Author: alex

Categories
Blog News Websites Caught !

WordPress plugin : wp-slimstat-ex

Yesterday I upgraded to the latest version of WordPress and in the process I also disabled my bad-ass stats plugin.

The BA-Stats plugin was a good solution that worked for me and answered most of my needs. But it was becoming rather long in the tooth (almost two years now) and is, it seems, no longer supported.

Yesterday I found a new stats plugin that is state of the art : the WordPress plugin for slimstat (ex-panded). It’s based on the original WordPress slimstat plugin made by Mr. Coolman and has been expanded with Ajaxy goodness. That plugin, in turn, has been based on the php package slimstat, which has been based on oldstat.

Open Source at it’s best ! 🙂

The features are amazing : svg graphics, ip-to-country database, top hits, the whole shebang. It’s really nice to be able to find out who all came to visit and especially, what they were looking for. This helps me to find out if some posts are more popular than others, so that I can focus on providing more information about that subject.

For example, two posts are consistently on the top of most visited posts : how to setup a GPS in Windows Mobile and Tips and tricks for Windows Mobile 5.

Categories
Apple Pocketpc

Parallels USB support in beta 3106

I just booted into Parallels XP bootcamp partition and installed MS Active Sync 4.2. I had a beast of time finding it, with Windows Vista arriving they are phasing out that version and they are rearranging all their links.

Then I plugged my QTek 9100 in, and nothing happened. Hmmm. Oooh… click usb icon in Parallels bottom bar, select USB serial for Wizard, and woopdiedoo, I got a connection.

Now synchronising… It’s nice when technology just works !

Categories
Blog News

Anaconda – moving the search bar in your header

Hah – found it !

When the browser window is too small, and if you moved your title around in your header, sometimes the search bar will overlap above your title or your image where you don’t want it to be – not very nice. I found out how to change it though…

Just a quick reminder to myself what I did to move the search bar below.

In the Anaconda style.css file (found in /themes/anaconda ) – go to the section called /* FORMS */ and just below that you can see the subsection /* FORMS – general classes */.
After that is the /* SEARCH */ line – below this line is the line that you need to change.

In my style.css file, this is line 675.

/* SEARCH */
.sb-search {color:#fff;font-weight:bold;position:absolute;top:60px;right:20px;left:auto;width:18em;}

By changing the values for ‘top’ and ‘right’ you can move the searchbar down and more to the left or to the right. Top was originally set to 10px and right was set to 30px.

Now if I can only find out where I need to change all the color settings… I really want to get away from the “redness” of this theme.

Categories
Apple

Parallels Desktop for Mac

In December I took advantage of the offer that Parallels made (buy before dec 23 and get free major upgrades for a year) and bought the Parallels Desktop for Mac software.

This virtualisation software allows any Intel-based mac to run Windows (or another Intel-cpu-based operation system like Ubuntu or even Reactos) side-by-side in Mac OS X 10.4 at close to native speeds.
I previously had played a bit with Virtual PC (Microsoft) and Qemu (OpenSource) on my PowerPC mac mini, but the performance was very sluggish (more so with VPC than with Qemu, actually). But with my new dual-core 2 imac, I wanted to give it one more try, especially as with the latest beta, Parallels now can use your Bootcamp partition as a virtual drive.

This means you need to create only one (Bootcamp) Windows partition on your Mac and then in Parallels create a new virtual machine and indicate that it needs to use your bootcamp partition. It’ll install some drivers, and you’ll need to reactivate your licence once (if you have a Volume XP licence, this does not apply).
Disclaimer : Please note that this only works if you let Bootcamp install itself on your primary disk. I’ve seen lots of mac pro users on the boards who have assigned another partition or even another disk where it is not working. My guess is that these bugs/missing features will be worked out soon enough…

The result has blown me away. Windows XP is running at full speed in a (re-sizable) window on my imac. Using Activity monitor, I can see that while Windows XP is active, both my CPU’s are running between 50 and 60% of capacity, but that means there is plenty left over to run other Mac applications. When XP is not running, CPU usage is around 10 to 20% … I haven’t compared it against Ubuntu, though, so it just might be Parallels who is taking all that CPU time to ‘virtualize’.
I’ve installed all of my office programs in it, and everything “just works”. As a plus, most of the simple 2D games my son Tom loves to play (like “Putt-Putt at the zoo” and “Ollo Tomaat”) just work !
Next I will try out Coherence mode, which allows one to run windows applications seamlessly next to mac application, each in their own windows.

My one big wish for this software : to support 3D DirectX. That would be sooo cool, not needing to reboot in Windows but just be able to play DirectX games when I feel like it.

Categories
Gaming PSP

PSP Firmware 3.02 cracked – PSX games possible without needing a PS3

I don’t know if the people at Sony were lazy or if the people behind the cracks are that good, but for at least a week now the psp firmware 3.0 (first 3.0, then 3.01 and now 3.02) has been cracked.

This is great news for those of us who would like to use emulation software on our psp.

If you downgraded from firmware 2.71 (now even from 2.80) to firmware 1.5 or used a custom firmware like 2.72 SE-B or SE-C you could already emulate lots of other systems :

But so far, Playstation One games (also called PSX games) could not be emulated on the psp. There was an attempt made early this year by an independent coder, but that didn’t really get that far, although many wished for it.

But now, Sony officially allowed you to buy and download psx games – on your hugely expensive PS3. You know, the one that currently (dec 2006) is nowhere to be found ? That is hugely expensive ?

That’s right, in order to play your old games (that you might still have lying around) on your psp you need to buy a PS3. Of all the stupid hare-brained schemes, marrying the psp to the PS3 to get PSX games is a really STUPID way of getting attention for your psp business.

I really get the feeling that the psp is not exactly the center of attention at Sony Games. Here is a chance to let the psp system shine, and whoops! – you can only download from our servers if you have a ps3. It simply sucks.

No way am I going to buy a PS3 – I’ve got two kids with the eldest being five years old, so I’m going to buy a Wii so I can play games with them ! I like my PS2, but I’m still selling it for the Wii – there’s only room and time for one console in my living room.

So for Sony Games to allow us to purchase PSX games only via the PS3 means that they are missing out on a lot of the emulation market – people who have fond memories of them playing games in their youth and want to relive the experience on their psp and marvel at its ability to be able to play them – in the palm of their hands !

So that’s why this is great news for those of us (like me) who don’t own a PS3 and are not planning on buying one anytime soon, and by the time I might buy one my psp will likely have gone to its grave…

Xenogears (if I can find the discs again) here I come !

Categories
Blog News

Merry, Merry, Merry all !

Snowy Christmas

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from all of us to all of you !

Alex, Dolores, Tom and Sam.

Categories
Blog News

Pictures from New Zealand

Christchurch
xdgspr

A mate of mine has been going all over under and around New Zealand this last year. From time to time he receives visitors from Europe.

Above is a link to some of the pictures one of those visitors made…

His own flickr account shows lots more

Categories
Apple Blog News Hardware

Busy with my new mac

I don’t have too much time right now.

I’m busy migrating my content from my mac mini to my new iMac, plus dual-booting into Windows XP to get a good dose of the latest graphical games there.
It’s a swweeeet beast… Guess which one I have ?

Ok, ok, for my own benefit (I just realised I use my own blog to find the hardware details of my stuff) :

Imac 24 inch consisting of an Intel Core Duo 2 (2.16 Ghz) , 2GB ram, 500 GB harddisk, Nvidia 7600 GT (256 MB Ram), AppleCare protection for 3 years).

Categories
Gaming PSP

Killzone : Liberation

Killzone : Liberation

A new addition to my gaming collection… Killzone : Liberation

So far very nice, good for some quick action, the save checkpoints are reasonably to very well placed, and you actually need to think to advance ! I’m playing on ‘easy’ mode, and that is already hard enough !

Also, while the game is played from an isometric perspective, the animations are all very well done, when you go sailing through the air after an explosion your limbs flail about ! Gruesome, but a nice touch.

‘Playable by Dads’ rating : ‘Pick it up!’

Categories
Hardware PSP

Getting online with your PSP if you use WEP

I’ve had to use WEP security for my wireless setup as I am working with a WDS setup.

This was needed so my DVD-HD Kiss Player, connected to an Airport Express, can get to the internet and download his program tv guide. And WDS only works with WEP… sigh. Otherwise I would be using WPA pre-shared key, which is much more secure and which the psp also supports.

Anyway, if for one reason or the other you do need to set up WEP, please use the 128 bit kind and set up mac filtering – the 64 bit key can be broken in the space of a few hours !

A few reminders (for you and for me) :

  • your psp can only use 802.11 B networks (it confused me though, that it can see the access point even when it is only in G mode… must be a different protocol or some such)
  • when using WEP, it is best to type in the actual WEP key and not the password that generates the key (the password is the one that you typed in your router to set up wireless wep security). For the 128 bit key you need to type in 26 digits.