Vocal Trance Mixes

For some good vocal trance mixes check out Generation Trance. Here you can download mixes by DJ GT and Project C. I personally like Project C but they are both worth a listen! If you do not want to download the mixes but would like to hear them they are played frequently on Digitally Imported (which is a great streaming radio station).

HL2 preload complete!

Well I was finally able to start downloading the Half Life 2 preload on Steam last night. It actually came down a lot faster then I thought it would and has completed. Now I just have to wait until it goes gold so I can start playing it :). For anyone who cares the filename is base source shared materials.gcf and its size is 1,068,909KB.







Doom3 is keeping me occupied for the time being but I really can't wait for the Half Life 2 multiplayer mods. So many good modifications have came for the original Half Life. A couple that I still play are Team Fortress Classic and Natural Selection.



Oh yeah, here's another Gmail invite

http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-1ca6e8ea66-9c938c4aae-cc75bb6a26

Even more gmail invites

Well as I stated here, free gmail invite, yesterday I received a gmail invite after a long dry spell. This was quickly used up as expected.. Anyhow, I was surprised to find 6 more invites today! Google must be ready for another swarm of beta testers to try and work any remaining kinks out before going live with gmail. I'm feeling generous again today so here are three invites:

http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-1ca6e8ea66-ee8b439ef6-d2a47274a0



http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-1ca6e8ea66-bd7e69a4c1-5c108c21d9



http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-1ca6e8ea66-80126b2cca-5363daf9b3

I will post the remaining 3 over the next few days. Enjoy!

Free gmail invite

Well it's been awhile since my gmail account has received any invites but I got one today. I asked around and it seems everyone I know already has one so I decided to post it up here. This is first come, first serve and at this point is the only invite I have. If I happen to receive any more they will most likely end up here. If you miss this invite check back and I may have another one available. Here's the signup link

http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-1ca6e8ea66-d41f4096f9-249780d495

Congratulations to whoever gets in, I am sure you will be pleased with gmail.



Please do not email me requesting an invite! I will post more as I receive them.

Which OS Are You?

Want to find out what operating system you would be based on your personality? This short quiz will tell you! I ended up being Debian Linux:




Which OS are You?



Although this describes me perfectly I was hooked on Slackware when I used to toy around with Linux.

uxtheme

For all you Windows users I can confirm that the uxtheme patcher from WindowsX will patch Windows XP SP2 RTM successfully. For those of you who do not know what uxtheme is here is a short explanation. uxtheme.dll resides in c:\windows\system32 and provides the interface for loading Windows theme files (known as Visual Styles). The standard Microsoft version will only allow for signed visual styles to be loaded. This is not ideal as there are many free visual styles available but are not signed because Microsoft does not allow us to sign our own. A great resource for visual styles is available at the Neowin Forums.

SEO Experiment

This is completely off topic but has to be posted in the name of science. mcdar, someone at the Digital Point forums, has requested help with his sleeping bags experiment. Being curious myself I decided to join in on the fun and can not wait to see what the results are. Stay tuned, if things get interesting I will provide an update.

Blogger SEO tips

I thought I publish a couple of blogger SEO tricks I have come up with, they may help you out. I have just recently made these changes to my blog and have not been able to gauge the results yet but I believe only good can come of this.



1. You must publish your blog via FTP or SFTP to a PHP enabled server. Sorry ASP users, no support at this time.



2. You must add the following to your .htaccess file

AddHandler application/x-httpd-php .htm

AddHandler application/x-httpd-php .html

If you are already using .php extensions for your files you will not need to do this. Also if you are using extensions other than .html and .htm you will have to add them to the .htaccess file as well. .htaccess file configuration is outside of the scope of this posting but Google has plenty of information.



You are still reading so I assume you qualify for the two requirements so let's get started.

Optimizing the title text

The first tip is to optimize the title text of your posts. This is accomplished by removing your blog's name from the title.



In the Blogger interface select Template. This will allow you to edit your current template. Once in this Template screen search for the line that reads <title><$BlogPageTitle$></title>. <$BlogPageTitle> is a Blogger variable that outputs "Your Blog Title" on the main page or "Your Blog Title: Your Post Title" on a post page. This is fine for the main page but a post page would be better just containing the title of the post. This is accomplished by replacing:



<title><$BlogPageTitle$></title>



with (The below is one line of text):



<title><?php echo str_replace('<$BlogTitle$>: ','','<$BlogPageTitle$>'); ?></title>



With this chage complete, save your template and republish your blog. One drawback with this replacement is that your archive pages will now have a title containing only the time period for which the archive is for. I may post a workaround for this shortly.

Adding meta keywords

The next tip is adding keywords to your posts. Most if not all Blogger templates do not offer keywords. Adding keywords is very similar to replacing the title text as illustrated in the first tip.



Again, log into Blogger and edit your template. This time locate the line that contains <$BlogMetaData$>. Create a new line below this tag and paste the following code (The below is one line of text):



<meta name="keywords" content="<?php echo str_replace('<$BlogTitle$>: ','','<$BlogPageTitle$>'); ?>" />



This will add your blog title as a keyword to your main page, your post titles as keywords to your post pages and, unfortunately, add the archive dates as keywords to your archive pages.

That's it for now please leave a comment if you find this useful.

Windows XP SP2 Developers

Now that Microsoft has released Windows XP SP2 it is time to make sure your applications work. Microsoft has a Windows XP Service Pack 2 - Security Information for Developers page up to help with this process. This page has resources to ensure your website will work with SP2, information on the new security features and a whitepaper overview of the features in SP2. They also have a Windows XP Service Pack 2 Resources for IT Professionals for the more advanced developer / PC user. A webcast will be available here tomorrow, August 11th 2004, at 10AM Pacific time to discuss the August security bulletins as well as a detailed overview of SP2. They will also be answering questions regarding download and deployment of SP2. Be sure to check it out!

PocketPC Trojan Horse

Well it has finally happened, a trojan horse has been detected in PDAs running Microsoft's PocketPC operating system. An article has surfaced on The Register: Trojan horse stalks PocketPC | The Register. Only a small amount of PocketPC's have been infected. This comes just shy of a month after the First Pocket PC Virus Surfaces surfaced which was a "proof of concept" and not released into the wild. A quote from viruslist.com which lists the virus as Backdoor.WinCE.Brador.a:

Brador identifies the IP address of the infected handheld and sends it to the virus coder to inform him that the handheld is connected to the Internet and that the backdoor is active. Brador then opens port 2989 and awaits further orders.



The backdoor responds to the following commands:



d - lists the directory contents

f - closes the session

g - uploads a file

m - displays MessageBox

p - downloads a file

r - executes the specified command

And to think we all thought our personal data was safer on a PDA. For the time being I believe it is but who knows what the future holds?