Yep .. I jumped the bandwagon and bought a copy for my xbox360 last week and played daily. Since I played daily (and I am not a gamer) you can tell that I like the game. I progress very slowly, because I enjoy driving around town and finding out what it can do and not .. more than going on ‘first date’ with Michelle for example. The game looks amazing, very nicely put together, great story, you can do a lot .. so I recommend it.
With MySQL v3 out of the way, and MySQL 4 and 5 being used everywhere now (and if you have not upgraded to the latest stable .. shame on you) I think it is time to point out that you can use MySQLi for your code, software and sites. This blog is to inform you about MySQLi and give you information so you can decide to upgrade and if you have already to perhaps use it on your vBulletin installation.
Bigger PHP applications, such as vBulletin can gain a lot of increased performance from running a PHP op-code cache/accelerator such as APC.
Here are some instructions on how install APC on various systems, my personal experience is with what appears the most common: 32bit CentOS 5 Server.
A while ago when their new Ghosts came out I downloaded their Ghost I for free and enjoyed it. It’s in my playlist in Itunes. And today I heard the songs playing again and I was like, damn .. this is good. So I decided to go ahead and get the full shebang.
There ya go, some changes to my blog !
Upgraded to wordpress 2.5, upgraded the plugins, and started blogging again.
I’ve also created a new tab for “find me” with details on my social profiles and stuff like that : http://mrfloris.com/find-me/
So .. today I went to Amsterdam for a bit with a buddy to watch Live Diggnation episode being recorded. We had fun and .. this was the second time I’ve participated live. Not much else to say, just .. go get episode 144 and see Kevin’s mustache :p (it’s fake)
A small update about my ISP account. I do not have an HDTV and won’t be getting one any time soon (unless I get lucky and get a load of money suddenly) so now that my ISP (UPC.nl) has introduced new accounts with discounts it was worth looking into it to see if I could save some money. Not really, just a bit, but I got more in return for it. more…
On Justin.TV I am talking to some very nice people on a live cam about Wordpress and vBulletin (and about how much Drupal sucks).
Here’s a plug to them 
http://www.justin.tv/austintexas
That’s correct, there are too many things going on today in my offline and online live that require me to put priority on that instead of my blog. Check back tomorrow when we have some ‘facts’ about todays Macworld. I will try to share my opinion and thoughts. So please check back soon.
Today I read on vBulletin.com that Google’s PageRank has been updated again. So I bothered to take a look. Let me start by saying that I do care and do not care about page rank. It doesn’t bother me a bit if a site has 1 or 2, or 4 or 6 or 10. But I do like to see my own web sites get a bit of page rank. Inside my head I go ‘yay, others thought it was worth linking to my site’. For me, it was a bit of bad news hehe.
When dealing with data such as a video file, audio file, text document, spreadsheet and such, I have always been told to use a office solution of some kind. Something that ties things together. So when I moved away from Windows to a Mac solution I have purchased additional software solutions to replace for example Microsoft Office. I’ve also tried out a lot of open source solutions. And while there are great programs out there that do the job, I still felt like I was perhaps missing out on something. Leopard provided the solution.
No new blog entries today, I am having a very busy day. I thought this would be a great time to repost a few of my old blog entries. I will do this a few more times in the future so I slowly restore the lost entries. So check them out if you haven’t already.
So, today I think it’s time to let everybody know I have tried to avoid listening to Mac Break Tech from PixelCorps.tv. I expected it to be like Mac Break Video, short tech chats about something trivial. I used to love Mac Break Video, but now it’s just about that moron who has a book on how to do something with the Mac (final cut or who cares really). So I thought this would suck. Verdict: It doesn’t!
Oh my, so sorry. The other day I kind of implied I would make up for slacking, but I had a busy day, went to bed, woke up late, and continued my todo list. I run into the item of writing a blog and realized it’s already nearing midnight. Woops. I still have so much to do that has a higher priority so I am afraid this will be another short blog. Tomorrow is planned to do part 2 of 5 of the re-posting of older blog entries. So I will then make it up with adding old entries again which you might not have read yet.
I have a million things I want to talk about, but I am knackered and have a million things to do, sorry .. unless I wake up before midnight later today, no blog today.
News I do want to talk about: New Mac Pro by Apple Inc.
But, I already have one, .. so not really interested
In an earlier blog entry I kind of promised to come back to explaining how I try to be more secure about how I browse using FireFox. So here it is. First of all there are two different ways I do this, one is on my Powerbook (laptop) which I bring with me and therefor has a higher risk being used by others (unauthorized) or worst case scenario: it can get stolen. And my Mac Pro in my computer room which doesn’t get used much by others, and when so, only by those who I trust. Regardless, in both situation, unknown people might try to hack into the system from the outside or steal traffic via sniffing and such. Preventing abuse is impossible, making it harder to do so is possible.
Over the last year or so I have been signing up on one social network after the other, from MySpace (ugh!) to Facebook (woot), from Twitter to Jaiku, from using Adium-X to iChat, etc.
I run them in the background, on the second monitor, or in a different space and had to spend a minute going through all the damn sites to update the status if I just wanted to let my friends and followers know that I am doing this, or just did that, or am having lunch or that I am on my way - whatever.
Now with Moodblast it’s a matter of a few seconds. So .. use this program if you do what I do!
Today I just can’t deal with nonsense, so I am staying in bed feeling sorry for myself. I didn’t sleep last night due to my shaky eyes, woke up every other hour with an increased headache. Spend the day ignoring a migraine and felt like shit each time I ate something. Life can suck my c&ck, I will be back on Saturday.
Because I was enjoying (cough) the flu around Christmas I invited my parents and my sister over for a catch-up dinner. We’re just getting together and having a nice dinner. Nothing fancy. We’re ordering it from a catering service so no fuzz or anything.
Today I’ve tried to work on installing BootCamp 2.0, doing a 32GB partition for Windows XP Pro with SP2. Boy oh boy, that cost me a few hours of nothing but frustration. After a lot of screwing around, a lot of reboots, a lot of forced shutdowns and a lot of swearing towards Microsoft .. it’s finally here. A working version of XP so I can play my old games like Half Life 2 and Counter Strike: Source. And .. I had to write a review which required native Windows (no emulation) for a specific benchmark program. more…
Through the last summer and especially the last few months I’ve had a bit of a rough spot when it comes to my finances. And I won’t go into detail to ensure that I won’t bore anybody with the specifics, but .. now that the holidays are over it’s time to revisit my pile of bills and my small pile of income. Since it’s January 1st today I guess this could be my new resolutions. Getting my financing in order.
Yes! The HDDVD Box with the four Die Hard movies has arrived. And it’s the 31st of December today, which means that we are enjoying enduring an evening of old classic movies or Christmas movies, and top100-everything lists on TV, speeches and musicals before we start having fun with friends and family, set of fireworks and get drunk. Not me! I got Die Hard *grin*
No new blog entries today, I am having a day off. I can’t do much work and don’t feel like writing a lot. I am feeling under the weather and I thought this would be a great time to repost a few of my old blog entries. I will do this a few more times in the future so I slowly restore the lost entries. So check them out if you haven’t already.
At this moment I can not browse the web without running into a Top X list, and some are fun or nice to read, but the majority of them are just made without any thought. For example, there was an article on Digg about top25 movies from 2007, but a good handful were all made and released in 2006. But ok, maybe the author meant the ones he’s seen in the last year. What I haven’t seen yet is an Apple Top 10 list of products and services they offer through their stores. So I guess here it is. Yes, I am not doing any research either. I am going to wing it, but I will try to provide some arguments why I made the pick.
The categories are Software, Services, Accessories, iPhone, iPod, Laptops, Computers, Underdogs, Failures, and Rumored.
## spoiler ## And if you think ‘damn this blog is long’ let me spoil it for you. The winners in my eyes are for handheld devices and iPod, and media experience the iPhone, no doubt. And as computer system the new 24″ iMac has no competition. ##spoiler##
In the last few years I have hosted the vBulletin Fans Chat Network over at irc.vBulletin-Chat.com and we have grown quite a bit. We are still what is to be considered a small chat network, but we are an open network, have a flexible group of staff and have a growing group of supporters and chatters.
Each year I review the situation and decide whether to stop or continue with the chat network. After all, I pay it out of my own pocket or use the few donations we receive. And it could be that we’re paying too much for too many services when we perhaps only need half of the resources. Or, we might have grown so much that we need to double our set up and increase capacity. To just name a few questions I ask myself when the time is there again to make that decision.
Before the weekend we had the sad news that our Uncle Charles has passed away (peacefully) at the age of 89. Today’s the funeral.
We love you Uncle Charles and will certainly miss you. From when I was a child you spoiled me with elaborate gifts, and I enjoyed our conversations about your travels, old automobiles and your hobbies. It was nice seeing you again last summer. I am proud of my dad and his family for taking care of you in the past few years.
Goodbye.
There are quite a few domain names that I own, and they have to be hosted too. Some are small few page-sites, and others are medium to large. But they will all do just fine with shared hosting-, or virtual private server hosting solutions. And each account is only using about 50% of the capacity.
Individually each account is affordable, cheap, works just fine, and could work with a few parked and add-on domains. But as soon as a site peaks in traffic there could be problems. And some have the potential to do so. However, all together the bills I pay add up to quite a bit. A solution was needed, but the solution must have potential to grow without doubling the costs quickly.
The latest upgrade to Mac OSX is 10.5, which is Leopard. An awesome operating system, but with a few little issues. It has a lot of cool new features too such as the awesome Time Machine.
However, we all know that with great powers comes great responsibility. Apple is new to playing with time. At this point they can travel back in time, but not forward (I am sure Steve Jobs will make it happen in the near future). Going back in time turns out to be risky. Many TV shows and movies have mentioned that the same matter and energy can’t exist in the same space and time (or something like that).
