The Download Munkey : Tracking the Treasure Down …

These booklets commissioned by Great Britain’s Ministry of Defence to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II in 2005, are the perfect introductory material for Company of Heroes players (me included ) looking to learn more about the contributions and sacrifices of the Western Allies in defeating Axis militarism across the globe.

© Ministry of Defence UK

A total of nine books are available in this freely downloadable series chronicling the events and important facts of selected World War II operations in which British or Commonwealth (Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, Indian, etc) units participated in.

1. The Battle of Kohima, North East India (4 April – 22 June 1944)
2. The Battles For Monte Cassino, Central Italy (12 January – 5 June 1944)
3. The D-Day Landings, Northern France (6 June 1944)
4. The Drive on Caen, Northern France (7 June – 9 July 1944)
5. The Final Battle for Normandy, Northern France (9 July – 30 August 1944)
6. The Advance from the Seine to Antwerp (25 August – 30 September 1944)
7. Operation Market Garden, Netherlands (17–25 September 1944)
8. The Clearing of the Scheldt Estuary and the Liberation of Walcheren (2 October – 7 November 1944)
9. The Liberation of the Death and Concentration Camps, Europe (June 1944 – May 1945)

© Ministry of Defence UK

As seen above, seven of the books detail battles fought during and after the amphibious landings at Normandy on D-Day (6 June 1944) – the other two being the battle of Kohima which halted Imperial Japanese plans to invade India and the costly fighting for Monte Cassino around the histroic monastery of St. Benedict in Italy.

As for Company of Heroes players, a suggested reading list would be booklets 3 and 5 for the American campaign (Invasion of Normandy), booklets 4 and 5 for the British campaign (Liberation of Caen) and finally booklet 7 for the Panzer Elite campaign (Operation Market Garden).

© Ministry of Defence UK

Maps and photographs are liberally sprinkled throughout each booklet for illustrative purposes. Above shows British infantry and a Churchill tank advancing through Normandy’s distinctive bocage.

© Ministry of Defence UK

At the end of each booklet, accounts detailing the actions of recipents of the Victoria Cross (the British Commenwealth’s highest award for gallantry in the face of the enemy) highlight the valour, tenacity and often self-sacrifice of these heroes who fought against all odds. The ninth booklet about the liberation of the concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen includes an corresponding section for the Special Operations Executive recipients of the George Cross.

Download these British Commemorative Booklets for World War II.

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MINDEF Commemorative Books – Apaches, Crewcuts & Detention Barracks
US Army Center of Military History Prints
German WWII Atlantic Wall Bunker Photobook PDF
Conquer Monte la Difensa in Devil’s Brigade Lux
Military History Books @ Focal Point Publications

Normally one wouldn’t associate the idea of fun with the tedious but obviously important task of chopping firewood for the (hot) pot but this frivolous Flash mini-game at the official Japanese website for Taiko no Tatsujin seems to imply otherwise (and yes, I do know that Taiko no Tatsujin has been featured in more than one post here )

和田イヌ (which supposedly translates to Wada Inu according to this GameFAQs article – inu means dog in Japanese) is trying to gather as much firewood as possible for his yosenabe (cooked in a claypot known as donabe) within a single minute and it’s your job to help him.

Over-application of force

Despite its appearance, this mini-game is no clickfest but is actually a test of hand-to-eye coordination since Wada Inu has to judge and time each attempt so as to utilize the minimum amount of force necessary for splitting each wood block with a single stroke of his axe. Using too much force simply wastes time which could be better spent on splitting more wood. Conversely, an underpowered strike will only lodge the axe bit in the larger blocks, requiring him to either retry again with greater force and finesse or hammer the wood repeatedly until it splits (much slower).

Boing! Under-application of force.

It’s a cute little diversion that should last you more than a couple of tries during lunchbreaks or for those days when you need to entertain youself with something brainlessly simple (and admittedly pointless).

So how many logs can you split ? My current record is at a lowly 60

Play this Taiko no Tatsujin log-splitting mini-game. (sorry, I’ve absolutely no idea what the Japanese game title translates to)

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Learning About Japanese Festivities with Taiko no Tatsujin
Domo-kun Wallpapers & Clock Widgets
Makibishi Comic – Japanese Point & Click Flash Adventure
Zookeeper – A Bejewelled Clone in Flash
Official Tuzki (兔斯基) Emoticons

I encountered CamStudio while looking for a freeware or open source solution for creating Flash screencasts to demonstrate the new features of the software products developed at work. For most users, viewing such screencasts beats reading a lengthy user guide or looking through a whole lot of screenshots.

If you’re new to producing screencasts, you’ll be glad to find that CamStudio is very easy to use. After the straightforward installation process, launch CamStudio and change Region > Fixed Region to Region. Click Record, select the screen area to record and then control the recording process with the mouse or keyboard hotkeys (default for record/pause is F8). Below is a short screencast of me capturing a screencast of myself typing in Notepad.

[kml_flashembed fversion="8.0.0" movie="http://www.downloadmunkey.net/download/convert.swf" targetclass="flashmovie" publishmethod="static" width="450"]

Click here to view screencast at its original size.

Of course, unless a screencast is self-explanatory or utterly pointless like the one above, you will need either verbal or written messages to be displayed during your screencasts. CamStudio supports recording audio instructions through microphones or speakers connected to the computer. Alternatively, you can also create screen annotations – see the screencast below. Much more useful, eh?
[kml_flashembed fversion="8.0.0" movie="http://www.downloadmunkey.net/download/annotate.swf" targetclass="flashmovie" publishmethod="static" width="450"]
Click here to view screencast at its original size.

CamStudio records your screen actions into an AVI which you will most probably want to convert to a bandwidth friendly Flash file with the included SWF Producer.
[kml_flashembed fversion="8.0.0" movie="http://www.downloadmunkey.net/download/record.swf" targetclass="flashmovie" publishmethod="static" width="450"]
Click here to view screencast at its original size.

While I use CamStudio primarily for work, I’m sure it can be put to imaginative use for gaming too – creating walkthroughs, feature demos, tutorials, etc.

Download CamStudio.

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Exporting and Converting Bookmarks with Bookmark Buddy
Foxit Reader vs PDF-XChange Viewer vs Sumatra
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A series of wallpapers from Korean art collective, Project Coo!. I don’t know what’s exactly Project Coo! is all about although I do know that the members of this collective include bombay, KEI, laziel, Maggi, milktea, NAKBE, NOX, oro, U’s and Yueciel.

A myriad of styles are represented from the requisite busty female anime character to Maggi‘s hip fashionista (fourth from top) and Yueciel‘s bright pink and saccharinely cute vectors.

© Project Coo!

Found Project Coo! entirely by chance after visiting Maggi’s Harem from the archives of the Elderly’s now silent Forbidden Forest. If you’ve ever seen the concepts for the MMORPG Granado Espada : Sword of The New World, you’ll definitely recognize her works from the intricate detail of their clothes and elaborate hairdos

Download these wallpapers from Project Coo!.

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Arguably the best DOS-based shoot-em up in my opinion, Tyrian is now available for gamers on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux (and Nintendo DS, PSP, even Wii!), thanks to the dedicated efforts of the OpenTyrian team who modified the source code to use the cross-platform SDL libraries and of course, Jason Emery, who graciously offered Tyrian as freeware back in 2004.

Installation for Windows users is fuss free : Just grab the pre-compiled Win32 version from the OpenTyrian forums (direct link), the SDL libraries – both SDL and SDL_NET (look under Runtime Libraries) and the original Tyrian 2.1 data files from the OpenTyrian site and unzip them into the same folder in the following sequence : data files, OpenTyrian, SDL, then double-click Tyrian.exe and enjoy!

I don’t think I need to go into how good Tyrian is : old-time shoot’em up fans should already know this classic which comes complete with fully upgradable ships, weapons and equipment, retro tracker-ish music and a storyline to boot (via datacubes collected within missions) while newer fans of genre should not miss this definitive icon of DOS shoot-em up history.

Datacubes – one of the pioneering forms of in-game advertising, courtesy of EPIC MegaGames

To toggle full screen mode, go to the OpenTyrian option in the main menu and set it from there. You might also want to set the game speed under Options (press Esc in-mission).

Download and play OpenTyrian.

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