iPhone 4S, Should I Or Shouldn't I?

The day before Steve Jobs passed away, the iPhone 4S was announced, the unlikely, unwanted and certainly unwelcome successor to the iPhone 4. I've heard the same words mentioned about Tim Cook, the successor to Steve Jobs. But, come on? What's with all the hate?

Many people expected the iPhone 5 to be announced on October 4th, but instead they heard the words "iPhone 4S", emphasis on the S please. This made them unhappy, but why?

Disable Right-Click in Blogger (Unsavable Pictures)

After the post on Unselectable Text in Your Blog Posts many people have asked how to make the images unsavable too. As before, there are always ways around this if a user really wants, but again, let's make it difficult for them!!

After trawling the internet and trying out every code I could lay my hands on there was only one which I particularly liked. There are others dedicated to just images but they did not work as well as I thought they should. In short, the best way is using JavaScript to disable the right-click function of the mouse completely on your site.

New Dynamic Templates for Blogger

Having had a quick look at the new dynamic templates for Blogger during a work break, I was initially quite impressed. HTML5 is nice, and the guys at Google have certainly done a good job. BUT, there seems to be a lot missing.

Where are the options to change anything? And I mean anything.

I am sure that at some point they will see that they must add this functionality, but why not from the start? I can't change the menu colour, what pages appear in the menu, or even the favicon! At least I couldn't find the options in 10 minutes (which is that maximum amount of time it should take).

If you can find these options, or the way to change the HTML and not just add custom CSS please let me know. I really want to play with this!!

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Less than two months to go before Skyrim hits the shelves. So plenty of time to finish Oblivion one more time before you get to "continue" the story! Check out the latest videos below.

The Elder Scrolls Chapter II: Daggerfall

For those of you waiting for The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim to be released, here's a freebie. Get yourselves the second in the series for free here. 15 years old today. A bit of nostalgia for those of you old enough to remember the roots, a quick glimpse of the past for those of you who were never initiated.

Click here to go to the download page

Bose Computer MusicMonitor: You Got Cash?

Do you like to travel? A lot? Think you've got your weight limit sorted? Laptop packed? Films on the hard drive? Speakers? What, no speakers? Well think again..

I'm a big traveller, whenever I can, I move countries with my job. But this means that I am limited to 30kgs of baggage (including the girlfriend's shoes). But I like my music, I like watching movies, and I love playing games. The problem I always had was with the sound quality, laptop speakers just don't cut the mustard, even with these fancy "subs" they are claiming to have.

Nuclear Free Blog!!!

Is yours a Nuclear Free Blog? Let everyone know with this banner:

600x313 pixels

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I drew this banner after the events in Japan on March 11th 2011. Living there at the time, I was immediately thrown into the unknowing desperation of all the locals as to whether the food and water would be safe. It still isn't. Show your support for alternative renewable energy sources by flying your flags high!!

(right click on the image to save and please link back to this blog!!!!!)

Unselectable Text In Your Blog Posts

A lot of people want some of the text in their blog to be unselectable. This can be achieved, but as always with anything on the net, nothing will stop a willing person from finding a way around, or just retyping what you wrote. But that's no reason not to make it difficult for them!! For example, try selecting the orange text above. Not so easy is it. Here's how I did it...

EDIT: For images click here.

Logitech G19 Keyboard: Who is it for?

I used to have the Logitech G15 Rev. 1 keyboard. With 18 custom assignable macro keys, a monochrome screen and built in USB 1.1 ports. It also sported 2 brightness settings for the blue backlit keyboard while also being fully usable with the lights off in full daylight. The key action was the best I personally had ever used for gaming and it was seemingly indestructible. So after having to sell it (many reasons…) I have always been on the lookout for something better.

The Old Logitech G15 V1

I really got used to the separate LCD panel, using it to monitor stats within games and also as a system monitor, with the large clock being very useful to make sure I got to work on time, so for me the replacement was going to have to be another Logitech as other companies (quite rightly you might say) don’t see the need for a screen on a keyboard. The other day I got to play with the G19 in a shop.

What was this thing? The keys on my old G15 were something that felt more natural than anything I had used before, or since. The new G19 keys are narrower on top and tilt back and forth a little under use. I’m sure I could get used to this but why should I have to when they had it perfect before? The option to change the backlight colour scheme to anything I want is nice, but they have done away with the 2 brightness settings. Now if you want to reduce the brightness you have to change the colour scheme to a darker colour altogether. Not impressed. And if you want to turn the backlighting off? You have to turn the screen off too (at least I didn’t find a way to keep the screen on).

Yes, the screen is full colour, has its own operating system (so hundreds of programs can be written for it down the line), and can be used to watch films while playing games, but it is also power hungry. To use this keyboard as intended you need to plug it into the wall. I have never heard of something so ridiculous. In an age of USB powered monitors this seems a major oversight. Surely they could have done away with the full USB 2 powered hubs and used 2 USB plugs to power the keyboard?

I’m unconvinced. I don’t understand who needs this keyboard. I love gadgets and toys but even for me this seems like an over the top novelty keyboard. I would much rather have a cheap plastic normal keyboard and spend my money on the G13 Advance Gameboard. In actual fact, I may just get back on eBay and buy my old keyboard…

Mini Mod: Project Hand Baggage

After the tragic breakdown of my laptop I was left with no computer for my travels around the world. I was about to leave for Turkey and I needed some form of PC to keep me entertained and to stay connected to the world. Back in 2004 I bought myself a computer with an AMD Athlon 64 3200+ and ATI X800 GPU and was thinking that maybe that could be brought with me as hand baggage. I went back to my parent’s house, where it was stashed, and saw the size of the case I had bought for it. The Cooler Master Centurion.

It was just far too big. I needed something smaller. While thinking of a solution to this I was also thinking of how to improve on a Socket 939 motherboard without spending too much money. After asking for advice on the Bit-tech forums I got an X2 3800+ and a new graphics card. They told me to get an ATI 5450 but I got a 1GB GDDR5 5670 from a friend for next to nothing.

So new bits, still no case. On returning home to Italy my girlfriend told me she still had a computer that she bought in 1996 and that I could use that case. Ignoring the looks of the case, I measured it up and realised that it was perfect for flight hand baggage allowance. Awesome. So here is the beige goodness:

Upload A YouTube Video To Blogger

Adding a YouTube video in your Blog post should be a simple task, but in reality it is not as straight forward as it seems. Follow the steps below to embed a YouTube video within any of your posts.

First you need to find a YouTube video. Simple. Then, below the video box you will find a button labeled "Share", circled below. Click it.

Nuclear Free Blog!!!

Is yours a Nuclear Free blog? Do you want to show your support for a nuclear free world? Then use this image on your blog.

Right click and save the image, upload to your favorite image hosting website and share with the world.

"It's Not A Computer Mum" Media Player PC - Toshiba U400 Mod

Just after New Year, the backlight on the screen of my Toshiba U400 decided to give up. After 7 countries, over 20 flights, 100’s of trips in my backpack, and 2 years and 2 weeks of use it wasn’t happy anymore. The simple solution to this problem is to replace the light, or if necessary get a new inverter. Boring.

Stock U400 Photo – as usual I forgot to take a picture of mine first

My better half had decided on getting a MacBook Air (I don’t really like it but I can see why some people would absolutely love it, it’s what a Netbook should be, but with OS-X) so she would be giving me her laptop, which was better than mine. Time for a project. At my parent’s house computers aren’t allowed in bedrooms until Uni. My sister is only 16 so still has some way to go. At the moment she uses the internet on the DS Lite I gave her after “Lights out” for important Facebook business. While checking emails etc. on the DS is fine, it’s not really useful. So this project was destined to be a surprise present for her when I got back from Japan.

The idea was to have essentially a media centre PC, something to keep all her music, videos and pictures. I wanted it to play the music and videos well enough for viewing from her bed (her head would be about 2.5m behind the desk) but most importantly give her the internet. Not just so she could check stuff that seems important to her (but really isn’t ) but for Skype. Me and my brother live far away from her so the only real contact we get is by phone. Currently she has to Skype on the family computer which offers no privacy, this way she would be able to talk freely (and watch BBC iPlayer from her room).

Edit The Widget Title Text In Blogger

An important consideration in making your blog is how much coordination you want it to have. If you want individual designs for each widget in your blog then individual coding is required, if however you want to add a global effect to a series of similar attributes, then read on to find out how to edit the widget title text in Blogger.

  Old and New  

If you look at the columns on the right of this blog, you will notice that the titles to the widgets have little chevron images before each of them. Here is a guide on how to do the same to your widgets. This works especially well if you couple it with related images for your post titles.

Fix Image Thumbnails In Blogger Popular Posts

You may have noticed that for the past couple of days any new posts you write refuse to show up with thumbnails in the Popular Posts widget (the official one!). There is a temporary fix floating around the internet that I will outline below. Hopefully Blogger will get this fixed automatically.

The problem has something to do with the image hosting for the thumbnails, but I won't go into that. In order to get the thumbnails to show you need to do the following to the first picture in your post, you do not need to do it for all.

After adding the picture into your post, switch to Edit HTML. In this section you will find a part that looks like the following (look for the first one, at the top):

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.nintendo.co.uk/NOE/en_GB/nintendo_3ds_23802.html"
 imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"
 target="_blank&quot;"><img alt="Nintendo 3DS Logo" border="0" height="56"
src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/--AWSNblmvZA/TWt8UC2yFDI/AAAAAAAAAI0/vY8suL7AggQ/s400/3DS+Logo.png" title="Nintendo 3DS Logo" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">

You need to change what is highlighted in orange to the following:

src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/--

You can do this to older posts too by editing them after and it will load up new thumbnails in the widget. (The part where is says "lh6" may be different for your images so leave it as it appears in yours.)

This does work, but it needs to be done to all posts so I hope Google gets this fixed as soon as possible.

Add A Widget (Menu) Above The Title (Header) In Blogger

Browsing around websites you may notice that the vast majority have a small menu bar at the very top of the page. This sometimes adds consistent functionality to the site on all pages, or like the one on this blog adds basic quick links and some info. Adding this is a simple way to make your blog look more professional, or just to add some fanciness.

Nintendo 3DS Hands On In Tokyo

On March 25th Nintendo will release it's new handheld gaming console, the next generation DS, now in 3D. So is it as good as they want us to believe? Should we trade in our older boring two-dimensional DS's and upgrade to 3D goodness?

In January I was walking around Akihabara's biggest digital tech store and I bumped into the 3DS show stand. Literally bumped into, I was looking the other way at a shiny red Wii (I sold my Wii to help buy a one way plane ticket, worth it but I still miss it...) and I walked into the back of the display. That was how much Nintendo needed to advertise their new console in Japan, everyone knows about it. Walking around the other side I saw there wasn't much of a queue. Ah. Lunchtime. Everyone has lunch at the same time here. So I decided to join the mini-queue and have a little play.

Copying Text From Word Into Blogger

Most times when preparing a post for blogger you will first write it in Word and want to transfer the text into Blogger using copy and paste. This can present a problem as a straight copy and paste will result in Word’s markup language being copied with it, bypassing any font, size and format settings you have set in Blogger. This is an easy problem to solve, simply copy the text as you would normally, but instead of pasting into the “Compose” tab, click on the “Edit HTML” tab and past into there. Then feel free to click back into “Compose” to do any further editing or to add images. It really is that simple! Happy Blogging!

A Short Essay On Piracy

From the time I got my first tape recorder I remember pirating songs. But it wasn’t called piracy back then. At least not in the mainstream world, and the term certainly wasn’t thrown around the news as it is today. Yet the question still remains as to what the real difference is between taping a song off the radio and downloading a torrent.

Logitech G5 Budget Mouse Mod

A bit of background to start:

One day while bored at uni one of my friends lent me his copy of Custom PC. This is where my problems began. Within a month I had spent my full terms student loan on a new computer. It was beautiful, expensive, and didn’t work. Having never actually seen the inside of a computer before, I didn’t realize that you needed a graphics card and a motherboard. Woops. So out I went to get the latest and greatest graphics card, an ATI Radeon X800. Far Cry looked awesome! Still couldn’t really play it though. My keyboard was a crappy generic PC World home brand. It was time to introduce myself to the world of peripherals.

The funny thing about having no money is that you are more willing to spend it, so out I go and come back home with a Logitech G15. Ooh, light up keys and an LCD! I got instantly better at jumping around like a lunatic. Still couldn’t actually shoot anything. OK, time to get a mouse. Having decided that I like Logitech, and being slightly OCD sometimes so everything must match, I got a G5. Love at first sight. And I’ve been using the same mouse ever since. I’ve always had an eye out for a replacement but nothing seems to suit me better!

Stock G5 image. Got too excited and forgot to take a pic of mine first.

Edit The Read More And User ID In Blogger

Editing the read more and user ID appearance in posts is a small change but can help make your blog look more like how you want it. Changing the user ID in particular makes your name stand out, which is always good!

Editing The Post Box In Blogger

This guide is a description of how to edit just the area where the posts are written, from just above the title all the way down to, and including, the labels. Editing the post box is something that I found difficult to tailor properly in the Template Designer, jumping into the CSS and HTML turned out to be the best way of adjusting the look to what I wanted. The problem with this is that there is a lot that can go wrong when making these specific changes to a site that you haven’t coded yourself as you have no idea where to start looking for the specific code. One trick that I use to find the relevant sections is the Inspect Element option provided in Google’s Chrome browser.

To access this open any website you want in Chrome, then right click on the section you are interested in (menus, text, boxes anything) and choose Inspect Element from the drop down menu. This then shows you the applicable HTML and CSS code for that section. You will then notice something else that is quite frankly amazing, as you move the mouse cursor over different parts of the HTML code shown on the bottom of the screen, Chrome will in turn highlight the applicable section of the site page that is being affected by that part of the code! This is incredibly helpful and I use it to speed up page coding massively. Anyway, back to editing the posting box.

Format The Date Header In Blogger

Sometimes you may not want the date to be on the left above the post title. I didn’t, so I looked at ways to change this. This guide may not be the most in depth in terms of editing the date but it does give the basis for doing more if you know some CSS. By adding your own background to this section you can further customize the look allowing for some interesting effects, enhancing the look of your posts dramatically. On a side note, remember that submitting more than one post in the same day causes the date to only appear once at the top of the most recent post. Bare this in mind when editing the look of the posts as it may result in unwanted effects.

Default Justify Blog Posts In Blogger

I tend to think of a blog as a book. If you were to print your diary and publish it for the world to see then the print would most likely be justified. This may not always be the best solution though. A lot of websites, including news website, do not justify their text. This may be because as the horizontal space for text reduces, the formatting may start to look out of place. I, however, always prefer justified text as I like having the straight lines. If you decide you want to justify your text then do the following.

Change The Blogger Favicon

EDIT: Blogger now incorporates a favicon uploader in their "Design" page on the Dashboard, so you no longer need to do this!!!

Pretty much all websites now have their own favicon. A favicon is a 16x16 pixel image that is shown in the explorer bar and when people bookmark your site so it is nice to have one personalized. You can either draw your own picture in paint or GIMP, or resize your own picture. The advantage of dawing your own is that it can be perfectly personalized. The advantage of resizing is that you get the advantage of automatic software blending, so that the edges don’t seem as sharp. The choice is yours. Once you have your image (jpg, png, gif, bmp, ico or tiff for this method) take the following steps.

How To Remove The Blogger Navigation Bar

The main reason behind removing the NavBar is to make the blog look more like a website. I also find that it disturbs the flow of whatever design you have in mind. If you think that your readers may actually want to use the NavBar then leave it, other than that, get it off! One explanation I have heard for leaving it on is as an easy access for you to switch back to your dashboard. Personally, I always have 2 tabs open when editing anyway, one for the dashboard and one for the actual blog. This, for me, is a much easier way to make edits and see them work, as the Preview button may not always show you everything you want to check. Should something be wrong it is much easier this way to go back and undo what you just did.