Hi. Darren Pearson here from DNP Consulting. Please feel free to leave feedback on any of my blog postings. I especially encourage feedback from Disqus users.
Apr
24
Just added flv support to my WordPress blog. Here’s a video a good friend of mine, Andrew Maxfield, and I made about a year ago called My Simulated Life, based on the video game Sims 2. In addition to video editing, Andrew wrote this song as well.
Used the Riva Video Encoder to convert from mpg to flv formats, then installed the FLV Embed plugin to WordPress. The plugin has some good documentation on code options. Gotta explore that in more detail soon.
Seems to work like a charm.
Apr
24
I really love my new iTouch!
After using it for a little over a month or so, I really like my new iTouch. All my music,photos and podcasts in one place, plus email and web access. Have bought a couple of apps too which are a lot of fun like Sudoku and Doom.
I’d almost be tempted to get an iPhone after this experience. It would be very convenient to only carry one piece of technology instead of both an iTouch and my cell phone. Just don’t want to make a commitment to an AT&T cell phone plan. Been burned before on that one. (Been with Tracfone for over two and a half years now with no complaints.)
One of the great things I’ve enjoyed about my iTouch is how quickly I can access my email. Power on, tap the mail application, update and I can start reading my new email within seconds. Before this, my morning routine was to wake up, power on my PC, go get some coffee, return to log in to my user account, wait, sip coffee, wait some more, start my browser, wait, look out the window, wait, then finally see my email. The whole process takes at least two minutes in Windows XP. Made me think, is there a market out there for a simple, basic, desktop/laptop OS. Considering how poorly Vista been received, I think this might be something Microsoft ( as well as Apple) should explore. While the iTouch is great, I’m not going to do any long blog posts using the touchscreen keyboard. Still want a full size keyboard and screen for that one. Anyone else out there be interested in a laptop OS which boots up super quick but only does the basics? (Email, simple web, basic word processing plus minesweeper) No fancy graphics cards, no support for the latest first person shooter games, no fancy video rendering capabilities. Keep it simple and keep it cheap. I’m guessing a couple of people would be interested in something like that during a recession.
Anyone else think this is a good idea?
Apr
21
Not sure if I should be excited or concerned about this article from LaptopLogic called 64 Things Every Geek Should Know. Just browsing the list, I’m pretty confident I can do at least 40 of these. I’m actually kind of glad I’ve never put LEDs in a lightbulb or hacked a pop machine. Good links however to cracking Wi-Fi passwords or setting up a VPN.
Apr
20
Heard rumors in the last few weeks that IBM was going to buy Sun but now it looks like Oracle is going to get them for $7.4 billion. Full article about it here: Oracle to buy Sun in $7.4 billion deal. Saint Paul College recently became a Sun Center of Excellence, guess I’ll find out in the next few weeks how this change will affect SPC.
Apr
8
Found a great article from Smashing Magazine about 15 things to check before launching a website. I know I’ve missed a few of these in the past, especially when I’ve been under a deadline. I always seem to forget the cross browser checks as well as validation. Also, after reading this, I’m thinking about installing the WordPress Database Backup plug-in.
Apr
3
Just added a Digg plugin to my blog so now you should see a little Digg icon for every posting. Still playing around with the layout formatting for it however.
Apr
2
Found a great article on Digg about web developer skills needed in the next 5 years. Glad to see PHP, Javascript, Flash and CSS on there. Been meaning to teach myself SOAP and brush up on XML.
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