graeme.blog

Category: toreview

  • Still not smoking, still sort of sane.

    I’m still not sleeping, well not much, but I had a long walk home in the cold (on purpose) last night, and it really shook off a lot of the headiness I’d been feeling, I felt so much better for doing that. If I can do that a couple of times a week minimum as well, it really is going to help with the weight-loss too.

    Yesterday evening was important as in places it was the first time I’d felt normal since I stopped. Important for me to feel I am getting that grasp back. It will obsess me a lot less soon, but obviously at the moment it is a lot of what I think about.

  • WordPress 2.1 Ella – How is it?

    Well, I took the plunge last night. I meant to upgrade one of my least used blogs to WordPress 2.1 as a test, and it was so quick and easy I ended up doing all four. Basic process was just backup the database, disable all plugins, copy the upgrade into the same directory as your main install, run the upgrade, restore the plugins. Quite painless.

    I still think that WordPress needs to built the upgrade functionality in, I should be just clicking to install it and run the above process. That is the sort of thing that takes away the admin side of WordPress, and would draw more people into using it.

    Overall, it seems a little faster, a little prettier, and nothing has broken. So, happy with it thus far.

  • Bizarre Creations Next Live Game – Kotaku

    New Xbox 360 Live game coming from the makers of Project Gotham:

    Bizarre Creations, the guys behind Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved and Project Gotham Racing, are working on a new Live Arcade title.

    Boom Boom Rocket, set to go live this spring, is described as a hypnotic rhythm music game conceived by Electronic Arts’ casual game site Pogo.com.

    The game has players firing off rockets to the beat of music as they travel through a 3D city. The goal is to choreograph the firework-like explosions to the music. The game features 10 original tracks.

    Link

  • ‘Thieves’ tracked via satellite – BBC News

    This amused me, thieves stole GPS units. Guess how they were tracked down…

    Three men are arrested for allegedly stealing global positioning systems mistaken for mobile phones.

  • Make your firewall more secure – Lifehacker

    Well worth a look to see if you’ve set up your firewall and security correctly for your home network.

    Is your firewall doing its job? Find out with ITSecurity’s guide to making your firewall (and, ultimately, your PC) more secure.

    The 10-step guide covers topics like tweaking firewall settings to match your specific needs, adding multiple layers of security (including anti-virus and malware tools) and choosing strong passwords. Sure, much of this advice is common knowledge to Lifehacker readers, but you probably know someone who could benefit from it. Share, people! The guide has a friendly tone, with plenty of real-world examples to make it easily digestible. Good stuff. If you like it, the same site offered tips on fighting spam a few weeks ago. — Rick Broida

    10 Steps to Make Your Firewall More Secure [ITSecurity]

  • Sync your podcasts to your iPod under Ubuntu

    This is a big deal for me, not so much getting it working, more that it is one of the few things I’ve been booting back into Windows for. I am hoping fairly soon to remove the Windows partition from the hard drive, and reclaim it all for Ubuntu.

    Anyway, the setup is this:

    1) Dock the ipod with Ubuntu open. This should place the iPod using the name you’ve give it previously on your desktop. Find the location it has mounted the iPod at using right-click and properties, and make note of this.

    2) If you don’t have it installed, sudo apt-get install amarok.

    3) Go to System > Preferences > Removable Drives and Media, and on the Multimedia tab, change the command for portable music players to /usr/bin/amarok (or whatever your location is for amarok)

    4) In Amarok, go to settings > Configure Amarok > media devices. Add device, choose the Apple iPod Media Device, and enter the name you gave the iPod, and its mount point.

    5) That is the main part done, now you need in playlists to add any URLs of podcast feeds, and configure each feed so that it automatically scans for updates, downloads when available, and adds to the media device transfer queue (just check each option when configuring the podcast.

    6) When you connect the iPod, it should now launch Amarok, and queue any new shows to transfer to the iPod. At the moment I just highlight the shows and transfer them, but I am sure I can find a command to do this automatically.

    So that is a bit of work to get sorted, but worth it to keep Ubuntu open! If you try this yourself, let me know how you get on.


  • Keep up with online video at Vidmeter – Lifehacker

    Vidmeter helps you keep track of the hottest videos out on the internet:

    vidmeter.png

    Web site Vidmeter keeps a running tally on the latest, most popular videos from across the spectrum of social video sites.

    Vidmeter is similar to previously-mentioned Internet TV Charts, but with a much more useful interface. While watching internet video isn’t necessarily the most productive way to spend your time, you can at least be sure you’re getting a look at the most popular stuff out there. The only problem with sites like Vidmeter is that several of the most popular videos at any given time can be pretty poor. What would be really nice to see is a service like Vidmeter that tracks the most popular videos in categories, like technology/how-to videos. If someone has a good method for tracking internet video based on categories or search criteria, I’d love to hear it in the comments. — Adam Pash

    Vidmeter

  • Still not smoking

    Still haven’t killed anyone. Not slept very well, I seem to get imaginary loops of code stuck in my head for hours. Better last night, still not good. However 3 and a bit days without smoking isn’t a bad start, I reckons.

  • Dolby to Turn Volume Down on Loud Commercials – Neowin.net

    What isn’t quite stated here that I believe this should get rid of the need to turn your telly down massively when adverts come on. I was listening to someone talk about this the other day, and apparently the volume isn’t turned up by the tv company, the sound is recorded at a higher level of compression. Anyway, if this deals with it I want it built into my telly, and yesterday.

    Dolby. That’s all I have to say and you think of “audio” and “surround sound”. What’s that company up to recently? Dolby Volume: a technology that equalizes the volume across all audio coming out of your TV. The system aims to deliver consistent volume for TV channels, programs, and commercials.

    Dolby Volume models how “humans perceive audio” to eliminate variable loudness in the audio stream, automatically. Dolby claims user intervention completely is unnecessary (aside from the initial setup). The system handles up to a 30dB in reduction or amplification. Ars Technica mentions that Dolby did not address what Dolby Volume does when explosions or other sudden noises are meant to happen.

    News source: Ars Technica

    Read full story…

  • WordPress 2.1 Ella – WordPress Development Blog

    WordPress have announced version 2.1. It sounds like there are some interesting new features to try here, such as spellchecking, autosaving and more AJAX-based features. So I will have to try it out soon, probably on another blog first as a test.