I just joined Google Wave this week and I have 8 invites if anyone wants one ... leave me a comment or get in touch via Twitter (@ben_stokes) with your email address and I'll send one over. Personally I am not that amazed with it, not sure if it will catch on ... I think it should handle SMTP mail as well as 'waves', it's a bit too exclusive in its current form.
In other news there's been too much happening to have time to write about the interesting techy bits, I do have some new and useful bash and vbscripts which I'll probably post up in one big batch this week as I have some time off (woo). I've also been meaning to write some stuff about Android, yesterday I got Google Navigation working on my HTC Magic in the UK (currently it's only officially working in the USA). This was courtesy of xda-developers.com, see the link for details. It works really well, I feel sorry for anyone that bought CoPilot Live from the Market for £20 (ouch) ... as it looks like Google will be giving this out for free with Android 2.0 in the very near future.
Just a quick test so see if posting and collection via RSS is working since I have migrated to a new webhost.
A cat selected at random
Here's just a quick mention for a couple of decent tools.
Syntax Highlighter plus (plugin for wordpress). Link
IMO this is the best code highlighting plugin for Wordpress. Here's a quick example:
ls -la
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
Does exactly what is says on the tin and has the 'view source' button to you to copy and paste the plain text version of your code into notepad or Putty sessions.
Second quick mention is EasyVMX. Link
Ever wondered how to create a new VM for VMware player? Just visit the EasyVMX site, fill in the form and click go, and your VMX file is created. Then just give the file to VMware player and you can boot into your new machine. Genius!
3G is a great selling feature for modern mobiles, but are many people really using these 3G features yet? I certainly don't - I moved to Virgin Mobile when I got my K800 and unfortunately mobile web browsing is now too costly at £4 per Mb (with no option to add GPRS bundles), and I don't know anyone I can make video calls to yet. Another grumble I had after changing phones was battery life on my new phone was a bit disappointing. However, through a colleague at work I made a nice discovery - disabling the 3G features on your K800 can extend your battery life for another 24 hours. This is how you do it:
Menu - Settings - Connectivity - Mobile Networks - "GSM/3G Networks"
Change the option from "GSM and 3G" to "GSM Only".
The 3G icon will then disappear from your standby screen. You can always switch this back when needed or if all of your friends suddenly go out and buy video phones!
Everyone knows what blacklists and whitelists are, but we don't call them that where I work, because it's not policically correct and is upsetting for some users. Well, actually it only upsets one user, but apparently this is enough for us to change our ways and refer to them as the 'banned address list' and 'global safe list' instead, from now on. I promise I'm not making this up.
Policically correct or just pedantic and timewasting? I'll let you decide.
OK, slightly off topic for me but I've just spent the weekend scraping walls and need to get this off my chest. Hopefully this post will save some poor souls a few hours of needless scraping and help ridthe world of woodchip.
Here's a DIY tip for anyone about to strip a room of woodchip wallpaper. Don't waste your time with normal wallpaper scrapers as you will be there scraping away for days, especially if there is more than one layer of paint on the walls. What makes this job so tough is the water or steam does not penetrate through those layers of paint, and if you get the walls too wet there is a danger you will ruin the plaster underneath.
The best woodchip removal method is to get yourself a heavy duty scraper with a razor sharp blade (a bit like this one), and scrape the top layer off the walls while they are dry. You should then find layer underneath then comes off very easily if you use a steamer or a wet sponge. The remains will just turn into pulp as you scrape it off. Scraping the top layer is still hard work but I'm talking from experience when I say it will take a lot less effort and man hours than using a normal scraper. If your room is very large you will also some spare blades for your scraper as they are easily blunted when you hit wall plugs, loose plaster or other objects in the wall.
Technorati Tags: Decorating
Is it just me that has this problem? I am unable to view www.linux.com through Internet Explorer 7!
"Internet Explorer cannot open the Internet site http://www.linux.com/.
Operation aborted"
Also, if I visit a link directly within linux.com, my browser crashes! Is this some kind of evil censorship from Redmond? 
Technorati Tags: Linux.com, IE7, Microsoft
These are most of the books I've read over the last few months (I couldn't find pictures for all of them). As you can see I have a lot of opportunity for reading these days due to my daily train journeys!
Now it's time to stop reading fiction and start reading 70-291 revision materials. I've decided I want to get this exam out of the way before the end of the year, or at least before Server 2007 and all the new examinations come out!
Technorati Tags: Books, Reading, Fiction
'Integrity' is doing the right thing even when no one else is looking.
Quoted from the writings of the 'Goompahs', in "Omega" by Jack McDevit.
A while ago when the .eu level domains were made available to the public, I tried to register www.benstokes.eu and www.stokes.eu. My application for www.stokes.eu was unsuccessful, which annoyed me as that was the one I really wanted. It annoys me more, that many months later www.stokes.eu is deserted and still gives a DNS error. Why register it if you're not going to use it??!
The registration process for .eu domains was a bit of a joke during the 'landrush' period, you basically had to apply and pay for a domain (along with loads of other people applying for the same names), and then your registrar applies on your behalf. On the day they were made available, the registrars could only apply for one domain every 10 seconds, to make it fair to everyone. I don't think it's very fair though that I don't get my money back for my failed application. Instead I get a credit for an alternative .eu domain, but the trouble is, all the best ones are gone already.
So I thought I'd jump on the Web 2.0 bandwagon and I started looked for words ending in eu (thinking along the lines of del.icio.us), If I was French I would have loads of words to choose from but the English dictionary was drawing blanks. On a tangent I wondered if www.stok.es was available, I checked and it was! I registered it immediately, but on reflection now I'm wondering if my new domain name is really a bit sh.it, exactly like Rob Manuel says ...
Anyone want a .eu domain? I've got one going spare ...
Technorati Tags: Domains, Domain Names, Web 2.0
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