RSS Subscribers: Full Post vs. Summary Preference?

June 29, 2008 – 7:29 am

I don’t use RSS Feeds to read things, I prefer to see content the way a site designer meant it to be seen…So I really have no idea what people want to see in an RSS Feed. I recently received some complaints that some of my posts have images that are really big, and mess up some RSS Readers. Of course, on my site I use CSS to resize images to the right dimensions, so I don’t notice things like that.

Anyway, I found a setting in Wordpress for putting out summaries of posts on the RSS Feed, instead of the full post, meaning that images don’t get posted to the feed. I don’t know if this is better…Would people rather have a full feed with oversized images every now and then, or would you rather have a summary?

I don’t know if you can tell from this post, but I don’t like RSS Feeds. They make it impossible to get a real count of the people who read my blog, since Wordpress doesn’t track them…

By Zib | Posted in Blog, Life in general | Comments (1)

Happy Birthday, Eve!

June 29, 2008 – 7:29 am

My MacBook Pro arrived on my doorstep two years ago, yesterday. She is still an amazing computer, and I use her every day. I’m learning to program in Objective C now, so I can make better use of her. The only things I have changed since buying her are an upgrade to Leopard and an upgrade to 2gb of ram instead of 1. Anyway, Happy Birthday, Eve!

By Zib | Posted in Computers, Life in general | Comments (0)

iRemember Stores Cookies on Mobile Safari

June 25, 2008 – 11:23 pm

If you have a jailbroken iPhone or iPod Touch, you absolutely need to get iRemember now. It fixes the fact that Mobile Safari doesn’t save cookies, meaning that after you install it, Safari will remember your passwords. You have no idea how long I have wanted this.

Just add the iSpazio repo (http://repo.ispazio.net) to your sources list (in Installer.app), and then install iRemember. It can be uninstalled as soon as you install it, the change it makes is permanent. This app is a godsend.

By Zib | Posted in Computers, Life in general, iPhone | Comments (0)

Larger Firefox Icon

June 25, 2008 – 2:11 pm

I noticed today that the official Firefox icon is still using the old 128×128 resolution, rather than the new 512×512 icon size that is the standard in OS X Leopard and I think Windows Vista too. Since the Firefox icon is a vector image, it is (in theory) infinitely scalable, so it should be a breeze to make a larger one. In light of that fact, I made a larger icon, which you can download here.

For comparison, here’s the new icon compared to the old one, at 512×512 resolution (click for full resolution):

To use the new icon, you can get a program like Candybar, or simply ctrl+click on firefox (in the /Applications folder), choose Show Package Contents, and replace the icon in the Resources folder.

By Zib | Posted in Computers, Life in general | Comments (0)

Geese

June 22, 2008 – 8:43 am

I went with my girlfriend to feed some old bread to the geese that live down my street yesterday, and figured I should bring my camera. I got some pretty good pictures, but let me just say this: geese are vicious.

This guy kept attacking other geese and hissing at us for more bread. He had a metal ring on his ankle:

I wonder if that has something to do with it? Perhaps the park rangers marked which ones are really aggressive? Maybe that one is the alpha male? Do geese even have alpha males? I have no idea.

All I know is that teenage goslings are very cute:

You can see the rest of the pictures at my gallery.

By Zib | Posted in Life in general, Pictures, Releases | Comments (1)

Spore Creature Creator

June 21, 2008 – 5:48 pm

Electronic Arts released the Spore Creature Creator on Tuesday. The Creature Creator serves as a sort of demo for the full Spore game (which is currently marked for a September release), and also as a stand-alone product from Spore, because it is actually really fun. I downloaded the Trial Edition (yes, there is a full version and a trial version of what is basically a glorified Spore demo) on Wednesday, and with the help of a friend, I have created 7 creatures so far. Here are a few examples:

You can see all the creatures I’ve made so far, as well as all the creatures I will make in the future, on my page at the Sporepedia.

Anyway, the trial edition is nice, but it only has 25% of the parts that the full version has, and since the full one is only $9.95, I figured I’d download it. But wait, what’s this? It seems that EA only has the direct download option for PC users. How odd, considering that EA is offering the game for both Mac and PC platforms.

Sure, I can buy the boxed version of the Creature Creator here, for both Mac and PC, but then I’d have to pay (and wait) for shipping, something I don’t want to have to do. That plus my disc drive is broken, so physical media is useless to me. EA, why can’t I have a direct download for the Mac version? This is just stupid. It’s not like Macs can’t download things that PCs can….

After about 10 minutes of googling, I found Game Tree Online, a site devoted to direct downloads of Mac games. They have Spore imagery all over their site, but the Creature Creator download for Mac is listed as ‘coming soon’, with a pre-order available. I don’t really understand why, because if I remember correctly, EA had said that it was going to release Spore for PC and Mac at the same time, and I would tend to assume that that meant the Creautre Creator as well, in a format that’s actually useful. I’ll get it when it comes out, but I’m disappointed, EA.

By Zib | Posted in Computers, Life in general | Comments (2)

Firefox 3

June 17, 2008 – 4:24 pm

Today, Mozilla released Firefox 3, the newest version of the best browser on the planet. They’re trying to break a world record, so head over and download it now!

Download Day - English

By Zib | Posted in Computers, Life in general | Comments (0)

Wordpress 2.5

June 1, 2008 – 10:15 am

Last night at around midnight I decided to upgrade the site to Wordpress 2.5, which is why the site was down for a while.

It shouldn’t look any different to you guys, but if something is broken, please tell me!

By Zib | Posted in Blog, Life in general | Comments (0)

Cosmic Osmo’s Hex Isle

May 31, 2008 – 12:43 pm


Cosmic Osmo's Hex Isle

I just received Cosmic Osmo’s Hex Isle, the latest game from Myst creator Cyan Worlds. It has a very different feel than the Myst games, a lot more dialogue and bright colors and a lot less exploration and puzzle-solving. The game is very pretty, using the newest version of Cyan’s Plasma engine, and (unsurprisingly, due to a faster dual-core processor and four times the memory) runs better on my Mac than on my PC.

The gameplay is much more similar to a ‘casual’ game than a normal video game, in that the story is extremely simple, and the game mechanic is very straightforward. Touch all 6 blue ‘hexes’ (hexagonal tiles) to complete the level. Of course, it gets more complicated as the levels go on, with moving hexes, hexes that disappear after you step on them, etc.

The game is very fun, and for a game of its caliber, it’s very pretty. Unfortunately, the only website it’s available from is Fanista, which I think is possibly the worst online retailer I have ever had the misfortune to be forced to use. Maybe you can find it on eBay?

Having played Cosmic Osmo’s Hex Isle, the only remaining Cyan game I have not played yet is the original Cosmic Osmo, which will be on Gametap next month. Can’t wait!



By Zib | Posted in Computers, Myst games/Cyan Worlds, Video Games | Comments (0)

New Theme, Sandpress

May 26, 2008 – 9:32 am

I installed a new theme yesterday, called Sandpress. It’s by Arpit Jacob, and I think it’s very pretty. I noticed that the search box on K2 (my old theme) was no longer working, and I was also just kind of bored of the way the whole site looked, so I spent most of yesterday shopping around for new themes, and came across this one.

However, it seems to have a problem with the sidebars, at least on my computer.

Here’s how it’s supposed to look:
How it's supposed to look

But sometimes it looks like this:
How it actually looks, sometimes

And if you scroll all the way down, the second sidebar is at the bottom:
The other sidebar, at the bottom

Does anyone else see this? For some reason it only seems to happen to me, and only when using Firefox. And even then, only sporadically. If the site looks broken to you, e-mail me or drop a comment here.

By Zib | Posted in Blog, Life in general, Pictures | Comments (0)