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.
Monthly Archives: December 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!