software

I'm always interested in cool software and below is a list of articles about such software, for linux, Mac and Windows.

Synergy for OSX Leopard

I recently setup my PC in the living room with my TV so I could play games and watch streamed video from the net (eg, BBC's iPlayer). Unfortunately this always meant having a keyboard and mouse attached.

Then came along Synergy.

Getting the most out of Fedora Core 4

MySQL and Apache

I recently looked into which versions of software I was running and was a little concerned to see how backward Fedora Core 4 was in some areas. I did a little Googling around and found a website (http://remi.collet.free.fr/) which is predominately written in French (but has a few English translations) which provides a new repository for Fedora Core 4's Yum Installer Package which provides far more recent RPM's for the likes of PHP and MySQL... So I installed it!

Force a PDF to download

Apache Logo

I recently needed to force a PDF to download using Apache. The default behaviour for most browsers is to try to open the PDF inside the browser itself. This is fine for a small PDF or for powerful machines - but a large PDF on even a modest machine can often lock the browser up. This needed fixing!

After 20 minutes of perusing the Apache documents, I happened across the FilesMatch option which takes Regular Expressions. Regular Expressions are cool things which pattern match; you give it a rather complicated (yet logical) pattern and it matches it for you. Initially I used something like this...

Significant hardware change?

 

After watching a DVD last night, I went to bed as usual. Then this morning I woke up to find Windows had convinced itself that I'd had a Significant Hardware Change. This led be to believe 1 of 2 things...

  1. I had been sleep upgrading again. I thought I'd grown out of that...
  2. Windows was up to its good old screw ups.

Interestingly, this is a fully legit copy of Windows XP Pro OEM and I haven't had a single hardware change since I installed it.

Social Statistics module released

Social Stats

I've been working on it for a few days now, but its finally released. Social Statistics is being used on this site and can be found on any page on an enabled site in a block. It provides pluggable statistics for (currently) 3 major Social Networking websites; Del.icio.us, Digg and Ma.gnolia. It currently boasts caching of statistics for a configurable amount of time, AHAH retrieval of statistics which are not cached (thus not slowing down page loads) and an API to make the project extendible to anybody who cares to add a Social Network to the mixture!

The core module consists, mostly, of a few menu callbacks and an API. This API allows the user to enable any number of enabled modules to add their contribution to the block. The 3 enabled sites all have an XML based API, but each does things slightly differently - hence my choice in using them as examples of the module as a whole.

You can find this module over in the Drupal Projects section.

Pongis - a new game I made!

Pongis Screenshot

I've just released a new game - its a VERY simple adaptation of the classic, pong, but it has a twist in the form of tennis. You must rally the ball back and forth - the ball gaining speed slightly on every return. Players win points (and serve) by knocking the ball past their opponent, either through a cunning move or by making them lose out in a game of reactions.

Checkout the game here - Pongis - Where Pong Meets Tennis

Pongis

This is my entry into the Medialess Challenge set on February 2007 which was to re-invent a classic (rather than remake). This has turned into quite a fun game!

This game is not called Pongish - as I keep typing it!

Fireworks Screensaver

About the screensaver

This started out as my entry for the Fireworks Challenge and I decided to build upon it to make a screensaver of it. Its pretty simple - no sounds (sounds in screensavers annoy me!), a city made of white boxes and brightly coloured fireworks

The challenge was actually back in June 2006 and its only recently, with fireworks going off outside, that I've decided to finish it!

3D Gravity Screensaver

About the screensaver

This is a game I started earlier this year (about June 2006) and - as is usual for me - I didn't finish it. Well now its certainly closer to being finished! A working screensaver with mesmorizing balls whooshing everywhere.

20 free windows applications

Over 20 free windows applications under 2mb, courteously of revision3 forum member, lordfoul. Definately a list to look into. Applications range from miscellaneous software, command utilities, system performance tools, and more.

GraviKill

About the game

GraviKill started out as an experiment with the effect of a gravity field on a moving item. When I found you could get really cool sling-shots from the formula, I thought "What if I tried to fire something from A to B but it got effected by pushes and pulls in between?"… and thus GraviKill was born!

Primitive Maze

About the game…

This is a game that started out as a personal challenge - "How hard is it to make a random maze?!"

Wormhole Generator

About

This was a tech-demo I quickly made using only dark basic professional. I used no external media makes - the whole thing is purely coded. It simulates flying - allbeit in a rather uncontrolled fashion - down a wormhole. I am going to turn this into a proper screensaver at some point.

Dodge The Fart

About the game

This is a game I started over a year ago and never really got around to finishing. Well now I decided to actually try to finish a game! With the help of The Game Creators forum (a special thanks to "Freddix" for compiling The Ultimate Shader Pack AND creating the eXtends plugin for Dark Basic Professional) I have managed to not only improve the games efficiency but I have also given it quite a bit more eye candy too!

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