Geek Swagger.
Applications
Get Vent!
Feb 19th
I was severely disappointed when, a couple weeks ago, developer released a patch that broke the support for me. Other than that the patch was great, but one of my favorite parts of the game was that Xfire was integrated allowing for in-game parties to quickly and easily move to voice communication rather than text via the chat. Voice is vastly superior because it's easier and faster, so this feature alone really made the game for me.
For some reason (and this problem still isn't fixed for me as of February 17th, 2008) I can get into an in-game party and use voice chat but as soon as I leave the area I'm in I get logged off of Xfire and booted out of the voice chat. This also seems to happen for the other party members. Pretty lame, particularly for a game that touts its integration with Xfire. The solution? Well, after asking around in the in-game chat to see if anyone else was experiencing the same thing everyone was oblivious. They did have some advice though -
At the time this sort of infuriated me. Nothing like asking how to fix something that's broken and being told to get an entirely different app for the same purpose when the first one should work properly. Still, after waiting all this time about a month later I said I'm sick of this and decided to set up Vent. Vent, in case you don't know, is online "shortification" of the word which is a voice communication application for PC and Linux. It's really common but it's mostly used for larger groups of gamers, for instance guilds in or clans in tend to use Ventrilo. It's referred to as a voice server, and as such it's really appropriate for 10 or more users at a time. Therefore for my small groups of players (sometimes as few as 2) it seemed like it wasn't really worth the trouble. Still, like I said, I really wanted to have something to enable voice.
So I went about setting it up. It was actually pretty easy, and once it's installed it's kind of slick. My main concern with installing Ventrilo (particularly the server) was that it would be a resource hog and use up a lot of RAM but it doesn't. I think Ventrilo Server took about 900k? I'm rocking 3 gigabytes so that's not very substantial. Anyways, the installation! All you really have to do is download and install the server, edit the .ini file that is included to add the name of the server, default channel, passwords for users and the admin, and so on and then tell the other users to point their Ventrilo client applications towards the server's address and input the name/password and you're good to go. When it worked after only a few minutes of I was shocked. I started out by testing the connection from client to server on my own computer by running the server and client application at the same time then connecting to the server via the client, and when that worked, I tested it out with a friend. That worked first try and it's been gravy ever since.
Despite my initial misconceptions (I had used Ventrilo in the past, by the way) Ventrilo has some neat features. First off, you can have multiple channels which you can think of as different chatrooms. For instance if you had a large group of users playing different games you could set up a different channel for each game so that all of the users can be connected to the same server why also having discussions in different games without any confusion. There is also commonly an AFK channel so people can show when they're away from their keyboard. Another cool thing is that you can show your current iTunes, Winamp, or Windows Media Player song next to your name in the voice chat room. I kind of discovered this out of the blue, it wasn't really a feature I had known about previously, but I thought it was neat. If you've used with its iTunes away message which shows what's currently playing you'll know what I'm talking about. Why you would want to listen to tunes while trying to voicechat is beyond me but it's there if you need it.
So that's it, I "GOT VENT!" Now I just have to build a larger community or something so I can really put it to the test. Until next time...
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(Blue Dragon OST)
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Testing out MarsEdit
Feb 16th
Alright so this is basically just a freestyle post, no frills. It's 1:30AM Friday night and I'm struggling with a conundrum. I really want to start managing my blog on my Macbook in OS X, but I can't find a good freeware blogging solution let alone one that compares to .
The thing I like the most about Live Writer (and I know I've said this before...) is that it shows a preview of the page in the editor the way it will look on the blog once it's posted. That's a really nice feature. seems to sort of do the same, it tries its best, but it doesn't really look like my blog in the editor. So far it's easy to use though, so we'll see.
So like I said this is just a one-off post testing out MarsEdit. I'm also considering trying out . The problem with both of these applications? They're certainly not freeware. I suppose that's just how it goes though. If nothing else I'll get the most out of this trial while it lasts and then move over to Ecto - that should cover about a month's worth of blogging, right?
Twitter VS. Pownce – Battle of the microblogs
Dec 20th
So I was recently given reason to start using my delinquent account that I created a few months back on a whim. I originally wrote off as just trying to make some cash off of the fad (afterall, what does Pownce add to the game? FTP? Exciting!) but after starting to use it again it definitely has its merits. For one thing it's pretty. Way prettier than . If you look at Twitter pages what you normally get is something like a , an , or some ridiculous color scheme. Thinking about it now it's really kind of like a lot of the awful MySpace pages you might have seen - just not quite that bad. Pownce has a much cleaner look and has some pretty cool default themes for your page. Also the page itself is laid out a lot more like a social network page (with information about the person who's Pownce messages you're looking at) unlike Twitter which is pretty much just a list of tweets. Another nice thing about the layout is that each message you send via Pownce is basically like a - people can reply to it and it is added to the page beneath the original message. Pretty cool.
Next up I have to comment on the Pownce - it's slick. It runs on and allows for easy link integration. You can also add files for people to check out but you have to pay for the premium service in order to upload anything larger than 10 megabytes. I wish it showed messages that are replies in thread-form underneath the original message like the Pownce website does, but I'm not about to quit using it because that's not included. It definitely kills Twitter's first-party desktop client...oh wait there isn't a first-party Twitter app. My bad. There are plenty of third-party applications for posting to Twitter though (my favorite as of late is , which also runs on Adobe Air and is very similar to the Pownce desktop client).
I think what I like most about Pownce is that it's more personal. For some reason I don't feel dumb for putting up an actual picture of myself as my Pownce image but I'm hesitant to do the same with Twitter. Maybe it's because Twitter is open to everyone and Pownce is still in beta (if you need an invite give me a holler, I have plenty to share), or maybe it's just the fact that, like I said, Pownce feels more like a legitimate social network. So Pownce is prettier, more personal, has a better desktop client - what's not to love? Well first of all there's no support for sending messages to your Pownce feed via a mobile phone. You can pull it off but your phone has to have a web browser and then you just go to Pownce's , but that's a lot more hassle than Twitter's mobile setup - all you have to do is link your account to a number and whenever you want to send a tweet you send a text message to that number. The text message is automatically added to your Twitter feed. Given the nature of microblogging this is huge because it's all about short messages about what you're doing at the time. If you have to be behind a computer to post what you're doing then half the fun is taken away. Hopefully Pownce will integrate a phone number system like Twitter's sometime soon.
So right now I have two microblogging systems, Twitter and Pownce, and both of them have the same exact content for the most part. What I really want to do is figure out specific uses for the two so I can continue to use them both, and I think I've sort of figured it out. What I'm toying with is using Twitter for messages about the blog or site (maybe the title of the upcoming post, site news, etc.) and also for when I'm out and about and can't post to Pownce. Then, I can use Pownce for basically everything else. We'll see. If you're a Twitter or Pownce user go ahead and give me an add and I'll do the same. You can find links to my accounts for both services in this post.
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Kind of hating Firefox
Dec 18th
I've been using for a long time and have been (for the most part) loving it. Having extensions to check my email, block ads, and quickly hit up Wikipedia is great. However since 2.0 using Firefox has become a bit of a nuisance. On Windows it seems to be the default choice for your recreational browsing, but for that reason I'm beginning to dislike it. The main problem seems to be the . For instance - if I leave Firefox running for a couple hours (whether I just get up and walk away from my machine or I want my email up so I can check for new messages) I find that it has frozen. When I say "a couple hours" I'm also being very generous. Depending on what you're doing Firefox seems to crash quite a bit. Whenever I'm at my machine I tend to have one tab with a podcast or something going in it, another tab with my email, and a third tab for just general browsing. After 30 minutes or so of this I'll notice that the browser stops responding. I'll try to change tabs and it will churn and churn until I bring up the task manager and notice, whoa!, Firefox is consuming a huge chunk of my system's resources. Time to kill it and start over.
I'm also used to Safari on the Mac and in comparison Firefox seems . I haven't tried out the beta of Firefox 3 but I'm just hoping that they've fixed the memory issues. What I'd really like to see though would be a nice stripped-down no extension version of Firefox that is lightning fast and runs like a champ. Even if they released it as a separate download (Firefox 3 basic or something) and then also allowed users to download the full version I'd be cool with it. Alternatively they could just make Firefox 3 a solid release and they wouldn't have to worry about multiple versions. It's gotten to the point that I've started to consider trying out Opera or the Windows version of Safari again to see if there has been improvement from either of those browsers. Post a suggestion for a good browser (or just tell me why I'm nuts for starting to dislike Firefox) in the comments section and I'll try out whatever you have to offer. Obviously this is really only an issue for my XP and Vista boxes so what I'm really looking for are Windows solutions but post whatever you'd like and I'll check it out.
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If you aren’t using this you should be
Dec 13th
It's been sort of a slow news week and to be honest I haven't had much time to dedicate to post-writing with finals and so forth, so this will (hopefully) be a quick one about an application/website that's been around for a while but I just found out about recently. One of the nice things about modern networked computing is the ability access machines across the network either with , , or whatever your preferred method of connection is. This is all well and good when you're on the same network as the machine you want to get remote access to, but what if you aren't? There's always the issue of being able to find your computer across the internet - especially if you're using an ISP that issues dynamic IP addresses. It's near impossible to get a legitimate connection since every few hours or so your machine will be issued a new IP address. So what's a geek to do?
. What they let you do is set up a domain for the purpose of rerouting traffic to a computer of your choice. All you have to do is , give them the host name you'd like to use, and install their little Dynamic Update Client on your host machine (the machine you'd like to access remotely). Then, whenever you want to remote desktop into that machine (as long as the DUC is running on it) all you have to do is set the remote address to the host name you setup at No-IP's website. Say for instance I wanted to make a DmK host, it would be something like "dmk.no-ip.biz," and I could type that into my remote desktop client, hit connect, and bam you're connected across the internet. There has been programs out like this for a long time but a lot of them are pay services. This is completely free. The only thing you really have to deal with is making sure you renew your host name with No-IP every couple months. As a result of this being a free service you'll get an email from them occasionally saying they'll delete your host name if you aren't still using it. All you have to do is hit a link they provide to renew your host name and you're set.
So that's it, really. A pretty simple fix for a fairly common problem, and now I can get to my main computer that's sitting at home from . It's available for all platforms (, , ) so you have no excuse to not give it a shot! Thanks to for giving me this info a ways back. =)
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Testing out Flock + Snitter
Nov 8th
Alright this is a post that could probably appeal to a lot of the students out there. We all spend way too much time on social networks like and , right? Well now there's a web browser built just for you, and it's called . What Flock does is integrate almost any social network you can think of right into your web browser, allowing you to quickly respond to messages on Facebook, update your status on , or save a link to del.icio.us without having to open a new page. It's pretty useful if you find yourself spending a lot of time at a site like that.
Another pretty cool feature is that it allows you to post to your blog straight from the browser. The blog editor isn't exactly featured packed but it's a nice touch and it makes inserting images and links a breeze. It's what I'm using to write this right now actually. We'll see if it sticks. Anyways get your social on with Flock - it runs on all platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux) so you'll be able to try it no matter what.
On a somewhat related note I'm using a new Twitter client called . It's a handy little app written in and I like it quite a bit. I used to use on my PC and on my Mac but now I can standardize and just use Snitter on both platforms. If you're a Twitter user and you're looking for a new way to let the world know what you're doing give Snitter a look, you may like what you see. The only down part is having to install Adobe Air can be a bit of a pain sometimes and not very many people are into installing applications from a web browser (it tends to ring of security risk, doesn't it?) but once you get over that hurdle you'll have access to a written in Air.
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The value of Vista DreamScene
Oct 18th
Okay so one of the Vista Ultimate Extras that I was excited for since I first heard about it at CES '07 was . In case you don't know about it, DreamScene is an extension to desktop backgrounds. It lets you use a video file as your desktop wallpaper. You can either choose from some stock videos that come with DreamScene or use your own video. From what I can tell though, the video you use has to be mpeg...no .avi files or quicktime. When I first installed (I was using previously) there were two things I was excited to use - the built-in and DreamScene. For some reason the thought of having a waterfall as my desktop background excited me.
I've used the beta and the final release - but both times I ended up removing it after using it for a day or so. Since then Microsoft has released DreamScene content packs that add additional videos for you to use and they finally released the video background that was shown during the of DreamScene. So now I'm using it again, and I kind of like it. It's totally gimmicky but for some reason I've kept it around. So basically I've ended up asking myself what the value of using DreamScene was. I don't think there's much more to it than aesthetics.
My first concern with using DreamScene is that I'm a gamer, and I'm fairly stingy with my computer's resources. That is to say, I don't run any extra applications than I have to - I close down IM, my web browser, and pretty much everything else whenever I don't absolutely need them. You would assume then, since DreamScene offers even less value than say my , I would want to get rid of it instantly. That's how I felt at first, but to be honest DreamScene is pretty good on memory. Surprisingly good actually. With it running I don't notice a performance hit at all, and that's not just because it's a lightweight application - Microsoft has built in some very simple but sensible features that really prioritize your system's resources (ram, CPU usage, etc.). For example: the only time you're really going to notice the DreamScene playing is when you're doing something at the desktop. If you're just going to the desktop to launch then, that's when you want to see DreamScene. Therefore, when you have a window maximized and can't see the desktop at all, Dreamscene pauses itself. This way it's not sitting in the background eating up CPU cycles and ram without you benefiting from it. So at least it doesn't hurt your machine's performance.
So will I still be using DreamScene in a month? I don't know. It's something nice to look at and it's something different but the novelty may wear off. I think there could be some better applications to this type of program in the future. One idea I thought would be to make the background an application. You could set an RSS reader to be your Windows background and then there would actually be a benefit for using something like this. In fact, there already might be something like that out there, but I don't know if it would be as efficient as DreamScene is right now. No one wants to have a slow machine just to save themselves a couple of clicks. Any purely aesthetic feature like DreamScene has to be almost transparent. You should never even have to think about if they're running, what they're doing, and especially how much memory they're using. If you've got Vista Ultimate I'd say you should at least try out DreamScene. Microsoft has been pretty slow to release like DreamScene so you should take advantage of those extra features you're paying for.
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Windows Live Writer
Oct 9th
About a week ago I found a post on where the poster mentioned WordPress clients. I use for my blog so I figured I'd give what he had to say a read. Basically he was trying to find a decent Windows application that served as a stand-alone blogging client, something he would be able to use to write blog posts separately from WordPress' WYSIWYG editor, and then upload to the server. He rounded up about 5 different alternatives, none of which I am currently using. The reason is that in one of the comments a Digg user suggested trying out a free program Microsoft has called . I installed it, set it up, and now it's what I use to create all of my blog posts.
Having a program like this is pretty essential if you work with WordPress because their editor is...well...garbage. Don't get me wrong, WordPress as a whole is an awesome CMS with a lot of valuable features that are relatively easy to use but when it comes to content creation it lacks quite a bit. With something like Windows Live Writer though, you're able to work in an almost Microsoft Word-like environment which makes things much nicer. What I have the most trouble with are both finding and including the images I put in some blog posts as well as going through after the fact and linking all of the words I want to have linked. It's not that these are particularly difficult to do with the stock WordPress editor, but they take longer than is necessary to complete. Now I find myself finishing up posts a lot quicker than I was before.
Live Writer is easy to install, just like any other application you might find on the net. There's no verification required or Microsoft updates that need to be applied, so it installs just like a normal program. Then, once it installs, it walks you through a few steps so it can sync with your blog and you're good to go. That was the part that impressed me the most about it. Live Writer is meant to be able to work with a lot of different blogging services like Windows Live , , and of course WordPress. All I had to do was give it the URL of my blog and it went ahead and pinged it, found out automatically that it was a WordPress blog, and then - after prompting me for my login information - it pulled down my theme and everything right into the program. Because of this I now have a true WYSIWYG editor, because the "document" for lack of a better term which I work in while writing the post has my blog's theme pre-applied, so without even saving and especially without publishing the post I already know what it will look like once it's live. That's pretty handy.
The only problem I have left is that now I'm stuck on my Vista box whenever I want to write a post. I used to use my laptop exclusively for this, I'd write in an app called , copy and paste what I wrote into the WordPress editor, and then add the images and links. Now I have to be sitting at my desk to get anything written which is much less desirable than sitting in front of the TV on the couch. So here's where I do a bit of crowd sourcing (I just made myself laugh a little, comparing my blog's audience to a crowd was a bit of an over exaggeration I think). If anyone knows of a good OS X or Ubuntu 7.04 WordPress blogging client I'd love to test it out. Post your recommendations as a comment, and keep this couch potato where he belongs! =P
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Safari > Firefox
Sep 27th
When I got my Mac (a black macbook as I've previously mentioned) one of the first things I did was install . I was used to Firefox on my Windows box so I figured it was the better choice. As far as the Macintosh platform goes however, I'm not so sure if choosing Firefox over OS X's default browser - Safari - is a wise decision. I originally used Firefox, then tried (a version of Mozilla that's been "Macified") and now I'm back to using plain old Safari.
The reason for my switch to Safari is that comparatively, at least on my Mac, Safari is much faster than Firefox. It loads pages extremely quickly and even launches faster. This probably isn't a huge deal for people running a beefier system than I have, but generally when I use my macbook I want to check something quickly so the faster the better. There is of course a downside to using Safari - many of the we all know and love still aren't compatible with it. That means that if I want to jump into I have to load up Firefox. I don't use Docs all that much though, and Gmail and Google Reader both work in Safari, so that isn't much of a conflict. And, of course, if I do need to use docs I still have Firefox sitting down there in my dock.
Now, just to be clear, I'm not saying that Safari is necessarily faster on the PC side of things. I tested out the on Vista and I was unimpressed. It still seemed buggy and I didn't notice a performance increase. Not only that but there are also a lot of documented security holes in Safari for Windows so I don't really see a compelling reason to use it right now. Basically, if you're on a PC stick with Firefox but if you're using a Mac give Safari a shot. It's not as flashy as Firefox and you might miss some of your favorite extensions, but if you're just looking to quickly pop in a check your email I think Safari's the better route to take.
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