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WP Plugins to investigate :

Here are some plugins which I’ll be looking at (mostly this is a note to myself).

  • Backup your WordPress : One-Click Backup for WP 1.5 – also read the tutorial ! Done.
  • For small to medium large databases,
    optimize
    your WP database once a year.
  • Have a icon showing the local weather. Use this link to find your weather station code. Done.
  • Statistics for your blog : Ba Stats. Done.
  • Here’s another note to myself : reminder : BACKUP BEFORE DOING ANYTHING ! Done.

    Categories
    Links TechScience Future

    New High-Capacity Microdrives coming

    Hitachi is working on new micro-drives that are using a different sort of magnetic recording (perpendicular instead of longitudinal recording).

    Categories
    Hardware

    Dead Pixel Problem & HP online support

    I just noticed that my iPaq has two dead pixels. They are left of the screen, not really centered and not really visible unless you open up media player with it’s black background – then you see them. One is colored red, the other one is colored blue.

    As this is a newly bought handheld, I first went to the shop to see if I could exchange it. No luck, they stated (correctly, from reading the docs) that I would need to contact HP support as they handle al after-sales support.

    No, I didn’t buy it in the Fnac, or else I would have been able to exchange it for another due to their standard exchange policy. Bweuh.

    So I went to the HP support webpages, and selected the online chat support system, which first collects information from your pc (only those parts that you want help with, in this case Active Sync and the model and serial number of my iPaq).

    I then had 3 support people (all with Indian names, but that doesn’t really matter, just that I am not used to seeing people with names longer than mine) ‘analysing my situation’, asking me to wait while they did this.

    I think this is a standard message they have in the copy/paste buffer, as all I asked was ‘What are your support policies regarding the return of a handheld with 2 dead pixels ?’.

    The first support person asked me how ‘big’ the dead pixels were – uuuumm, 1 pixel big ? Duh.
    The second didn’t add anything, and the third person referred me to my HP local after-sales telephone support.
    So I’ll give them a call come Monday, see what they have to say.

    Update :
    I called HP Support Belgium on Monday – in the end, they told me that they could not take it in for replacement. They only do iPaq replacements if there is more than 1 dead pixel (I am not sure how many dead pixels you need to qualify, more than 2 I think), and the pixels are totally dead (aka they show up as white-colored).

    He explained to me that each pixel is made up out of 3 sub-pixels : red, green and blue, like a RGB-monitor, same principle, and that the fact that I had 2 dead subpixels did not qualify me for an iPaq replacement.

    It is only really viewable on a black background, so I am not too bothered about it. Still, it’ll teach me for not checking the screen out before buying it. Kudos for the guy in HP Phone Support – he at least knew what he was talking about.

    Categories
    Hardware

    HP iPaq hx2410

    I finally succumbed to my craving and bought myself the HP iPaq handheld.

    It’s the hx2410, which has an Intel PXA270 processor (520Mhz) with integrated wi-fi (802.11b) and bluetooth connectivity. I had been planning to buy the rx3715 with a built-in camera and slightly more memory, but in the end I opted for the faster processor, since I already have a digital photo camera, and I hope that with the faster CPU it will last much longer with more demanding applications in the future.

    It will be a part of a gps solution with TomTom 5 – which is coming out in May 2005.

    Categories
    Blog News

    Another update

    Dolores is home, but has to take beta-inhibitors (which have some nasty side-effects) to prevent contractions. She has to rest a lot, which means that I have to do most of the housekeeping, but better this than her in hospital. I look at it as a preparation for when our second child arrives !

    The car has been repared, free of charge (it’s got a 2-year warranty, and it’s not yet a year old) and is back with us.

    I’ve started looking into a gps solution for the car – I’m currently looking at the iPaq hx2410 handheld together with a TomTom gps solution, more on this later…

    Categories
    Blog News

    Vacation it was not !

    Well, we were supposed to take a midweek vacation in a Sunparc domain. A way to relax before the strenuous business of having a new baby and all that comes with it. At the end of the very first day, while walking between pools in the sub-tropical swimming paradise, Dolores slipped and did a belly-flop. Now this is not the thing to do when you’re 7 months pregnant.
    She was not hurt badly, but both her and me were in shock and concerned for the baby, so we went to the local hospital in Veurne to do a check-up. The gynecologist at hand did not find anything wrong with the baby, but the monitor showed that there were some contractions. It was decided she would stay overnight.
    Tom and I went back to our little house to spend the night, thinking we would pick her up the next day. We both had a hard time getting to sleep, and Tom woke up at 3 crying for his mommy.
    In the morning Dolores called me – the contractions continued, she had to receive a medicine to stop them, but this meant a 3-day stay-over in the hospital. This was prolonged for 3 more days as the contractions came back after the first dose of the medicine.
    Dolores is back home since Sunday, everything seems to be ok, but she has to rest as much as she can.

    On top of that, when I wanted to drive home on Friday to pick up some clothes for her, the car broke down. I had to have it towed to Halle, as it was full of our vacation stuff, and my replacement car is a Renault Clio.

    I’ll be busy the next few weeks…

    Categories
    Hardware

    iPod Shuffle update

    After using the iPod earbuds for a time, perhaps half an hour, my right ear hurts. I’ve now switched to some Sony earbuds, (MDR-ED21LP for the connaisseurs) as I heard some good stuff about them, but I think I prefer my old Philips ones more – however, they are attached to my previous 128Mb mp3 player.

    No complaining about the iPod Shuffle itself though, it works very well, and controlling it is intuitive. Most of the time, it is set to Shuffle mode.

    Categories
    Blog News

    Privateer Remake!

    Privateer was a DOS game made by Origin sometime in the 1990’s, when a 486 CPU with 8 MB RAM was still the top of the line ! I remember buying it and being flabbergasted by the video and renders in the game intro.

    A group of people took the opensource vegastrike engine, and rewrote Privateer with up-to-date graphics.

    Version 1.0 is out *NOW* and it’s playable for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. The file weighs in at 178 MB, so you are advised to use a bittorent download if your internet pipe is not large enough (and it keeps their ISP happy).

    Go get it !

    Categories
    Hardware

    LinkSys Router WRT54G

    Today I finally bought myself a LinkSys WRT54G router (the company is now owned by Cisco), to replace my aging Belkin wirelles router, which could only do 802.11b (which means 11Mbps). This new router can do wireless speeds up to 54 Mbps using 802.11g.

    I’ve heard great things about the router, especially in combination with 3rd party firmware upgrades. I’ll be checking that out in the near future.

    I have bought the very latest V3 of the WRT54G which also has the official V3 linksys firmware installed (3.03.1) – none of the 3rd party websites even mention V3 of the firmware or hardware !! So for now I’ll wait a bit and start reading up on the different firmwares and their capabilities and compare them to the factiry firmware installed.

    So far, it seems that LinkSys has incorporated quite a few of the ‘hacks’ that were doing the rounds, like the ‘ping’ hack I read on the sveasoft support forum.

    After a small struggle to follow the superduper friendly installation wizard, which assumes you are doing this for the very first time, I closed it. Kudos to the wizard for finding out I was cheating though – it correctly identified that I had already connected the router to the pc and the cable modem.

    As I was not installing a router for the first time but rather replacing it, I figured I could handle it and went through the setup manually. This worked better than the wizard, in just a few minutes my net connection was back up.

    Now I’m going to try for the difficult part – setting up the wireless network with encryption. Always fun with an apple computer which just has to have it’s wep keys entered differently than others …

    Update : that was easy ! For the mac lovers out there, connect via a (wired) pc/mac to the router’s interface, activate wireless security, choose WPA Shared key (TKIP, and not AES) and type in your secret phrase. On the mac, you don’t get a choice, just WPA personal. Type in the exact same phrase, clicking ‘add to keychain’. That’s it, surf’s up !!

    Categories
    Blog News

    Something on my mind

    When I was young, each choice was a sacrifice.
    Now that I am older, each sacrifice is made by choice.