But I’m still not changing my RH9 server, for sentimental reasons…

Just catching up on a whole backlog of GeekBrief.TV episodes, so I’m overdosing on new tech, but after loading more wood on a skip and stripping wallpaper it’s a nice chance to geek-out for a bit. I’ll probably listen to the final podcast from LUGRadio in the morning, it’s a real shame they’re packing it all in just a couple of months after I discovered it.

Hmmm… 3 monitors is very tempting, GuildWars on 2 monitors is great apart from having your character (and view) split in half…

Wide Widescreen

Drupal has been sucking up a good chunk of my time too, as I’ve been tinkering with a gaming resources website idea. Drupal is pretty good, when you finally discover how things are done, but getting it to work just right is a real art form. It’s probably the same with most CMS software, they can’t make it absolutely configurable to satisfy everyone’s needs. But I’m certainly having more fun with it than I was with Joomla, that just seemed to waste my time. I’m not saying it’s no good for anyone, just that I couldn’t get my head round it.

Well, that’s it. I’ve over excited myself with all this talk of servers, I need to go lie down.

So, I’m now trying out this WordPress blogging software and I’m pretty impressed, especially with the admin interface. Although the WYSIWYG post editor leaves a lot to be desired and enjoys infuriating me to within an inch of my life. I *need* to display code in my blog and for that I chose Priyadi Iman Nurcahyos ‘Code Auto Escape’, especially since many developers of WordPress code displaying facilities opted to dump their efforts and adopt Priyadi’s plugin instead. But the WYSIWYG editor continued to strip html tags from within the tags of the plugin, so I’m having to use the old style post editor, although there’s nothing to complain about there to be honest.

Considering the popularity and notoriety of Six Apart’s ‘MovableType’ blogging software I was surprised when I saw the features covered by WordPress that MovableType had missed. WordPress covers multiple level categories with a simpe interface, more control over perma links, ability to create static pages as well as posts, extremely simple plugin installation, etc. Well, I am pleased but I guess it is early days yet and if my posting frequency doesn’t pick up I may never realise it’s true power.

Anyway, I’ll finish off my first post on my new blog, with a little bit of code to sort life out…

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>

void swap(char *a, char *b);

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
  char c[5];
  int i,j;
  
  sprintf(c, "LIFE");
  
  printf("Sorting '%s' to ",c);
  for (i=0;i<strlen(c)-1;i++)
    for (j=strlen(c)-1;j>i;j--)
      if (c[j-1] > c[j])
        swap(&c[j-1],&c[j]);
  printf("'%s'\n", c);
}

void swap(char *a, char *b)
{
  char c;
  c = *a;
  *a = *b;
  *b = c;
}

Which should give you: Sorting ‘LIFE’ to ‘EFIL’

From this we can deduce that in order to sort out your life you must be backward.

Recently I have been delving into the realm of podcasting, mostly listening to the ‘Daily Source Code’ by Adam Curry, a popular podcaster and very active in the development of this relatively new technology. But since my MP3 player stores only 128MB of data, when most podcasts are in the 10-20MB region and it doesn’t remember at which point in the current MP3 I had reached when I switched the unit off, I thought I’d look for an alternative. Rather than splashing out on a more feature rich MP3 player, the answer was, I thought, to use something I already have… an IPAQ Pocket PC. It’s a mobile device, it runs windows media player, plenty of storage space, connects to the desktop PC via a USB cable. Sorted.

You would imagine with the IPAQ running windows, as with the desktop, you could set the whole thing up so that listening to podcasts while out and about was a cinch. I thought that maybe I could slot the IPAQ into its cradle, have it automatically download any new podcasts from feeds I am subscribed to, so I could just pick it up and listen to the tracks on the bus to and from work. Instead it was just technical problem after technical problem. Can I get my IPAQ to connect to the internet while cradled? No. Even simple tasks are an issue since sometimes the IPAQ likes to say it’s connected but not let my desktop browse the filesystem. Sometimes it doesn’t like to synchronise emails, etc. etc. It’s too unreliable for the simple tasks to even begin to try a slightly more complex yet theoretically simple procedure.

I put most of these issues down to chronically bad design, since it seems those responsible for the features of new gadgetry are driven by what sounds great, rather than innovation and usefulness.

Gripe over, it’s late and I feel more like taking a good old fashioned device and using it’s primary function to reduce everything electronic into a small pile of basic components.

I’ve yet to find a nail that my hammer isn’t compatible with…