(Because we cheat!) Well that's the theory anyway. Except then we stop gaming because we're bored and we go back to coding our cheats.

So I recently dusted off the game FreeSpace 2. Still fantastic, and thanks to the FreeSpace 2 Source Code Project it has new and pretty graphics and mods. Metacritic thinks it's awesome too... if that means anything.

In a space combat sim, deftness and accuracy are your best friends. Unfortunately in FreeSpace it didn't seem that you could have both. With the sensitivity maxed you could pivot, bank, and pitch with maximum speed, but your target would bounce around your reticle, and you'd miss most of your shots.

Perhaps a very nice gamepad joystick would register a wider range of the slower, gentler movements. Mine certainly didn't, and that may be the most likely scenario. A standard computer mouse absolutely doesn't work, as there's no "center" to return to, you're constantly turning.

I of course thought, "Ha ha! I can fix this" and turned toward AutoHotkey. I was going to code an ugly hack, and have a button or joystick open the key configuration and adjust the sensitivity in a lightning quick second, preserving the state of my other buttons and ship movement.

That is until I spotted an example script in the (very awesome) help file for using a joystick as a mouse. Programmatically controlled sensitivity, some significant rewriting, and yeah. Dominating.

I have one joystick for movement, the other to adjust the sensitivity/speed of that movement for excellent ship tracking, and a button which brings it to the absolute maximum for rapid orientation changes. Also many other intuitive combinations for interacting with enemy/friendly/escort ships, such as targeting, targeting attacker, and so on.

Have at the AutoHotkey script here. Code skillz required, sorry.

Mouse gestures are awesome. They're incredibly convenient, powerful, simple, and intuitive. I personally would be no where near as efficient without them. It's when you hold down the right mouse button, and drag the mouse in a particular direction or draw a particular shape to perform an action.

Of course it's apparent that mouse gestures must be too awesome, because you're not using them, are you? In fact, no one seems to be. Sure, the web browser Opera makes fair use of them. There's more than one Firefox extension which does the job too, with pitiful download numbers.

You'd even be hard pressed to find a gesture program for Windows. Though you would find StrokeIt, an entertainingly named little application so awesome I found it invaluable even when it wasn't updated for 4 years and had Vista bugs - but all of that has changed! A version .9.6 is here to release us of such troubles, it's time to rekindle the gesture revolution!

I'm not sure why mouse gestures have received such a poor welcoming, though I have a few ideas. It could be that you think they're slow, requiring convoluted ridiculous wrist gyrations. Is that it? Perhaps certain wonderful applications are even guilty of such default configurations. It sort of makes a difference, you know?

Here's your solution. Install StrokeIt, delete all the default configurations and add the following Global Actions:

• / Up, Max/Restore
• / Down, Minimize
• Right, Move to Next Monitor
• Left, Move to Previous Monitor
• MButton, Launch Explorer
• Up, Close Window

There you go, you just became incredibly more productive. Now enjoy the rest of your life. :)

Note: If you're worried about closing a window accidentally with the Up gesture, don't be. For at least a few years now I've used this gesture and triggered it on accident maybe once, and even then was able to cancel closing my program. Is accidentally triggering gestures one of your fears?