Anyway. Now I’ve got that useless piece of information out the way here is a small amount about the two projects I’m working on.

the first project is a web site that simply throws a wrting prompt at the the user. Sound boring. Well, yes I suppose it is. The main reason that I have undertook this project is into increase my PHP and MYSQL skills since they are nearly non-existent.

The second project I am working on is a reviews type website. It’s still in the design phase, but I can say that I’m really excited about this one. Once the design has been completed i’ll move onto the development of the back end. This will take a while to complete but shouldn’t be too hard to do. the only problem I’ve encountered is that of content. if you’ve read my reviews you would realize that that kind of writing isn’t one of my forte’s. So I’ll have to try and drum up some interest for writers and other contributors.

I know that these descriptions are really vauge but I’ll release some more information whent the time gets nearer to launch; which will probally be in the year 4242.

Wordpress links does exactly what it says on the tin, it displays links in your wordpress template whether its widgetized or not. But there’s so much more that the built in ‘Links’ functionality can do. In this article we will look at how the ‘Links’ functionality can be used to help make your life easier and do the same things that bespoke plugins have be made too do.

I’ve Got The Power!

Or more precisely WordPress has the power. We’ve all seen different hacks, workarounds and general hickory pokery used to show off the expandability of WordPress, so what I’m about to show isn’t anything special. In fact there will be no hacking or workarounds and most definitely no hickory pokery in this article; all we will be doing here is using the WordPress API to the advantage of the user i.e you.

Get To The Point!

Or more importantly the code. What i’m about to show you is a very basic use of the wordpress ‘Links’ but hopefully those einsteins among will think of better uses than this. I’m going to show you how to create a ‘Currently Reading’ widget (like the one in my sidebar) that will show the name of the book and a description of the book. This is easy enough to work out how to do if you read the Wordpress Documentation but I thought I would share how I did it.

In the latest version of WordPress the wp_list_bookmarks() function is used to call the bookmarks/Links and display them on the page so this is what were going to be using.

Here is the code used in the sidebar:

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<?php wp_list_bookmarks('category_before= //The text that goes before each category. Defaults to <li id="[category id]">
&category_after= //Text that goes after each category. Defaults to </li>
&category_name=Currently Reading //The name of the category
&show_images=0 //Display an image (in this case book cover). 1=true 0=false
&show_description=1 //display description.
&orderby=updated //Order it by the last updates bookmark
&title_before=<h4> //what goes before the title
&title_after=</h4> //what goes after the title
&show_name=1 //show the text link
&between=<br /> //Text to place between each bookmark/image and its description. Defaults to '\n' (newline).
&before=<p> //Text to place before each bookmark. Defaults to '<li>'.
&after=</p> //Text to place after each bookmark. Defaults to '</li>'.
&title_li=0 //Text for the heading of the list
&categorize=0 //Bookmarks should be shown within their assigned Categories or not.
'); ?>

It should be noted that this code has been format for display reasons. This is how the code should be entered:

<?php wp_list_bookmarks('category_before=&category_after=&category_name=Currently Reading&show_images=0&show_description=1&orderby=updated&title_before=<h4>&title_after=</h4>&show_name=1&between=<br />&before=<p>&after=</p>&title_li=0&categorize=0'); ?>

This has just been thrown into a text widget that I called currently reading. For the code to be executed in the text widget you will need the Exec-PHP plugin. You can read the documentation about wp_list_bookmarks() on the WordPress Codex. The only thing left to do is create a link category called ‘Currently Reading’ and add a bookmark with the name of your book, and image and a description, the plugin will do the rest.

Room For Improvement

This is a very simple and effective use of the WorPress links capability but there are many more ways to use this that more imaginative people could come up. If you liked this *cough* short article then why not leave a comment.

I’m currently busy working on a project whilst simultaneously appeasing the job center so I haven’t had time to write up the blog post I had intended to write, never mind, I have been importing a few of my slightly older post. Now, why not check out some stuff in my “round up”

Stuff

Round ups are one of the latest and greatest trends in the world of blogging; so I thought ‘why not jump on the band wagon?’. And so I have. Here are some websites, software, articles and stuff that some people may find useful, funny or interesting.

Sample resume template

This Sample Resume Template is a simple and quick way to build a HTML resume.

Project2Managment

Project2Manage is a free hosted project management solution that virtually anyone can use.

Website For Writers

An independent directory of online writing resources

Feedly

A cool startpage/Magazine RSS reader by Google

Net Tuts: Build Your own CAPTA form

Useful for those developer types

CH-CH-CH-Changes

The first and most obvious change to SCU is the design. I don’t about you but I think it’s got a few advantages over the original WordPress theme. And on the subject of WordPress, you’ll discover that SCU now runs on the popular Blogging platform. I love it. The third change to the site is that it now has a real host. Thanks to the recommendation of Darfuria I have signed up with *This webhost. The fourth and final change is actually more of a change to my habits. I have now decided to have at least one post every two weeks. That doesn’t sound like much but everyone has to start somewhere. Oh! and I’ve decided that the contents of the Blog contained way too many videos, so there going to be a big cut down in that.

That’s it for the first post. Tell me what you think of the new design. Or don’t. Who am I to tell you what to do?

What is ClearType?

ClearType is a type of technology developed by Microsoft that improves the display of text on LCD screens that can be found on a variety of devices. Examples of such devices are laptops, pocket PCs and flat panel monitors.

Though you may not know it ClearType comes built into Windows XP and Windows Vista operating systems. ClearType is automaticly turned on in the windows Vista operating system.

How Do I use it?

As mentioned above ClearType is already turned on in Windows Vista. To turn it on in xp you need to:

• Right click on the desktop and select ‘Properties’
• Select the ‘Appearance’ tab and press the ‘Effects…’ button
• Check the box for ‘Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts’, then select ‘ClearType’ in the dropdown list
• Close the Effects dialog by clicking ‘OK’ and click ‘Apply’ to complete the process

Tuning ClearType

You may want to tweak your ClearType settings. To do this Microsoft have provided a web Tuner (requires windows Internet Explorer) that allows you to change your settings from there website. Microsoft also provides ‘Power Toy‘;a piece of software that allows you to to tweak your settings. For more information on ClearType visit the ClearType website.

Sky Drive Logo

SkyDrive?

SkyDrive is an online storage solution developed by Microsoft. I t allows users to store documents, music, videos, photos etc..

What’s this about an Update!

Recently Microsoft updated ‘SkyDrive’, there file hosting solution. The update consisted of a few small upgrades such as giving the user the ability to download entire folders as Zip files, adding a slide show capability for users photos and making the service available in more countries, in more languages. The biggest upgrade to the service is that the storage capacity jumped from an average 5GB to a huge 25GB storage capacity. 25GB may not be enough to store all files from your hard drive but you have to admit, it a lot of storage for a free service.

What’s the catch?

Yes, as always there is a catch. Though the service is free and has a storage capacity of 25GB; the maximum size of a file or folder can only 50MB. This seems a bit odd doesn’t it? 25GB of storage but users can only upload a 50MB folder. I no next to nothing about business but I have a theory. I think this is where Microsoft is going to make their money from this service. Give a huge amount of capacity space away for free but only allow the user to upload a 50MB file and if they want to upload bigger file sizes then charge them extra.

Any Good?

Though I just started using SkyDrive, I can say that it has a better user interface than say, media fire (another online storage solution). It’s not plastered in ads like media fire and because it’s Microsoft I know that they won’t loose my files (like media Fire did). I wouldn’t use SkyDrive to distribute software or media files but as a personal storage solution I think it’s a great service from Microsoft. Now that’s a rare thing.

Burn Out Paradise Art

Recently I picked up the 360 controller and started to give Burnout Paradise another go.

The story of Burnout out paradise follows the traditional Burnout model, meaning it is completely non existent; this doesn’t detract from the game whatsoever. It would have to be a really stupid story line to explain why some many cars are racing around, destroying the terrain and making a genuine nuisance of themselves without any cops trying to put an end to it.

The game play is very easy to get to grips with; basically drive as fast as you can without trying to crash. The vehicles are very responsive to your commands though depending on the vehicle it can get better or worse. The AI works very well up to a point; there are times when I have taken out another vehicle, as always a short scene of the crash is shown and when the player gets control of the vehicle back from the AI, it crashes into a wall. This made me want to throw my control at the television a few times; but it only happens once in a while so I suppose it’s not as bad as it could be.

There are several game types; these include the traditional race event and road rage. In addition to these are new events such as stunt run, burning ride and midnight ride. As well as event types there are car types; each type as different attributes to it making it better for certain types of events e.g. the stunt car is lighter than other types of cars, this allows it to get more air, the aggression type of car has better strength and is heavier; this makes it easier to run vehicles of the road therefore making it best for the road rage event.

The graphics great though most of the time you’ll be travelling five hundred miles an hour whilst, giving you less of a chance to take in the scenery
One of the first things I noticed after the update (apart from motorbikes) was that now after a set amount of time; day changes to night and vice versa; this adds new depth to the game because it provides you with extra events and things to do plus, the driving at night can get tricky because of how far you can see ahead of you. A slight annoyance of the update that I noticed is that now it tries to bring the latest news from the server when the game starts, which can get annoying when you just want to jump into the game and get driving.

This is one of those games that can be picked up and played for an hour or two if you don’t have time to get stuck into a full story intensive game.

I don’t find racing games very appealing but the Burnout series has always exceeded my expectations and has given me great enjoyment; in fact it’s the only racing game I enjoy. Paradise continues to give the same enjoyment as the previous games in the series. I would recommend it, without hesitation to anyone.

The thing I hate about firefox 3 is the (in my opinion) inappropriately named named ‘Awesome bar’. The problem I have with it is that every time I start to enter a URL it brings up a list of URLs that have been found in the history or your favourites and have been matched with the text that was entered into the address bar. I just don’t like it. I much prefer the firefox 2 address bar. The fact that the ‘Awesome bar’ exist isn’t my problem; my problem is that there isn’t any way of making it act like it does in firefox 2. Sure, you can turn it off but that’s just as unhelpful as having turned on.

I can see that people are either going to love it. Or hate it. I personally hate it.

What do you think?

Update: I Have found a way to stop the bookmarks from appearing in the address bar drop down.

Use this guide to find the you firefox profile

• Now find the userChrome.css file. It should be in the file called chrome. If isn’t in there then just rename the userChrome-example file to ‘userChrome’.
• Now add the following code to the userChrome.css file.
  richlistitem[type=”bookmark”] {
  display: none !important;
  }
• Restart Firefox