Solutions to Life's Dumb Problems (Part 1)

Lately I realized I had found several solutions to various annoying problems that might help other people. I could not find these solutions documented other places, so here they are. As I solve more of life's dumb problems, I will continue the series.

I have inflamed, irritated, and/or acned skin on my nose or chin that doesn't go away.

Many people have found shocking success with the clean towel trick. My skin was generally well behaved, except I had persistently inflamed skin on my chin and nose. I eventually realized I had the same problem under a different guise. What was contacting my face frequently in those places? My bicycle helmet's straps, and my glasses. I started wiping down the clips and spacers on the helmet and my glasses' nose pads every few days with alcohol & my skin cleared right up.

I do pull-ups and chin-ups, but they only develop my upper back & biceps. Is there a better way?

Try doing pull-ups with both your legs extended fully in front of you, by bending at the waist - knees locked & parallel to the floor (or higher!). This will shift your center of mass forward so that most of the effort goes to your chest and deep-arm muscle. As an added bonus, holding the posture will ensure your abs get engaged too.

I bought Onimusha 3 on Steam, but Capcom's "fun game, shitty PC port" system thwarts me.

Yes, actually, it can. But you need to do several things to help it along. On a Windows 7 system the game came up windowed, and would crash randomly during the first video cut-scene. . .which happens to be before you can even start playing.

To fix it; browse to wherever you installed steam, then your steamapps\shared\onimusha3 folder. Find the sub-folder that has all the game's pre-rendered videos. Delete or rename it to prevent the game from playing them - this will prevent crashing during cut-scenes. You can, however, watch those videos separately with VLC or another player to follow along.

If your game won't run full-screen even though you have set full-screen in the configuration options, select the game window once it is running, and hit alt + enter. It may also be beneficial to run the game as administrator & in compatibility mode for windows XP SP2. It worked for me with those settings enabled, but I did not test fully enough to say they are required.

Finally, you may notice that "Cofigure controls" in the menu option won't show you the current keyboard controls at all, nor let you change them. By default the mappings are ASDF for movement and IJKL, space bar, and enter for your actions. Shift/Control manage your target lock & stances.

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