While working on my plugin, Tango Smileys Extended, I found that my traditional method of programming was not working out very well. I had grown accustomed to having full control over web based content by authoring completely by hand — using a generic text editor (previously Notepad, but more recently EmEditor) — which was becoming very tedious and time consuming. The most time consuming part was having to debug because of a typo or a missing semicolon or curly bracket. The most tedious part was looking through WordPress source trying to find which parameters are passed to a function and what is returned. I was on the lookout for a new editor which could at least help save time and avoid the simple bugs of missing punctuation or mistyped function and variable names. As it turns out, I already had one, except I had never installed it!

Find out what program can help you, too »

A while back, I wrote about a Windows Mobile WordPress publisher app called moBlog. As a matter of fact, I wrote the post using moBlog. moBlog was designed to allow people using Windows Mobile to publish to their WordPress blogs.

At the time I was using an HTC Apache (6700) and it had a standard QVGA [240x320] screen. Now, however, I’m using a Samsung Omnia (SCH-i910) – with a WQVGA [240x400] screen, and moBlog is not compatible. Actually, I’ve looked into three other WinMo apps with very limited success – meaning two crashed instantly and the last took nearly 10 minutes to enter the setup screen, and then it crashed. So what is PocketPress?

I ran into a problem today and I had such a hard time finding a solution that I decided to post some help for anyone who has the same issue.

I had a small issue with my new wireless dongle that was causing it to disconnect from my router and become unable to reconnect to the same router without being reset – [disconnected|disabled] and [reconnected|re-enabled] – but it always happened while I was at work. This meant that I could not access my computer until I got home, and I could not access the internet until I reset the dongle.

I decided my best course of action would be to add a task to the Task Scheduler which would detect the error and disable then re-enable the dongle, thus fixing the problem without requiring my interaction. There was, however, one small hitch: Task Scheduler cannot interact directly with devices, and there is no built-in command line controller for the Device Manager in Vista.

This new issue led me to search for a command line interface for the Device Manager, and as luck would have it I found one. DevCon. And as my luck would have it, it is available for x86 and ia64 platforms only. Since ia64 is not the same as x64, and the x86 version cannot interact directly with x64 devices, I had come to a brick wall. Fortunately, I’m a resourceful person, and I found – through no small feat, I might add – an x64 version of DevCon. I now make this version of DevCon available to you. For information on the usage of DevCon, please refer to the Microsoft documentation page here. Continue to the file »

While thumbing through the fixed tickets in the new version of WordPress, version 2.7.1, I came across a ticket regarding Word 2007 and WordPress.

Was I the only one that didn’t know that Word 2007 could post to WordPress?

I had to try it out, and this post is the result.

Not that I plan on using Word 2007 to write my posts, but it would be a great option if I ever had to go back to a dial-up and had minimal bandwidth. Not that I plan on that happening, but just in case.

One thing I can say about AOL is that they’ve really been on the ball with updating AIM for Windows Mobile. The newest release, v1.1.15.1, offers increased performance and support of Windows Mobile 6.1.

While I can attest to the increased performance, I cannot confirm full functionality with WM6.1, as I do not have it.

Along with the general improvements with each update, the one thing I’ve been waiting for has been ever so slightly improved. I speak, of course, about power consumption.

I ran my own little benchmarking test for power consumption. The only differences in the tests were the phone status (normal or standby) and the status of AIM (not running or running), and the results are as follows. Click to view the results »

I’ve been meaning to install some form of Linux, as it has been quite a long while since I’ve worked in a Linux environment, but I actually got around to it this morning for some strange reason.

I don’t know what prompted my renewed interest in Linux, but I typed ubuntu.com into the Firefox address bar and hit enter, and here I am.

I decided to go with Kubuntu 8.04 LTS with KDE3 instead of KDE4, and I’ll wait for 8.10 final before I switch to KDE4.

It was actually a difficult decision for me, as to which version of Ubuntu to go with. On one hand, the simplicity of the Gnome environment of Ubuntu would make it a bit easier to transition from Windows to Linux, but I would always be missing out on the advanced features available with KDE in Kubuntu, and going with Xfce in Xubuntu would just be a waste of my computer’s potential. In the end, I made my decision based on my most recent use of a Linux environment.

I had been using Knoppix to repair issues or recover data on my Windows drives for a long time, and KDE was the desktop environment of choice for Knoppix, so that’s what I went with.

I think I’m in for an adventure, and if you’ve never used Linux, you are definitely missing out.

I should also point out that I have not abandoned Windows XP in my Kubuntu adventure, as I have installed Kubuntu using Virtual PC 2007. If you’d like to do the same and see the wonders of Linux for yourself, but you don’t want to leave the familiar Windows environment, leave a comment and I’ll post instructions. As it turns out, parts of installing Kubuntu in VPC are troublesome, and usually require some tweaking to get it to work.

Now I’m off to see if I can crash Kubuntu!