So, as many in the tech world know, Apple recently switched to a new photo format for their iDevices with iOS 11 forward.  While the new format is vastly superior to JPG, it was all but entirely incompatible with Windows programs. However, thanks to a college class in JavaScript, I managed to download and jury-rig the official HEIF format website into a file reader!  It seems Chrome/Edge are incompatible as of this writing, so thus far only Firefox seems to work.  Here's a link to the program: https://mega.nz/#!9xwWgCSA !6G3mvAjN_zB7iYzhVEkuGsulNjPFCsoZubSfpUTHQw4   This is far from a perfect viewer, so I plan to keep working on and rewriting the program as necessary (#1 on the agenda would be compatibility with more browsers).  In the meantime, though, have fun with the program!   UPDATE 1/3/2018: I've run a direct copy of the website on other browsers, and apparently Chrome (and presumably the other browsers) somehow can't load the special images b...

Hi!  Way back when , I learned how to modify the game credits of a game known as Bejeweled 2.  But now, I'm getting a bit more ambitious. Grim Tales: The Bride is a puzzle-adventure game.  The plot so far: someone was killed and the person's sister wants to find out what happened.  Quite good, until a demon appears and says he'll tell her what happened if she can do some things, and if she fails he gets her soul.  And the game doesn't give you a chance to opt out.  Now, one of the things I've been taught is that it's generally not a good idea to make deals with demons (when I say generally, I mean always), even if it's in a game, so I shut down the program--but instead of switching to another game, I stayed with it.  In fact, it became one of my biggest obsessions. Why?  Here's an example: Grim Tales is the most hackable game I have ever played. Every single picture in that game has a jpeg image under the game's "hood". I'm an ...

Here it is… The link of today’s post is the site of the bestseller game, Bejeweled 2 ! What, surprised?  It was the first “real” computer game we ever had! Ahem.  Well, to tell you why I put up nothing related to PC animation, Photoshop etc., I have been digging into this particular program and have brought up the backdrops as usable JPEG images!  For computer nuts who want to try this themselves (assuming you bought the full version), you can go to (for Windows) ‘My Computer’>’OS (C:)’ or ‘Local disk (C:)’, depending on the version>’Program Files (x86)’>’PopCap Games’>’Bejeweled 2 Deluxe’>’images’>’backdrops’.  If you have not yet bought the game but have a Windows 7 computer, it should have a trial version installed already.  If you’re interested in using images from this trial please ask me about it in the comments.  I used these background images for my Photoshops–it’s way safer than just browsing the internet for “ali...