Options Tab
   Check/Create .dvd file
   Check Stealth
   Verify is Stealth Passes
   Check/Fix Video padding
   Use Colors
   Check for updates
   Check Game Partition CRC when needed
3. On the Manually Patch or Extract Files Tab do the following
   Check Patch even if stealth passes
   Check Patch even if these files are invalid
   Check Patch Video
   Check Patch PFI
4. Still on the Manually Patch or Extract Files Tab, next to Patch Video you should see an empty text box and a gray button with 3 dots, click on that button and choose the Video File from the pack. Do the same thing for Patch PFI and choose the PFI file from the pack
5. On the AutoFix Tab Check Mark the following
   Adjust angle 359 for iXtreme < v1.4
   Fix C/R Table if data is invalid
   Adjust angles that deviate more than 3 degrees from their CCRT targets
   AutoFix Threshold – Level 3
6. On the Misc Tab
   SplitVid: Add it if it doesn’t exist or isn’t valid
   Images: Extract images when using HTML output
7. Click on Launch and wait for abgx360 to finish patching the ISO when abgx360 reads Press any key to exit … then it has completed patching.
8. You can now close abgx360 and re-open it to verify that the ISO is indeed a wave 3 now.

I myself haven’t tried this particular tutorial, I just placed it here from gathering bits and pieces online. I would urge you to do this as a last resort and remember not to play these modified / downgraded to wave 3 games on Live.

I recently acquired a white G3 eMac with a 17 inch screen and thought it would be perfect to put into my daughters room. Unfortunately the eMacs didn’t come with built in airports, so no wireless. I looked around online for wireless cards that would work with a Mac and found that they are quite expensive.

Instead of purchasing a wireless adapter online, I went to Wal-Mart and bought a Belkin Wireless USB adapter. After getting home and opening the box, I noticed that there are no Mac drivers on the included CD, furthermore after searching Belkin’s website returned no results for any available Mac drivers for this particular adapter.

After some more searching on google, I found a few sites with drivers for this card for a Mac, but only to find out that there are multiple versions of this particular card. You can use the version matrix below to determine your version.

Version 1 – FCC ID = K7SF5D7050
Version 2 – FCC ID = K7SF5D7050A
Version 3 – FCC ID = K7SF5D7050B
Version 4 – FCC ID = RAXWN4501H
Version 5 – FCC ID = K7SF5D7050E

This article will cover installing Version 4 of the F5D7050 adapter. Although, I will also be listing available drivers for Versions 1, 2, and 3. The Version 4 driver may also work for the Version 5 adapter, although this has not been tested, and if anyone tries and succeeds, I would appreciate a comment to let everyone know.

F5D7050 Version 1 & 2 Mac Driver
F5D7050 Version 3 Mac Driver
F5D7050 Version 4 Mac Driver

Each of these drivers is installed in much the same way, there is an install file that you run and then restart the Mac when the install has completed. After the Mac restarts you have to click on System Preferences and click on Network. You’ll receive a pop-up dialog alerting you that a new network device has been detected. Apply the change and then start the wireless utility if it hasn’t been started already. Scan for wireless networks, when your network has been found, connect to it.

That’s all there is to it. The install is very simple and straight forward. If anyone has any input / advice, feel free to post for others to read.

So, unfortunately hackers have found a new way to hack WordPress blogs by way of MySQL injection when registering for a new account on your blog.

Unfortunately my blog was hit, what this hack does is, a new user registers and achieves a level 10, which is an administrator account, and with this account changes your permalink structure. This in turn renders your blog useless when your readers try to click on an article they are presented with a page not found error.

This is the string that gets appended to your article’s URL:

/%&(%7B$%7Beval(base64_decode(Array%5BHTTP_EXECCODE %5D))%7D%7D|.+)&%

So How can you fix this issue ??

1. Login to your WordPress Blog
2. Click on Permalinks under Settings
3. Change your Permalink structure to what you previously had it set to

Once you’ve corrected your permalink structure you need to remove the registered user that caused the damage. Unfortunately you will not be able to do this from within WordPress, since the user will appear hidden. You can see this for yourself if you click on Users, then look under Administrators, you’ll see that there are 2 administrator accounts listed. Yours and a hidden one.

The only way to remove this hidden account is by using MySQL Query Browser or phpMyAdmin by logging into your servers cPanel or Plesk interface.

Once you have either MySQL Query Browser open or phpMyAdmin you’ll want to follow the steps below to remove the user account.

1. Browse the wp_users table in your MySQL Database and sort by ID to see the latest registered users.
2. You’re looking for a user that does not have an e-mail address.
3. Note the userid, you’ll need it for the next table, then delete the row for that user.
4. Browse the wp_usersmeta table and again sort by userid
5. Look for the userid you noted from the wp_users table
6. Delete all of the rows with that userid, there’ll be more then just 1 row

If you’ve followed the procedure above, your permalinks should be working again and the malicious user should be removed. To prevent further attacks you may want to consider disabling the registration of user accounts on your blog. At the time my blog was attacked I was running version 2.8.4, which is the latest version and didn’t prevent the hack. So maybe we’ll see a newer version of WordPress soon.

I strongly recommend always running the latest version of WordPress, as the newer versions are not just for feature enhancements but provide important security updates.