Gaming For Good Causes

 Internet, Other  Comments Off
Dec 082010
 

Casual gaming is becoming a big thing, I’m sure we can all agree that Zynga creators of the annoyingly popular FarmVille (just a personal opinion), and it’s growing array of *ville games, has proven this. Worthy of note here is that the platform for a lot of these games is Facebook. With the links that these games ask to put out from time-to-time, I guess we could say that it’s more “Social Gaming” rather than “Casual Gaming”.

I recently came across an offering from Soshi Games, a fairly new company based in the UK. Their offering takes on a somewhat different spin to most other Facebook games I’ve come across, in that it truly has a social side. Soshi Games have partnered with organisations such as Kiva, Fair Trade USA and Keep Britain Tidy, in order to raise awareness, as well as funding for the organisation. Needless to say, the idea intrigued me, and I checked out their first release – Village Raffles – on Facebook.

The game is simple, and can get surprisingly addictive, but more than anything, it’s nice to see a fresh take on things. I’m sure everybody has a ‘feel good movie’, those ones you watch to put a smile on your face and generally cheer you up. Village Raffles felt almost like a ‘feel good game‘, you enter the raffles for venues in your current location which add to a total required to complete ‘Appeals’ for that location. There is also a link from the game to some of the charitable causes being helped by the game. The idea is a good one, and I look forward to seeing more things from Soshi Games, who I’ll be following throughout 2011 – supporting a good cause is never usually a bad thing :)

 Posted by at 10:58  Tagged with: , , , , , , ,

He’s Waving….

 Internet  2 Responses »
Sep 062010
 

I’m sure most of the people reading this will, at some point in time, have heard of Google Wave. The subject of discussions I’ve seen surrounding Wave have been…opinionated…to say the least. I’ve spoken to people who love it, and to people who hate it. Personally, I’m one of the people who loved the idea of it rather than Wave itself.

Sure, I clamoured with the rest of us to get my invite and see what wave was all about. Then I checked it daily for about 2, maybe even 3 weeks. After that, I think I did the same as most people – realised I had no real use for it, and ignored it. I might have check it 3 or 4 times since then, but that’s about it. I think I was made part of 1 new wave in all that time. For me, this is a real shame. I’m actually of the opinion that Wave has a potential to be awesome. If you don’t agree, please, hear me out.

Imagine you’re working on a small project with 2 or 3 people, Wave provides a brilliant way to collaborate and share ideas with each other throughout the development of the project. The problem, I imagine, for a lot of people was the fact that the entire thing was hosted on Google, and we all know at least 1 person who is genuinely concerned about using any Google product for privacy reasons (I’ll be honest, for me, this is less of an issue as they have the last 5 years worth of emails I’ve ever received on a personal account) which is fine.

With Google announcing the cessation of Wave development, I was concerned that some of the ideas it brought would simply die out. Luckily, they’ve also announced ‘Wave in a Box‘, which essentially means that Wave will be open-sourced, and people will have the ability to run their own Wave server. I find the idea of this rather exciting, partly because it will be interesting to see what kinds of directions it may take in development from whoever picks up the project, and partly because it means I get to play around with something on the server again.

If possible, I’ll try and actually get some use out of a Wave server, however, I can’t guarantee that’ll be possible. In fact, it’s far more likely that the install would be just that, an install, after which, I’d ignore it :) Either way, I – personally – am looking forward to the release of ‘Wave in a Box’, it might even increase the uptake of the project so more people can use it. Certainly, some of the things Google are putting into it before releasing it mean that it will have a solid base upon which to build.

 Posted by at 22:51  Tagged with: , , , , ,

New Host

 Internet, Linux, Reviews, Ubuntu  Comments Off
Sep 052010
 

I can’t remember whether I made a blog post about my previous VPS switch to Fivebean (now part of Bluemile Inc). The service I received from Fivebean was brilliant, and I can’t fault it at all. I opened a few support requests with them during the initial period (as Fivebean), and recently (as Bluemile) – I genuinely cannot fault the replies I’ve had, which have been stunningly quick, and incredibly helpful.

However…I have (as of yesterday) migrated the site to a new VPS with Linode. I have almost the same VPS (now a Linode 512), however I was suffering from some high memory usage with the Fivebean VPS, which have inexplicably gone away with the Linode host. I don’t think this was the way the physical server was setup, it could quite easily have been Ubuntu 9.10, which is what the previous host was running. The new server is now running 10.04.1 LTS.

The main reason for me moving the service to Linode was not because of bad service from Fivebean/Bluemile, or because of the high memory usage issue. It was, in fact, because I almost always experienced lag when I was accessing the server via ssh. And when you run some things in screen via ssh (IRC being one of these), and frequently use the ssh connection to the server, you’ll soon come to realise that it becomes frustrating using it with lag all the time.
Again, this was nothing to do with the server (as far as I’m aware), it was more to do with the fact that the datacenter is in Texas, whereas I’m in the UK. The new Linode host is in a datacenter based in London, which is around 100mi away from where I live, thus, much better in terms of lag. Not to mention a convenient iOS app from Linode which allows me to check the stats of the server wherever I am, as well as reboot it, if necessary. Combined with the SSH app I also have, remote administration is remarkably easy for me.

I’d still recommend Fivebean/Bluemile to anybody who is in the market for a VPS, as they offer incredible service, however, Linode is a strong competitor, and it’s hard to promote one before the other.

 Posted by at 13:45  Tagged with: , , , , , ,

Ubuntu Forums Hits 1 Million

 Internet, Ubuntu  11 Responses »
Jan 192010
 

…….Members!

That’s right, we have 1,000,000 members on Ubuntu Forums now, and I’m glad I could be a part of that awesome community :)

A snippet of the screen:

UF's Member 1,000,000

Ubuntuforums.org Millionth Member

 Posted by at 20:13  Tagged with: , ,

Chrome Beta

 Internet, Linux, Ubuntu  14 Responses »
Dec 092009
 

OMG Chrome Beta for Linux is available!!11!!…………………….is all I saw on Twitter/identi.ca the other day. So I figured I’d give it a go, knowing it should be much different from Chromium.

It seems that, somewhat surprisingly, I was wrong. I downloaded the 64 bit .deb file from the chrome site and installed it. Easy enough – there’s also RPM’s for any of you using Fedora etc. One thing I liked, though incredibly insignificant, was the Chrome logo – I just prefer the green, red & yellow to the Chromium blueness.

From what I can gather from various bits of info online, and my own personal use of the browser, it’s very similar to the latest builds of Chromium, except it carries the official Google backing. One thing I did notice though, which is a deal clincher for me right now – is that flash (specifically YouTube & BBC iPlayer, I haven’t tried anything else really)….works! Now I have received a Flash Player update today, but it worked before that :)

Another thing that seems to have been fixed is the double posting issue a lot of Linux/Chrome users were experiencing over on Ubuntu Forums – thankfully I haven’t had it happen yet, but I’m keeping an eye on it. I just have the privilege of being able to remove my double posts without having to report it first ;)

All in all – I’d say it’s definitely worth looking into, especially if you’ve been put off trying Chromium

 Posted by at 20:04  Tagged with: , , , , , , ,

Some Scheduled Downtime

 Internet  Comments Off
Nov 262009
 

My VPS is kindly provided by a friend of mine (if you really want to know who, drop me an email, I’ll forward them on to him). And this weekend – he’s scheduled some downtime on the server – so the site will be offline for a while around 2100UTC (incase anybody happens to be trying to access it).

I just thought I’d make anybody aware – hopefully we won’t be offline for too long!

 Posted by at 22:53  Tagged with: , , ,

WordPress Upgrade

 Internet  3 Responses »
Nov 142009
 

I’m pretty sure I do these wrong, but I can’t complain, considering I’ve recently upgraded to 2.8.5 with no issues, and now I’ve just upgraded to 2.8.6, again with no issues, everything still seems to be intact (though please let me know if it isn’t!!).

Thanks again to the WordPress guys!

 Posted by at 14:23  Tagged with: , ,

Long Time No Blog

 Internet, Programming  Comments Off
Aug 022009
 

Clearly I haven’t blogged for a while – this was evident by the fact I had a wordpress upgrade waiting to be done, and no less than 8 plugin upgrades!

Now normally, I don’t mind being all long winded about plugin upgrades, because it’s usually just one or 2. Now because I’m picky and awkward, the WP auto-upgrade for plugins doesn’t seem to work on my server. Instead of fixing that, I simply wrote a bash script. The contents of which are:





    

  1. 

    #!/bin/bash
    

    2. 

  2. 

     
    

    3. 

  3. 

    if [ $# == 2 ]; then
    

    4. 

  4. 

                    new=$2
    

    5. 

  5. 

    else
    

    6. 

  6. 

                    new=$1
    

    7. 

  7. 

    fi
    

    8. 

  8. 

     
    

    9. 

  9. 

    if [ -d $1 ]; then
    

    10. 

  10. 

                    rm -rf ./$1
    

    11. 

  11. 

    fi
    

    12. 

  12. 

     
    

    13. 

  13. 

    wget http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/$new.zip
    

    14. 

  14. 

    unzip ./*.zip
    

    15. 

  15. 

    rm ./*.zip
    

    16.

Not sure if anybody wants to use that – I’m sure it could be improved, but it satisfied 2 of my needs. I now have an easier way to update (and install, I guess) plugins, and a lesser desire to code things. I now have to think of my next blog topic so I can get back on track!

 Posted by at 00:07  Tagged with: , , , ,

WordPress 2.8

 Internet  3 Responses »
Jun 122009
 

Normally these upgrades go well, but when you accidentally unzip/untar the new version over the top of your current install, things don’t quite go according to plan ;)

Though kudos to the WP Dev’s, I modified the wp-config file and set all the options (including a different database table prefix), and then I put all my plugins back in to place, and took the time to upgrade a couple I needed to do. Finally, after a deep breatth, I ran what would normally be the installer, which said “Your database needs updating”.

And that was all, so considering my potentially costly foul-up, things actually went very well :) I’m quite impressed!

 Posted by at 02:14  Tagged with: , , , , ,

Drupal?

 Internet, Other  13 Responses »
Jun 022009
 

So I’m trying out a test install of Drupal on my PC, and considering switching the site over to it. Though I have a few issues…

1) Do I keep this blog on WordPress, or do I attempt to migrate it over to Drupal? I love WP, it’s simple, easy to use, got a load of plugins I like and that I use. But then Drupal supports blogs, so I could just use the 1 software solution and be done with it, slightly less resources on the server – win all round? But WordPress is set up.

2) Drupal supports dynamic content. This is an issue for me, because I feel as though I would have to take advantage of it, but I never have anything to update my site with (as you may have noticed!!).

3) There’s too many settings to configure!!! The first screen presented by Drupal’s admin section is just an array of settings, such as the plugins, themes, etc. I don’t know where to start. I suppose if I take the time to read and research about Drupal, it would be better.

The thoughts come as I have a broken wrist and can’t really go out too much at the minute (I can’t drive :( ). But it’s been something I’ve considered for a while, it’d be much better than the iWeb pages I have up in place at the moment, and I could probably put content about life in general on the main page instead.

I would like to hear from others who use Drupal to get a rough idea of what they think to it, and whether it would be worth switching to.

 Posted by at 22:35  Tagged with: , , , , ,
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