This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!
Here’s what we have in store for you. First things first - games. Raveen has done his duty once again and reviewed a top notch shoot-em-up. A little warning though, Chronicles of Riddick is hardly child’s play. Turn to page 42 to see a review of some (quite literally) neck-breaking action.
Windows XP. Love it or hate it, many of us use it. Mark Jaquith shows you how to turn a brand spanking new XP install in to a desktop environment you’ll feel comfortable and safe in. Flip to page 34 and start tweaking right away. Now! Before the spyware invades! RAM. Yes, Random Access Memory – those little pieces of silicon that make your computer do the coolest things faster. Chinthana Seneviratne guides you through the process of replacing and upgrading your memory and boosting system performance instantly. Remember though, anti-static, anti-static, anti-static! Page 37. As for buzzwords, we’ve done ourselves proud. Blogging. Yeah you heard right! Nobody really admits to it, but everyone is doing it. Turn to page 30 and follow Indranil Dasgupta’s tutorial on how to setup your very own professional-grade weblog with a neat little piece of software called Wordpress. Of course, we would be nothing without the letters X,H,T,M and L, and we pay due homage to the foundations of web design by giving you yet another amazing tutorial by Prabhath Sirisena, CSS zealot and member of the Web Standards mafia. A PHP tutorial has also been slipped in as promised. Pages 26 through 29. Last but not least, we’ve broken our backs (and sacrificed our privacy) to give you an insight in to how we work. Yeah that’s right – the Virtual Office is no longer science fiction. Flip to our cover story on page 12 to find out just how we mash out a 60 page magazine between the two of us. Well, November is done, and Christmas is just around the corner. What does that mean? Gadgets of course, among a lot of other things. Drop by next month for what we know is going to be a cracker of an issue. Happy Hacking Sri Lanka!
Pragathi Mahilal business development Dunstan Wijegunaratne design consultant Aruna Wickramarachchi graphics/layouts Lalani Heenwella proofs David Ranabahu printing Primal Fernando circulation Rohan Fonseka subscriptions Nimal Weerakkody advertising Saranga Wijeyarathne promotions Nalin Wickramasinghe branding
Mahangu Weerasinghe Associate Editor
Sujith Pathirannehe systems Naveen Guneratne
published by Wijeya Newspapers Ltd. No 8, Hunupitiya Cross Rd, Colombo 2 printed by Lake House Printers & Publishers ( [email protected])
Thanks to everyone for their feedback and support on the beta. We’re calling this version 5.11 (2005, November). It tries to incorporate some of your responses while retaining our identity. Mahangu has developed a crop of talented young writers - local and international - and I think it makes for a good reading experience. With help from Raveen we’ve also aggressively copy-edited this edition to get all the bugs out. Hopefully everything is speeled correctly. I’m especially happy that all the work is original, nothing copy and pasted from the Internet. You can read a lot of articles on the Net, but IT Times aims to give you fresh and Sri Lankan perspective. We’ve had good feedback on the new look and, most encouragingly, a lot of unsolicited contributions. For future issues we’ve enlisted the support of bloggers, Microsoft MVPs, researchers, and ordinary geeks with extraordinary talents. This issue also contains ever-entertaining advertisements. We’re trying to be selective, finding businesses that are truly relevant to the content and our readers. In speaking to advertisers we’ve heard requests for more office/work oriented content, so we’ve added a Work section covering Virtual Office, productivity, and PDF. Next on deck are tips for better presentations
and reports, just you wait. We’d like to include something for everyone, whether you live to geek or geek to live. Now, getting to your comments. One crucial point that is that we are focused on producing a quality magazine above all things. We’ve received numerous requests for an included CD, and that is in the works. The priority, however, is developing the magazine to its fullest before we add anything else. I believe that the design and content have reached an international standard, but we still have further to go. Right now the priorites are magazine, website, CD. If you think those should change, email away. There has also been a significant amount of debate online about the covers. For the future we’ll seek to balance girls with geek celebrities (as they’re manufactured). Please put in your two cents, because I have the feeling there may be a silent majority out there. We’ve also taken your suggestions and revised the contents page, among other sections. Again, thank you for reading and supporting us, even critically. Even though we’ve jumped to version 5.11, I’d like to consider this magazine a permanent beta. IT Times has a vision, but we always need to know how things look to you.
The cover story on open source, with emphasis on FOSS conference caught my eye especially, since I’m interested about FOSS very much... I would like to say that the Ubuntu Linux article was very interesting to us Linux freaks. I had Red Hat 9, but after reading you article and looking at the stunning screenshots, I’ve already ordered my quota of Ubuntu CDs!
- Nirmal Jayasinghe
Cover: Nice girl... I mean... er, nice concept. Are you going to have Salvador Dali-esque philosophical collages for all your covers? Well so long as there are plenty of Thilinis, it wouldn’t matter... but heavy impressionist cover design may tend to get a bit of a bore after a while. Don’t dispense with it... not on your life, but have it spaced out... Page Numbers: Cool concept. Small bug report here... The number of the actual page is not conspicuous enough... Contents: A contents page shouldn’t have to be navigated. Its meaning should leap out at the reader. No ambiguity tolerated. Illustrations: fellas, have a screen dump to show what you are talking about... Just moi 0.02. - MaQ
Cool mag!! Now its far better than the previouse issues. They were lame as ever. Even the graphic design sucked. But the October issue simply “Rocks”! i have no more words in my vocab to explain the standard of it..its so so cool. Even the articles were written in a very very attractive and interesting way, that caused me to read the same articals many a time (esp the GTA San Andreas)! In contrast to the last issues, this time there is a HUGE improvement
I read the beta version of the IT Times magazine. I would like to thanx for the great work. Here are some comments and suggestions. 1) compared to the previous magazines there is no free CD available. Is it worth to sell the magazine at same price? 2) In earlier magazines there are articles about new products available in the market, hope u continue with these.
- Hashir
- prince angel
comments
To wrap up, you’ve hit a good balance between “tutorials” and “features”. Your intention of giving “immediate skills or knowledge” is very important and you’ve achieved it a lot. I like it. Previously we didn’t have much on tutorial side
Good work for a beta, but constructive criticism is not flattery. Lots of novel concepts, but here lies a good parallel from the programming world... no matter how carefully we code (read “design”) there will always be that pesky little bug to give us that darn itch.
I’ve read all IT Times issues so far. I’ve gone through your revamped version also, and I feel feedback is due... I’m a student on Computer Systems and I did a course on Internet technology in my first year, and I would like to say that I never did an introductory exercise as interesting as your resident web junkie’s tutorial.
Sahana in Pakistan Sri Lankan disaster management software is now deployed in Pakistan earthquake aftermath. Chamindra de Silva and Buddika Siddhasana are currently in Pakistan ably assisted by Ajith Ranabahu, Eran Chinthaka, Sudheera Fernando and Dr Sanjeeva from Sri Lanka. Sahana Software was developed by Eurocenter, Finder2000, hSenid, IFS, JKCS, LKLUG, LSF, UCSC, Univ. of Moratuwa, and Virtusa, among others. More information can be found at sahana.sourceforge.net.
news by Chamil Thanthrimudalige
Code Fest for Taprobane Taprobane (taprobane.org) is a Linux distribution developed in Sri Lanka. They have a regular CodeFest event at the UCSC where remote coders from Ruhuna and Peradeniya universities join in using IRC chat.
Group Hug for MSN and Yahoo
Tech Ed 2005
Yahoo! and MSN are working together to connect their large IM networks. Friends on Yahoo! and MSN will be able to see each other online, share IMs and emoticons, easily add new contacts from either service, and more. Yahoo! is predicting that this new feature will be available in the first half of 2006.
Microsoft fans were treated to a feast from October 12-14th. Tech-Ed (teched.lk) has been described as Microsoft’s premier educational event, featuring a host of Microsoft evangelists from India and beyond. Talks by William Tay and Gaurav Khanna were a special treat. The theme of the event was learn, solve and grow.
Google in The News
iPod Nano
Google and Sun have agreed to cross-promote the Google Toolbar, Java Runtime Environment, and Open Office. Google has also added a web aggregator named Google Reader to its array of services (google.com/reader).
This sleek MP3 player comes in black and white, and cans store 2GB and 4GB of music and photos. This is now available in Sri Lanka too. Go to you nearest Apple dealer (BT Options) and have a look at this. It is one sweet player.
/it-times/newsfeed
feed Gaming The Xbox 360 Controller for Windows will work with the upcoming Xbox 360 console, as well as with computers that have the Windows XP operating system. “Gamers can simply unplug their controller from their Xbox 360 system and plug it into their Windows XPbased PC,” Chris Donahue, director of Windows gaming at Microsoft, said in a statement. “This is a great breakthrough for the gaming industry as we make it easier for developers to create multiplatform titles.” The controller features a new design meant to improve ergonomics. It also offers “force feedback vibration support” and a button layout.
Hardware ATI launches Radeon X1000 series video cards - ATI launched the X1000 series on the 6th of October which features a totally re-done architecture. Cards are slated to be available in stores during the month of November. Intel chip glut may bring holiday cheer to PC buyers - An excess supply of Intel processors purchased this summer, combined with Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) increase in market share, could lead to price cuts of as much as 10 percent on computers over the next three months.
Internet E-mail turns 34 - Ray Tomlinson, father of e-mail, sent the first e-mail message 34 years ago in October. Unfortunately he can’t remember what this e-mail message contained [editor - probably herbal supplements]. FireFox reaches 100,000,000 downloads Google Mail - Google lost its fight in the UK over the GMAIL name, and so new (UK) signups will be getting @googlemail.com addresses. Those in the UK that already have gmail.com addresses they will get to keep their much shorter and easier to remember gmail.com addresses. Service is unaffected for everyone else, including Sri Lankans. Yahoo! Buys Upcoming.org - Yahoo plans to keep the current local search website separate, but will eventually assimilate the content into Yahoo proper, said Paul Levine, Yahoo’s general manager of local search “We think local search is about much more than being able to find a business in your community,” Levine said. “There is no question that local events are an important component, too.”
Gadgets iPod Video - The iPod has “been a huge hit for us, so it’s time to replace it,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs said as he showed off the new video-capable MP3 player at an event here. “Yes, it does video.” The new devices hold up to 15,000 songs, 25,000 photos or more than 150 hours of video, Apple said.
Movies Doom, the movie - ‘Doom,’ based on the blockbuster video game series considered to be the granddaddy of this generation, pits an elite team of Marines against chromosomally mutated monsters on Mars. When the film’s action peaks, the camera’s perspective changes to that of Karl Urban’s Reaper, the movie’s hero, as he blasts a series of gruesome aliens to bits.
Microsoft Tech.Ed 2005 Tech.Ed is Microsoft’s premier educational event, focused on delivering cutting edge technology training to professionals. Around the world the term ‘Tech.Ed’ has earned its reputation as an event which delivers knowledge, brings new opportunities, opens new horizons and more.
Microsoft Tech.Ed 2005 was built on three pillars - Learn, Solve and Grow.
Tech.Ed turned out to be the largest event of its kind in Sri Lanka, drawing over 700 Professionals. The magic continued for 2 ½ days at Water’s Edge, Sri Lanka’s newest golf club. The theme of Tech.Ed Sri Lanka was “Get ready to be amazed” and it has been evident with the buzz that every one was. This event was a great milestone for Microsoft’s activities here, and it looks like they have only just started. Rumour is that they are now gearing up for a mega Visual Studio 2005 launch soon.
nity. This was also a great time for everyone to catch-up with their old buddies and as well as network with their peers from other companies.
grow The Exhibition Hall was filled with stalls showcasing upcoming Microsoft tools and technologies. In the Hands on Labs, attendees got a chance to practice what they had been learning over the past two days.
Community
learn The event was powered on two overarching technical tracks, one for Developers and the other for IT Professionals. Four parallel sessions were going on at any given time, so the attendees went crazy trying to decide on which they liked most. A total of 40 sessions were packed into the two days, many of the sessions covering the upcoming Microsoft tools and technologies.
solve It was a great experience to meet some really outstanding speakers from Microsoft and the global IT commu-
The Microsoft .NET User Group (dotnetforum.lk) is a powerful resource for the Sri Lankan development community. The forum currently has a registered base of over 1500 Sri Lankan .NET developers and is growing rapidly. Technical contribution to the community comes from .NET enthusiasts including the MVPs (Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals). Guided by Microsoft and INETA (International .NET Association) and led by local MVPs, the .NET User Group is on a journey to build a strong and vibrant community to support .NET developers in Sri Lanka.
.net Windows XP Windows Vista Exchange Server Visual Studio XML Web Services Mobile
/it-times/news
Microsoft
ISA Server SQL Server,
BizTalk IIS Indigo
MVPs and Tech.Ed The title ‘MVP’ is awarded by Microsoft to reward technical skills and community development. MVPs play a major role in Tech.Ed worldwide. Regionally, there are 15 Tech.Ed events in 9 countries, with 14,000 attendees. Over 80 MVP speakers and over 100 MVP experts have contributed to these events. If you’re a developer, log on to microsoft.com/mvp to findout more about the MVP program and to find out how you can become a MVP.
Games:
The gaming room powered by Microsoft Xbox and Microsoft PC games was a key attraction throughout the event. Not to mention that one lucky attendee walked away with an Xbox console at the end of the event.
.NET 2.0: Millions of developers around the world live their way of life on the .Net 1.1 platform today. At Tech.Ed the developers were treated with a heavy dose of the new features which will be released by the time this article goes to print.
Visual Studio 2005: Visual Studio takes another big step with the 2005 release. With the primary focus on cutting down the development time by 80%, Visual Studio is sure to create a great experience for developers. I’m sure those who participated in the hands-on labs got a taste of what is to come. Windows Vista:
Sri Lankan Developers and IT Pros got the chance to look at the first local public preview at Tech.Ed. Windows Vista is a mission, focused on bringing computing clarity, confidence and a connected way of living. This powerful theme of Vista was well demonstrated by the features built into the Operating System and showcased at Tech.Ed.
“Your sessions were really interesting, mind-blowing and I got a chance to learn a lot. With so many sessions to choose from, I think we were amazed.” Ram (attendee) Indigo: Now officially renamed as WCF (Windows
Communication Foundation), Indigo will be the future platform for application communications. William Tay from Singapore - one of the top regional speakers took everyone through two deep technical sessions on this radically re-engineered upcoming technology.
SQL Server 2005: It’s time to re-think the way
you use databases. SQL Server has come of age with this release and is now gearing up to take on the top contenders in both breadth and functionality. Developers are in for a real treat now that the.Net framework has been integrated into SQL Server 2005.
Windows Mobile: Windows on your mobile de-
vice is the latest trend. The goal of the Windows Mobile sessions at Tech.Ed was to give developers an idea of the new areas which Microsoft is focusing on, and to show how easy it is to develop mobile applications with Microsoft technology.
ASP.NET 2.0: Developing rich web applications is
going to be a whole new experience with ASP.NET 2.0 features. This was well demonstrated in the handson lab sessions which included usage of Master Pages and Web Parts technologies.
It’s seven forty three Monday morning and the private bus in front of you has just swerved into a wayward three wheeler. Cursing the rain, you loosen your tie before leaning on your horn for a few satisfying seconds. Nothing doing. The conductor has found an old brick and is lazily marking the tires before the Police arrive. Opening your door, you get out and look in dismay at the long pileup behind you. You have to be at a meeting in ten minutes. Oh oh..
/it-times/newsfeed
It’s early, but your alarm bids you wake. It’s eight, you tell yourself in disgust – I went to sleep just three hours ago. Crawling to your computer, you flip the switch. You fall into the kitchen and put the kettle on. Two minutes later you’re back with a big mug of tea. You login to your Instant Messager, check your email and wait for your colleagues to come online. You avoided the traffic, woke up later, and you’re sitting in on a management meeting in your sarong.
virtual office? pfft... I know you just said that. Well, if not aloud, at least in your head. And hey, it’s granted that you’re skeptical about how a Virtual Office environment stacks up against a real work environment. I mean has anyone tried it out? Anyone in Sri Lanka?
home. The first thing you’ll want to do is create a Project. In Basecamp speak, a project has one specific goal. For example ‘Reduce Barzini’s Hold on Gambling’ is a project, whereas ‘Increase Profits’ is not. Try and be specific with your projects, as that will help you organize your resources and workflows in Basecamp. So think hard, name your project and hit Create Project.
We have. The issue you are holding now is the product of one. That’s right, the IT Times Editorial Team runs almost completely as a Virtual Office. Indi has nasty sleeping habits, and I have a pesky thing called higher education. The two just wouldn’t mix in a normal office environment. I’m usually asleep by ten. Indi starts work then. You get the picture.
concept Now you’re thinking – sure, it worked for two anti-social cyberpunks, but is it going to work for my company, right? Well, it can, if you want it to. The great thing about the Virtual Office model is that it focuses on increasing productivity. As a VO manager you don’t need to care about when, where or how your employees do their work. All you need to worry about is that deadlines are met on time. In reality, getting your employees to come down to work everyday can be counter productive. This is especially true of technical and creative people. For programmers, writers and designers, the office itself may prove to be a stumbling block.
Take a long look at this screen my friend. It is your dashboard, your home, your Virtual Office, where you are the Don. What better way to start your day than giving someone something to do – click Add to-do list and fill out the form. Done? Push Create This List. You can now add as many list items as you want. That’s right, as many as you want. How’s that for dishing out orders with ease?
The VO concept is based on the comfort factor of each individual. Does your copywriter perform best sitting in his garden? Then so be it. Does your designer work best at 3 AM? That’s fine as well. The Virtual Office allows everyone to work at their fullest potential.
basecamp Probably the most popular out-of-the-box project management tool, Basecamp is developed and maintained by 37Signals (37signals.com). Praised for their minimalist approach to development, the Signals proved their finesse with Basecamp. The tool is quick to load, simple to grasp and easy to use. Follow these quick steps to setup your very own Basecamp account. Point your browser to - https://secure.basecamphq. com/signup/Free, fill out the web form and submit. Login to your Basecamp using the Username and Password you provided during setup. That’s it! A Virtual office in less than five minutes. Welcome, stranger - click around and make yourself at
In the same way, you can add to-do lists, Messages and Milestones and assign them to different people. Best of all, you can monitor everything via one screen. Let’s look at what the Family ended up with (next page). Using Basecamp, the Godfather can now monitor everything that goes on in each project. Thanks to 37Signals, the Corleone Family now enjoys an enhanced workflow which results in increased productivity. Barzini doesn’t stand a chance. Using RSS, Vito’s hoods can pick up the latest project details via feed readers from their mobile devices. His sons will receive notifications via email when a task is assigned to them. Vito leans back in his chair and lights a cigar. Terrorizing New York has never been easier. But now, back to business.
Vito is a busy man, and has more than a few projects on his mind. Clicking on the Dashboard link at the top of the page, he jumps back to his Control Center. He wants to buy more control in Las Vegas, but that would mean paying off several top Nevada officials. Starting a new project, he opens a To-do list for his son Michael – the boy was always good with words. Like the good Don, you too can open as many projects as you like. But, ah - the catch. There is always one, isn’t there? Well, the free version of Basecamp lets you add only one project. Need more? There are several levels of service to choose from. Personal lets you manage 3 projects for Rs. 1200/month, and Basic lets you manage 15 for Rs 2400. Basecamp is actually quite reasonably priced when compared with many other web based project management services. So, do yourself a favour and Basecamp your office. It will make life a lot easier. Don’t believe me? Watch the Godfather trilogy. Barzini is dead, and The Corleones own most of Vegas. Seriously, history doesn’t lie. Basecamp rocks.
FOSS solutions OK, so your organisation doesn’t have any Sicilian connections and you can’t afford to keep 37Signals on the payroll. That’s alright, we’ve got another fix for you. Leave your coat at the door though, because this is going to get messy. The draw is called FOSS, and it comes in many flavours. Visit opensourcecms.com and browse through the Groupware section. dotProject is fairly mature project management software. eGroupWare is another viable solution.
Gmail Email is the backbone of any Virtual Office, and a good email solution is a must. At IT Times, we use Gmail. Why? No, not because we’re Google groupies
/it-times/work/productivity
(don’t believe everything you hear on the grape vine). We use Gmail simply because it’s so darn quick, flexible and easy to use. Oh yeah, it looks nice as well. Oh what the hoo, maybe we are Google groupies after all. Either way, go and set up a Gmail account for yourself and your employees. Apart from providing multiple gigs of space (which increases constantly thanks to a special ingredient known the web over as Google Love), Gmail also has neat features like Labels and Filters which let you sort your mail out well. Think of Labels as little references for emails. When a message lands in your Inbox, it could be for many reasons. Your boss emailed you, your wife wants you to bring groceries on the way home, or your friendly neighbourhood spammer decided that he should send out another cordial Viagra reminder – there are many types of email you could get on a daily basis. Labels help you sort them out. To label a message, just select the tick box next to it, go the More Actions drop down box, scroll down and apply the label you want. You can also create labels on the fly. Labels are all nice and pretty until you start getting two hundred and thirty seven messages a day. Then what happens? If you’re anything like me, you’ve signed up for a few dozen mailing lists, and work related mail keeps coming in all day as well. How do you sort and Label all that? The answer is, you don’t. Let Gmail do the work for you. Using Filters, you can have Gmail automatically sort and label your messages as they arrive. Click the Create Filter link next to your searchbox, and then follow the wizard. You can filter your messages on a number of conditions. Don’t want your wife’s mails landing in your inbox? Your wish is Gmail’s command - just check the tick box next to Skip the Inbox (Archive it) before you create your filter. So now you have nine thousand emails that are all or-
ganized using Labels. Great. But what happens when you want to find that report you filed eight months ago. Sure it’s labeled Work, but so are four thousand other emails. This is where one of Gmail’s most popular features come in – Search. Searching through your mail is a snap with Gmail. You can use all the syntax you’d use when searching Google. That’s right, queries like “quarterly report” -finance work just fine in Gmail.
One of the hardest parts of Instant Messaging, however, is keeping up with the many IM services that have evolved over the years. If for example, your staff uses MSN, Yahoo! and Google Talk, how on earth can you keep in touch with everybody? Thankfully, there is an easy way. Install a Multi-Protocol client such as GAIM (gaim.sourceforge.net) or Trillian (trillian.cc) and you can connect to all these networks at once.
Google Groups
The Virtual Office, like any form of management, has its own strengths and weaknesses. Although it increases productivity, the system also dampens personal ties between employees. This is where common sense is needed. There is no such thing as a total Virtual Office.
The other cool thing about your Gmail account is that it entitles you to Google Groups access as well. You can use Google Groups as a mode of communication between your Virtual Office staff. The messages get stored, and are easily searchable. Just point your browser to groups.google.com and click Create New Group.
instant messaging One thing you’ll need to master in a VO environment is the art of Instant Messaging, or IM, as it is more affectionately known. Instant Messaging is a hassle free way of communicating in a VO environment. Most popular clients such as MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger allow group or combined chatting and this is where most of our Editorial meetings are held.
As an employer however, what you must realize is that the way people work and look at work is changing. The nine-to-five grind is dying a slow death, and goal oriented employment is on its way in. Although interpersonal ties are important, they need not be tied to employment itself. Your workers need time to interact with each other. At the same time, they also need the freedom to work in circumstances and environments where they perform to their true potential. So try a VO. Set your company free. You’ll thank yourself in the morning.
Access your computer from anywhere in the world. Sounds too fantastic? Well, it’s not. It’s the latest incarnation of remote computer management tools which is now standard in Windows XP. The name is Remote Desktop and it’s probably already installed. The quick verdict if you are not of the reading sort, is yes, it does effectively allow access to your computer from anywhere in the world. It does it very well too. To be clear, this is definitely not the first time we have seen such a thing on the market. Longstanding incumbents PCAnywhere and Citrix have established themselves in office environments. However, the technology has
been herky-jerky, riddled with timeouts, disconnects, and generally sluggish. With the advent of broadband for the masses, and new operating systems, the landscape has definitely changed. Remote Desktop allows you to connect to a computer using a client included with XP Pro, or downloadable from Microsoft. You can also set your computer up to accept incoming connections from browsers capable of ActiveX (like Internet Explorer). What this means, literally, is that any device with a browser can give you a connection to that box at the home/work that you love so much. I’ve done this across the world standing in mall kiosks, in airports on a PDA, and even just across the street from home when I was too lazy to run back. There are even more applications for this service. Consider - all you sysadmins - when you want to check on a server. From the comforts of your own desk, you can check on said device without even putting your shoes on to venture down to the basement where your mail and file servers (LUKE & DARTH) are located. Consider - all you techies performing maintenance in a lab - having the ability to check each and every one without having to play musical chairs. Consider - all you sickly employees - having a way to work from home with access to all of
your files at work. Or wait, maybe you shouldn’t bring this up with your boss. In any case, the possibilities are endless. No longer are there any barriers to access and mobility, as this is the first piece of software that I have tried that does what it claims to do, and does it well. The ease of setup and ease of use is another attractive feature of RD. Not only does it come pre-installed on XP Pro machines, but activating the service couldn’t be easier, as it literally requires a toggle of a checkbox (see next page). From there, all you need to know is your IP address (whatismyipaddress.com) and you’re set. RD allows access to your computer on a grand scale. Not only are you able to work with your files, use your programs, and see your favorite wallpaper of the upsidedown kiss scene from Spiderman, but RD gives you control over all your external devices that are plugged in as well. Provided you have media inside them, CDs, DVDs, and card readers work as well. There’s more. You have the option of bringing sound to the computer that you’re using, so if you feel like blasting La Vida Loca at work, and you have the file at home, no worries. You can also port over disk drives, printers, and serial ports, so that the local machine you’re using appears connected to your computer and you can transfer files back and forth. What’s not to like? Maximum mobility combined with maximum accessibility is a winning combination. While that’s all well and great, let’s take a look at yet
another application of RD. I do something that’s slightly backwards to what I described above. Perhaps I shouldn’t divulge, but just for the sake of transparency, here’s how I get around the office firewall. First, a little background. At work, I have to battle the IT department’s firewall. This firewall prevents users from going out, to access the internet. Prevents users from going out you ask? Yes, going out. I realize traditional firewalls prevent intruders from coming in, but the purpose this firewall serves is that the company
If you feel like blasting La Vida Loca at work, and you have the file at home, no worries. does not want its employees sitting around all day playing on the internet. So, unless you have a password that allows you to bypass the firewall, you cannot do anything. Only users with clearance and a billing number which allows them to charge to a certain project will have access to the internet. Without going into too much detail, I have bypassed said firewall. Because it blocks port 80, the standard port for web traffic, I have set my Remote Desktop server at home to sit on port 83, which they have conveniently left open in the firewall at work. Now I can tunnel into my computer at home, have access to all my
files and benefit in all the ways enumerated above, and I can use the browser at home. I certainly do not have a firewall preventing me from doing anything on my home computer. Now, I can browse around free of any inhibitions by simply using the browser on my computer, set up how I like. Now, putting the subversive method this was attained aside, there are many applications for going in the reverse direction. Many in fact, benefit the company. Keep in mind that my computer at work is less than stellar. It is however, good for just browsing, and by using Remote Desktop, I harness the power of my computer at home, without having the company pay for the upgrade cost of having the same functionality at work. Additionally, I no longer have to tussle with my boss about whether this or that is possible and the cost of the software to make said solution possible because I have access to my software at home. Need a PDF done? Need a brochure done quickly in InDesign? Need a quick fix of pornogra-- just kidding. All things considered, RD is n invaluable tool in my workflow. Remote Desktop has given me the leeway to occasionally work at home, something that employers should strongly consider in this age of connectivity. Ray works for a large engineering firm in Canada.
Captain’s Tutorial [23:42] indi.ca: how do i use remote desktop? [23:43] RC: right click on my computer [23:43] RC: go to properties [23:43] RC: go to remote tab [23:43] RC: the check remote desktop ON [23:43] indi.ca: ok, then how do i access it? [23:44] RC: start, all programs, accessories, communication, RD [23:44] RC: pop in your IP address [23:44] RC: and *bam* you’re there
Photoskin
Photoshop versions 7 and up ship with one of the best ideas to come out of the Adobe development labs the Healing Brush. Touching up photos has never been easier, and creating wickedly morbid artwork has never been simpler. All you need is a little practice, and you can work wonders on those old snapshots and stock photographs for whatever you may need, be it family albums or personal portfolios. Lets begin. The main Healing Brush tools are the Brush itself, and the Patch tool. I’m using the Healing Brush to remove, or at least smoothen the pimples on my good friend Robin’s face here. To do this, I’ll need a clean pimple-free bit of cheek to use as my source area. Hard as it may be, I’ve found one such area. To define it, simply, select the Healing Brush tool, and Alt + click the area. Next, move the cursor over the area you want to ‘heal’, and simply click. Rinse and repeat. I suggest choosing new source areas around the face, close to the area you want to fix as you go along.
by Abhimanyu Goshal
Next up is the marvellous Patch tool. This is used for larger areas, that you can define just as you would using the Lasso tool. To demonstrate, I’m going to replace my other friend Basu’s eye with skin. Gruesome, but at least its a cinch. Select the Patch tool (Shift + J), and draw an outline around the area you want to replace, in this case the eye. Then click and drag the outline to an area you want to replace the outlined spot with (a bit of cheek, for instance). There you go, instant surgery. You might want to work on this a bit, using the Burn tool and the Healing Brush. It just takes a good eye to see what needs work. Remember to look out for consistency in skin tone when you do this.
PDFs are the greatest thing since roast paan. It takes the unhacked loaf of Microsoft Office, third parties and HTML and gives you one clean slice of portable goodness. PDFs are becoming business and academic standard, but few people know how to make their own. This tutorial runs through the easy ways to bake your own at home.
Probably the easiest, if you can purchase it online or at Unity Plaza. The software menu itself lets you create PDFs from your files, scanner, or even whole web pages. What’s more useful is the virtual printer it adds to programs like Microsoft Word. That means you can Print > Adobe PDF and there you go. Professional has other benefits, however. You can leave virtual post-it notes on documents, rearrange pages and do basic edits on the PDF itself. It is used for proofing this magazine, in fact. As a note, one neglected feature of Acrobat is that it can actually read your PDFs aloud to you (View > Read Out Loud). This isn’t especially useful, but it’s really cool.
Online PDF
Why? PDFs look professional and they preserve your exact layouts, fonts and images. They’re especially good for contracts and proposals which you don’t want edited.
/it-times/work/office
If you have a stable Internet Connection you can also visit pdfonline.com. Simply upload your Word, PowerPoint or Excel document and get a shiny new PDF emailed to you. Online PDF can also convert from PDF to HTML, though that’s still a buggy way to make webpages. Adobe offers a similiar pay web interface.
Cute PDF
OpenOffice
CutePDF is like a free version of Acrobat Pro that doesn’t talk back. What it does is add a virtual printer to your system. Within Word or PowerPoint you can simply Print > CutePDF and it’ll drop a PDF on your desktop.
Once you get OpenOffice running it’s probably the easiest option of all. OpenOffice is a full-fledged alternative to Microsoft Office which can read and write any Office Files. Making a PDF is as simple as clicking the PDF icon above (6th from the left). It actually writes the file almost instantly, so you may wonder if it’s working.
Visit cutepdf.com to download, and don’t get distracted by their other products. The PDF Writer is free. It comes recommended from CNET and Lifehacker, among others. It lacks some of the extended features of Acrobat Pro, but it does one job well. It lets you create PDFs from Office files seamlessly and without errors.
The only downside is that the OO interface isn’t as polished as MS Office. The new Release Candidate is quite good, but most professionals will prefer to stick with MS. You can however, always use OO for quick PDFs.
‘The Drop’. Photo and shop by 1nternet Hero by (flickr.com/photos/75377403@N00)
Think about it, you poor third world citizen you. Is a personal digital assistant (PDA) really affordable? Let’s say you landed that swanky new job or even better, your sugar daddy wants to give you an early Christmas present, are you still willing to run the risk of losing all that precious data in some random electronic disaster? Alright, fine, you get a PDA anyway, spend hours setting up, laboriously enter all the minutiae you think you’ll ever need, and then little chickens, the real fun begins. The merry synchronising of your computer and PDA becomes a daily habit, envious stares abound when you whip out the old flip-top during meetings, morning potty time is spent squinting over e-books and you are well and truly hooked on this wonderful piece of equipment. That is until your boss wants those notes you took at yesterday’s seminar and your state-of-the-art PDA suddenly decides it wants more than its precious batteries can currently provide. Oh and in case you’d forgotten, the charger is at home. What happens then? Let’s not rule out the possibility of theft or loss either. Losing a phone drives most of us up a wall, but imagine losing a PDA that not only costs a fortune but also holds much, much more data? People have been using paper for centuries with some success. Everything from those impressive leather bound paper organisers with those cutely addictive snap on/off tabs to basic spiral notebooks – they have all worked. Sure, the electronic gadgetry has its uses. However, not everyone needs a complex and costly piece of equipment like a PDA to get themselves organised. Not everyone needs a heavy, paper organiser either. A high school student for example, might benefit from a cheaper and simpler alternative. An adult who’s on their feet all day may also require something that’s easier to carry around. This is where something like the PocketMod comes to the rescue. For those of us who can’t afford PDAs and
/it-times/work/lifehacks
1. go to pocketmod.com 2. drag-and-drop pages 3. print 4. fold 5. done! find paper organizers too bulky, the solution may just lie in using a web based Flash tool to design your very own organiser, which is in essence, a single, folded up piece of paper. Sounds too easy to be true? The PocketMod is basically a miniature book with preprinted layouts called “mods” for each page. There are mods for everything from calendars, to-do lists and tic-tac-toe to food logs and even frequently needed conversions. These mods are combined with a unique folding style that enables a normal piece of paper to become the ultimate mini-organiser. Remember the PocketMod is in beta and thus in constant evolution. New ‘mods’ are being added frequently and people are finding more and more ways of using it. I, for example, use a laptop to keep myself organised but carry a PocketMod around with me for the quick stuff. At the end of the day I update whatever’s necessary into my laptop. The Pocket Mod can now be discarded if necessary. A PocketMod may or may not be the solution for you, but remember there are other options out there. The “Hipster PDA” (the acronym here standing for Parietal Disgorgement Aid) is yet another paper based alternative to the electronic organiser. What we tend to forget in this shiny, tech-savvy age is that a technology that helps you get organised does not necessarily have to be electronically operated. David Allen, time management guru extraordinaire, puts it best when he reminds us that the focus should not be on finding the most up-to-date system, but about finding a reliable system that helps you get things done.
So you followed Chintana’s tutorial last month and got Ubuntu installed. Brilliant. I assumed that by now you’ve played around a little, changed your screen saver (try MatrixView – it’s amazing), and pretty much got the basic hang of your system. Without further ado then, on with the show!
towards the center now) you will find the date and time, followed by my sound and laptop battery options, the Wireless connectivity monitor, the System Update Manager and a running instance of GAIM. Just to the left you will see a link to a Root Terminal windows (yes, I’m a control freak) and a Force Quit link.
The Start Menu, Reloaded
Appletica
Forgive me for the Matrix euphemism, I just couldn’t resist. At the top of your desktop you will find the Top Panel. This is the GNOME desktop start menu. Its similarity with the Windows start menu however stops there. GNOME panels like the one you see at the top of your screen are extensible and customizable, meaning that you can edit them to suit your every need.
Now this is where it gets interesting. The Force Quit link is not an application as such. It’s a mini application or Applet which is integrated in to GNOME itself. Right click on any panel (even the one at the bottom of your screen) and select Add to Panel. You’ll be presented with some neat widgets to add to your panels. A personal favourite of mine is the Geyes applet which puts a pair of eyes on your panel of choice. What do they do? Follow your mouse cursor around of course. Yeah, this is definitely not for your conspiracy theorists.
If you look at the screenshot (very top) you may notice that my panel is a little different. As you’ve probably guessed, I’ve customized my panel by dragging links to my frequently used programs on to the panel. Although (from left to right) Firefox, the Evolution email client and the GNOME help links come as default, the icons to the right of them are all my programs – Xchat, GAIM, XMMS, Gnome Bittorrent, Open Office Writer, Terminal and XINE. To the far right (and moving
/it-times/learn/linux
However, Geyes is just a fun example of what GNOME Applets can do. There are applets that can check your weather, stocks, and even tell you how to make your tea. Of course, not all these are available with the default Ubuntu installation. You’ll need to download them. Hold on, don’t open Firefox just yet.
Synaptic Downloading software you want in Ubuntu is really easy. Remember, this is the Free and Open Software World, and there are no time limits to bypass and serial numbers to crack. You just find what you want, and download it. How? System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manger, that’s how! Open Synaptic and search under Name and Description for the term gnome applet. You should end up with something similar to the screenshot at left. Now all you have to do is find the applets you want and mark them for installation. After that, hit Apply and watch Synaptic fetch the packages from the Ubuntu repositories for you. Now, just wait for Syanptic to do its thing. When done downloading, jump back to the desktop, right click a panel and do another Add to Panel. You should now see the applets you downloaded. Add them to your panel and play around with them. Congratulations, you have just extended your system. Synaptic however is not just for downloading little applets. Using the package manager, you can download full blown applications for Ubuntu as well. Load Synaptic up again, and this time instead of going to Search simply browse the list of categories available to you on the left of your screen. You should find hundreds of programs, all yours for the taking, at no charge. Well, unless you have infinite space and bandwidth, downloading all the packages is probably dumb. Since we live in a bandwidth starved nation, let me give you a few programs to go for initially.
Expanding Horizons Oh, almost forgot. Ubuntu doesn’t enable all the repositories by default. It’s a security measure, but we’re going to bypass it. Oh don’t worry, I’m your crash test dummy remember? Been there, done that, got the tshirt. No scars mind you. It’s going to be fine. Open up a Console, we’re going to edit your sources.list. Feel like a sysop already? Great. Work it like this sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list
Now we need to change your apt sources file. First, comment out the cdrom line at the top. We don’t want Ubuntu looking for that install CD (you passed that on to a friend, right?). #deb cdrom:[Ubuntu 5.04 _Hoary Hedge-
hog_ - Release i386 (20050407)]/hoary main restricted
Next you need to add the Universe repositories by uncommenting the following lines. deb http://lk.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary universe deb-src http://lk.archive.ubuntu.com/ ubuntu hoary universe
Do an apt-get update and you’re done! You have just added hundreds of extra programs to your list of downloadables. Open Synaptic and see for yourself. The day just keeps getting better, doesn’t it? OK, let’s get on with the recommended downloads now.
XMMS That’s right kids, I cut my teeth on Mpeg Layer 3 when it wasn’t even a buzz. Any of you remember Winamp 1.x? Respect. Well XMMS looks a lot like it, thus appealing to the prepubescent music freak in me. Do a search in Synaptic, and it should pop right up. Why download? Because it’s awesome. Enough said.
XINE If you’re anything like me, you like trilogies. Or maybe not. Either way, you’re going to need a movie player. Ubuntu ships with a player called Totem, however, in my experience it was more trouble that it was worth. In steps XINE. Available as xine-ui in Synaptic, XINE proved to be just what the doctor ordered. Or maybe not. Is watching the Godfather Trilogy back-to-back medically recommended? Probably not. There’s so much to download that I could go on, and on. There are however things called page margins, and alas, I’ve arrived at another. The great thing about Synaptic is that you can browse and download at will, and I suggest you do just that. Experimentation is the mother of breaking your system. No, I’m just kidding. Oh, almost forgot - those of you who plan on joining me next month should get pretty familiar with your keyboards. Why? Because next time around we’re diving headfirst in to Console mode and the wonderful world of Bash. See you then.
In the previous issue, we had a look at the very basics of standards compliant web design. Using valid xHTML and CSS, we created a web page that contains several “blocks” of different content [see HTML at end of article]. However, our control over the positioning of these elements was minimal. In this issue, we’ll start using CSS to create practically useful web page layouts.
the options There are four different ways CSS can be used to create web layouts:
Static Positioning Absolute Positioning Fixed Positioning Relative Positioning Static positioning is the easiest of all: it’s the way elements will be laid out by the browser in the absence of positioning style rules. A browser takes an html file, applies the styles from the style sheets (if there aren’t any, it uses its own default style sheet), and “flows” the elements on to the page. This is called static since the position of any such element is static in the document flow. We’ve seen it in action in the page we created in last month’s tutorial. Absolute positioning, as the name suggests, positions elements precisely in the location we specify. It’s a handy way to achieve pixel-perfect layouts. We’ll look at this method today. Fixed positioning is quite similar to absolute. With this method it’s possible to position elements that remain
/it-times/learn/web
in the same location even when the page scrolls. Old school designers will see that this visual effect is what the element was used for in html. Now it’s managed more efficiently by CSS. Relative positioning, not surprisingly, positions elements relatively. Most designers have got that part figured. What’s not so obvious is that a relatively positioned element is positioned relative to its own position. Don’t worry if that doesn’t make any sense, we’ll discuss it later.
absolutely basic Let’s start from where we left off last month: we’ve got index.htm (our web page) and style.css (its style sheet). Using absolute positioning, we’ll apply a better looking layout to this web page. Open up style.css in your text editor, and make the following changes to the style rules for #header.
Save the css, and take a look at index.htm in your browser. The red header block has been pushed to the upper left corner of the viewport. The yellow #maincontent div is underneath the #header, and depending on your browser settings, only a small part of it is visible.
xHTML CSS
‘Drops’ by Heaven Up Here (flickr.com/photos/heavenuphere)
I am the header
I am the subcontent column
z-index: 2 z-index: -1
I am the footer
What has happened here is that the #header div has been taken out of the document flow, and absolutely positioned (position: absolute;) with its top left corner at the (0,0) co-ordinate (top: 0; left: 0;) on the browser viewport. Because it’s no longer a part of the document flow, the rest of the content rushes upward to take the space #header occupied earlier.
layers that aren’t So how come #header covers #maincontent, not the other way round? That’s because by default, any “positioned” element is put on a layer that is above the static content. Think of these layers as transparent sheets stacked on top of each other, with the static content at the bottom. Any element in a higher layer will cover whatever content that happens to be in a lower layer. If you have experience with graphic tools such as The Gimp and Photoshop, you’ll see that these layers in CSS are identical to the layers you get in those applications. You can control the position of the layers in the stacking order using the z-index CSS property. Apply z-index: -1 to #header and see what you get:
You’ll notice that #header has disappeared. Interestingly, in CSS you can have negative values for the stacking order, so any layer that has such a value appears underneath the static content. Since the static content I am the main content column
is in an opaque layer (similar to the “background layer” in graphic applications), anything under it is hidden.
I am the header
It’s important to understand that these layers are not the same as the proprietary extension to html by Netscape. If you don’t know what is, you don’t have to: such code is non-standard.
making absolute work Now that we have an idea of how absolute works, let’s go ahead and update our style.css with positioning:
Check out the web page in your browser. Not bad eh? It’s starting to look like a decent layout.
time to experiment Something that we didn’t really pay attention to, but crucial to any layout, are the dimensions of the elements, specified by width and height. Note how we changed these values to come up with the desired design. Now is the time to back up your files, and start experimenting with the CSS. We didn’t edit our html markup today - perhaps you’ll want to add some content to the blocks (or even add more content blocks) and see how the page looks. Try to create different layouts by using different values for the top, left, z-index, width and height CSS properties of these elements. In the next issue, we’ll talk more about layouts and other positioning methods. I love web standards
I am the header
I am the main content
I am the sub content
PHP
includes... S
o you read last issue’s tutorial and set up XAMPP on your PC. Excellent. Now it’s time to harness one of PHP’s primary powers – includes. Using PHP, I’m going to show you how you can create your very own site template. First let’s split your site in to neat little sections. Traditionally pages are cut up into three.
Header - header.inc Body - index.php Footer - footer.inc Today I’m going to show you how we can create a system that encompasses the bread and butter of templating - a stock header and footer. This way you can just change the body text on each page while the rest takes care of itself. So without further ado, let’s get started. Our file structure is going to look as above. You can either start off by creating those files or make each as we go along. As I said in last time’s column, this isn’t an XHTML tutorial, and for the basics of creating such a template you’ll need to turn back to Prabhath’s tutorial. Right now I’m just going to teach you how to glue everything together. First of all, let’s open index. php and type in the following code
Thank you for begetting easy templating
Browse to http://localhost and you get:
Not too cool, right? Well we’re not done yet. Now open up your header.inc file and add this line in
Basic Templating System
by Mahangu Weerasinghe
Got that? Great. Now open footer.inc and include this code, and point your browser to localhost once more. <em>Random footer text.
You should end up with something similar to this.:
Although the page is not that nice to look at, it provides you with the most basic items of a templating system. What do I mean? Well, your inc files can be used over and over again, across as many pages as you want. The neat thing is that you can stick wherever you want the header. Of course, the power of includes doesn’t stop here. You can include or not include a file based on certain situations. But that’s for next month’s issue, where we’ll discuss the power of the IF statement. For now our nifty little header.inc lets us change titles, META tags and CSS references with ease. Change your stylesheet? Need to add a new <meta> tag? Just make one change and watch it propagate across every page. Let’s look at some other instances where includes come in handy. Think of a contact address, for example. You want to have your business address on three different pages. What if you move? Or your phone number changes? You have to make the same change in three places. On the other hand, you could just create an include file for your contact info (possibly contact. inc) and include it wherever you want. Now when you change addresses, you just have to make one edit. Similarly, include files can be used anywhere you want to insert repetitive data. What’s that? You think includes are really cool? Me too. In reality though, the fun is yet to start. Hang around for next issue to see what happens when Include meets IF. Till then, happy hacking!
Word These days, everyone has a weblog. From my brother’s cricket blog to your aunt’s lipstick blog, there seems to be no escaping the blog phenomena. I myself had refrained from blogging due to two fairly simple reasons. First, I had no time, and second, I didn’t know where to start and was too proud to ask my brother or auntie. When my neighbour, started his own weblog on dogs however, I thought I should give it a shot. On a free weekend, I dug into Google, and researched all I could about blogs. As I already owned a domain, I naturally wanted the blog to be a part of it. After a lot of research, and a lot of chips and drinks, I thought that I knew enough to venture into the big bad blogosphere.
Options Blogs are powered by powerful scripts, which manage the entire process from posting entries to managing comments, etc. You can either host the blog on your own server, or use one of the hosted services. Popular among the latter are Blogger.com, owned by Google, and livejournal.com, owned by Six Apart, the company behind Movable Type (more on this later). Getting a blog hosted on one of these services is as easy as choosing a name, (this can take some thinking though). Both these services have been around for a
/it-times/learn/web
Press by Indranil Dasgupta long time and are very popular. Once you have found a name, it’s pretty much smooth sailing from there. Your blog will be setup automatically and you will be taken to the administration screen where you can post your first entry, or tweak away. The other, slightly harder, but more fulfilling option is to host your own blog. If you have your own website, it should be easy enough. Since I was already the owner of a domain, I went for the host yourself option. The choice of blog scripts are large. But the two most popular, and widely used blogging scripts are Movable Type (MT), from Six Apart (movabletype.com), and WordPress (WP) (wordpress.org). Movable Type has two flavours, paid and free. The free restricts the number of authors and number of blogs you can install. The paid removes this restriction. Of course, there are several sub-flavours among the paid option too. WordPress, on the other hand, is GPL licensed and completely free. Since I am an open source enthusiast, I chose WordPress, though both MT and WP look like good options. If you don’t wanna splurge on MT’s licensing, or are an open source enthusiast, WordPress is the way to go. In this tutorial, I’m gonna walk you through installing and setting up WordPress. It should be simple enough. We’ll start with six simple steps on the pages that follow. It’s certainly easier than running a printing press.
1. Downloading WordPress WordPress can be downloaded from wordpress.org/ download. The latest version at the time of my downloading was 1.5.2, code-named “Strayhorn”, named after the legendary jazz musician Billy Strayhorn.
2. Setting up MySQL WordPress stores your posts, comments and settings in MySQL databases, which is arguably the most popular and robust databases around. Setting up a database is fairly easy, if you know what you are doing. Since there are so many different ways of adding databases, I won’t go into the details here. Basically, look for database in your Control Panel and note its name, username, and password. I just added a database “blog” with username “indranil” and password “blogsarecool”. 99 times of 100, your database host will be “localhost”, but in my case, it was not so. Not to worry, WordPress has it all covered.
3. Configuring WordPress Once I downloaded and unzipped WordPress, I navigated to the WordPress directory, and located the file wp-config-sample.php. Opening the file, I edited the username, password, database name, and database host, to reflect my created database. Of course, as most of you will have “localhost” as your DB host, you won’t have to change the last one. Once edited, I saved this file as wp-config.php in the same folder.
/it-times/learn/web
4. Uploading WordPress Once done configuring, I fired up my FTP client, and uploaded the entire content of the wordpress folder to my web server. As I was about to host my blog at mydomain.com/blog/, I created the folder “blog” in my domain’s home directory, and uploaded everything from the wordpress folder onto it. After uploading the contents, I chmod-ed the blog folder so make it writable by all (0666), so as to allow WordPress to write usable hyperlinks. In most FTP clients opening the properties dialogue box will give you chmod settings
5. Installing WordPress Pointing my browser to mydomain.com/blog/wp-admin/install.php, I gave my blog a name, provided my email address, twiddled my thumbs for a second, and was delighted by the shortness of the procedure. I was presented with a makeshift password, and a joke.
6. Rejoice! Well, that’s about that. Logging into my blog and posting cool contents was as easy as the flick of my mouse. WordPress comes with a default theme, and many more are available. Of course, you can use your well honed aesthetic skills to create your very own theme as well. WordPress can also be enhanced by many powerful plugins, available for download at wp-plugins.org.
Now that I’ve finally installed a blog and jumped onto the bandwagon, it’s time for me to post some entries to my online journal. All that and more, after I go and tell my neighbour that I also have a blog, and a good one at that. Happy blogging!
xp tweaks ‘Cutting Edge’ by Dopiaza (flickr.com/photos/dopiaza)
by Mark Jaquith There is nothing I enjoy so much as being able to set up a brand new computer with Windows XP. It’s like decorating a brand new apartment, or adjusting the mirrors in the new car you just bought. Windows XP, by default, lacks many things I consider essential to efficient use of your computing time. There are musthave programs to install, settings to adjust, utilities to run and files to delete that will let you hit the ground running with your new computer.
cleanup You wouldn’t cook a fabulous meal without first cleaning the kitchen, and likewise, you shouldn’t start configuring Windows XP until you’ve cleaned out all the junk. When you look at your desktop, for instance, you’ll see a bunch of default icons. These icons can vary depending on where you bought your computer. They usually include vendor-specific support icons, utilities, and “spamicons” (links to internet service providers,
/it-times/learn/windows
photo printing services, fax services, etc). The odds of you ever wanting to use these shortcuts is very slim, so we’re going to tuck them away for safekeeping. When you look at your desktop or your start menu, you’re actually seeing a combination of two desktops and two start menus. Each Windows user has their own start menu and desktop, but they also see shortcuts and files in the “All Users” start menu and desktop. Anything in these folders will be seen by all users. When icons are deleted on one account, they’ll still show up when you create a second account, which can be frustrating. The “All Users” folders can be found at C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu and C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Desktop Create a new folder in the C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs folder, and call it something like “Original Desktop Junk.” Use your
imagination. Move all the folders and shortcuts from the All Users desktop that aren’t related to Windows (except Internet Explorer, My Documents, My Computer, and the Recycling Bin) into this folder. Now when you create new users, their desktop will be clean of all this junk.
”owner” is NOT your name Depending on your setup and whether you bought Windows preinstalled or installed it yourself, you may have a default user already created. Often times this user will just be called “Owner.” Before you get comfortable changing your settings, it’s a good idea to create an account that actually uses your name. Click Start => Control Panel => User Accounts => Create a new account. Once you have created a new account with your name, log off Windows and log in with the new account. You can then delete the default account by visiting the same menu, selecting the “Owner” account, and clicking “Delete the account.”
who include images in their e-mails can use these images to verify that you received the message (and then send you more spam.) If you never load the images, they don’t know you got the message (getthunderbird. com).
X-Setup Pro X-Setup Pro is the tweaking program to end all tweaking programs. Many of Windows XP’s hidden registry settings can be accessed using this handy tool. We’ll use this one later to disable annoying programs from starting up when you boot your computer (x-setup.net).
Winamp 5 If you want to listen to digital music on your computer, there’s no better program than Winamp 5. It is fast (much faster than iTunes), and powerful. It includes a powerful music library that lets you find your music instantly. (winamp.com)
IrfanView
Windows XP computers don’t exactly come with everything you need. Basic things like viewing photos or checking e-mail are handled poorly by Windows’ builtin applications. Time to upgrade your user experience, and do so without spending any money!
This powerful image viewer created by a lone programmer in Bosnia is nearly 10 years old (although it is updated regularly). It is small, fast, and incredibly useful. Although it is primarily an image viewer, it can do quite a few editing functions as well. If you need to resize, crop, adjust contrast/brightness/colors, or convert to a different image format, there is no need to use an expensive program like Photoshop. You could open a file, edit it, and save it in a format of your choosing before Photoshop even has time to load. Features include batch resizing and conversion, slideshows, and creation of HTML photo galleries. Really, too many features to list here (irfanview.com).
Mozilla Firefox
PopTray
Firefox is the must-have browser. It is free, standards compliant, secure, and extendable through a wide array of plugins. This should be the first thing you install. Make sure to let it take over as your default browser when you first run it (getfirefox.com)
Another old (5 years) one-man project, PopTray is a program that runs in your system tray (the lower right portion of the screen with the small icons and the clock) and checks your e-mail for you. It is a simple task, but PopTray excels at it. You can check unlimited accounts, assigning each one its own colors, sounds, and notification settings. I check two accounts, and set one to use red, and the other to use blue. When I have e-mail in both accounts, the mail icon alternates between showing a count in red, and a count in blue. You can create complex filters. You may be on a mailing list that gets a lot of activity and not want to be notified every time there is a new message from that list, or you may want the computer to make a different noise when
must-have apps The absolute first step is to get antivirus. Your computer may have come with it, and that’s fine. Just make sure you have it. Two popular programs are Norton (symantec.com) and McAfee (mcafee.com)
Mozilla Thunderbird Thunderbird is Firefox’s twin brother... for e-mail. This does everything Outlook Express does, plus more. It is secure, so you don’t need to worry that opening an e-mail is going to give you a virus. It has cool features like disabling images in messages at first. Spammers
your mother e-mails you (or maybe to automatically delete her messages!). Available at poptray.org. At this point, you’re in good shape. You can browse the internet, get notified of new mail, check your mail, listen to music, view and edit photos, and change system settings at will.
settings You have cleaned your desktop of unneeded icons, but what about programs that run on startup? Time for X-Setup to work its magic. Start it up (Start => All Programs => X-Setup, or via the Control Panel), and click “Classic.” On the left, you will see a directory-style “tree” of options organized by category. From there, navigate to: Startup/Shutdown => Startup => Windows NT/2K/XP => AutoRun - Part 1 => AutoRun Programs On the right, you’ll see a list of programs that are set to startup with Windows. Note that these programs are not to be found in the “Startup” folder of the Start Menu. Choosing what stays and what goes is a bit of an art, I’ll admit. Certain things should go, like anything related to Quicktime, iTunes, or Winamp. You’ll run those programs when you’re good and ready. Other than that, look for the things that show up in your system tray that you don’t use. Antivirus software is good, “hotkey” programs generally are not. Do you really need a button on your keyboard to take you straight to eBay? Less is more, because these programs will always be running. They can quickly start to slow things down. Disable a program from running on startup by selecting it and then pressing the Enable/Disable button. I recommend leaving the programs as disabled, and not deleting them. That way, if you find out you have disabled something that you want, it is just a simple matter of re-enabling it. The next place to look is in AutoRun - Part 2, which is basically the same thing, but specific to your Windows user. You’ll likely find yourself revisiting these menus in the future when some annoying program has decided that it is going to run every time you start up your computer. It’s your computer, you decide when programs should run! Next, it’s time to adjust Windows Explorer, your window to the contents of your hard drive. Browse to C:\ and then select Tools => Folder Options The first item on the first tab is “Tasks.” I like having a cleaner interface, so I select “Use Windows classic folders.” You may want to experiment with this one.
/it-times/learn/windows
Go to the “View” tab. Put a check next to “Display the full path in the title bar,” and “Display the full path in the address bar.” Remove the check in front of “Hide extensions for known file types.” This feature was intended to make windows more “user-friendly,” but it is actually quite dangerous. Without the file extension visible, you have only the icon to go by. Furthermore, executable files could have their own custom icon, and you could be clicked into running a dangerous program because you don’t see the .exe extension which designates it as an executable program. Click OK to save your settings. Still, something is missing from your explorer windows: the address bar! Right click any blank space on your toolbar area, and uncheck Lock the Toolbars. Right click again, and enable the address bar. Click and drag the address bar to your desired location. I usually like it to be on the bottom of the toolbar. Now, the important part, making this view your default view. Click Tools => Folder Options again and go to the View tab. Click the Apply to All Folders button to make this setup your default. Windows XP’s search functionality is crippled by default. Normally, you are treated to an animated dog character who walks you through a dumbed down search. It’s cute, but it has to go. Click ‘Change Preferences’ and then ‘Without an animated character’. Don’t feel too bad about the dog tucking his tail between his legs and sulking off. He was only slowing you down.
the reward Congratualations! Your computer is now a lot closer to being the productivity machine it was meant to be. You’ve earned a reward for making it to the end. I know you want it. Go ahead... change your desktop wallpaper to something fancy! Mark Jaquith lives in Gainesville, FL, USA, and splits his time as a college student and a professional web designer.
Computer Cake baked by !efatima (flickr.com/photos/webmonk)
Another Slice of RAM? They say that no matter how much money you have it’s not enough. One could say the same about RAM. Adding more RAM to your system maybe the most cost effective method of enhancing your system’s performance. RAM can be divided into two basic form types (physical build), SIMM and DIMM. Most computers today use DIMMs. These DIMMs can be further divided into two types, SDRAM and DDR SDRAM. These two are the most widely used RAM types in personal computers today. The difference between the two is that DDR SDRAM is cheaper and twice as fast as SDRAM. Before you go out there and buy, there are a few things you need to know.
what does RAM do? RAM is used to temporarily store pieces of data for processing by the computers CPU (Central Process-
by Chinthana Seneviratne
ing Unit). RAM stores data in memory cells that are arranged in the form of a grid and the data stored is in the form of 1’s and 0’s. Data that is stored on the hard disk drive cannot be accessed in such a manner. Therefore the more RAM you have, the more data that can be stored, and in turn the faster it can be accessed.
why get more? Other than your computer’s processor itself, RAM is the next most important factor in computer performance. Increasing the amount of RAM can result in a marked difference in the speed at which applications running on your computer respond. For an example if you have 64MB of RAM, increasing it to 256MB would result in a significant difference in performance. If you have 128MB and upgrade to 256MB you might not see such a drastic difference, but you may see some im-
provement, especially if you are running Windows XP as your operating system. If you already have 256MB of RAM upgrading may not be necessary if you aren’t using specific applications that require more memory. Such applications include CAD/CAM, 3D Modeling software and some newer games. Once you have upgraded your RAM, your movies will run smoother, applications will load faster and tasks in general would be accomplished faster.
how much? How much RAM would largely depend on the Operating System (OS) and the tasks you wish to accomplish through your computer. If you were a general home user, who is running Windows 98 or 98SE and use your computer to send and receive emails, browse the Internet and use general word processing and spreadsheet applications, 64MB of RAM would be sufficient. If you are running Windows 2000 or NT, 128MB or more is recommended. If you are using Windows XP, although 128MB is enough we recommend 256MB for optimum performance. However if you continually use graphics software, 3D modeling or if you are a serious gamer we recommend using more than 256MB of RAM. These types of applications require great amounts of memory and processing power. Hence the more memory you have on your system, the smoother these applications will run.
what is the right type? First you need to determine what type of memory fits into your memory slots. To find this out refer the manual that came with your motherboard. If you don’t have the manual with you, look up the make and model of your motherboard on the Internet to determine what type of memory it supports. Mixing manufacturers
/it-times/learn/hardware
is not a good idea. Therefore if you are planning on adding RAM to your existing memory, make sure you match the brand of memory you already have. Second, you need to determine the speed of the memory you want to buy. If you are planning on adding more memory to what you’ve already got, you don’t want to buy memory that works faster than what you already have. This is because memory works as fast as the slowest module on your system. For optimum performance, buy memory that matches the speed of the memory you already have. However if you want to buy new memory and willing to throw away the memory you already have, then you should buy a faster type. Again you must keep in mind the fact that your computer’s motherboard supports only up to a certain speed. So refer your motherboard manual or look up the make and model of your motherboard on the Internet to determine what memory speeds it supports. Bottom line – When you are adding memory to what you already have, match the brand, the speed and the type of memory; this is very important. If you are planning on adding fresh memory and doing away with the old, you have a little more freedom. However take note of the maximum amount and speed that your motherboard supports.
where does it go? Now that you have bought the correct type of memory that runs at the correct speed you are ready to install them on your computer.
Unplug your computer’s power cable before opening the outer casing.
If your computer casing is one that uses screws at the back, use a screwdriver or an appropriate tool to undo the screws. If it’s one that has clips, simply
... movies will run smoother and applications will load faster unhook the clips and remove the outer covering. Note: If there is a manufacturer’s warranty sticker that says the warranty is void if casing is removed, it is best that you take your computer to your vendor to get the RAM installed.
Its better if you wear an antistatic wrist strap before you do any work inside your computer. At least try not to touch the circuitry on the components. Touch a metal object with your bare hand to discharge any built up static electricity before handling any parts. Now locate the DIMM slots on your computer’s motherboard. In most systems, it is as shown below.
If you are going to remove any memory that is already installed, place your fingers on the two sides of the memory card and push the locks down. The memory card will now pop up slightly enabling you to remove it from the slot.
Installing the memory is quite simple. There is a little notch on the side the pins are located. This notch makes sure that the memory stick is inserted the correct way. When you push the stick into the slot, it should slide in with a minimum of trouble. If it does not slip into the slot, then it is either the wrong type of memory for your computer or you are trying to insert the memory into the slot the wrong way.
Make sure the memory module notch 1 is aligned correctly with the connector key 2 on the memory connector. Insert the memory module straight down into the connector until the retaining clips close.
After installing the new memory, close the casing and put all the screws back into place. Now plug in the computer and power it up. At the startup, you should hear a single beep sound, which indicates that all your hardware is working OK. Then check if the new memory is counted and if you can see the amount you added, you have successfully added more RAM to your system (i.e. if previously it showed 65536 and you added 64MB more, it should now read 131072). While a memory upgrade may seem like the simplest method of upgrading, if you do not take the correct steps, you could end up damaging your computer. Therefore take steps to ensure you buy the correct RAM for you computer and install them carefully. A memory upgrade will give your computer more speed and it will respond faster than before. However a memory upgrade will not help if your hard disk drive is severely fragmented. Run a system scan and de-fragment your computer before you set out to buy more memory. For most users, however, one more slice of RAM couldn’t hurt.
Jack Valenti signing a Betamax. Matthew Bradley (flickr.com/photos/mjb)
Contributing to a majority of the internets’ traffic, peer to peer file sharing is probably the largest and most widely used means for distributing copyrighted material. When you’re being ripped off at such large scales you can’t help but notice and take action. And legal action was indeed taken. Legal battles in court have led to rulings that changed how p2p will work in the future. For the benefit of the p2p-illiterate reader I’ll jot down briefly the history of P2P. It all started in 1999 with Napster. If you were net-savvy somewhere around early 2001 you’ve probably used it yourself. It was a software program that allowed users to share mp3’s easily. Pretty much what today’s P2P programs do, but with added *wow* factor - being the first of it’s kind. It got immensely popular and suddenly the RIAA realised they were being ripped off. They filed suit and won... the end of Napster as we knew it. Napsters downfall was directly linked to the fact that the copyright infringement could be stopped at any time, but wasn’t. All communication between users was carried out via a central Napster server. This meant anyone wanting to put an end to Napster had only to pull the plug. To fill the rather large void created by Napsters downfall, a second generation of P2P clients popped up from all over the world. Now these were special because, unlike Napster, there was no central server routing data to users. Users could directly connect to each other and download any shared goodies. This was revolutionary legality wise because this system couldn’t be ‘shut down’ - there was no plug to pull. What could
/it-times/play/p2p
be done however, is the targetting and eliminating of clients connecting users together. Morpheus and Kazaa were some of the early clients. Today we have clients such as Shareaza and LimeWire, the latter being an icon of P2P in the current world.
the betamax ruling In 1984 the Sony Betamax VCR was taken to court by the movie industry on the grounds that it could be used to make illegal copies of TV shows. The Supreme Court ruled that Sony the Betamax is legal because it has “substantial non infringing uses” as well. This could be interpreted as, anything that has even a small chance of being used for legal copying of content, is legal and no one can be held liable if it is used for illegitimate purposes. This ruling acted as an umbrella under which technology could be developed without fear of being sued out of existence.
the grokster ruling In 2001, major movie and music companies sued Grokster and StreamCast (Creators of Morpheus) for contributing to theft of copyrighted music and movies. The entertainment companies were rejected, concluding that file sharing software had legitimate uses and therefore was protected under the Betamax ruling of 1984. The court of appeals upheld the ruling and so it was taken to the Supreme Court. The Supreme
Court was the final court of appeal for the entertainment companies, and things were looking bleak for the entertainment companies. After the usual media frenzy and lots of waiting, the big day in court arrived. On the 26th of June 2005, for the first time in 20 years, a case with the potential to rewrite the Betamax ruling was about to be heard. The outcome of this would change the way new technologies were developed. Grokster lost, with the Supreme Court ruling that any device distributed with the intent of promoting its use for copyright infringement will be held liable for the resulting acts of infringement. What they essentially meant is that, if you promote the device as a means of making illegal copies, you will be held liable for the illegal copying. This sent shockwaves throughout the world of filesharing and many an online forum was abuzz with discussions of what’s next. Although the Supreme Court ruling sounded fair enough, the entertainment industry now had very strong grounds to take most developers of p2p clients to court, whether or not they promoted copyright infringement. The companies that couldn’t afford legal fees had to turn their backs on the p2p community and be slave to the entertainment industry. The halting of development of BearShare (a popular p2p client) could be taken as example of how the entertainment industry can use this ruling to bully filesharing developers. eDonkey and LimeWire, two very popular clients will convert to a DRM system shutting out millions of filesharers from content they want to get to.
open source p2p Shortly after the ruling was announced, the RIAA sent out letters to various P2P developers asking them to
prevent their users from infringing on copyrights or face legal action. This wouldn’t have meant much before the June 26th ruling while the Betamax ruling was still revered. But the new ruling left p2p developers weak, and all they could do is comply with RIAA demands. LimeWire, one of the most used clients with 2 million simultaneous users online at any time has announced new features that will carry out license checks on shared files. If a file is not licensed, the user will get a very polite but surely infuriating message saying the file cannot be downloaded. So what do we suppressed filesharers do when our favorite clients get tainted by the dark side? We turn to open source. An open source application is one where the source code is freely available for anyone. This means open source P2P clients don’t have one single developer or company in charge of it and therefore no one is responsible for how users will interact with it. Shareaza is an open source p2p client which is still being developed with no fear of legal action. The LimeWire sourcecode was released sometime back and forks of the popular client are in the works. FrostWire is based on LimeWire source code but will not include the license validation features built into LimeWire.
FrostWire FrostWire has been getting a decent amount of publicity as possible heir to the p2p client throne. The first public beta of FrostWire released was based on LimeWire version 4.9.33 but with no ‘Pro’ version, ads, pop ups or constant nag screens. This could be described as a LimeWire ‘Lite’ since it’s basically LimeWire without the unnecessary bits. The new client is substantially faster to load and exit, which is a huge plus. The FrostWire developement team comprises of many poeple from the ever growing p2p community and have been working on it since the source code was published. The main challenge for the FrostWire development team is continued innovation. Since this is an open source project it’s easy to slack and let development slow down. With the proper development pace set on the right track, FrostWire has a good chance of being the future king of p2p. The P2P community has proven to be flexible when needed and has evolved ahead of forces attempting to dampen out filesharing. The Grokster ruling dealt a big blow to innovation and buried it under fears of legal headaches. But history shows P2P has grown even during the hardest of times. Nnow, thanks to the power of open source, P2P will always be a step ahead.
‘The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay’ (TCR) stands out among the rest in the ‘based on a movie’ game bucket. Games based on movies thrive on the fan fare created by the movie and never focus on proper gameplay. That is till now. Calling TCR a first person shooter is slightly unfair since it incorporates a few other gameplay types and does a pretty damn good job of it. Add awesome graphics (the best lighting since Doom 3) and realistic sound, and you have yourself a game worth showing off to everybody. TCR shows that a game doesn’t need to be a highly anticipated sequel to do well in today’s very critical gaming world. Although the game is based on a movie, players who haven’t had the chance to watch it won’t get lost in the storyline that unfolds. It actually acts as a prequel to the movie Pitch Black and therefore requires no prior knowledge to get into the game. You play as Richard B. Riddick, a real bad ass with a brutal no-nonsense attitude towards survival. Riddick is successfully modeled after Vin Deisel, who plays Riddick in the movies as well. Riddick is delivered to the darkest and most secure prison in the galaxy, Butcher Bay - a stronghold
/it-times/play/games
from which none have managed to escape. Sounds like a challenge eh? You spend the rest of the game finding your way through the many sections of the prison in your quest to get free. You will encounter many characters during your journey to freedom which opens up the adventure type gameplay that’s incorporated well into the game. You speak to characters and they will give you little tasks which act as side missions, for you to accomplish. Speaking to a character presents you with a choice of what you want to reply with. Though this gives you the feeling of being open ended, it’s actually quite illusionary since any reply you choose leads to the same end result. This said, there are a certain amount of open ended options in the game overall. For instance you talk to a certain character and he will give you information about who can provide you with a knife early on in the game. This makes completing the next few tasks, like carrying out a hit on an inmate, much easier even though the weapon is not needed. In my case, the person who I was supposed to meet to get the knife was killed while I was trying out the hand-to-hand combat. This of course didn’t mean I couldn’t finish the mission, it just meant I had to get my
hands dirty. TCR is also a fighter. You can engage other characters in melee combat which can at times be very entertaining. The character modeling and sound plays a big role since the sound of your fist meeting with your enemies nose or chin and the resulting bloodsplatter is very satisfying. Though it can be pleasing to the eyes and ears, the feel of it can be sluggish. When engaged in melee combat movement is bogged down and annoying. Take a swing and you have to wait about a second till you can move again, so you’re planted in one place. Also you can’t move while you are blocking (right mouse button) which makes dodging and getting around your fore impossible. You can however combine punches and movement to execute different types of attacks and string these together to deal out some decent combos. If you happen to let your guard down and get a whack in the face, your view will get joggled as you stagger backwards. This gives melee fighting a very realistic but at times annoying feel. TCR is primarily a first person shooter and you’ll be doing a decent amount of running and gunning down foes while you progress through the game. You’re presented with some basic weapons like the shotgun and assault rifle to work with and later on it gets a little exotic when you get your hands on the minigun which specializes in turning enemies in to hole ridden corpses. The shooter aspect of the game is a little bland and could have been improved a lot more. You can’t complain about the AI much, but you do see enemies doing the stupidest things at times which takes away the realism from the game. I’m being very critical here because AI in todays FPS’s should be a tad more competent than that shown in TCR. They aren’t really all that bad, but they definitely should have been better. Luckily there is a second approach to getting around the levels and taking care of enemies. TCR combines stealth into the gameplay really well. Since the whole game is
you can perform a silent kill with a swift and audible break of his neck based in a dark and grim prison complex, stealth can be used anywhere to crawl around in dark passages and sneak up on unsuspecting guards. Crouching in a dark area where there is no light puts Riddick in stealth mode thus making him invisible to nearby enemies. The screen turns a slight shade of blue to let you know you’re in stealth mode, which eliminates the need for a graphical icon on your HUD. The ability to shoot out
light sources in the game gives a much deeper strategic aspect to the stealth factor. At some points you will have to shoot out lights in a passage as you work your way through it so you wont be noticed by the guards. If a guard notices a broken light he will pause near it for a moment and you’ll hear him say “Who put this light out?” before he gets back to his patrolling... just eye and ear candy really - it doesn’t affect the gameplay all that much. Sneak up on a guard while crouching and you can perform a silent kill with a swift and audible break of his neck – a trick you’ll never quite get sick of, in my opinion. If you have a shiv in your possession this could be used to undo the guard in a more painful manner. If by chance you do something stupid and the guard turns around to face you, press the correct buttons and Riddick will grab the guard, ram his gun up his chin and pull the trigger. Again, the sound adds a lot to the move and if you’re next to a wall, the upholstery will be re-coloured bright red. You will be totally awed the first time you see this happen. It is truly one of those dude, did you see that!? moments that will probably keep you trying to get in up close to a guard to make it happen again and again. Once a guard has been dealt with, the body can be dragged around and hidden away
so other patrols wont be alerted of your presence. This dragging around of bodies not only serves as a strategic element, but can also be fun at times thanks to the physics engine. If small things like pushing a body off an elevated area and watching it fall entertains you, then you will find many entertaining moments throughout the game. Later on in the game Riddick acquires the ability to see in the dark – an ability the developers call eyeshine. This comes into play extensively as the levels get darker and the need for total darkness arises. You will be able to take out all light in a room and turn on your eyeshine to crawl around while guards are oblivious to your where abouts. This leaves you the choice of either leaving them alone and getting through to the next section, or practicing that funky gun-in-chin move on each and every one of them. The general dark atmosphere the levels have make it somewhat hard for you to find the right vent or grating that you’re supposed to get through during levels. The developers fixed this by giving objects you can interact with, a glowing effect. So if you’re stuck in a room, shoot out the lights and you’ll probably find a glowing vent in a not so visible corner.
anything like that. This is similar to the GTA Series’ hidden packages or the ability in Prince of Persia to unlock developer content. Another thing you will notice when first playing the game is the lack of a heads-up display (HUD). A normal FPS would have a health meter, ammo reading and maybe a little man showing whether your character is crouched or in standing position. TCR eliminates all these needs in very creative ways that also add to the overall look of the game. The health meter appears as a small line of white boxes on the top left corner of the screen only when you are taking damage, restoring health or if you press the use key. Riddick has the (unexplained) ability to heal himself slightly when hurt. If a white box is emptied half way, crouching will slowly regenerate the health till the box is filled. This adds a small element of strategy especially during melee fights, where when hurt, you can block or just plain run away till that block of health is fully regenerated. This way you can kill even the toughest opponent with only one block of health left, if you do it right. The ammo reading takes on a Haloish form by having the reading on the weapon itself, adding to the realism of the game. On the other hand your view turning blue tells you that you are in stealth mode and eliminates the need for a graphical icon on your screen. The flashlight never runs out so a meter is not required. When you crouch there is a visible difference of your perspective of the environment as well as a slight distortion of the
later on you acquire the ability to see in the dark
TCR contains cigarette packets which give you access to content like trailers, concept art and so on. This doesn’t affect gameplay at all and shouldn’t be taken too seriously unless collecting all cigarette packets is your goal. You’ll never find a packet that unlocks a new level or
/it-times/play/games
edges of your vision. The sound also slightly changes and you can sometimes hear yourself breathing as well, which is a nice touch. The weapon crosshair isn’t a big X or + in the middle of the screen. The weapons laser sight acts as your crosshair which looks large or small according to how far the object you’re aiming at is. This means there is nothing on your HUD, and this does a good job of eliminating distractions on the screen and immersing you in the gameplay and environment. The gameplay of TCR is very addictive and enjoyable, and the graphics are right there alongside it. One small complaint I have is about the characters... minor, but I’ll get back to that later. The textures in TCR are absolutely awesome – detail, detail detail. The first few moments of the game is pure graphical pleasure and it just keeps getting better throughout. As you walk into the prison for the first time, the detail on the walls and floor, and how everything blends to give the feel of a grimy, unfriendly place will amaze you. You walk into your cell and see various things scrawled on the walls. The floor too is appropriately filthy looking and the toilet in the middle of your cell is covered with something that looks similar to a mixture of chocolate mousse and squished banana. This gives you the notion that someone has actually been living here before your arrival, and a general feeling that this place is alive. Once you start exploring outside you’re cell you see that the developers have paid intricate attention to the details. Security cameras will follow your position
where ever you go. Trash cans will have flies hovering around them and light bulbs will have similar kinds of moths flying around. The lighting effects are also the best I’ve seen in a first person shooter game. Especially since (the lack of) light plays a big role in this game, shadows cast by you and other characters are realistic. The guards’ armour looks especially amazing when under different sources of light. The floor and walls also play a big role by reflecting light realistically to give you that real world feel. One notable glitch however is that the characters at times look like plastic figures. They have been modeled really well, but the reflection of light off their bodies make them look like those plastic army soldiers we used to play with as kids. This applies to the prison inmates only, as the guards look really good covered in their shiny armour from head to toe. If you found Half Life 2 graphics good, I dare say TCR graphics have pushed standards even higher.
everything blends to give the feel of a grimy, unfriendly place
Sound is another killer feature in TCR. The ambient sounds do an excellent job of immersing you in the game with many, many details - if you listen carefully enough. How it changes when you enter an open air area from an enclosed space or a machine room, sounds really good. The slight variations in sound as you go from a standing position to crouching position is also cool. Weapons sound like they should, from changing a clip to holding down the mouse button and burying a clip into an enemy. Go into stealth mode and the music
can create some major suspense. Sneak up on an enemy and your heartbeat quickens as you get nearer, and becomes audible. When the firefights or melee battles start, the music score pipes up and adds to the feel of the situation you’ve just got into. The music is also a battle cry of sorts as it explodes to life when you’re spotted by an enemy. This either results in the guard getting riddled with bullets or you taking cover where he can’t see. In this case the music will die down once again. The change in music style is drastic enough for you to notice, but is executed tastefully so it doesn’t sound bad. The voice acting for Riddick is done by Vin Diesel himself. He does a brilliant job making sure Riddick conveys his brutal indifference when he delivers his lines. The script does get corny at times if you listen to it with a critical ear, but most of the time Riddick’s blatantly cold lines sound really good. Well, the game is rated M and the dialogue probably contributed a lot to that. You will hear plenty of cussing during conversations, which blends in perfectly with the theme – being based in a prison and all. The PC version ships with a developers’ commentary in the form of small voice recordings placed near specific places in the game. Once you finish the story, playing the campaign again will get you access to these recordings. For example, you will find a recording where you first find a cigarette packet. The recoding will explain how the developers came to include the packs and why. This commentary can be very interesting and funny at times. One recording has two developers discussing a review of the game written by a Swedish newspaper. In the review the author had expressed her views about how the developers had portrayed two inmates as ‘gay’. The developers replied her by stating that they had no intention of portraying them in that manner and that they didn’t even see them as gay until they read her article. This commentary system which is much like the directors cut in a DVD, is the first to be implemented in a game. It has come to be praised by the gaming community and it has been requested that every game in the future incorporate a similar commentary system. It has been said that a game should stick to doing one thing right instead of doing many things in mediocre fashion. On the other hand, The Chronicles of Riddick manages to do many, and indeed does an excellent job on all. A FPS with a hint of RPG and a pinch of adventure all mixed in with amazing graphics and outstanding sound gives you some very satisfying game play. So satisfying in fact, that I’m stopping right now. Sorry people, but there’s a guard in my field of vision and he’s got his back turned. Tme to break some neck.
/it-times/play/games
Skinning Winamp Winamp (by Nullsoft) is probably the most popular MP3 Player for Windows. But what’s in it for artists? Well, Winamp supports Skins, and since the Classic Skins don’t require much else other than artwork, you can make your very own. Most skinners use a template (see winamp.com for one by Bill Donaldson), which has the outlines for these parts, over which they design their skin. The design is then sliced up as per the different components and saved as individual files. Each component supports bitmap files, which you can make in Photoshop or any graphics program. The focus here is on making your skin look professional. There are so many skins out there which don’t cut it just because the writers make a few common mistakes. I’m assuming that you’ve more or less finished your skin, and are just checking for bugs and glitches. That’s a very good thing to do, but this can be done at any stage, even when you’ve just finished half a window. Here’s a bug checklist:
B
uttons - Do they look
by Abhimanyu Goshal
C
lutterbar (To the left of the little Visualization + Time Display Window) - Do the buttons look funny when pressed? This is something you must look out for. For beginners, I advise you to make that area a single color, without shadows, so that you can skin that part easily. It becomes a hassle to do it otherwise. Of course, any hacker wiill try it their own way.
Another thing I want to emphasize are the window borders. If your skin needs the windows to be positioned in a certain way (say, with the EQ under the main window )then you needn’t have borders. However, if each window is independent, then do add a border (a singlepixel black/white border will do). It adds a touch of class to your skin, and completes the packaging of each window. Make sure your text is readable. To sexify your text, make sure it is ‘anti-aliased’. This rounds off the letters, or gives them a light shadow, making the text look far more natural and less pixelated. A little shadowing and beveling also helps. Too much can also look terrible, so watch out. Use a smaller font size, or a small symbol.
odd when pressed, or toggled on/off ? To fix this, open the cbuttons.bmp/shufrep.bmp files and see what’s If you want to use a special wrong. Possible issues: the font, include it in your .wsz/. pressed/toggled button isn’t by Nina Nexa (flickr.com/photos/ninanexa) zip file, with permission to skinned, or is 1 pixel off its pouse it if needed. And make a mention of it in the resition. That’s why you should always save your work adme.txt file. Another couple of teeny, weeny things both in a reworkable file type such as Adobe PhotoI would like to mention are regarding the ‘Currently Shop’s .psd, which has editable Layers. Playing’ text area, and the other little text-display areas. Please make sure that text doesn’t look out of place itlebars - Do they lower or raise themselves when there. For this, mention that under Options -> Preferselected/deselected? Again, the problem will be ences -> Skins -> Classic Skins -> Classic Skin Opthe Titlebars being a pixel off its supposed position. tions, ‘Use skinned font for main window title display’ is checked. Make sure that the text is vertically and qualizer Sliders - Do they slide properly? For horizontally centered. this, you’ll have to open the file eqmain.bmp, and
T E
check the sliders. The most common problem is the background of the slider. Make sure its colored just like the bands it slides on. The same goes for the Position bar (posbar.bmp).
That more or less wraps things up, I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this, and have learned something from it. Have fun skinning the llama (Nullsoft’s logo).
Learn the meaning behind the acronym, or skip ahead to setup your Nokia/Dialog phone for immediate mobile browsing by Rakesh Mithun
Since the mobile internet trend has taken the world by storm the market for mobile communication methods has bloomed. Now the newest trend in mobile Internet or mobile communication is GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) as it is commonly known. GPRS is a new non voice value added service that allows information to be sent and received across a mobile network. It supplements today’s Circuit Switched Data and Short Message Service. GPRS is not related to GPS (the Global Positioning System), a similar acronym that is often used in mobile contexts. GPRS facilitates instant connections whereby information can be sent or received immediately as the need arises, subject to radio coverage. No dial-up modem connection is necessary. This is why GPRS users are sometimes referred to be as being “always connected”. Immediacy is one of the advantages of GPRS (and SMS) when compared to Circuit Switched Data. So lets get down to the facts: General Packet Radio Service is a technology that allows your phone to transfer data at moderate speeds. GPRS lets you send data faster than over a GSM data network, and it’s also a lot more efficient. But “data” sounds pretty vague, right? To use GPRS, you need a phone that supports it, a subscription from your network operator that supports
/it-times/play/mobile
G
GPRS, and the proper settings. General Packet Radio Service does what it says: it sends “packets” of data over a radio wave (on the GSM network). Packet switching works like a jigsaw puzzle: your data is split into many pieces, then sent over the network and reassembled at the other end. GPRS is just one of the ways to transport these jigsaw puzzles When you talk on a mobile phone, a continuous connection to a channel is reserved for you on the GSM network, which means nobody else can use that channel. With GPRS, you can still have a continuous connection, but you only use the channel when you’re sending data. One channel can be shared by many people. This is why you’re billed for data transferred, not for time. GPRS is significantly faster than CSD (Circuit Switched Data, sometimes just called GSM Data). However, you may find transfers slower than the maximum GPRS data rate during peak hours in busy cell networks, because voice connections usually take precedence. The data transfer rate also depends on your device’s multislot class, which brings us to the next section. GPRS classes refer to the slots allocated for uploading and downloading data. The class number, 10 for example, signifies the multislot class. The number 4 in (4+2, 5) refers to the maximum number of slots that can be used for downloading - the more slots used, the
P
R
faster the data transfer. The second number (2) refers to uploading, and the final number (5, which may or may not be shown), refers to the maximum number of slots that can be used at any one time, both uploading and downloading. So in this case, we could have 4 downloading and 1 uploading (4+1=5), or 3 downloading and 2 uploading (3+2=5), as a slot can only be used for uploading or downloading at one time. However, you couldn’t have 2 downloading and 3 uploading, because that would exceed the maximum number of slots for upload. Some common GPRS classes for Nokia phones are below - but it’s not an exhaustive list: So lets get down to the most interesting part of this whole excercise: setting up a GPRS connection on your phone. Since the majority of mobile phone users in Sri Lanka use NOKIA we’ll take a NOKIA phone with a
Class 2 (2+1, 3) Class 8 (4+1) Class 10 (4+1, 3+2) EGPRS (EDGE)
S DIALOG GSM connection as an example. First of all start by entering the SERVICES menu dialog and navigate settings> settings>connection settings> edit active settings> bearer settings and configure the access points, if your using a prepaid subscription connection the access point will be “ppwap” if you are using a dedicated subscription connection the access point will be “www.dialogsl.com” and the ip will be “192.168.112.2” (try replacing the number 2 with (002) if it does not connect). After this process call the DIALOG GSM support centre to enable the GPRS connection, switch off your phone for like say 2 hours after the GPRS connection has been enabled by DIALOG GSM, the next time you switch on the phone your mobile phone will be GPRS activated. Now you can surf till you drop on your mobile phone.
You guessed it, 2 slots for download and 1 for upload. It’s a simple class of GPRS that’s found in many phones. Class 8 reserves 4 slots for downloading and 1 for uploading. This is suitable for Web browsing, and also if you read more email than you send. This profile, which is in the example above, is better for back-and-forth use of GPRS, like instant messaging. EGPRS (Enhanced GPRS or EDGE) uses a slightly different technology based on 8-Phase Shift Keying (8PKS_. In practice, it makes GPRS transfers about three times faster - making large downloads less frustrating.
pple was the first company to incorporate the mouse, floppy, the GUI, and pretty much everything we call cool into Personal Computers. Starting from the original Apple in 1976, to the first Macintosh in 1984, right down to PowerMac G5 in 2003, Apple has gone from strength to strength, and we’ve seen them churn out better, and faster machines. At the helm of it all purred their flagship operating system, Mac OSX. With Tiger, that purr just became a ROAR. In 2001, after about 20 years of innovation, Apple launched its redesigned OS, the Mac OS X. With a stunning new GUI, and a rock solid base it blew critics away after a somewhat buggy OS 9. OS X (pronounced as 10’) made Windows XP look like an ugly enemy, and that’s saying something, considering XP’s graphical supremacy over it’s previous siblings.
‘Grrrr’ by Dreadful Dan (flickr.com/photos/dreadfuldan)
/it-times/play/computers
Screenshot by Jackol (flickr.com/photos/jackol)
under the hood Mac’s have always been known for the spaghetti source code that drove them. From 1980, starting with Mac OS, until Mac OS 9 in ‘99, the same spaghetti code has driven much of the Apple world. This was highly disadvantageous, and Apple engineers knew it. Mac OS, up until OS 9, was unable of multitasking! That’s right. They had no multitasking. What they did was they disguised it with Finder, Apple’s “Explorer” like “master program”. That’s why programmers at Apple threw away all the old source code after OS 9, and started afresh. Using their own variation of the open source industry standard super stable Unix core, christened Darwin, they went in to build the dream OS. OS X’s power and stability lies in its Unix core. You see, Unix is one of the most powerful Operating Systems in the whole world. Linux is based on Unix. Of course, you may ask, why didn’t they make their own source? The answer may be as simple as lack of time, or the already stable and secure source code that is Unix.
Anyway, what’s done is done. Apple chose Unix, ditched its own spaghetti and gave more emphasis to the UI and user experience. In the process we got Mac OS X, and the open source community got a major company as its supporter. Better for everyone. Well, not Microsoft - but you can’t please them all, can you?
on the dashboard Apple completely redesigned the UI for OS X, making it sleek, subtle, and beautiful. The Aqua user interface, which debuted with OS X ran circles around Windows XP. Four years on, and with the launch of Tiger, Apple has polished it’s interface and added features at a rate that leaves competitors in its wake. Of course, for such a graphically rich OS, oodles of RAM is obviously a prerequisite, and Tiger wont roar to your liking with less than 740 MB of RAM. Now that’s a helluva lot of RAM. Even XP, the slow
General options and preferences on macs are handled by the System Preferences, a Control Panel clone, but more efficient and better handling and usability. Everything is sorted in to easily definable categories, such as Internet, Network, Display and Desktop. Changing the desktop wallpaper is as easy as dragging and dropping the image file into the box! Another first timer bundled with Tiger is Spotlight, OS X’s state-of-the-art desktop search tool. Present as a magnifying glass at the top right hand corner of the Screenshot by T Squared (flickr.com/photos/t_squared) menu bar (the white glossy bar at the very top), it is easily the fastest and best deskMicrosoft beast is perfectly content with 512 MB of top search tool around. Clicking the blue icon opens RAM. Of course, XP doesn’t do a Genie animation up a search field, where you enter your search string, when apps are minimized! Trust me, it’s a treat to and searching happens on the fly, i.e, no hitting enter watch. On a Mac, it seems that everything is transparand twiddling your thumbs. The hits are categorized by ent, translucent, and has its own animation. No one, of documents, folders, emails, contacts, images, and pdf course, minds that. documents. Yes, it searches emails and pdfs too! All that with the speed of a dog with its tail on fire. Take it Of course, once you overcome the graphical goodness, from me, that’s pretty fast. the feature packed system will help you waste a lot of precious time. You’ll find yourself opening and closing Automator, the macro like robot like app thingy is the Dashboard and dragging widgets in and out, just simply that, an Automator. It’s a robot like application to see the ripple effects from the widgets being placed which will do what you tell it to. The concept is dead on the screen. simple. You create workflows, and set a time or an action as a prompt for it. At the predetermined time, or For the uninitiated, the Dashboard is an Apple applicaaction, or both, the action will be carried out. As robots tion that opens up a workspace containing a handful of don’t grumble, tedious tasks will become dead easy. For widgets. Widgets are nothing but tiny programs, such example, ripping an audio CD and gathering info from as a calculator, clock, weather and stock quotes. Of CDDB can all be done via a simple workflow. Easy course, this is just the tip of the widgets iceberg, and peasy, huh? over a thousand widgets are available for download at apple.com/downloads/dashboard. Tiger also comes with Safari, the default Mac web browser. It supports tabbed browsing, a RSS reader, and looks darn cool as well. There’s also Mail.app (all Mac applications have .app extension like .exe on windows), the default mail reader. The smooth, no nonsense mail client blends perfectly with Tiger and Safari. There’s also iChat, iCal and iTunes - respectively an IM client, calendar and to-do list, and everyone’s favourite music player. QuickTime player is also bundled.
/it-times/play/computers
anchorage at the dock The dock, anchored at the bottom (left, or right) of the screen is the main launching point of all applications on the mac. You can drag all your frequently used applications to the dock, to be opened at your will with a single click. All open apps are present on the dock, whether dragged to it or not. Also, all open applications have a little black triangle beneath their icons, showing their state. Very thoughtful.
Minimized windows are also anchored in the dock. The amazing thing about this is that the minimized windows are actually minuscule screen shots of the programs, which, in short, look very cool. One thing about the dock, though, is that if you have too many open applications, it becomes a little too small. Not a big hindrance, but you might have to squint a little to see the minimized windows. Although there’s a zoom feature which enlarges the icon your mouse is resting on, I find it a little irritating to have the the dock popping out all over the place.
how does she purr? Performance wise, OS X is comparable to Windows if you forget the bugs and crashes and smoothen up the experience by a factor of ten. Of course, you’ll have to remove the viruses, the security measures, and spyware as well – but you get the picture. Mac’s have always been a designers first choice, and I’ve now found out why. All Adobe and Macromedia prouducts run seamlessly and fluidly on a Mac, with stability to boot (no pun intended). The fact remains, however, that Mac products are more costly than Windows ones (well, many are), and that there are fewer of them out there. The latter is in no way a bad thing, however, because the choices are more than enough. But still, there aren’t infinite choices like our Windows machines. Of course, as I’ve already told you, OS X can guzzle RAM faster than you can say DDR. Without the required supply of RAM OS X will move like a zombie with a bad case of arthritis. If you’re into games, at least 1GB of RAM and a high class graphics card are the prerequisites to playing the few games that are available for OS X. Although the number of games may be less, the graphics seems to be better than PCs. And yes, there’s Halo! Of course, as most of you are Windows users, your first priority is to check
01 02 03 04 whether everything runs or not. And I have to tell you, 05 you won’t be disappointed. I transfered all my files with 06 a standard USB cable and everything worked off the 07 shelf. All documents and images opened nicely and 08 there’s Microsoft Office! Yay! 09 Speaking of MS Office for OS X, I was surprised to 10 find that many experts believe that Office for Mac is 11 a better product than Microsoft Office for Microsoft 12 Windows. How’s that for irony? 13 14 15 conclusion 16 17 Mac OS X, no doubt, is Apple’s biggest achievement 18 to date. It’s the most stable, fastest, and most secure 19 Mac OS operating system to be built. With it’s smooth 20 new aqua look, OS X runs circles around Windows and Linux GUI’s, and with a healthy dose of UNIX in the 21 form of Darwin, it’s probably the best there is. 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 Screenshot by Fly Down (flickr.com/photos/flydown) 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 Screenshot by Carpeicthus (flickr.com/photos/carpeicthus) 57 58 59 /it-times/play/computers 60
/it-times/play/photos
Elephant Orphanage Panorama . By Tom Chan (flickr.com/photos/tomchan)
kottu.org Geek With an Attitude (budlite.blogspot.com) was in Pakistan with the Sahana team (see newsfeed, page 6). Sahana is an opensource disaster management system developed in Sri Lanka. “We met one of the girls, who had been stuck between the rubble for 9 days. It’s an amazing story, that is just beyond belief. Just imagine being trapped in a confined space for 9 days with no food or water. Of course when they found her, she had already passed out, so hopefully she had hibernated most of the time. Her father said that he had buried 12 other children.” The World Spice Festival (spicefestival.blogspot.com) was blogged and photographed by Dushiyanthini Kanagasabapathipillai. “Thirteen different dishes were promoted during the World Spice Festival. They were Australian Bush food, Italian, Chinese, Indian, Sri Lankan, Arabian, East African, South African, European, Indonesian, Malaysian, French and Thai. These delicious dishes were promoted in thirteen hotels and restaurants throughout Colombo.” Nittewa (nittewa.blogspot.com) has proposed a ‘blogger peace plan’. The thread has become less active, but it’s worth noting in this first roundup. As of press there were nearly 100 comments. “I would like us to propose a 10 point peace plan for Sri Lanka. 1) Trial separation - Both parties break of any further contact immediately. Withdrawal of troops from Jaffna. Re-signing of commitment to stop picking of potential foes, 2) Separation to be enforced by a Peace-keeping force administered by the UN - no more rampaging Sikhs please !!! 3) At the end of a 5 year seperation - ALL associated parties must lay down their arms, 4) A referendum to be held in the North
/it-times/play/blogs
This section is a Sri Lankan blog roundup. A blog is a web journal, updated frequently. There are nearly 100 Sri Lankan bloggers at the moment, writing, ranting and raving about a variety of topics.
& East whereby electorates can decide if they wish to remain within the Sri Lankan framework or set up an Independent state, 5) Based on the above a constituion is drawn up for the North & East.That’s a start. Please add other points.” The United National Party (unpsrilanka.org) started a blog for the Presidential Campaign, drawing hundreds of comments, and some criticism for moderating those comments. “For the first time in election campaigns in Sri Lanka, the website www.unpsrilanka.org will provide an opportunity for the public to make comments, offer suggestions or ask questions in keeping with Ranil Wickremesinghe’s strong belief in inclusion. Commenters can see and respond to each other’s comments. We see this website as one more way for the people to stay in touch directly” Another controversial blog is Lanka Citizen (lankacitizen.blogsome.com), which takes an almost opposite tack to the UNP. They’ve taken some criticism in the blogosphere for blocking comments altogether. “We are a group of citizens who want to see the space of freedom for diversity and plurality is preserved in our society. That’s all. If that is there people will sort out things. If political freedom is not there, as it happened under the infamous regime of JR Jayawardena, then we will traverse the path of destruction yet again, in the South of Sri Lanka. This is our fear. We want to share this with the public. Hence this blog.”
The views expressed here do not represent IT Times or anyone besides the authors. To read more blogs you can visit kottu.org. To start your own, visit blogger.com or blogsome.com and join the fray for free.
» photoskin » abhimanyu goshal » » making PDFs » indi samarajiva » » paper makes a comeback » loki » » ubuntu » mahangu » » taking back the web » prabhath sirisena »
» php: includes » mahangu » » power of the wordpress » indranil dasgupta »
» xp tweaks » mark jaquith »
» a slice of RAM? » chinthana seneviratne »
» jiving with the RIAA » raveen wijayatilake » » chronicles of riddick » raveen »
» skinning winamp » abhimanyu » » GPRS - mobile browsing » rakesh mithun » » mac OS X - tiger » indranil dasgupta »
