Archive for September 2005
Opera Is FREE, FREE, FREE!
20 September 2005 in Root | Comments (1)
Ok, this is just officially a crazy day! 
For the first time that I know of, there have been major technological brakethroughs on my birthday! 
Anyways, my favorite browser Opera is now, completely, utterly F R E E ! No more banners, ads, or reg-nags for anyone! 
So, head over to Opera’s homepage to download the best* browser there is! If you have got a Bittorrent client installed, then you can download the free Opera via torrents.
(* = as tried and tested by yours truly)
Official Dell Axim X51 Day Today?
20 September 2005 in Root | Comments (1)
It just happens to be my birthday, and things are (for some reason) happening on the Dell Axim front today: there are bunch of Dell Axim reviews popping up all over the place! 
The X51 isn’t much more than a X50 with a new operating system installed and a bit more memory. That, is just about the major news in the “a dot release” as Jason Dunn said in his review of the device. PocketNow also have put up their review of the device and they pointed out that the Bluetooth stack being used in the X51 is now the Microsoft stack, which simply isn’t the best Bluetooth stack out there. The Broadcom stack is more complete and has gotten a so much better GUI than what the Microsoft stack has got.
But overall, the X51 is a cool device since you can connect it directly to a projector (to show what you’re doing on-screen), it has gotten an integrated 3D graphics accelerator and runs Windows Mobile Pocket PC 5.0 (which looks cool). Dell could be nice and send me an X51 for reviewing, just because…. 
Spice Up Your WordPress Administrator Pages: About Links Contact WP Tiger Administration
19 September 2005 in Root | Comments (0)
I’ve been using this WordPress “plug-in” for some little time now and must give you all a head’s up on the coolness factor on WP Tiger Administration. What it does, is make the WordPress administrator pages look very much like Apple’s Mac OS X Tiger (version 10.4). The design is top quality and Steve Smith has done a great job at designing it. Works very nicely on Opera (with Mac OS X-ish skin on) and could grab people’s attention for sure. It is way more legal choice than running the unofficial x86 Mac OS X version on a PC…
So for all of you WordPressers and Mac fanatics out there, be sure to give it a test drive. It is very simple to install: unzip, upload the files to your server, go in to WP admin and enable the plug-in — you’re done! 
It makes the admin pages load slightly slower, but that won’t burn your eyes in the long end.
Ah, the Joys of Writing - AKA: An Update on Things Happening
9 September 2005 in Root | Comments (0)
With the flu finally gone (at the start of this week, acctually), I have had more things to do lately which have ment that I don’t have time to blog much:
Writing reviews: I’ve got around three program Pocket PC reviews in progress stage with a 90% completion status and I’m wanting to get them over with and posted. I’ve got two hardware reviews as well upcoming: one computer related and another one more related to mobile computing. When I manage to finish them off, I will for sure post a link here to them. I just wish I had gotten them done much earlier than this late, but what can you do when time flies? 
Programming: I got to admit that I love to program over writing reviews as of lately. It is sort of the same “disorder” which happens when it is exam time — you start to clean the whole apartment for some strange, subliminal reason. Maybe it is because the entropy has to decrease around yourself before you can cram in those lecture notes into your head? I dunno…. But anyways, I’ve been fixing a new version of my university webschedule exporting program to work with SSL and amazingly it was easier said done, than said. Just a little Google-ing around and I found the little piece of code to make WebRequest object access all SSL sites with no butts, and no questions asked. (Security wise it’s no biggie since it is only a scheduling server which isn’t attached to anytype of personal information, or the university authentication system.)
My J# RSS & weather screensaver (made for a school project) amazed me when running under .NET framework 2.0 beta, since it was incredibly much faster than on the 1.0 framework! I really thought that was a bit wierd. Furthermore, Visual Studio 2005 complained a whole lot when I used threading and updated a thread from another thread — the reason for which, I don’t exactly know, but it wasn’t allowed according to VS2005. Running the program by double-clicking on it, didn’t render any error messages on my wonderful thread usage. 
(Anyone knowing why that is, please let me know. )
The Fall Is Here: Which means, windy, windy weather and my university studies start. I’ve been at campus this week checking out the freshmen and the views. Nothing has changed radically though, just noticed that the WiFi network — PCWN — had been upgraded sometime to mainly 802.11g, which is nicer to use with my new computer. I also managed to report in time to the exemption tests in English (one written another one was a presentation) and it seems like I managed to pass them both. Wohoo! Well, I should get some bonue for taking after the IB high school, and this I guess was a reward for taking the IB diploma some time ago.
New Orleans: It is pure tragedy which has hit the New Orleans area after hurricane Katrina. It is worrying to see that the US Government cares more about crime and terrorism than helping people right out from the start. The farce is completed with the Bush’s morale boosters (aka. press conferances and going to visit in New Orleans) being broadcast all around the world and still no help is sent to those poor souls down there. The words of Kanye West still echo in my mind… 
To my surprise, the US can’t handle the situatiuon themselves but need the help of other countries, as well as my homecountry - Finland. I think that in a few years time, most of the people in New Orleans will thank their god(s) when Bush finally leaves his post in the White House. (Hopefully to never return again.)