George's Technology Blog
» Smart Phones, Web Design, Google or whatever
Gmail is on twitter with over 26,000 following on first day
Oct 4th
Gmail is on Twitter… short announcement that Gmail is looking for you to follow them. They just announced today and have over 26,000 followers already. Gmail is on Twitter
Halo Reach – The Package Walkthrough – Spoiler Warning
Oct 3rd
SPOILER WARNING: HALO: REACH WALKTHROUGH for THE PACKAGE
Noble Six lands the Falcon on the extended landing pad. Rejoining Team Noble, Kat is again getting reprimanded for accessing comms she shouldn’t be listening to. As Carter tells her to focus on her work she informs him there’s more shrapnel than transceiver left in the radio.
As she works on it, a voice crackles to life and she hands off the headset to Carter, informing him that the communication is coming over an open (unencrypted) channel. Noble Team is assigned to a priority one Torch-N-Burn mission at Halsey’s installation to protect info that must not fall into the Covenant’s hands.
As the mission starts Noble Six is checking out the outside noting that the number of enemies needs to be thinned out. He has been put in charge of a squad of marines, and they move in quietly toward some Covenant at the position in front of them. Shade Turrets, a Ghost and many Grunts can be seen. The building in the water ahead has some Armor Abilities and a nice Focus Rifle.
More >
Halo Reach – New Alexandria Walkthrough Part 2 – Spoiler Warning
Oct 2nd
SPOILER WARNING: HALO: REACH WALKTHROUGH for the NEW ALEXANDRIA MISSION Part 2
As the battle continued, Noble Six sprinted past stairs the that lead up to the elevator toward a stairwell off to his left side as he eyed up the elevator entrance guarded by three Covenant. He and the ODSTs had thinned out their numbers greatly, and now only three denied the civilians a safe evacuation. He noticed the Skirmisher was hanging back a bit getting in shots as he could without exposing himself too much, but rushing forward like a bloodthirsty animal when he had the upper hand. The Brutes were running around shooting anything that was close enough, possibly realizing their attack had turned into a defense – or maybe they didn’t realize that yet. They ducked into cover only when they were hurt badly – as one of them had just done as a pair of ODSTs lit him up with Assault Rifle slugs. The Brute was probably close to dead, and definitely in need of medical attention. That was good for Six, bad for the Brute.
More >
Joomla or Drupal – Which is better?
Oct 2nd
I’ve always coded sites “by hand.” At first, early on it was using Windows Notepad and later I began using EvrSoft FirstPage, and then year later it was Macromedia Dreamweaver (before Adobe bough them out).
During the past year or so we’ve been using WordPress self-hosted blogs more and more. WordPress has a great following of theme, plugin and widget makers who continually write software that extends and enhances the base WordPress blog. Now, WordPress itself is a great, extensible, flexible system and since WP 2.7 support for child themes. We naturally evolved at work into using WordPress to build sites, and then to offer our clients the ability to maintain and add content to their sites (CMS).
I code HTML, XHTML, PHP, and CSS; I uised to code ASP before .NET came out and I copy-edit-paste or install/customize Javascript (Lightbox, Ajax, jQuery) and whatever else I can get my hands on to extend what we do for our clients. The point is, I’m a CODER by nature and although I use Adobe Photoshop, I am not a designer. You can tell this by looking at a home page renovation I threw together last year (here).
So, here’s the question, in light of the fact that I’m heavily into coding, and do NOT prefer to let editors write my code (unless I check and edit it)…
Which is better for a WEB SITE CODER to develop a website that a client can manage – JOOMLA or DRUPAL? The CMS should allow easier building of a web site that is also easier to maintain than a site built in, say Dreamweaver. Can it be edited by a client who does not know HTML also? Do you think DRUPAL or JOOMLA have better templates/themes as far as visual impact? How about functionality?
Halo Reach – New Alexandria Walkthrough – Spoiler Warning
Oct 2nd
SPOILER WARNING: HALO: REACH WALKTHROUGH for the NEW ALEXANDRIA MISSION
Noble 6 [GameInformer.com link] watched as the slipspace rupture enveloped the Corvette and tore the nearby Supercarrier in half. Explosions pock marked the dying Covenant ship. Noble Six was taking a “gravity ride” back to the planet, no doubt thinking of the sacrifice Jorge made to insure the survival of mankind and to make sure that the Frigate Grafton wasn’t destroyed in vain. Six gained speed and finally impacted planet Reach.
No doubt some time passed before he regained consciousness, then scouted around a bit and found an M6 Magnum, cocked it and walked toward the sound of gunfire and explosions.
FAST FORWARD… Six punched the button on the central terminal to activate the anti-air batteries. Missiles reached out through the air racing toward the Covenant Corvette. Impacts in several places cause the now flaming Corvette to move off to safer places, and the civilian transport ships can now take off safely again. More >
Gmail Settings – Conversation View Gets Lost
Oct 1st
Google has added the option to lose your conversation view now. Gmail is much appreciated by some for its threaded conversation view which takes related emails and puts them together in a running thread.
However, some people prefer the emails to be all separate instead of “stacked”. Its the same with the Windows Task Bar, you can can put similar items together or you can keep them separate. As of this past Wednesday Google launched this same feature for Gmail, so if you prefer your emails separated instead of stacked you’ll love it.
The screenshot to the left you is a BEFORE and AFTER view. Before 3 emails are all “stacked” together in a conversation thread. After, they are separated into separate emails.
For complete details head on over to the Gmail blog’s “Turn off Gmail’s conversation view” post.
Halo Reach – Exodus Walkthrough – Spoiler Warning
Oct 1st
SPOILER WARNING: HALO: REACH WALKTHROUGH for the EXODUS MISSION
“No KIAs?” Dr. Halsey murmured. She touched SPARTAN-034′s entry. “Sam is listed as missing in action. Why would that be? He died in 2525.”
“ONI Section Two Directive Nine-Three-Zero,” Cortana replied. “When ONI went public with the Spartan-II program it was decided that reports of Spartan losses could cause a crippling loss of morale. Consequently, any Spartan casualties are listed as MIA or WIA, in order to maintain the illusion that Spartans do not die.”
- From Ghosts of Onyx, pg 9 More >
StumbleUpon Announces iPhone and Android Apps
Sep 30th
StumbleUpon Apps for...
StumbleUpon has announced apps for Android and the iPhone and here are some details.These apps are optimized especially for your mobile device and is a quick download. For more details continue reading or visit http://www.stumbleupon.com/mobile/
You can also visit the link to read about the StumbleUpon app for you iPad, then download it free.
EXPLORE
You can explore pages in your favorite topics and on top sites like YouTube, Flickr, Photos, and News.
SYNC
Pages you bookmark from your phone are automatically synced with your online StumbleUpon account
on the web. Access your favorites wherever you are.
SHARE
Its easy to share with using Facebook, Twitter or Email.
FOR THE IPHONE
Download from the Apple Store
Or, on your phone’s browser, visit www.stumbleupon.com
FOR YOUR ANDROID
Point your Android phone to this QR Code.
Your barcode reader should be able to read
it and launch the Market. (no code?)
Or, on your phone’s browser, visit
www.stumbleupon.com mobile
