Month: March 2008

Windows Live Writer

Are Americans Clever??

Well I wondered this one as I sat in the Blogworld convention in Vegas not more than 6-7 months ago.

“Are Americans Clever?” cos in a way there’s a lot of churn over there and most of the people doing the churning don’t know they’re churning.

WIndows Live Writer
This little piece of software can be testament because if you’re a travel blogger, many will be the times when you’ll find yourself with all the material to do a blog but a bad connections.

This software, I am hoping, (if Americans are clever), will take away the sins of the non-broadband world and deliver us from bad uplinks, 6-10 minute image uploads and all the other nightmare scenario’s you can expect when blogging on the road.

Compose: then post as your connection allows.

Download it here: windows live composer

New Gadget – Pentax Optio W30

You’ll be pleased to hear, with forthcoming bloggage we’ll be using this little gadget to capture those things that walk above the earth, and those which slither upon it.

Personal
I’ve stuck with the optio series, partly because the optio s was the first ‘true’ compact capable of quality pictures, sound & video recording. Also, I’m familiar with all the features.
At the time, 2003, I hated the idea of carry around a camera. I now own a Canon 350D, so things have moved on in that respect.

My first Optio S lasted for about 1 year, whilst on the road in Rio a little sand became wedged in the lens mech and jammed for which I had to go to Costa Rica to get repaired.
On reaching the Repair shop in San José, I was sold the S5i to continue my travels, this lasted up through the States. Got some nice shots of the mesa verde caves down round Colorado/Nevada area,
carried on through NY got a nice shot of this American flag which everyone seemed to be looking @.

Anyway, whilst in Kosovo/Serbia the S5i went missing somewhere.
That was last year.

New Camera
You might think that owning an SLR would be enough.

but AN SLR WON’T–

Take Videos
Take Pictures underwater

So I bought this Optio W30, water resistant up to 3 meters.

It’s got many features 7mega pixel, looks OK and will fit in my pocket.
I got this Cybershot pouch to protect it from random pieces of sand or anything that might damage the lens.

You got 2 in the case and they’re reversible+washable.

My two cameras

666 the number of the beast.

as iron maiden used to sing.
My fave was the ace of spades ‘gamblin’s for fools, but that’s the way i like it honey..’

Without a spade in sight or an ace. Here’s 6 stories from 6 authors in 6 weeks. It’s called ‘we tell stories’.

It uses a map to illustrate how a story progresses, the narrative being provided by 6 successful UK authors.

* Charles Cumming
* Toby Litt
* Kevin Brooks
* Nicci French
* Matt Mason
* Mohsin Hamid

Each week you can tune in and read a little. The stories are quite long, longer than a coffee break, so if social networking is getting you down, this may be the ideal distraction.

Visit the site here and click through each story until the devil arrives to reprimand your computer and sack you for wasting office time.

Steal peoples Credit Card details with scanners available on Ebay

Wow!

This is almost like going back to the days of hairspray on phone-cards, video-tape on cash cards or all those other small-time low risk scams of yesteryear.

Your life in their hands
Bearing in mind credit-card fraud in the UK is not a criminal offence, you won’t even get a sentence for this one.

The video explains all.

I know RFID is a good thing. I can’t help thinking this is a bit dodgy to me.

New suit?
The video recommends getting a stainless steel wallet, to go with your tin-foil hat, if you’re really worried.

RFID Future
There was another interesting video about baron S de Rothchild talking about getting us all chipped and muted, but you’d have to search on u-tube for that one.

I guess it all ties in with the masterplan.

remove line break characters

preg_replace to get rid of those pesky line break characters.

Particularly for Google Maps bubble’s which take an aversion to non-ASCII chars so as to stop a map rendering altogether.

Non-ACSII characters
This piece of code should be applied when generating a Google Map using any quantity of user generated material.

function removelinebreaks($string)
{
return preg_replace(‘/[\r\n\t]/e’, ‘ ‘, $string);
}

Also make sure you trim your bubbles, and if you’re particularly nervous check the htmlentities and CDATA[ declarations also.

Makes for happier bubbles :)