Archive for July, 2006
Visa card replaces Monopoly money
Posted by Benny Chew in General Tech on July 30th, 2006
Looks like the days of counting Monopoly bank notes are over..
WordPress 2.0.4
Posted by Benny Chew in Coding/Development, General Tech, Open Source, Site Updates, WordPress on July 30th, 2006
It was released earlier today and is noted to have fixed a lot of security vulnerabilities, so I those who are running WordPress blogs themselves should update soon.
Have just updated blogs hosted on spherebox. :)
Edit: You can get only the changed files in a zip which would save the time needed in uploading here.
AMD-ATI merger
Posted by Benny Chew in Humour on July 30th, 2006
Previously only a rumour, but it has now been confirmed that AMD and ATI will be merging. I don’t have much to comment on this but I do have a link to a satirical news piece done by BBspot on it. ;)
M$ speech recognition goes awry
Posted by Benny Chew in Humour, Windows on July 30th, 2006
Getting back into groove..
Posted by Benny Chew in Personal Events on July 28th, 2006
Took awhile for me to get moving on work again after another vacation (trip to Mt. Hotham :D). Updates to the blog should be coming in soon once I clear up the backlog on my project work..
Forum software
Posted by Benny Chew in Coding/Development, General Tech, Open Source on July 19th, 2006
It’s been a while since IPS ceased to offer free unlimited trials of IPB (Invision Power Board) and I’ve been trying out various forum software since, but most don’t seem to have the same level of usability as well as featureset as compared to IPB.
The venerable phpBB has been around for years and wasn’t updated much till only recently when they released v3.0 beta1. I have not tested it out much, but v2 had a very weak admin control panel which I found annoying to use. It being a target of heaps of exploits don’t help much either. See v2 here and v3 here (via KhimHoe.Net).
SMF (Simple Machines Forum) v1.1 RC looked promising and decent aesthetically, but the admin CP was poor as well. I didn’t quite like how the code was modularised when I tried to modify the underlying code. See it here.
One forum software which I came across recently and sort of liked is PunBB. It’s very lightweight and quick and only contains the minimum functionality (even the PM function is left out! – a little absurd IMHO). Mods to add functionality to it are quite plentiful, so you should be able to search for what you want and not code it up yourself. It’s probably a hassle for the initial set up, but this would definitely keep bloat to a bare minimum and allow the user to choose what he/she requires (similar to Firefox’s extension based system). See it running here and here.
I’ll probably stick to PunBB for now. Wikipedia has a long list of forum software here in a comparison table.
Lowyat.NET Development Blog
Posted by Benny Chew in Coding/Development on July 19th, 2006
A brief summary of what it is about:
In support of the BlogSentral project, the Lowyat.NET developers will blog about our development efforts on the website. We aim to provide timely and technically insightful, yet interesting posts about our contributions. The topics covered will revolve around operational issues (e.g. Database Management, Systems Administration, Systems Architecture), and programming (PHP development, Software Engineering methods).
I have only done minor stuff, and only posted once so far though. ;) wKkaY (my webhost) has done quite a lot and if you have any interest in the topics stated above, you might want to have a read of stuff posted there. Here’s the link.
EngNet World Time Clock
Posted by Benny Chew in General Tech, Tips & Tweaks on July 18th, 2006
There are probably a lot of sites as well as utilities that do this (been using timeanddate.com after being told about it by Han Kern long ago), but since AsenDURE posted it on his blog, I read about it, started using it and I found it nifty, I thought I’ll mention it as well. ;)
Screenshot:
Once all the clocks are set, it just takes 1 click of the EngNet icon in the system tray to pop the details up.
Download: Link
Change Windows XP Home to Windows XP Pro
Posted by Benny Chew in General Tech, Tips & Tweaks, Windows on July 18th, 2006
If you have the Home version of Windows XP, try following the steps here and you could end up with a Pro version (I have not tried this before, so do it at your own risk :P).
Interoperability between WLM and YM now available
Posted by Benny Chew in General Tech, Web on July 18th, 2006
I mentioned about this feature being missed out when WLM came out of beta in a previous blog entry, and well, it’s now available. I’ve been messaging with a friend who’s on Yahoo! Messenger and it has been working rather flawlessly. Offline messaging between the 2 networks seem to work fine as well.
Those using YM will have to be using the latest beta version for this to work though. Do also note that M$ still terms this functionality as a beta, so you would have to accept an agreement before you are able to start using this feature.
Info for WLM here.
How do I start sending messages to friends who use Yahoo! Messenger with Voice?Once you sign up, you can add Yahoo! Messenger contacts to your contact list in the usual way. Under “Contacts,†click “Add a contact†and enter your friend’s Yahoo! e-mail address. That’s it!
Does this work with all my Yahoo! contacts?
Yes. As long as your friends have the beta version of Yahoo! Messenger with Voice, you’re set. When you add them to your contact list, they’ll get all the information they need to gear up and connect with you.
For YM users, here.
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