Happy New year to all !
BTW: You may notice I’ve added gravatar to comments, not that I get many, but I like to support a cool idea 
– enjoy.
Yearly Archives: 2005
New game: Burnout 4 and Jak3 Complete
Burnout Revenge Screenshot
Good playstation planning means you finish one game in time to start a new
I’ve finally got round to completing Jak3, I haven’t quite hit the 100% completion mark, but my 99% isn’t a bad effort, and there’s only so much “orb hunting” you can do before you get bored ! I’ve updated my personal playstation2 review section, and for those that have never got into the jak and daxter series I’d suggest you get started, you’re missing out on hours of entertainment !
I’ve also got a new game Burnout 4 (Revenge). I’ll follow my usual routine of saving the review until I complete (or get bored) , but I have to say, I’ve had the game on for 30mins and It rocks !!!!!! I’ve played burnout 2/3 before, so I already knew roughly what to do. The big different in Revenge is that you can hit traffic going in the same direction (in the past this was a wipe out) and you can use this traffic as a weapon – yep sod trying to win fair & square, hit a van hard from behind and it’ll catapult forward, if your aim is good you’ll hit your opponent and take the lead !
From first glance there is a variation on the race, i.e. do the tracks backwards, or getting quickest lap times, the only type that leave me cold is the launch your car into a cross-road for points – it sounds good on paper but it’s actually quite boring to play – especially compared to the high adrenaline races !
If you have burnout 3, you’ll enjoy burnout 4 !
Merry X-Mas to all
and a happy new year.
(I might not be back, so I thought I’d get this in early ! )
Implementing Adsides in wordpress
I’ve decided to take a tip from the pro’s and separate my useful content from waffle. The blogging term appears to be asides , and photomatt has simple post on how to do it. Basically the idea is, that asides content doesn’t take up as much space on your blog, so readers can easily see reference or important material, and if they’ve got some spare time read your thoughts.
Implementation is quite straight forward, assign a category for these less important posts – for me that’s blog - and then on you theme index.php add the something like the following code:
<?php if (in_category(1) && !$single) { ?>
<ul class=”asides”>
<li id=”p< ?php the_ID(); ?>“><?php echo wptexturize($post->post_content); echo ‘ ‘; comments_popup_link(‘(0)’, ‘(1)’, ‘(%)’)?> <?php edit_post_link(‘(e)’); ?></li>
</ul>
< ?php } else { ?>
<ul class=”asides”>
<li id=”p< ?php the_ID(); ?>“><?php echo wptexturize($post->post_content); echo ‘ ‘; comments_popup_link(‘(0)’, ‘(1)’, ‘(%)’)?> <?php edit_post_link(‘(e)’); ?></li>
</ul>
< ?php } else { ?>
Where category 1 is the number of blog – you can see this in the admin dashboard. The effect is posts in cat(1) get treated differently , on my blog I’ve removed the post content completely so you just have the titles, I think it makes things tidier.
Akismet is soo good I didn’t even know it !
I got my 1st comment spam today…
old! I’m not responsible for all these problems! vegas slot crackled in the air The sounds grew louder and the monkey looked .
Now this is obviously complete rubbish, so I ignored it.
There has been a lot of activity in wordpress land today and it made me think how is my akismet plug in doing ? I remember ages ago there was an update to the original that I had installed, and to my surprise Akismet has caught 411 for you since you installed it – wow – thanks guys !!! 
What is Ning ?
I’m not sure how I found ning.com but it’s kinda of cool !!!!
On first glance you think. OmG they have gone way over the top on the ajax stuff here, but then you get used to it. The ning team refer to their site as a playground, which basically means it’s a place to play with their ajax/php core. The big difference with ning appears that anyone can sign up clone an app and start using it. I’ve been playing with the blog tools: stupidlist.ning.com & wishlist.ning.com which as you can see are the same thing, but with a different focus…. both of which are very similar to del.icio.us
Check out:my stupid list & my wish list
The extendability of ning looks endless, there are example apps for photo diary’s and discussion boards, I really think it’s turn its hand to a good help desk system, maybe you’ll see one on calcylator.com
Nagios Ping And Traceroute Tool Version 0.3
This has been on my to-do list for a long while….I have finally release a bundled package which includes bug fixes from users, a big thank you goes out to you all.
Here’s a copy of my changelog:
Version 0.3
Package bundle of 0.1 & 0.2 – Plus valid html code for exit errors.
Package bundle of 0.1 & 0.2 – Plus valid html code for exit errors.
http://www.linickx.com/blog/archives/92/nagios-ping-and-traceroute-tool-version-03/
Date: 16.12.2005
Version 0.2
Commented out hosts problem.
http://www.linickx.com/blog/archives/81/nagios-ping-tool-another-hack/
Date: 09.11.2005
Version 0.1
NagiosQL – Multiple hosts.cfg files support.
http://www.linickx.com/blog/archives/79/nagios-ping-tool-nagios-ql/
Date: 08.11.2005
Version 0
Initial Release.
Nagios Exchange Release Date: 28.09.2005
Calcylator Update
I think it’s worth updating you, progress is slow, but I’m doing my best to be consistent, hopefully after the x-mas chaos, and with my health improving things will pick up again.
I’ve had a few issues with fee calculations, take a look at this:
Closing Fee over �600: (From: eBay.co.uk Fees)
5.25% of the initial �29.99 (�1.57), plus 3.25% of the initial �30.00 – �599.99 (�18.53), plus 1.75% of the remaining closing value balance
Have you ever looked at how complicated ebay fees can get ? I’ve had a bug reported that closing fee’s weren’t being calculated correctly, basically I typo’d a > rather than >= and this was causing the function to fail under certain circumstances, the up-shot, closing fee’s not being added to some transactions.
99p listing fees were also effected by a similar bug – DOH !
Anyway onto some good news, I shall be focusing on two new features (todo page updated), 1 improving the work flow so things feel quicker, the server and page response is excellent, but users just feel they are spending too much time typing stuff in; so I’m going to add a Sell Similar function – like what ebay do. The second will be fee variations, so shops & non-UK users can get involved !
The help section has also been updated with an link to us page so you can now share your favorite calculator with the world !
These are the graphics I’ve done so far, if you’re a paint wizard, please let me know.
New GnomeArt: Anyone for Frosty Grass ?
So I’m having a small issue posting, I’ve been in casualty due to my right eye not working properly. (More about this when I can see)
This picture has been on the camera for a week or two, but the recent additions to art.gnome have inspired me to crop this up to a nice shot.
Tiz cold in here!
Writing a PHP Page for the googlebot / google’s cache
Here’s something cool to share.
My calcylator project is written in php, it’s one of those “on-line tools” where users can create an account, log in, and can calculate personal profit & loss sheets for ebay.
Like most websites there are “log in” sections, now these pages need to be dealt with differently for search engines & users. Search engines will not be able to log in, but you may still want to deliver some content to them. Take my example, calcylator is running google adsense, and for adsense to work the googlebot (search engine) needs to be able to “see” some content, thinking this through, every time googlebot visited the log in or other protected pages all it would see is “access denied” error pages.
To target google with some “special” content, google kindly present themselves as google in their agent string. Now php even provide a simple tutorial on distinguishing user agent, so this is all I needed to do:
<php
function find_googlebot() {
# This is where we look for the googlebot
$user_agent = $_SERVER["HTTP_USER_AGENT"];
if (preg_match (“/[Gg][Oo][Oo][Gg][Ll][Ee]/”, $user_agent )) {
return true;
}
#For debugging, uncomment this and the agent will appear in the source of the html.
#echo “<!– $user_agent –>”;
}
if (find_googlebot()) {
include(“google-content.php”);
exit;
}
?>
If I quickly run though what I’ve done. We have a function called find_googlebot , we run a test (look for the word google), if we get a match, then we return “true” and run the php google-content.
Here is a working example, if you visit http://www.calcylator.com/index.php?cmd=myhome you’ll see a login page (or your account if you log in) and google will see:
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:25ez2GhuhDQJ:www.calcylator.com/index.php%3Fcmd%3Dmyhome+site:http://www.calcylator.com
Have fun, just remember, google cache doesn’t update that often, so if you present a mistake, you may be stuck with it for a while
I want a Sony AIBO so much it hurts.
You know the deal, it’s getting close to x-mas time, you start looking at gifts to get for friends & family, not to mention windows shopping for stuff you want.
Yesterday I came across this little guy, a Sony AIBO pet dog. From what I’ve seen on the sony website this dog is da bomb !
There is a long list of cool things this do can do, like interact with it’s environment, learn it’s owners face, speak ! But the features that caught my eye is that it can wi-fi connect to the Internet ! Oh yeah, it can stream you favorite radio station to you, read out RSS feeds and the really funk thing is that it can write it’s own blog !!!! In fact I’ve found on online, and it publishes to WordPress, check out fido’s weblog.
There is a massive catch tho’ , all this coolness doesn’t come cheap, best price I’ve found so far is a huge �1,400 !!! Hummmmm I’m gonna need to think up a get rich quick scheme !
Sunset Pier on art.gnome.org
Just a quick note to share the joy, My Sunset Pier picture has been accepted into the art.gnome gallery.
Bug Hunting Calcylator
Nearly 10days in, and the bug hunt is in full swing, to be honest life is slowing me down !
I’ve learnt an important lesson it is impossible to fully bug hunt your own app, I know this seems obvious, but the scale of this truth isn’t apparent until someone else starts pulling apart what you have done.
Feedback so far:
- Many Pages: £ Signs were being formatted incorrectly – fixed
- Profit Report: Needs simple funds in & out calculation at bottom – added
- Edit sold page: Error – Cannot update postage type – removed
- Edit sold page: Massive Bug – fees increment without updating any information – fixed
- Sell Page: “please type description here” – reported as annoying – removed
- Help Info: Paypal fees used not shown anywhere – Added paypal helpfile
As a permanent record of feedback received, but not yet implemented please see the project todo list.
New Gallery & New GnomeArt
I’ve been meaning to finish this for a long time now, & I’ve finally finished integrating Gallery2 into my website. The pics section has a direct integration thanks to wpg2.
To celebrate I’ve thrown together a new wallpaper, it’s a sunset at southsea Pier, taken recently. Sunset pictures always make desktops, and this one has some subtle life in it too
Yummy Gnome Sunsetness!
Introducing Calcylator.com !
I’d like to introduce my new website: www.calcylator.com
Calcylator.com is personal project, targeted at ebay sellers. The site is free for people to sign up to, and provide them is a new & different profit & loss (P & L) calcylator, erm sorry, calculator
The wife & I use ebay as an on line car boot sale, one of the things we’ve noticed as sellers is how hard it is to keep track of how much you are spending on listing fees, paypal fees and P & P (postage and packaging) So in my wisdom I decided to write an application to calculate & track that information for me, and now I’m sharing it with the world !!!!
Calcylator is in it’s early stages, I’ve reached the point where we have used it at home for our own use, and now I would like users to embrace it, and help me improve it.
Most P & L calculators out there, are either OS specific download able applications, or subscription services; calcylator.com is w3c standards compliant (so will work in any web browser) and FREE ! Another difference is that most P & L calculators only offer fee calculations, they don’t take into account other expenses such as stock or packaging.
I’ve uploaded some screen shots into my gallery so people can instantly see what I’ve done, but since it’s free you might as well sign up
Over the next few weeks I hope to be implementing some new features, especially any that users contribute. The application defiantly is not stable so if anyone has any problems I’ve set up a calcylator.com contact page ; I’ve also set up a specific RSS feed for calcylator.com for users whom want to know what’s going on, but aren’t interested in my blog.
Please register, play, test and let me know how you get on !
I no longer own Calcylator the domain has moved into different hands