MyVogonPoetry

So, with our new arrangement of furniture and the incoming big-screen plasma/LCD, I decided I need another Xbox running XBMC - one will stay upstairs hardwired to the network, the other will be connected to the LCD/plasma and be hooked into the network wirelessly. My first one I used a modchip, but the art of softmodding has come a long way so I thought I’d try it. Since I already had a working Xbox, I went looking for a “broken” Xbox whose DVD drive didn’t work. I could just swap my working one in, do the softmod, and then just use it as a networked media center.

I posted on Craigslist looking for a “broken” but bootable XBox and found one for $25 which included all cables, 2 wired controllers, and one wireless controller. What a deal - though I did have to drive 18 miles both ways to pick it up. The softmod requires an original version of 007, MechAssault, or Splinter Cell so I asked a coworker (whom I know owns an Xbox) if he happened to have one of those games and he has two of them! I borrowed those and off I went.

I downloaded “Softmod Installer Deluxe” which contained the softmod installer and the hacked savegames. You’ll also need the Action Replay software for Xbox so that you can get the savegames on your Xbox. Along with that, you need a USB adapter that goes in your Xbox controller port. Luckily, my modchip came with one so I didn’t have to hack a controller and make one.

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If you have seen that annoying new service snap.com (it creates popup snapshots of the link destination) you have probably found it darn annoying. If you haven’t seen it yet, visit http://techcrunch.com and point at any link that goes offsite. If you find it really annoying, come back here and I’ll tell you how to get rid of it on all sites you visit.

It’s pretty simple to remove. If you’re using Firefox (and if not, you should be) and you are using the AdBlock plugin for Firefox, simply block
*.snap.com/*
and you won’t see the snap previews on any site you visit in the future.

Tags: geek, snap, snap.com, annoy, annoying, website, websites, spam

I could have also called this “The first Wordpress plugin you should install when starting a new Wordpress blog”.

So, today, I posted a new feature article on Candy Addict called Top 10 Grossest Candies. I hoped it would get some traffic and submitted it to a bunch of popular sites. I got linked from BoingBoing and Fark.com which sent a ton of traffic and this caused my CPU usage on my shared server to go over the limits. So, my possibly-new-readers’ first impression of the site is an error page.

So, I scramble to figure out if I can get the CPU usage down, I call my host, but nothing I do drops it and I still get the error message (it comes and goes). So, my buddy Tom says I need a way to cache the pages and AHA! I search for a WordPress plugin that does caching and I found one. I didn’t know if it would work or not, but I figured it couldn’t hurt since my site was hosed anyway.

Almost as soon as I get it installed, my site is fine. Snappy, responsive, and no CPU quota error messages. Amazing. So, I owe the author of that plugin a few beers, but he is Hispanic and the site is almost all in Spanish (except the plugin page) and I can’t find any contact info. If nothing else, I just want to say thanks!

So, the moral of the story:
INSTALL WP-CACHE IN YOUR WORDPRESS BLOG NOW!
Go do it now - I’ll wait. Install it whether or not you expect to ever get a bunch of traffic. You never know when something you write will spread across the internet like wildfire and you will need/want some caching.

• WP-Cache

Tags: geek, wp, wordpress, tip, trick, tips, tricks, blog, blogs, blogtips, blogging, cache, caching, boingboing, traffic

I had been using SSHTerm (now called UniTTY, see below) for a long time for my SSH and SFTP needs. The main reason was because it allows you to easily spawn an SFTP process form your current SSH session (and it puts it in a tab). This is SOOOOO handy - how many times do I SSH into my linux box then realize I need to transfer a file? Many times. SSHTerm lets me do both SSH and SFTP with one login.

The bad part: SSHTerm is in Java and is a memory HOG. I also don’t like the UI a whole lot. The buttons are not intuitive at all - even after using it for 2(?) years I still can’t remember what those icons do.

So I was playing with WinSCP the other day - I use it every now and then because I like the UI (in Norton mode) and it’s a native Windows app so it’s not a memory hog. Well, lo and behold, WinSCP has sort of an integration with PuTTY (a great, free, SSH client). Hit Ctrl-P while connected and it pops up a PuTTY terminal. You still have to enter your password but it’s quick. For commands that don’t require user interaction you can even use their built-in terminal by hitting Ctrl-T.

WinSCP just became my #1 SFTP client.

Oh yeah - all the programs I mentioned - SSHTerm, WinSCP, and PuTTY are freeware.

Hmmmmmm…..while getting the link for SSHTerm it looks like they have renamed it to UniTTY (cool name) and added/changed some features. I’ll update this once I’ve taken a look.

And yes I have tried FileZilla and it sucks (IMHO).

UPDATE: UniTTY is pretty nice. Fast startup times, nice GUI. Still takes up 40MB of RAM but it’s speedy. Still has crappy icons. I wish it had dual panes (local and remote).

• WinSCP
• PuTTY
• SSHTerm UniTTY

Tags: geek, software, freeware, ssh, sftp, windows, tips, tricks

How have I not heard of this before? Google has a registry hack (for IE only, sadly), that allows you to see what ads Google would put on a site if AdSense were to be put on it - even if it currently has no ads. Very cool. If used on a site that does have AdSense, you can use it to get the links from the ads so you can visit the URLs without clicking on your own ads.

• Google AdSense preview tool

Tags: geek, webware, software, tips, tricks, google, adsense

TipMonkies, a great site for useful tip and tricks (and one that I write for every now and then) seemed to be dead for the last few months. Martin (the owner/editor) had some serious family problems, but he’s back now and ready to go. He’s already posted some great stuff in the last day or two. Check out TipMonkies if you haven’t already.

Tags: geek, windows, software, tips, tricks, webware, web, website, websites, tipmonkies

I rarely need to listen to an actual audio (Redbook) CD any more since all my audio is in MP3 format, but today I did and I had no app to play it. I knew I had found a really small, non-installable CD player at one point and I found it again today. It’s only 10kb and requires no install. It’s fully functional and actually has a nice interface … amazing for only 10kb. Check it out at Robin Keir’s site. Lots of other cool little apps there too!

• Small Windows CD player app

Tags: geek, windows, softwre, cd, player, cd player

If you are using Windows XP and haven’t turned on ClearType fonts, you need to try it - it’s amazing. (Yeah, I know it’s probably old news, but I didn’t know about it til today). Go to
Desktop –> Properties –> Appearance –> Effects
and change the second drop-down to ClearType. Hit OK then the next OK. Now be amazed at how much different the text now looks in XP.

Credit goes to Tom for pointing this out to me.

Tags: geek, windows, xp, windows xp, tip, tips, trick, tricks, tips and tricks

Is there? I can’t find one. I have a webpage with a bunch of email addresses and I want to grab them all easily. I can’t seem to find a plugin that does this. Is there one? I was thinking I could write a quick Java program to do it. I actually wrote a java program before that would do this but I can’t find the source code! ARRGGHH!

UPDATE: I found a freeware Windows app that worked - XSite

Tags: geek, firefox, plugin, plugins, email, java, extension, firefox extension

If you ever need to control Foobar 2000 remotely, here is the plugin for you. It’s called HTTP Writer and it runs a mini HTTP server within Foobar so you can control it remotely via a web browser. I was going to write a JSP to do this for me, but since someone has already done it, I’ll just use this. I used it all day today and it works great.

HTTP Writer Foobar plugin

TAGS: geek foobar foobar2000 audio mp3s remote http