No more Emojipedia and character map (and/or typing Unicodes)!

Good moaning folks!

Been ages since I blogged last, but well… life and shit happens 😕

Anyhow, recently I found out keyboard shortcuts to access emojis and symbols anytime, anywhere in Windows. Quite simple actually and I can’t believe I didn’t hear of it before! Lifesaving if you ask me because, in addition of being able to enter shiny emojis everywhere where they are supported (actually a lot more common than it seems on the first glance…), you can enter any character you would ever need without the character map or typing Unicodes (although you might find typing Unicodes quicker depending on your needs). If you wanna write about, dunno, El Niño and want to spell the phenomenon properly, but don’t have access to Ñ, these shortcuts can come in quite handy. Although, if you want quick access to Ñ and loads of more characters, I suggest you add US International keyboard layout in addition to your local layout and if your default layout is the basic US layout (which is the case in all Anglophone countries except the UK and Ireland 🙂), you might consider making US International default because because the US International layout is the same as the basic US layout with additional characters being accessed with AltGr (right Alt) key.
You might also want to try to customize your own layout with MS Keyboard Layout Creator (a free 🙂 program for Windows) to make it more functional like me.
But those are different stories 😀

Now, I should thank Mosh Hamedani for this “discovery” because it was his YouTube Python course that made me Google this shit out 😀 So, thanks Mosh! 😀

Anyhow, the keyboard shortcuts on American QWERTY keyboard layout are Win Key + “.” and Win Key + “;” (without the quotes, of course 🙂). As for other layouts, try pressing keys located where “.” and “;” are located on the American keyboard (in my case those are “.” and Č).
Now, once you press either of those combinations, you get a popup with emojis! 😀

Click on the image to enlarge it

To gain access to symbols,  just click on the little Ω after clicking Win + “.”.

Click on the image to enlarge it

Now, the reason I had to Google my ass of is because the shortcuts didn’t work for me at first! They started working after I accessed emojis on touch keyboard first. So to enable touch keyboard, right-click on the taskbar and checkmark Show touch keyboard button (I watched this tutorial). Once touch keyboard is enabled, a small keyboard icon is gonna appear left of the language code left of the clock. Click on it and click on the emoji icon to enter an emoji once the keyboard pops up

Click on the image to enlarge it

You can just disable the touch keyboard afterwards if you want. Although, touch keyboard can be quite shiny, especially if you use other layout(s) in addition to your local layout (e.g. I have Greek, Serbian Cyrillic and US International in addition to Croatian) because you can see how the keys on those layouts are mapped, so you might consider keeping the touch keyboard 😉

That’s it, if you still have trouble with emoji/symbols shortcut, try switching to the American layout and this “guide” applies only to Windows I don’t know if this works on Linux; probably depends on a distro 😉

Well, cheers!

Update 15^th June

A small wee little update. With all the work I’m taking Mosh’s course slowly. Anyhow, the guy just said he hated cats and the motherfucker was LAUGHING! Well, Mosh, you are a fucking asshole and now I hate you! Was thinking of buying your advanced course after I finish this one, but now – if I’ll go for advanced at all – I’m either buy another advanced course or steal yours! And just after being smart he “encouraged” me to “get ‘his complete Python course'”. Well Mosh; I might indeed “get” it, but you won’t get a penny from me! Who the fuck do you think you are spreading such hatred?! It’s my time for (evil) laugh MWHAHAHA ×D
I mean, this morning before work me kitty spilled me juice all over the table and floor, so I had to waste precious morning time cleaning the mess (being half asleep, I doubt I did a pretty good job anyway 😕) and I ended up going to work thirsty! I’m going to kill the little punk for it when I return home 😡 but that was an isolated incident!

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Posted on 28^th April, 2020 at 18:54 GMT
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Smash champions

Super Smash Bros are without a question the best games mankind has ever created.

Unfortunately, no Smash has been released for computer yet and knowing Nintendo none will ever be.

Luckily, there are good Nintendo 64, Game Cube and Nintendo Wii emulators although Wii emulation requires a powerful machine.
Let’s stick to the other two then. Nintendo 64 emulators (Project64 is by far the best) work perfectly on pretty much every machine today and since neither the game nor the emulator (Project64 anyway) take much space (20 MB altogether tops), I suggest you keep N64 Smash on every computer just in case 😉

Now, the most important is Smash Melee for Game Cube since Game Cube emulation is pretty good on modern computers (you still might get a lag or two here and there though). The best emulator – well, the one I use anyway – is Dolphin. Yes, Dolphin, can emulate Nintendo Wii too, but I wouldn’t suggest trying it unless you have a pretty damn good machine. Especially since there’s no need. There’s a ton of good Game Cube games. When it comes to Smash, sure, Brawl is better, but Melee has it all too – great graphics, a lot of characters and maps (less than Brawl though 😦 )

I mentioned a lot of characters and maps, but when you start the game, you won’t say so.

The question marks suggest that there are maps and characters that can be unlocked. True, actually there are more characters and maps to unlock than the question marks in the screenies 😀

So, how to unlock them?
By playing single-player and winning, of course. But that takes a lot of time, especially if you’re a fellow like me, who just wants to Smash with his friends! In addition, if you’re playing the game on a computer, you need to “clean” emulator settings (meaning game saves too) from time to time to keep the thing running on peek efficiency. Furthermore, Dolphin v4 (currently the latest stable version of Dolphin) keeps its settings in the user folder, meaning that if you want to have unlocked characters and/or maps, you have to to copy Dolphin settings – which may not always be accessible –  to every account on which you intend to Smash with unlocked stuff.

So, let’s look for an alternative. There is one, at least if you’re running the game on Dolphin.

This is how the main Dolphin window looks like:

Go to Options\Configure… or just click icon. Checkmark Enable Cheats in the General tab. Then go to Paths tab, click on the big Add.. button and find the path to the folder with Smash

D: \ Igre \ Game Cube is the folder where I keep my Game Cube games, including Smash (igre meaning games)

Click OK.

The main Dolphin window should suddenly look something like this:

Right click on SUPERSMASH BROS. Melee and go to Properties.

Now, go to AR Codes tab and checkmark the following codes:
Open All Characters,
Metroidy Level,
City rooftops level,
During F-Zero race,
On top giant pokemon,
Mario Bros style level,
Game and Watch level,
Platforms in starfield 1 level,
Platforms in starfield 2 level,
Level with ‘windy’ tree,
Yoshi’s story level,
Dusk jungle level.
Press Close when you’re done.

Now, start the game and press Start how many times it takes to confirm everything you’ve “unlocked”. Wait a moment till the emulator saves new settings (a yellow message saying that things were saved should appear on top of the screen).

Now, stop the emulation, return to the game Properties, uncheckmark all the cheats you checkmarked before and click Close. Your unlocks were saved so you don’t need the cheats any more. Furthermore, if you leave them on, the game might get buggy.

Start the game again and commence Smashing with any character on any map 😀
Character and map selection should look something like this now:

There, I told you how to make full epicness of an epic game on computer. Concerned about the term cheat? Well, you can always unlock stuff the old fashioned way 🙂