With bbPress 0.8.2 hot off the press and, with it, the addition of the ability to create child boards, I’ve released version 1.3 of the Navigation Theme for bbPress to accommodate for nested child boards. I’ve wanted to have the ability to create child boards for quite some time now, so this is a very nice addition that I will enjoy very much.
Tags: bbpress, navigation-theme
The Xbox 360 is just simply amazing. Last night was the first time I’ve ever really had the chance to sit down and explore my way through the new dashboard and see all the available features. I was awed. It’s sleek, trim, and sharp and miles better than what the original Xbox can do.
First order of business was getting all the equipment set up. Piece of cake. Then it was time to login and connect to Xbox Live. A quick update and I was ready for account recovery. Done in a wink. Then another update, change the gamertag (appending a TTL to the front of my tag), toss Halo 2 in the tray, download those updates, download the maps to the hard drive, download a final update, and we’re in business. And let me just say, I noticed a definite improvement. Not only were the graphics more crisp and clean, making it a lot easier to spot a Spartan on the other side of the map with just a glance, but my gameplay was better than it’s been in weeks.
I’ve had a theory about this for a few weeks now. I think those of us who still played Halo on an original Xbox were at a bit of a disadvantage to those who played on a 360. For starters, the processor speeds are different. The 360 can render and process the game much more quickly than the original can – and that’s part of the point of having the three processing cores in the 360. Trouble is, the original Xbox then has a hard time keeping up, resulting, I think, in increasing lag times – and in any FPS game, lag is a definite detriment. Add to this the fact that the graphics are better on a 360, thus giving those players a slight advantage just on the level of visibility. Faster spotting times means faster reaction times – and it made a big difference in the way I played last night. Then there are the recent Xbox Live updates of recent weeks, which have, I suspect, favored the 360. These three factors taken together leave me suspicious that the original Xbox is now far too outdated for Live performance to allow those still ‘stuck’ with that console to continue to be competitive. Could be I’m wrong about all this, of course, but I think I’m at least close.
I only messed with my 360 for about an hour last night, outside of all the initial installations and upgrades, but already I find myself addicted. There are demos I want to download, the arcade to try out, videos to watch, and much more. My inner geek is going, “Whee!”
It’s official – my 1GB flash drive, the one I’ve been running Firefox, Filezilla, GAIM, and every single other portable application from for the last several months, is officially hosed. I plugged it into my computer at home tonight and got the same disc-not-formatted error I got at work today. So I reformatted it and attempted to move files from backup onto it. Every attempt failed about halfway through. So I tried to push just Firefox onto it. It went, but when I tried to start it, it would load most of the way through, then stop and start loading from scratch again.
Final determination – flash drive: 1; Jim: 0. I lose.
I’m not surprised. I make my flash drives work hard. They’re plugged in and running nearly 24/7, which means a rather limited lifespan. I think what I really need is one of those new portable hard drives, but those are currently way out of my price range (along with a whole host of other geeky toys I’d love to play with).
So, I’m back to where I was before – running separate instances of Portable Firefox on my work and home PCs until I can afford to replace my flash drive.
Bummer, dude.
Tags: firefox, flash-drive, Technology
My flash drive and I are at odds this morning. It was working when I left the house for work today, but when I plugged it into my computer at work, suddenly it was no longer formatted – and would I like to format it? Of course not, I say, since that would mean I would definitely lose all the data on the drive. So, my flash drive has been set in a corner, where it will likely spend the rest of the day moping. I’ve had to download the Portable Applications Suite again and live with a version of Firefox that is a bit more lightweight than I’m accustomed to. I’ll try plugging it into my computer at home again tonight and see if I can force it to be cooperative, but I’m fearful that it may actually require a reformat – for whatever reason – to get it working again, and I’ll have to restore my flash drive from a backup. And of course it figures – I forgot to back it up last night, so the latest backup I have is a couple of weeks old. I can live with that, even if I’m not necessarily happy about it. Worst case scenario is that the flash drive is completely dead, which wouldn’t be terribly surprising, considering how hard I make it work. I’m going to keep my fingers crossed, though, and see what happens.
Tags: computers, flash-drive
Frack.
One of my favorite WordPress plugins – Text Control – is broken with the update to WordPress 2.1.3. Unfortunately, I didn’t notice it until this morning, so it’s probable that my blog was broken all day yesterday. I’ve no idea if this plugin is still being supported – I certainly hope it is because all of my entries are formatted using Textile 2, which Text Control handles (or did) very nicely.
I can only hope it gets updated. And soon. For now, all my formatting from historical entries is broken.
Edit: I’ve reinstalled the Textile2 plugin (now TextileWrapper) so that at least my formatting works again. But I’m back to the problem I had before where, for some reason, the quicktags for my Contact and PluginsUsed pages break.
Tags: plugins, software, text-control, WordPress
Geeky things I’d love to learn how to do but haven’t, as yet, found the time or opportunity:
I’m sure there are others, but these stand at the top of my list.
Tags: geek, gimp, machinima, photoshop, Technology
Strange – over the past two or three days, my site statistics have spiked. Already today I’ve received 319 unique hits, nearly all from unknown referrers – and I’m really not sure why. The vast majority of these hits seem to be directed at my Book Love entry from a few days ago. Again I’ve no clue as to why. Initially, I was thinking spambots, but the almost single-minded focus on this one entry would seem to preclude that idea (spambots generally run the gamut of archived entries). So, the only other thing I can think of is that someone submitted that entry to a social bookmarking site – yet I don’t see that site listed as a referrer, which naturally causes doubt.
So, anyone know if that entry got submitted somewhere? Or can anyone offer up a better explanation for the sudden spike in traffic to my site?
Tags: counterize, plugins, site-statistics, Technology, WordPress
WordPress has all kinds of nifty little crosspost plugins now. With one click of a button, anything I post here will automatically and simultaneously be posted on Xanga and LiveJournal, as well. So allow me to add another item to my WordPress wishlist – a WordPress to WordPress crosspost plugin. Why would I ever want something like this? Simple – there are selected items I post here that I might want to deliver to an alternate site1 or I might simply want to mirror my site elsewhere, kind of as a backup in case something goes kerplooey here. What features would such a plugin require? Here’s some to start:
I think that’d certainly do for starters. Any coding geniuses out there want to take on a new project?2
Tags: crossposting, plugins, software, Technology, WordPress
I’ve just finished a complete site redesign on Flashes of Speculation, giving it what is, I hope, a unique and attractive layout.
I built this template – called Speculation (for obvious reasons) – from the ground up, stripping the necessary files down to the bare code to keep WordPress running and then builing everything back up around that. The result is a light-weight, minimalistic theme that serves to display just three categories (four, technically, if you count the announcements field at the top) on the front page in a 3-column format. In this case, I wanted to separate out the three primary genres of fiction that FoS specializes in, give a single-line teaser, and a link to the full post. The archives are structured in a similar manner, albeit in a single column, and the page navigation can be found in the footer.
Unfortunately, this theme will not be offered for public release at this time. Due to the specialized nature of the theme, it’s a beast to configure, and I haven’t the programming knowledge at this point to automate everything in the Dashboard or make the selection of categories and pages in the various places more efficient. That is something I will likely research for a 2.0 release to the public. For the time being, however, simply enjoy the theme on FoS and feel free to let me know of any bugs or glitches you notice.
Tags: Coding, flashes-of-speculation, geek, themes, WordPress
A couple of friends treated my wife and I to dinner at The Cheesecake Factory this past Saturday1, and afterwards we walked around The Fashion Mall for a bit to work off a bit of the meal. We ended up stepping into the Apple store there, which may have been a big mistake – I think I’ve become an even bigger fan of Apple products.
I’ve been drooling over iPod for a little while now, and previously I’d mentioned that I was interested in acquiring an 8GB iPod Nano in the black flavor. However, after having actually handled a couple of these devices in-store, I’ve been wooed and won by the iPod itself.2 The 8GB iPod Nano runs the same prices as the 30GB iPod, the only difference, of course, being the physical sizes of the two devices. Being the practical man that I am, I have repented of my desire for the smaller iPod Nano and have changed my allegiances to the larger, more powerful iPod. And for just $100 more, I could nab the larger 80GB iPod, leaving me plenty of room to further expand my music library.
Apple has also done very well in product design. All the Apple products now look sharp, sleek, and sexy. They actually look like the electronic devices of the future and are built in such a way as to be immensely functional and practical while also being easy on the eyes. The graphics displays are all exceptionally crisp and clean and almost make my mouth water. Plus, Apple products are work-horses – they’re built for power and durability and are designed to last a long, long time. My wife has wanted a G4 or G5 for quite some time now, and after having seen them up close and personal myself, I think now I want one, too. Another marketing device that Apple has done right – opening up a store to let people come in and play with all the ‘toys.’
Does that make me a mindless automaton?
Tags: apple, apple-g4, apple-g5, ipod, ipod-nano, ipod-video, Technology
