Now, for those of you who haven’t heard of swype, I suggest you head on over to http://swypeinc.com and take a look, I’m sure you won’t be disappointed. I think the beta is open for another couple of days.
Essentially, it allows you to “swype”over the word your want to type and, somehow, it works! Though it does appear that it’s only available for android at the moment, unfortunately.
And yes, this entire post was written from swype on my phone.
So as I’m sure a great many of you are all aware of, WordPress 3.0 has been released, fixing a number of new bugs, bringing some new features…and probably bringing new bugs (it’s to be expected, let’s be honest), though I’m sure that won’t get advertised!
As I upgraded, I decided to change my theme. I quite like the new theme, it makes a change to have a bit of colour on my blog, which I quite like, though I do still have the old theme kicking around on the server, should I decide to change my mind. Another change, is the VPS on which this blog is hosted, which is now hosted by Fivebean. So far, no real issues, the minor issue I initially had was dealt with promptly and explained thoroughly, I’d definitely recommend giving Fivebean a look if you’re in the market for a VPS 
I do have one small issue currently, which I’m not sure whether it is being caused by WordPress, PHP, Apache, or the VPS setup on Fivebean’s part, whereby directly after a reboot the RAM usage sits at around 300MB, and refreshing the WP dashboard causes usage to jump upwards by around 200MB. Now I know WordPress likes its RAM, but not that much, it certainly wasn’t an issue on the old VPS. Anyway – more news on that as it comes.
So, for those of you who aren’t aware – Microsoft appears to be marketing both IE8, and Windows 7…the theme of these is an 8 second advert (for IE8), or 7 seconds in the case of Windows 7. Not bad, emphasises the names of both products.
I’m unsure where these ads are being shown – but they appear to be on far too frequently in the UK, to the point where some people will probably get sick of the sight of them. The thing that interests me the most, however, is that Microsoft feel the need to advertise these…I think I understand why they are, but it shows that times have changed from when Microsoft was almost guaranteed to be on any PC.
I believe that the IE8 advertising is probably limited to Europe. The reason I make this (fairly large) assumption, is because of the EU ruling which ruled bundling IE8 was unfair to competitors, only last week did Microsoft push out an update which advertised alternative browsers to those users who still had IE8 as a default browser. Admittedly, more than 1 of these was based on the Trident engine, the same as IE8.
As for Windows 7, I’ve got a strong suspicion that a slow (but steady) decline in the OS market share has Microsoft a little worried, and they’re starting to push Windows 7 as much as they can, not to mention the catastrophe that came before 7…more commonly known as Vista
Things like this really bug me, which, given the subject, it really shouldn’t! I don’t know if I’m alone here, but suffering from a lack of motivation to do something you normally enjoy frustrates me.
A couple of examples: I’m working on a project with one of my friends (a Java application, for the more curious of you), and from time to time, I’ll sit and code into the early hours of the morning without realising…other times, despite enjoying coding, I’ll open up the code, look at it, and think “I really can’t be bothered”, despite the fact earlier that day, I was totally motivated and yearning to do it.
I’m not sure why this happens, or if it happens to anybody other than myself, but it doesn’t stop it being any less frustrating 
Anyway…time to go back to work!
Before I start – no, this isn’t a Star Wars post Sorry!
I currently have an iPhone, and no, I’m not ashamed to admit it, though it is a little awkward that I can’t sync it with my desktop. I’m also not ashamed to admit that I love it, I really do. But as with a lot of things, I find the Apple design of the phone a little restrictive. Sure it’s polished, and it looks sleek and sexy (to some at least), but I just can’t help feeling that I’d prefer an Android phone.
I’ve been looking, albeit briefly, at what Android phones are available on the UK market. Out of the choices, I think I’d prefer a Nexus One, though as far as I’ve seen – they’re Vodafone exclusive, and I’m on an O2 contract, so it’s a no-go. I’d love to hear from some of you guys that have Android phones, and what phones they are, because I’m definitely in the market!
Just a quick one to say Merry Christmas to all!
That said – I know some won’t celebrate Christmas, so Happy Holidays (whichever holiday that may be!) I hope everybody has a great time, and a good new year.
Following Laura Czajkowski’s post about machine naming conventions, I thought I’d post mine
Initially, my machine’s were named after characters from the Devil May Cry series of video games, though I changed that around 6 months ago, and went with something different, and with far more room for expansion….names of planets from the Star Wars Universe.
Currently, my desktop is kashyyyk, my laptop is naboo, my VPS is tatooine. I’m currently thinking of the less desirable planets to name the Windows PC’s in the house
Not sure if the phrase “A Little Thanks” is used a lot in Spanish speaking places, but that’s what I want to do
I did Spanish for a number of years (I believe it was 5, in total), and I enjoyed it, though I never really tried…to this day I’m surprised I did as well as I did in the subject. Recently on a trip to London, I spoke a little bit of Spanish, and read a short story entirely in Spanish – as the person I was staying with has learnt from colleagues at work, thus, had that book.
However I’ve kept it up since returning, I’ve even changed my Facebook language back from ‘English (Pirate)’ (that was a good 9 months though!) into ‘Español (España)’ which is helping me remember things…though Facebook notifications are pretty standard. So the main thanks I have to give are to the Spanish speak sub-forums on the Ubuntu Forums. For the main part, this includes the Argentina & Chile LoCo Teams – I’ve been reading threads in there, and for a large part, understanding them. It’s helping quite a lot, and for that – thanks for having your forums, & such a good LoCo team!
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.
