Cool tool Nov 28 2005
This is an impressive tool, and useful too. I once wrote a whois command line tool for Windows because I missed the ease-of-use found by simply typing ‘whois domain.com’ on most Unix machines. However with this tool, I can simply open a browser, type the domain name I’m interested in, and with the suggestion options enabled, I can find out which TLD’s, if any, my name is available on, aswell as possible domain hacks (a la del.icio.us) all with one query! Awesome.
CommentsThanksgiving Nov 25 2005
We don’t celebrate thanksgiving here in the UK, but I do enjoy the fact that it gives me the opportunity to watch NFL on a Thursday, Sunday, AND a Monday this week, and that can only be a good thing. My beloved Atlanta Falcons played in the early thanksgiving game yesterday, and won 27-7, and I got to watch the game on TV over here :-) Awesome!
CommentsAbbreviations galore Nov 22 2005
The already cramped technology abbreviations arena gained a new member today in the form of SSE, or Simple Sharing Extensions. This is a namespace addition to RSS and OPML. It transforms RSS into a bi-directional form of communication, making it more of an updatable, editable resource, rather than a read-only feed of information. A lot of the buzz today on the ‘net has been surrounding this announcement, and it certainly seems quite interesting. At first glance, SSE gave me a couple of ideas for some cool apps that’d take advantage of the technology, so I think I’ll sit down and take a really good look at the spec and FAQ when I get chance, see what I can cook up… Nice to see though that the innovation freight train isn’t done just yet for 2005, it is cool to see the web become such a huge breeding ground for ideas and concepts at long last, with big companies like Microsoft taking up the charge and driving ideas forward.
CommentsA must read Nov 22 2005
This is one of the most entertaining pieces I’ve read on the web in a while, and it actually had me laughing out loud. It’s a must read for any programmer ;-)
CommentsSome reading Nov 21 2005
I’ve decided that maybe it’s time I went back and filled in gaps in my knowledge in the C/C++ programming languages. As such, I picked up some reading material. Firstly, C Pocket Reference is a nice, concise reference to various aspects of the C syntax, and the C standard library. I’m working my way through it at the minute, and finding equal measures of stuff I know, and stuff I don’t :-P
Next up, Sams Teach Yourself C++ in 24 Hours, a book I figured I’d work through, and will probably end up skimming through the first half, just brushing up on the basics, and then concentrate on some of the stuff I’m not so comprehensive on in the second half of the book - some of the more advanced topics.
So I hope to work through these two books over the next week or so, and maybe think of a few cool test apps I can knock up to practice my C/C++. I really want to tidy my skill-set in these languages, as I think they are the foundation to good coding elsewhere, and to having a good knowledge of ‘how stuff works’. We’ll see how I get on with the books, and whether they are as useful as I hope they are :-)
Dedicated server Nov 21 2005
I’m looking at the possibility of upgrading my server package at the minute, and how feasible it is. There are a couple of reasons I want to do this. Three in fact. Firstly, a beefier server is always welcome. Secondly, some of the other server packages include backup options for free within the package, and I really want to get a good backup sorted. And thirdly, some of the packages also have unlimited bandwidth - currently I’m limited to 10GB bandwidth a month, and above that I pay for the extra. So far, I’m well under this limit, but I know for a fact that it pays to be mindful of future expansion, and so I’m keeping one eye on options ;-)
The trouble at the minute would be to migrate existing data to a new server - looks like I’ll have to run two packages at the same time for a month or two, while I copy over my data to a new server. Hmm…
In the meantime, I’ve tidied up my current server, spending a large part of this week clearing out a lot of crap, restructuring the sites, sorting out the LDAP directory, and performing general maintenance on the box. Hopefully the result will be slightly increased performance, we shall see!
System of a Down Nov 21 2005
Got the new System of a Down CD, Hypnotize, through the mail on Saturday as I had it pre-ordered with Play. Superb album, really good. Always been a HUGE fan of SOAD, and I had already heard a few tracks off the second of their double album Mesmerize/Hypnotize when I saw them at Brixton in June. But the new album as a whole is a work of art, really enjoyable to listen to. I recommend it to anyone who has a passing interest in decent, melodic, yet heavy rock.
A funny aside; while listening to the album for the first time, about half-way through, I was reading some news on the ‘Net, and saw some stuff on this Sony DRM/rootkit that was shipped with some of their latest CD’s. I suddenly realised I hadn’t checked any of the CD’s I’d bought recently to see if they were in fact affected. I looked at the back of Hypnotize, and sure enough, it was a Sony CD. A quick visit to the list of affected titles put my mind at ease, but it dawned on me what a big deal this really was, and what a huge recall even just the 52 affected titles must be. Crazy stuff.
New domains Nov 18 2005
I picked up a couple of new domains yesterday, ejdraper.com, and xframework.net. At the minute, http://www.ejdraper.com redirects straight to this blog, but I have a couple of ideas what I might want to do with it, so watch that space! http://www.xframework.net functions just the same as http://www.xframework.org.uk, likewise with http://svn.xframework.net. When I was first browsing for a domain for xFramework, I hadn’t realised xframework.net was free, and so bought xframework.org.uk. The other day I realised xframework.net was free, and so I thought maybe that’d be a slightly more memorable and useful domain to have for the xFramework project.
I took the time to tidy up my various domains and web spaces today too, and came up with a few domains I have that I definitely won’t mind leaving to lapse in the next year or two when their renewal comes up :-P
May the force be with you... Nov 17 2005
So in gaming news, I see that Star Wars Galaxies has been given the biggest facelift I can recall for a live MMORPG, I just logged in and checked out the changes, and I have to say I’m quite impressed. I’ve started in on the road to becoming a Jedi, and so far I’m pretty pleased with the ‘movie-like’ feel that SOE have come up with.
In other RPG news (this time not of the massively multiplayer kind), I’ve only just seen that in fact a sequel to one of my favourite RPG’s of all time has been announced. IGN have some info here on Neverwinter Nights 2, which promises to bigger and better than the original. In fact, it almost makes me want to dig out the original to tide me over :-) But I won’t, and here are a number of reasons why: Age of Empires 3, Quake 4, F.E.A.R., Resident Evil 4, GUN, and Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland.
There, I think that’s more than enough linkage for now, and enough games to last me into 2007 at this rate… ;-)
Improvements, continued Nov 16 2005
Ok, so I’ve gotten most of the improvements done. The title at the top is hyperlinked to my e-mail address now for those that want to contact me. There is a link at the bottom of the page to the RSS feed for those not using a browser that will pick up the feed automatically. I’ve changed the tagging of posts so I can tag a post with however many tags I need. I’ve improved the blog formatting, so I can space posts properly, and most importantly, I’ve added text formatting and syntax highlighting so I can write code snippets within posts. For example, check this out:
using System;
namespace El
{
public class TestSnippet
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
//Test comment within snippet!
Console.WriteLine(‘Test snippet of code demonstrating syntax highlighting!’);
}
}
}
So thats most of the improvements and fixes I wanted to get done, watch this space as I work a bit more on a few projects I’ve got bubbling, and of course as I keep working on getting those xFramework releases out the door!
EDIT: Just deployed a quick fix, as it seemed like one of the improvements added today (most likely the text formatting) was having an adverse effect on performance. The fix should speed things up a little again.
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