Weblog Quotes

I have just spent the last several hours attempting to connect to my own wireless network. Why?, you ask. Because.. I don’t actually know. :/

During Saturday early-evening, I set about making a few twiddly changes to the router settings; up-dating MAC addresses in the filter; the access key; typical networkie admin st00fs, and then I left for the weekend. No texts or calls about “the internet isn’t working”; or “the page won’t load”; or anything else, so I feel all is well.

That is, until I come home. For some un-explained reason, I was un-able to connect from my main desktop. That’s okay, not a problem. I’ll just ‘repair’. Nope; still red. Even if the internet is down, the router can still be accessed. So I turn off the router; and try a re-start. Nothing. Scratching my head leads me to turn another machine on, which connects perfectly fine.

Confused? Most certainly. After a brief look through the access list, I see nothing wrong; so end up pulling the dongle out of the desktop, and jabbing it back in. I guess it became angry at that point, as it just wouldn’t connect. Having re-arranged my room slightly some weeks before, I thought the change of ports may have caused a hiccup; as, after booting up, the device would scan for a few moments before connecting. Something it never performed whilst in the back of the machine. This thought led me on to stuffing the installation disk in; but I had forgotten how annoying the damn thing could be. After un-installing; re-installing; preventing boxes popping up; setting XP to manage the network; fixing the XP log-on; and re-starting the machine, the stupid little icon was still red.

I was not a happy kitteh. Looking through the router settings again, I decided to turn off access control; and see what happened. Nothing happened. The next step was to turn off the access key. That changed nothing either. So I growled a bit; well, a lot. I also up-dated Ubuntu at this point, as it asked nicely for me to do so; and since the machine was on and connected to the router, I thought “Why not.”.

Making myself a cup of tea, I stood, rather confused, wondering just why one machine wasn’t connecting; when it had been perfectly okay two days before. My next thought was location. Since I had moved the XP desktop further away from the router, I decided to move the router closer. This yielded little results, and led to further pulling out and plugging in of the dongle. It began to become frustrating, until life sprung into the little red icon.

Yes. We had a green icon! But don’t celebrate too early. The green soon became red again, after I re-activated the filter list; and the access key. .. At least this act narrowed down the issue; or so I thought. Another half hour or so was spent disabling the key, and prodding the dongle; which allowed the little red icon to sit in the tray, mocking me. It wasn’t fair. :’(

Thinking about my options, which consisted of either running a fifteen foot Ethernet cable from the router to the desktop; or from the router to the xbox, I started to trouble-shoot step by step. I knew distance and location where no longer an issue, as I was picking up networks perfectly fine. The dongle just wouldn’t connect. I turned off the filter; and still nothing. I checked the key; and it was the same on each device. I turned off the key; and still the red icon laughed in my face.

I was ready to give up at this point. The thought of it being one really small; in-significant change causing all of the grief entered my mind. After I moved the router back; tidied up; and re-booted the desktop, I pulled out the dongle; and sat for a moment. Not doing anything. Around seven minutes past by, and I lazily plugged the now hated stick back in. To my surprise, the not-so-funny red icon is replaced once again by a green one.

Well, “This is great!”, I thought. But me being me, I wouldn’t be satisfied until I had figured out what the issue was. And me being daft, that is what I set out to do. Knowing there was no security on the router, I set about turning pieces back on. This was where I noticed a change. A weird change. The channel which the router was using was some-how set to eight. Hmm. .. Poking it back to eleven, I saved the settings; and watched the little green icon dis-appear, and then come back again. .. So far so good. Moving on to the MAC filter list, I turned it on; and re-saved. Everything was working well. The little icon was still green; and we where rolling along.

At this point, I looked at the dongle; and shook my head slightly. It couldn’t possibly be. Placing the eleven back on to eight, I re-saved the settings once more. My nice little green icon vanishes; but comes back red! .. NEVAR!! So, it seams, after countless time and seemingly pointless actions, I had painfully deduced that my wireless dongle does not enjoy utilising channel eight of the router. At this point, I just felt like screaming at it.

Having switched back to channel eleven, I re-saved; and the icon became green. Success. Turning the key back on prompted another save, and rewarded me with yet another green icon. Everything was now working as it should. Fantastic!

So, from now on, if I am ever in a rush to head to the hospital again; I will never; ever; ever, manage my network before I leave. .. I need a stiff drink; and an hour of Glee. Woo!

Over the past few days, I have been working on a handful of up-dates for two of my Windows Live Messenger skins; All Woollie Sheep and Enhanced Live.

Enhanced Live simply reverts a number of changes, as well as a bug fix or two, with nothing new being added.

AWS, at this time, has also had one or two fixes; and one or two reversions, but I plan on up-dating compatibility to the latest version of messenger (9.0). I’m not sure on when this will be, as I will need to re-learn a few pieces; and actually up-grade;¹ and extract the resources; and see what 9.0 looks like; and plan on the best attack; and possibly other stuff. It will take a while.

I have also up-dated the screen shots for use within the projects, and made some thumbnails for light-box. That was ‘fun’.

¹ After this, I will cease designing for 8.5.

I’ve just spent some time re-downloading mission packs ¹ for the Condition Zero branch of Counter-Strike, which was no easy feat on its own; and I’ve just remembered how fun the game is, and how fast time can slip past ( it’s already after ten ).

I’m not overly keen on multi-player stuff for any type of game, so I do prefer to play the solo missions; all on my own and what-not.

Hopefully this time round I can actually complete something, since I usually became side-tracked with other items or projects etc. I still haven’t completed the deleted scenes package yet.

*waits for the single comment*

Hehe. I don’t know. It’s summer, maybe I’ll finally learn to finish projects and games I start . . .

¹ I still have each of the packs, as well as a number of fixes, if anyone needs them. ^2
2 Saying that, I may as well link to the sites: Urban Ruins; Index of Packs; Deleted Scenes fixes. I’ll leave it to you to decide what you wish to download, and trust that you’ll read up on things and follow read me files before installing.

A couple of days ago my mam was sent a brand new desktop from university to allow her to complete the degree course she’s on. This came about when they told her the current (now older) machine wouldn’t handle the software required for the course.

Just glancing at the new box we feel it’s worse, spec wise, with a smaller monitor; no wireless card; and Vista basic. I doubt there is a graphics card; bigger hard disk; and more memory. There was no spec sheet and I don’t want to prod about inside just yet.

Basically the university paied over-the-top prices for a poor machine. All we had to do was add a few additional sticks of memory in the previous box.

Not to worry though, when the time comes I’ll jiggle bits about. The previous machine has now been allocated to my step-dad, and his old one (and I mean old) has been scavenged by moi.

From back when XP decided to assassinate my old machine I have had various bits floating about, so have decided to take three machines and build/re-build them into two.

I choose to re-add everything back into my first case, the Dell Dimension 5100, as it’s extremely quite. So, unplugging all external components; opening all the cases; setting myself on the lino; and grounding myself to thin air I proceeded to remove optical drives; hard disks; memory; floppy drive; and graphics card.

Box1: My first, the Dell Dimension 5100
Box2: My newest, a custom case with donor parts from Box1
Box3: The old machine, now a donor to Box2

With all the bits spread across the lino, I began to fit the Box2 hard disk; memory; and optical drive into Box1, with the optical drive and 512MB of memory going back ‘home’. I then took the floppy drive and a CD re-writer from Box3 and placed them into Box1. I have left the graphics card as the screw holding it to the case (preventing theft) is actually doing a perfect job (preventing theft that is), the screw head has been stripped so I can’t use a screwdriver. I shall need to find a set of small pliers to take the bugger out.

With those parts now in place, I began to add the hard disk and DVD ROM drive from Box3 into Box2. With all but the graphics card and processors shifted about, I hit a bit of a snag.

Initially, I wasn’t planning to swap the processor from Box2 back to Box1 as Box3 would cover it. I was wrong. Although it is a pentium4, the processor in Box3 has pins, but the plate thingy in Box1 doesn’t have holes. Since Box2 had the processor from Box1 I deduced Box3’s wouldn’t fit Box2. (I hope your keeping up, with all my colour schemes). This meant I had to move the processor back to Box1, which is fine, but I now had to move the hard disk and optical drive back to Box3, and put the processor back in. Yes, I had taken it out by this time.

After some more un-screwing, and cable prodding, I had Box1 re-built; Box2 half empty; and Box3 re-built. When I have an in-flux of money I need to buy a stick of memory and a processor to build up Box2, as Box3’s memory is DDR and won’t fit DDRII slots. I will keep the heat sink from Box3 as it was spotlessly clean (I’ll swap it into Box2), and aim to have the graphics card out over the next few days.

The motherboard; power pack; and cables will be used as spares, along with the noisy heat sink from Box2. I have no use for the processor and memory so they’ll be up for sale if anyone is in need, just leave a comment or use the websites contact form.

All in all it was a decent evening.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, I’m typing this from Box1.

As this version of messenger is now out in the open, skins will eventually need to be updated to fit the new layout and underlying code etc.

Patchou has informed us of a new Messenger Plus! Live version, to be released soon, that will address the new beta:

..a new version of Messenger Plus! will soon be released to let you update your skins for the new Messenger 9 Beta.

.. this is good news, as we can continue to release new designs for a popular application.

As for the current designs, they will be updated to fit both 8.5 and 9.0, with a few tweaks included as normal before an update release is made. Ubuntu Live is still un-finished, with work taking over there has been no time to complete everything.

There are plans to make a start on a new design, that will be created to look similar to another popular software, using the colour scheme; icons; and basic layout; etc etc. There is no definite start date for this, but hopefully before Christmas.

As the projects weblog is now up and running, I decided it was time to release an updated version of this skin.

This time around, the future updates procedure will be handled by Messenger Plus! without a necessity to download anything manually.

The main feature for this release is the Plus! toasts now fitting the skins style, with status icons no longer the defaults.

Several small parts have been updated as well, to fit around the projects area.

I’m not sure on where I plan to take this skin, but as new ideas are tried they will most likely be added in. If you have any ideas let me know and I’ll get to work.

All information and downloads for this skin have been moved from the forums, and can now be found here.

Thanks for the continued support.

I could physically scream at Vista right now.

I’m hard at work on the new design for my new website, name yet to be disclosed, and have the files scattered across three separate locations, my XP desktop; my external hard disk; and one of my memory pens.

When I first transferred the files over to my laptop to do a little cross-browser-testing it took me for ever to get Firefox 3.0 to even open the .html file. I had to fight the system to finally run it, and I can’t remember how I did but it worked fine. I.E 7 worked fine from the start. Pshh, typical.

The initial tests proved positive, with everything looking good across five browsers, which is always a good sign this early on.

Howeverrrr, and that’s a long; drawn out howeverrrr, today I decided to plug in the external disk to watch a movie on tv through my Xbox, fiasco posted below this one; listen to a bit of music since the laptop has none, which is now being streamed through my tv, cool huh?; and do a little more browser testing now everything has changed substantially.

Or so I thought. (That seems to be the pattern with me and technology, something never goes as straight forward as it should).

For some reason the external disk has read-only protection on the files, which I can remove but doesn’t help anything. For some daft reason, when I try to save the files Vista starts to cry about not being able to locate it. Yea, got me confused as well. I can’t even save the file as a fresh one as it can’t find the folder. Umm, it’s kind of open with this file in it.

This is where XP beats Vista for usability. Vista has the looks but that’s just a mac in a funny jumper.

*Considers formatting fully to Kubuntu* .. or buying a mac book thing!

Apart from all of these Vista issues the new design’s coming along well, it’s only a simple one with a nice colour and about three images, one of which is an icon.

I’m happy to say the design currently works on the current settings:

• Firefox 2 under Windows XP (sp2 & sp3), at 1024×768
• Opera 9.5 under Windows XP (sp3), at 1024×768
• IE6 under Windows XP (sp2 & sp3), at 1024×768
• Firefox 3 under Windows Vista (sp1), at 1280×800
• IE7 under Windows Vista (sp1), at 1280×800

Still to be Tested:

• Firefox 3 under Ubuntu & Kubuntu 8.04, at 1280×800
• Konquror under Kubuntu 8.04, at 1280×800

I would like to point out that if you use anything below I.E 6 it will not be supported. No exceptions! Simply upgrade to the latest stable release of I.E and everything will work as it should. I recommend I.E 7 though, 8 is still a beta so may possibly be buggy.

Over the next few weeks I shall continue to work on the designs, as well as the Windows Live Messenger skins I am making. There is a Ubuntu Live Messenger skin available for beta testing over at the forums, so get over there; download it; test it; give ideas for it; and help squish bugs.

Look out for more news soon.

What a faf on!

It took me about an hour to get this set up to run on my Xbox 360, through my new laptop. The first issue I came up against was codecs to play an .avi movie file on the laptop, that was easily solved with a download. The next issue was lack of codec support on the Xbox and the movie not wanting to play in media center. Humph.

After a few googlings I found nothing worth doing, so I tried accessing the videos section through the media tab directly to play the file. Nothing there. OK, change the settings to hunt down the laptop across my network and we’re good to go. Or not. After finding some files I need to download another set of codecs for the Xbox, so off I go to sign in to Live to retrieve these “updates”, or so we think.

What’s my password thingy again? Oh yea, I forgot!

This is where most of the hour was used up, trying to guess the four random button presses that could be any number of combination’s.¹. Why it couldn’t just be a word amazes me. After fruitless attempts ² to guess the button mashings, with plenty of button mashing, I gave up and decided to google again for help. All I found was four posts stating that the support team could help. Pfft, another hour on the phone I see.

I trundled off to the Xbox Live site to find an email link, which I did find, and sent them a descriptive letter; as during the attempted password recovery process I managed to run through the initial console setup thingymawatchit, which was bad since you can’t get out of it unless you know your password or set up a new gamertag.

I didn’t want a new tag so I submitted the email and began to feel disgusted with myself for forgetting something as frivolous as four buttons.³ However, after a final last ditch attempt, I think you can guess, well I did. I somehow managed to input the correct combination to sign in to Xbox Live.

Yay! Well that was a waste of email typing.

I downloaded my required update to play un-protected music and mpeg-4 movies; made my way back into the video’s section; found my file; and had a good giggle at it for a while.

All in all it’s turned out good. I can now use media centre on my Xbox.

1: If anyone wishes to count the possible combination’s I’ll write you a whole blog entry about it. Seriously.
2: That’s the first time I’ve ever used that terminology!
3: .. and that one. I don’t get out much.

As promised yesterday, I have decided to do one of those live bloggie things, where you blog as it happens. For this I shall review the Inspiron 1525, killing two chavs with one bottle as the saying goes.¹

I decided to call this a live entry due to the fact I’m using the laptop to write it. So during this time I shall review it on the ease of key use, as well as everything else.

To start off with I’ll give my systems specifications:

• Manufacturer: Dell (UK)
• Model: Inspiron 1525
• Op Systems: Vista Home Premium (SP1) + Kubuntu 8.04
• Display: 15.4″ Widescreen (1280 x 800) with TrueLife
• Hard Disk: 160GB SATA (5400 rpm)
• Memory: 2GB, 667MHz, Dual Channel DDR2
• Graphics: Integrated Intel Media Accelerator X3100
• Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo T5550, 1.83GHz, 2MB, L2 cache
• Optical Drive: 8xDVD +/- rw
• Wireless Card: Intel pro wireless a/b/g
• Ports: 4xUSB; 1xSD/MMC; 1xModem; 1xEthernet; 1xPS2; 1xCamera lead; 1xData lead; 1xExternal Monitor; 1xMic; 2xHeadphones, yea two.
• Additional: 2.0 mega pixel camera; custom chill design; 6-cell battery; built in wi-fi catcher; uk keypad; bundled crap ware.

Now to the good stuff. The machine itself is generally quiet, especially when sat idle. If the fan whirs you will hear it for a few moments, but it’s never constant. The hard disk goes through its clicking cycles when it’s working, but I find that to be relaxing and it isn’t really noticeable unless you listen for it.

The built in keyboard is within nice reach, nothing too stressful to use other than the delete button is in the top corner, it would be better situated near the bottom as I need it often. There is a slight space between several of the keys, for example: the menu key has space on both sides; and the home, page up, and page down keys have space to their left. This space looks out of place, and could of been used to spread the rest of the keys out a millimetre or two more. For general typing the keys are great, and don’t require any hard presses like a desktop keyboard.

The touch pad is where all the fun is had. After tweaking the settings to prevent the slightest breath of air clicking everything it’s a snap to use. Widening the scrollbar area makes things that much more easy to scroll through, and dragging files about is nice and easy. The buttons underneath don’t intrude with what you’re doing; sit at the same level as the cover; and require a slightly heaver press than the keypad keys, which prevents accidental pressings.

As I have the 6-cell battery and use power saving, the battery life is around four hours without intensity. If you started to watch videos; play games; listen to music the battery will drain quicker, I can’t really review battery life since my computer usage is different to yours. Plus the machine is plugged in cheating anyway.

Temperature wise, there is heat given from the bottom, and the area around the touch pad gets a tad warm to the touch. There isn’t really any ventilation on the bottom, so suffocating it on your bed will make the sheets warm. Across the top of the base, just below the screen are ventilation holes that, when looking aren’t all “open”. Having had the machine on for 29 hours there isn’t a noticeable difference in the temperature, It’s as warm now as it was yesterday and still sat on my bed.

The volume controls are touch strips, so no weird buttons sticking out where they shouldn’t be, and are very easy to use. The num lock; scroll lock; and caps lock strip is similar, except they are lights run via the keypad keys. All of these lights are blue when lit, with the volume control lights fading back out, which is brilliant. As a designer you can’t go wrong with blue.

Opening the optical drive, like all laptops is as simple as pressing the button on the “drawer”; waiting a few seconds for it to pop out; then pulling it further out. I have always found this feature annoying in laptops, I guess it’s just the fear of damage.

This laptop comes with two speakers, situated either side of the built-in web cam, and since I’m used to heavy bass lines from my mini sub, don’t give a poor performance but don’t give a great one neither. To have an idea what they sound like turn the bass down on your desktop speakers, either the sub like me; or within the sound settings, and you will have a high pitched sound. Now go higher and that’s somewhere near the laptops speakers. They could do with a bit of an umph, but they are quite adequate. I may plug the sub in and see what I get out.

The screen resolution of the machine is 1280×800, and is a 15.4″ wide-screen. It’s actually a nice wide-screen, and I prefer it to my desktop monitor at 1024×768 and 15″ square. I also have the TrueLife feature on this, which I didn’t want but couldn’t refuse, and it gets quite annoying when the sun shines all over it. That’s just the TrueLife though, the standard screen would be fine.

The built-in wi-fi catcher works a treat, just switch it across; give it a flick; and the machine scans for available networks. The wireless also works in Kubuntu without issues, whether that’s due to installation I don’t know but the Inspiron 6400 (my sisters and the one I planned to buy originally) didn’t run on the live disk.

I played with the camera briefly and for 2 mega pixels isn’t all bad. There is a small blue light which shines at you when the camera is on, whether this will become annoying I can’t say. It will however, give a visual representation that the camera is on so you don’t do something regrettable.

Using vista, the 2GB of memory is diminished to having just over 800MB left for Firefox. There isn’t any delays in the response times for programs, mostly due to the core 2 duo processor strolling through everything, and vista runs smoothly.

Overall this laptop is great, and I recommend it to all of you looking for something general for every day office type work or web browsing. For those of you gamer-nating, go for something designed for gaming or beef up the components.

I’m going to be lame and give a score: 9/10. Only 9 due to the delete button; the odd space between keys on the right side; the speaker quality; and well that’s it. Nothing else to complain about. It was a great purchase, and apart from the original order being stolen I’m happy I bought it.

If you have questions feel free to ask in the comments, Ill try and answer whatever you ask.

1: It doesn’t actually, it’s two birds with one stone but teh burdehs outrank teh chavz0rz!

Yayyy.

I have finally managed to receive my brand new laptop that I had ordered exactly one month ago today.

It took a few days longer than I had initially hoped, for the replacement to arrive, but apparently the carriers phoned me to arrange a time. Not by my phone records they didn’t.

If you have been following this weblog closely for the past few weeks you will know of my previous laptop delivery being stolen by someone un-known to me. This made me angry and I set off after Dell to have a new one sent out, to which they eventually agreed to do.

So here I am, sat on my new toy, blogging. How cool is that?

At some point tomorrow I shall write up a small review for it, just because really. Everyone else does it so why can’t I?

I’m actually tired now and want to sleep but I just can’t, I’m all excited; eating toast, which is cold.