binaryslate

An open request to someone on the wordpress team…

Please fix the regex that replaces text smilies for the graphical versions, please make it match from the start of line as well when preceded by white space. It’s a nightmare having to always go back into a post to stick a space in front of a smiley…

Rumble Box

Rumble Box is a fast paced 3D action beat-em-up with a unique premise:
all of the characters are made of simple objects which stay around
in the level even after the character is defeated. The objects pile up,
changing the gameplay landscape and altering your combat tactics.
The game takes place inside a giant box, and the ultimate goal
of the game is to pile up enough defeated enemies to get out of the box.

Always nice to see a game out there that likes to break the typical gaming mould. Sure games all look spiffy these days and you need a small cray to run them, but hey where’s the gameplay, where’s the quirky twists, the fun challenges?

So much so, i’ve gone back to playing my old amiga games. They might not be a visual feast for todays young’uns (well I think the gfx’s are fab) but Shadow of the Beast, or Another World, or Manic Miner just have a charm that you don’t find these days.

I’m sure i’ve posted or commented somewhere before about the speed of posting with wordpress. I’d always assumed it was all the pingbacks/trackbacks happening in the background that would slow the saving of the post. It seems Owen has the same idea, being knowledgeable about such things… Why Posts Take Forever to Publish suggests it is the ping/trackbacks that may be the issue, and a possible solution of doing all the trackbacks seperately is suggested as below.

So i’m going to give it a whirl and see if it makes life more pleasant !

There is also a patch to fix something in the pinging mechanism.

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://api.feedster.com/ping.php
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://www.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php (Currently shows a PHP error)
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.newsgator.com/ (Seems non-existant?)
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi (Seems non-existant?)
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/

p.s. Well that took 7.83 seconds to post, seemed like a long time…

I shall change the rpc settings back for my next post and see the difference

p.p.s applied the patch and the rpc changes and i’m still getting over 7 seconds !!! Damn it !!

Canadian IT Operators Discover Beauty In Spam

Building on the idea that people are naturally attuned to sound, the Sheridan College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning has created software that translates network and server activity into music. And, their IT department operators can interpret the music to detect problems in the system.

I’d fear for the din that might be produced if I ran this on our network… clang !!!

Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.1 Released

The first security and stability update to Mozilla Firefox 1.5 has been released. It is recommended that all Firefox users upgrade to this latest version.

I’ve still not moved back to 1.5 after the quirks that appeared when trying to reach certain pages. It would prompt me to save the php page rather than display it ! Should I give it another go ?

I really want to try out the download bar extension too and it’s only for 1.5.

I’ve been using ABC for a long while now and it works a treat, but… I just read “» Can great software live in 130 kilobytes?” and i’m intrigued by µTorrent.

130 Kb, how nostalgic is that? harks back to the good old days when it was normal for software to come on a floppy (or more if it was cool, Monkey Island anyone!).