Skyrim: Mouse Icon Showing After Minimise [Solved]

I have been having this re-occurring problem with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim on my PC lately:
Sometimes when I minimise the game (for whatever reason) and maximise again, the Windows mouse icon is still showing.

There is a very simple fix for this:

Credit goes to "Oayarc" from Gamespot Game FAQs Forum:


"When i alt-tab in and out, i get the double cursorI alt tab out again, and then tab back in to the first black screen. On this window window, move your windows cursor up to the top of the screen so that it is visible around the top windows bar and left click. Then move your windows cursor down until it disappears (about 20-30% down the screen) and left click."

And that's it! This fix works with modded and vanilla.
Oayarc mentioned he runs a completely unmodded version and I have installed mods both from Nexus and Steam Workshop.

iTunes "Get Info" Window Loses Focus [Solved]

So for quite a while I was having this problem with my iTunes.
I am running iTunes 11 (not sure on the exact version) and every time I right click a song, or group of songs to edit the information, after a few seconds the window loses focus. So this means you can be staring at your keyboard typing the song name and the window will lose focus causing your typing to stop.
I ended up having to wait until it happened and then clicking back on the window so it would go back into focus.
It was driving me bloody insane for ages until I decided to sit down and fix it. A few Google searches proved unhelpful, so I tried a few different things.

I opened up Task Manager and opened the Performance tab. I noticed that when I opened the "Get Info" window, my CPU usage would suddenly spike to 10/11% and then go back to 0/1/2% that my CPU normally runs on. I thought maybe a background application was stealing focus.
I set the priority of iTunes to High but it didn't solve anything.
So I conducted a quick Google search querying X11 and iTunes which brought me to a strange forum who were explaining that MSN and one of its clients Mercury interact with iTunes to send and receive song information. If you are an MSN user then you probably know about the "Show information about the song I am listening to" feature. So iTunes, MSN and Mercury communicate with each other regarding song information which seems to be the reason my CPU spikes.

So basically, to solve this problem, turn the "Show information about the song I am listening to" feature off. Yes, that's it!

A very strange bug that Apple hasn't seemed to pick up on but it turns out to be a simple fix.
Remember, you can leave the aforementioned feature turned on if you want people to see what you are listening to as it doesn't disrupt iTunes' performance in any other way. Just turn it off if you are going to edit a song(s)' information.

It's like COD, but with bow 'n arrows.

Okay, so you've all played Paradox Interactive's Mount & Blade, right?
If not, here is a brief review.

Mount & Blade is a sandbox Hack-n-slash RPG. You create a character, kill people, complete quests, get more money, get better equipment, get more badass and get more control.
The game's primary aspect is to create a 'party'. As you get better, your troops increase in skill and quantity.
It does not contain a story-line and does not have any fantasy elements like that found in most RPG's such as Elder Scrolls and Neverwinter Nights.

But the game truly shines in it's battle sequences.
The graphics are impressive, the combat is good fun and the battles range from your character vs 3 outlaws to massive full scale battles and sieges with up to 6 different factions.
The player has a choice to join one of 5 kingdoms or can choose to go neutral.
Each kingdom has it's Pros and Cons and are all based on real-life Dark Ages communities. For example; Nords, Mongolians and Arabians.
As you progress, if riding under a banner, you can become a Lord and own your own castle and villages. But if you ride under a banner, expect to be under pursuit from enemy factions.
The game has a huge array of weapons, clothing and attributes which can be mix and matched to create unique and devastating combinations.



That is enough, I am here to discuss the latest expansion pack; Mount & Blade: Warband.
The expansion pack brought Multiplayer to the single player RPG, which sounds like a great addition. But when I sat down and joined a server of high latency, I quickly drew the conclusion that it is quite horrible.
Paradox claimed that the graphics were increased from it's predecessor, but I actually see a downfall is visuals.

But that is not what irritated me. What made me quit after about 15 minutes of play was that the game heavily resembled COD (oh no...) in that vast majority of players assume the role of archers. The resemblance to Call Of Duty (Modern Warfare 1 and 2 obviously because heaven forbid playing any of the earlier games) is the 'snipers pitching tents' aspect.
The archers sit on top of a hill and shoot arrows all day without being a man and charging in with an axe and slicing the enemies' heads in half. Which, to me, sounds like much more fun than standing in one spot clicking endlessly and shooting arrows.

In terms of kits, it is kind of like Battlefield where there are preset kits, but having the option to customise.
You choose a fighter type and spend your cash (say 1500 gold pieces) which is earned by stacking up kills and winning rounds to buy different weapons and armour.
The fighter type you choose limits the options available. So choose an axe based character if you want a axe. Pretty basic stuff.
And there is an option to mount a horse.

In conclusion, the Multiplayer isn't so great but the Singleplayer is hours and hours of fun and I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys RPGs.

My first and last experience with Games for Windows Live

On the weekend I bought Red Faction: Guerrilla, finally, after hearing alot of positive feedback from it's destruction system and general good fun.

But what makes this game a waste of time is the absolute joke system 'Games for Windows Live' (GfWL).
Basically, the system means you MUST create a profile to obtain the simple task of saving and loading your game.
What the fuck?!
So when I went to start a new game, it asked me to create an account.
It took me to the Xbox website (wait, what?) to create an Xbox gamer tag.
Okay so I HAVE to make an XBOX account JUST to save and load my game?
I should have stopped there.
After pissing around for an hour and a half I eventually got the shoddy system to log me in.
I then played the game...

Fuck it is actually alot of fun.
Being able to blow up everything basically made me jizz on my screen.
The story line is extremely unoriginal and the combat system is unrealistic and shoddy (typical 3rd person shooter). But albeit it's very entertaining.
Throwing remote charges on a bridge and blowing them up and watching the rubble crush thine enemies is fucking fun.

But anyway, I digress.
I played the game for a fair while in one session.
I then saved and quit the game. To my suprise, no worries: It approved and let me quit.

Later, I went to play the game again.
So I attempted to sign in. This took bloody forever.
When I finally signed in, my save games were deleted.
O_o and my god what a surprise it won't let me sign in the next day to start a new game.
Fuck. What a joke and an absolute waste of time.

NEVER buy anything that has 'Games for Windows Live' on it. EVER.
Save yourself the pain.
Fuck you THQ. Take some lessons from Valve.
Actually no, just leave the industry to those who know what they are doing.

/rant.