a week of wordpress

May 3, 2006 by Taoski

WordPress and I have now hit first base!  It has been just over one week since I made the cut over from Blogger and we are already holding hands and giving each other pet names.

"love you… pressy…"

Since moving over I feel all "grown up" and serious about blogging.  Joining Geeklimit has made this feeling more real and it feels great to be doing some proper technical blogging stuff, like.

As usual I have been obsessed with watching my stats and wordpress gives you a few builtin tools to track your visitors, popular posts and how people came to the site.

stats.jpgMy traffic is slowly building and since taking this capture has rocketed after an influx of visits from Geeklimit.

Overall, I am very impressed with WordPress and would recommend it to anyone!  There is a wealth of free templates available (although we cannot change them here on wordpress.com). 

Geeklimit

May 1, 2006 by Taoski

I have just been accepted as a new team member over at Geeklimit.com.

Therefore, my "technical posts" will go there – and the rest of my mindless drivel will go here!

iPod and Photos

April 28, 2006 by Taoski

I have spent all morning a little time trying to research using the iPod to store photographs and quite specifically – what the quality is like when it outputs the photos to a TV.

There seems to be lots of sites that cover viewing the photos on the iPod screen and with the new 5th Gen iPods you also get groovy transitions between each photo. However, they never go into a real detail about the TV display, the speed the images load onto the TV screen or the output quality.

It's actually not research for me. Although I would love to have a video playing/picture displaying iPod to replace my 4th Gen one, it's for my Father. A keen photographer, he recently purchased a Sandisk Digital TV Player to display his digital snaps and scans on the TV. He was less than impressed though as the time it took to display each picture was like going back to downloading porn pics over a 9600bps dial up connection – slow and frustrating. So he took the device back to the retailler within a few days of purchase.

We were then talking about iPods as someone he knows is getting a 30gb 5G model for her leaving present at work and I suggested he get one for displaying his photos on the TV as I knew they had that functionality. He could also get the iPod Camera Connector to upload photos from his camera when on holiday.

But I cannot really find much information about it. Can anyone help? Do you have a 5th Gen iPod and have first hand experience of displaying the photos on a TV?

Just Ordered

April 27, 2006 by Taoski

Just splashed some cash over at Play.com and purchased a 12 month subscription to XBOX Live and a Joytech VGA Cable too.

So, by the end of the weekend I should be up and running on the 360 via my PC monitor!
This means that while the wife will be watching Eastenders, I will be killing some poor teenager on Halo 2 or winning another match on FIFA RTWC…

Well.. maybe. 

Web Based Office Tools

April 27, 2006 by Taoski

So, you missed the train to work, the dog ate your laptop and your iPod ran out of batteries.  Time to slope off back to your house and do some tea drinking tele-working.  There are numerous web-based applications that can replace or augment your PC based software.  Mos of them allow collaboration of some sort and are available where ever you can get access to a browser.

Here is a list I have made of the main players broken down by application type. If you have any more to contribute – leave me a comment.

Calendar:
http://calendar.google.com
http://30boxes.com

Word Processing:
http://www.writely.com
http://www.ajaxwrite.com
http://www.zohowriter.com
http://writeboard.com

Spreadsheet:
http://www.irows.com
http://numsum.com
http://www.editgrid.com
http://www.numbler.com

Presentation Software:
http://www.thumbstacks.com

PDF Making:
http://www.pdfonline.com/index.htm
http://www.expresspdf.com
http://www.rss2pdf.com

Drawing/Photo Editing Software:
http://pixoh.com/
http://www.flickr.com
http://www.pxn8.com/

Flowcharting Software:
http://gliffy.com/

Project Management Software:
http://www.basecamphq.com/

Complete Office Suite:
http://www.goffice.com

Clipboard:
http://cl1p.net/

Bookmarks:
http://www.del.icio.us.com
http://www.spurl.net/

Google Calendar Notifier

April 27, 2006 by Taoski

For those like me who are obsessed with thinking they can manage their time better, the new Google Calendar is a godsend. Unfortunately, like most things, you can only see whats going on when you are in the site.

To counter this, a Google Calendar Notifier extension has been created for Firefox which shows you your up-coming appointments in the status bar. You also get cute little pop-ups too!

Great for the absent minded people of this world, like me.

As feared…

April 27, 2006 by Taoski

When I plugged in my iPod to my home PC running iTunes this morning, it quite happily overwrote the database and the tracks from "Northern Exposure – Expeditions" that I added here at work yesterday have all gone.

Shame.

But as Yamipod is so cute and I don't buy from iTunes – there is nothing stopping me using Yamipod as the manager for my iPod.

DamoB blogged about Anapod Explorer as an alternative to using iTunes, but as you have to install it onto a PC to use it – it's not quite what I wanted.

Joytech Xbox 360 LCD Monitor

April 27, 2006 by Taoski

Just spotted this news article over at Xbox-Scene regarding the impending Joytech fold-down LCD screen for the XBOX 360.

I saw this listed over at Play.com a few months ago and expected it to be a larger LCD monitor designed to fit with the 360 – but it turns out that it's only a "flap screen".  I suppose it means you could play games in the car though.  Go wardriving for a WiFi connection or get yourself a mobile wireless setup and you could play against your mates on Live too!

YamiPod

April 26, 2006 by Taoski

I just found this application via a list of "handy programs" to take around with you on your USB memory stick. YamiPod is a freeware application that allows you to manage your iPod without the need for iTunes.

The most impressive feature is that the application does not need to be installed and can be run from the iPod when it is plugged into the PC and operating in disk mode.

Yamipod allows you to copy music files to and from the iPod, edit, export or create playlists, rate songs, change the ID3 tag details and many more things too.  The application is also available for Mac, x86 and Linux too.

Does anything get any better?
Well… it could do, as after editing and uploading songs and playlists to the iPod using Yamipod at work – as soon as you get home and sync with iTunes – it all gets overwritten with the local iTunes database stored on your PC….

Then again – I have not "fully" tested this "unfortunate feature" yet, so I will report back.
I'm off to find some people on our corporate network who have iTunes installed to leach some tracks for the bike ride home!

Xbox 360 On a PC Monitor

April 26, 2006 by Taoski

There is a pretty good article about getting the XBOX 360 working with a standard LCD monitor.

IGN: Feature: Xbox 360 On PC Monitor Action

This might be my only option to get some serious gaming done with my 360 as the wife usually hogs the TV set until 11pm each night.  Plus, an LCD monitor which is better quality than the one I currently have would not be too far, financially, out of my reach.

I would be interested to hear the thoughts of anyone that has been using their 360 through a PC monitor – LCD or CRT.