Underground 2009 – Versatile’s Top 5 Favorite Posts

It is the last day of 2009 and what does the Underground have to show for a whole year gone by?  Well, a lot!  It truly has been a great year for me personally (discovered new programs, bought a house, played new games, new youtube and twitter account, and more) and I want 2010 to be an even better year.

So before I get started with the top 5 favorite posts of mine for 2009, please take a look at my initial 2009 post forecast for year 2009. I was partially correct, and no way did I know 365 days later what I would get myself into!  Read the January 2009 forecast post here.

#5 – TUG Blog in General

All right, so this is not a post, but more as an acknowledgement for what the TUG blog represents and what it is meant to be. It is at TUG (The Other Underground) where I can write “darker” articles and almost give things away. It is also where I write articles that don’t have a home here but a home over there.

For 2010, I got some ideas to really give it that Underground feel to it. If I really had to pick a favorite article, I would have to go with this one.  C’mon, who am I fooling if I were to pick anything else? 🙂

#4 – Tangent Conversations – Annoying!!!

At the time I wrote it, it was my favorite article of the year, but somehow I put it into number 4 slot. If you spend a lot of time online, then you know how important your time is, and there is no point in trying to get dragged into discussions you don’t have the time for. Read the article and learn how I cope with it, and some of the strategies that I use to get myself out of tangent conversations.

Use it not only for online discussions, but also for real life! Give it a try!

#3 – How to Use Btaccel(Cloud Bitorrent Client) and Optimize Firefox to Get Over 1GB Speeds For Your Torrent Downloads!

Btaccel is an online website where you can use it to download torrents for you. How it works is you sign up for an account, and then you give it a torrent link and it starts to download it for you to their online server. Once done, it will e-mail you and you can download through HTTP. This is perfect for those people who cannot use torrents, or must use HTTP to download stuff from the Internet.

Learn how to use Firefox to get even faster speeds with DownThemAll Firefox extension.

#2 – [How To] Play Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 Spec Ops Online Using Tunngle (Or Hamachi)

This was a hard pick between my L4D2 and my MW2 guide, but in the end MW2 wins because this game by default is special. There is a reason why it is the most pirated game of 2009.  With the hype comes with the pirates, and man this game delivers.  The PC version still has no dedicated server support, so team Teknogods took it into their own hands to create their own creation to allow (for now) spec op co-op online play.

They succeeded, and I wrote about it. The guide was a pleasure to write, and it enabled lots of gamers I met on Tunngle to learn how to play online. It was so satisfying to defeat Infinity Ward at their own game. 🙂

Now my most favorite post of 2009…

#1 – Tunngle – The Hamachi Killer – Learn How To Play LAN Enabled PC Games Over The Internet For Free!

How I came across Tunngle is an interesting story.  Earlier this year with the Hamachi guys, we were playing Tom CLancy’s Las Vegas 2. The problem was we needed more people for this game network. Fellow gamer Seb did a google search and he sent me this message on Youtube:

At the time, I had no idea what Tunngle was. Immediately, Las Vegas 2 started working, and we found 8 people playing online at that time! It was awesome! I went to youtube, and noticed there were hardly any Tunngle videos, except kissmyrank Las Vegas 2 video.

Now what really tipped the scales was later that week I tried to force Halo 2 PC to use Hamachi. I spent 4 hours that day watching youtube and reading articles on fixes to make it work. Nothing worked.

I applied the same fix to Tunngle, and it worked on the first try! I just cried in happiness, and that is when I vowed no more hamachi, time to Tunngle it up. To me, Tunngle is the sleeper hit of the year and I am so glad to have found it.

The majority of the Tunngle videos on Youtube are most likely mine, so if you get a chance, definitely check them out!

If you want to learn more about Tunngle, please see the link above.  Let’s see what 2010 will bring me!

December 31st – Underground Update

Today for me is going to be a busy day. Here are some quick notes that I am planning to do between now and tomorrow (New Year’s Day).

• Underground newsletter to be completed and sent out tomorrow. I am working with Voltaire on the details of the newsletter today. What content shall we put in there? I haven’t even finalized what I wanted to talk about in there, but I suspect nonetheless it will be good regardless. 🙂
• A personal post at a look at 2009 for the Underground and my top 5 favorite posts of the year. This will be difficult, because either I go through every single post since January 1st of 2009, or I just know what I like off the top of my head (yea right!).  When the post is done, it will be pretty good.
• Tomorrow is New Year’s Day, which just so happens to be my birthday as well. Will we have a special New Year’s Day post and warm wishes for 2010? Most likely. I”ll try to include something spicy in the post, if possible.
• Update on the Underground book: Will be working on it more later today and over the weekend. Let’s see how far I get. If results are good, then next week I reveal the next stage of the book and how you can help.

That’s it! If you are a red alert 1 fan, please download the game and play with myself and other gamers. I grew up with red alert, so it has a fond place in my heart right now. See you there! – Versatile

December 20th Update – Underground News

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Hey guys, I wanted to give a quick update on whats new so far with the blog, and what will happen between now and the new year.

First item – I got rid of the VersatileNinja youtube account. If you want to see the new youtube account, you can go to http://www.youtube.com/gamedexterity.

I am in the process of uploading new and old videos, and during this process I have learnt that its hard to start over again, but in a way it has given me newfound freedom to redo tutorials to make them better and even clearer so all is not lost.

The big problem is I don’t have the best upload speed in the world, so expect videos to be slowly migrated over the course of the next few days, weeks, and months. The new account will be hipper, edgier, and more provocative. 🙂

Second item – Today I received an email from Dropbox that my public links has been suspended. Damn, I guess hosting all the patches on there for MW2, L4D 2, and Killing Floor was not a good idea after all. >_> Eventually, I will get around to uploading these patches to another file hosting site. So if you are looking for a specific link, it will be down for the time being until I fix it (probably later tonight).

Third item – I have 10 Blackcat invites that I think I have to spend between now and the end of the month. Blackcats is a private game torrent site, and it is a great community. The problem is it is invite only, with the notion that the people that are invited are trusted people, and not random strangers (*cough* undercover agents *cough*).

With that said, if you think you deserve a blackcat invite, please send me an e-mail at versatileninja [at] yahoo.com and we can discuss further. If you are a tunngle gamer, even better as you will get higher priority. If not, tell me about your history, and maybe we can share IM contacts and discuss further.

Fourth item – Underground newsletter will be worked on sometime after the holidays between myself and Voltaire. If you are not on it, please subscribe.

Fifth item – I am officially on holidays starting on 12/23/09 and I will not be at work until January 4th, 2010. During this time, I will be relaxing and visiting family and other events. I expect to work on the 4th and 5th chapter of the Underground Book and finish it off (at least my part). We shall see after the holidays what will happen next.

Very unlikely I will be playing games during the holidays, or making any new video tutorials. I will continue posting here as usual so all will be good.

Sixth item – I went out today to a local Blockbuster movie store that was closing down, and I ended up buying a copy of Watchmen DVD. Preview price was $14.99, but with 67% off it was $5.23 with tax. I have an interesting story about this experience, and it will show up in an STD article for sure. It will be a good read.

Seventh item – Xmas is almost here, and sometime this week (perhaps Monday), I will have a special post for those tech savvy parents/shoppers out there who should think twice about buying electronic game consoles or gadgets until you hear about my provocative advice. I can’t wait to write it, its definitely unconventional thinking.

This is all I got. If you are an underground blog author, please write in the comment what your activities are as I know time to time people want to know if you are still alive or not. Thanks! – Versatile

Underground Blog – Looking for Graphic Artists Help

The contest will officially close on December 4th, 2009 at 7PM central time. Have fun.

As we all know, the holidays are upon us, and what better way to celebrate the Xmas season than sprucing up the blog? Over the next few days, I am going to take a look at the current sidebar info and see how I can make it better and easier to read.

In the meantime, I would love for our gracious banner to be updated too. What are the requirements? Simple:

It must say: “Welcome to the Underground” and in sub-text “Authored by Versatile & Voltaire”.

The size of the banner must be 920 x 180 pixels. If you are skilled in the graphic arts, and want to help us out, by all means have at it.

Please send your submissions by uploading it to imageshack.us and leave a link here in the comments so we (the staff) can review it.

If there are multiple entries, a poll will be done for the winner. If no one even participates, then we will just go with the existing banner until it is updated at an unknown future date. Thanks and good luck! ~ Versatile

November 21st Update

Here is the new update and a lot has changed (for me at least) since the last time I have written.  As we all know, when Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 came out it was crazy on the Internet.

PC Gamers went straight to the Internet to learn how to make their cracked copies of MW2 work online and they did beat IW, for a limited time.  Steam was patched and it made the MP crack  just about useless because you can’t connect to anyone now.

At the same time, team Teknogods released a fix that lets players play co-op Spec Ops online with their friends. While people are silly enough to go to Hamachi or Garena, the real deal is with Tunngle :0

In other news, L4D 2 is out. Razor released a version of the game, and there are people trying out fixes to get the game to work.  Once a firm solution has been found, expect me to be blogging about it.

Next week is Thanksgiving week, so I will be out on vacation. This means no work, and just relaxation. Not sure if I will do an article or two, but definitely no Youtube videos as I left the gaming PC behind. I will be working more on the Underground book, and expect to get it to be about at least 80% done is the goal. I can’t wait to work on it again.

The highlight of the week for me has been a decision I have come to terms with my Youtube account.  For those that follow me on youtube, I have had my account since October 2007, and in a little over 2 years, I have about 1030 subscribers, and 200+ friends.  I have over 20K channel views which is just astounding to me.

I have a following, and although I like to have an article with a youtube video, it is not always possible, and its hard to do a mix between more articles versus more videos and whatnot.  The bottom line is videos are somewhat faster to make, but if it makes sense, I will always make an article to accompany the video.

With that said, about 95% of my existing videos is gaming related in some shape or form whether that is game tutorial related, or console modding.  The other 5% is about general computer knowledge.

To make a long story short, next month I will be retiring the versatileninja youtube account, to join a fellow youtuber under a new account, and together create an audience larger than if we were working separately.  He does a lot of gaming related videos, and I do the tutorials. We both have youtube as a hobby, and don’t see that going away anytime soon.

The past few days I put up my very last video.  If you get a chance to see it, watch it as it is very touching.  Still thinking about it still gives me a tear to my eye to the new journey I am about to embark, and I am ready to do it.

Maybe to some people that doesn’t seem like a big deal at all, but I can assure you it was a tough decision for me to make as it was the only true way to give up what I love to even become stronger.  As a side subject, accounts are never ever truly forgotten, as you can recover the account and reclaim it given you know the email address the Youtube is connected to.

I have a backup of all my videos, so the only items that would be gone is the statistics and the comments. Seeing how many ridiculous questions there are still related to Garena to this day, I wouldn’t mind seeing them disappear. 🙂

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I had an e-mail from someone asking what is the story with the other authors, like Voltaire and Chyea.  I had no answer for them, just that they were busy with school.  So if you are an underground author and you are reading this post, please leave a comment as to what is new with you these days, and what you want to do over the next couple weeks here at the blog.  The viewers miss you!

Underground Update -Nov. 1st

I missed doing weekly updates, and with a lot of stuff going on in my activities, I thought I will start bringing back these blog updates because there are easy to get out of the way, as well as let you guys know what I am thinking and what I have planned for the future.

In fact, I love writing these updates because it is really the only time I can vent or talk about a particular idea that is in formulation, so with that said let’s get started.

Quick Update From Versatile

Just so everyone knows, I will be out on vacation from August 8th through August 16th.  I probably won’t be near a computer to check up on stuff until next week Thursday, so when I am gone this Friday, this place is going to be pretty empty, unless the remaining authors are going to be so kind enough to fill in for me with an article or two. *cough*

If not, then should I be surprised? >_>

With that said, the newsletter that is expected for an August 15th release date will have to be pushed back, probably sometime the week after my vacation or the following week.  The content in this month’s newslettter should be very good according to my sources. >_>

Anyway, before I head out on vacation this Friday, I really want to get some stuff done.  You know, the stuff that I promised. With that said, on the TUG blog this week, I’m going to squeeze off at least an article or two before I head out on vacation.  It will be tough though, because there is so much information I want to talk about on V1, but I really want to get some new dirt on TUG.

What is the criteria for TUG this week?  How do I determine if something is underground?

Simple.   If I can’t share it on public radio, TV, magazines, or newspapers, then it goes on TUG.  For example:  Learning how to remove the password to Excel documents.  Sounds fine right?  Well, its not cool if you un-protect an Excel spreadsheet from your boss that has hidden data about the companies cost structure. >_>  Now that’s underground!

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The Underground Roadmap – What Lays Ahead of Us

Revisions:

7-27-09:  Initial release

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Everyone has a vision, and a goal in life.  Of course we do, otherwise you would be a worthless sack of particles and matter, right?  Anyway, after writing a few retrospect posts these past few days, I thought it would be nice for a change to give you guys where I want the blog to go, if anything, my own personal goal for the blog.

By revealing what I want to work on, it should hopefully get you excited too so that when the time comes you will be ready or you can give other suggestions. For the other authors, if you have something to say, do it in your own post please.  Do not let my ideas impede on yours or influence or subtract from your thoughts. If things happen to overlap, then so be it.  It just means that this blog is doing something to your subconscious. :-0

Newletter Issue 1

Earlier this afternoon, I had sent out the first Underground newsletter. Unfortunately, someone had an incorrect email address entered into the database!

If you typed “amitmida1122@yahoo.com”, please come back and type your new email address. For those who did not subscribe to the newsletter, well too bad. We are not going to upload them online for you to download. If you want to get the older issues, please subscribe, and then you can send an email to me for the back issues.

Note: The newsletter is Issue 1. I had accidentally named the file as “Issue_0”. Please disregard that error. To those who have read the newsletter, please leave your feedback here!

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Ninjas Need To Breathe Too! – Blog Update 5-11-09

Finally, something that I can write that doesn’t require a lot of time and careful planning on my part!  For the longest time here at the blog I did what was called “[TiT]” articles, or “That’s It Tuesdays” where I gave an update on the blog as to what is going on.  I did that for maybe 62 weeks in a row and then I just stopped.

Now here is summer and we got some new people on board (ok, just one) and I thought I’d give you the community some flavor as to what will be going on in the next month or so.  Due to the new audience from Garena, I thought this would be the best time to divulge some secrets.

Earlier this week I wrote a post about tangent conversations.  I hope you guys have a better idea what a tangent conversation is, and how to bypass it when necessary. We all have the same 24 hours, it is a matter of how do you spend it.  When I come home from work, people just send me messages from all over the world. They have questions, I have answers.  I need to get the questions answered quick so I can do my own work.  To do so, I need to make sure people are not going off of tangents.  ;0  If you are one of these people, recognize that I am only helping you get to the answer faster.

Now in terms of new stuff that is coming to the blog, I recently did a powerpoint file on how to patch L4D.  I value community feedback. If there is a problem I consistently see over and over, I do something about it.  The powerpoint file was one of those items that I created on the fly to help out a user understand his issue more. ;0

Did you notice that in the polls I have a poll asking about tutorials?  I  recently enjoy doing video tutorials, for the fact that it is faster to explain a concept than try to write it out all in words.  However, I realize some people don’t want a video, they want just the text so they can read what they want and move on.  I totally agree with you.  Whenever possible, I try to do a text tutorial with a video tutorial as necessary.  Note that the video tutorial is nice to have, but it is also made for the youtube communty.  A lot of people from youtube goes to this blog, and from google.  I have created as many avenues as possible to capture this new audience.

One last thing that I am excited to reveal is the concept of underground newsletters.  The goal is that starting next month some time, once a month, a special newsletter will go out to email subscribers.  It will have a reflection on the past month’s hottest articles, whats in store for the future, maybe a secret tip, and other spicy details.  The newsletter will be short, maybe 1 page or 2 page of text.  Not sure if it will be done via email, pdf, or whatever.

We shall see. Expect the form to be up relatively soon so you can sign up. Thanks!

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