Posts filed under 'Software'
After almost a full year of using this personal project as a neat TeamSpeak addon, I decided it was about time to tidy it up a bit and release it into the world.
TeamSpeak Extra is an add-on written in Borland/CodeGear Delphi for the purpose of expanding the scope of features that TeamSpeak already has. It does that in a way that improves productivity and eliminates the needless hassle for frequent TeamSpeak users, and Administrators as well (such as myself) when public behavior needs to be moderated.
If anybody is interested, head on to ts.burex.net and grab a copy.
January 18th, 2009
I don't usually use any products that have "Live" sitting in their name tag, but this one is an exception. Amongst all available desktop blogging applications, this one is actually free *and* still very functional! (And it boasts a nice minimialistic Office/Vista feel, too) This li'l tool will integrate into LiveSpaces, Wordpress.com, any custom Wordpress blog, Moveable Type, etc., and saves me from having to log in and use the (let's face it) very doggy integrated TinyMCE that Wordpress has.
I do have to admit, I'm a bit tired of web-apps recently, since they don't use all the potential that Windows'/MacOS'/Linux's native apps have to offer, but instead rely on slow JavaScript scripting, slow HTML browser rendering and all sorts of hacks to do all the work. This doesn't cost bandwidth, it doesn't slow my browser down and still does everything I need. (In case anybody wondered, this whole thing works because of that mysterious and large xmlrpc.php file inside the default Wordpress directory, bless it's soul). Finally, blog publishing isn't confined to a browser tab anymore...
PS: An acceptable alternative to WLV would be ZoundryRaven.
November 29th, 2008
Google has finally launched it's very own browser! This decision was completely unexpected, and carried a lot of doubts with it, and, not to mention - risk... The first ever version of Google Chrome is in it's beta stage, as expected (following the Google tradition), but it works remarkably well. It's fast, simple, and stable. The tabs are placed on the very top of the screen, and that, in my opinion, was a very good feature, since I don't have to "aim" for any of my tabs like in other major browsers, I simply shoot up with my mouse and click what I need to click. Since every tab is a separate process, Windows Task manager is filled up with "chrome.exe" tasks, which is kind of a sloppy solution, but it "works". The whole interface is simple, and gives me plenty of needed space, so any advanced options are well hidden (such as the internal task manager).
What I didn't like at first site is the default 404 page that is included with Chrome, because you have to look at the whole page longer than usual just to realize that it's actually a 404 page (pictured), and not a customized Google home page... Also, some websites don't behave as expected, but that will change eventually (I hope)...
I have just installed this thing, so I have yet to experience a crash, but it's running just fine for the time being. We'll see if this Google product will be comparable to something so successfull such as GMail, or will it die off like GoogleAnswers...
Check out the screenshots in the meanwhile:
September 2nd, 2008
I love toying with old and outdated operating systems, it's a kind of an equivalent of listening to old records to get an "ahh, those were the good days" smile on my face. Windows 3.11 was my material this time, and it's the last Windows operating system to remain tightly in the grasp of DOS, but it was very useful and productive on machines that in today's world are considered completely obsolete. What's even more interesting is that Windows 3.11 is actually reaching it's "end of life" status in just a few months from now (it was sold to the embedded devices market for some time)!
September 1st, 2008
Tis' just a tiny rant... As much as I like to ocasionally play a game or two of Counter Strike (usually the Source version), I just can't help to emphasize on how much the dedicated server software for this thing sucks genitalia... I am unfortunate enough to administer one, and it's one heck of an aspirin-immune headache.
For some reason, the whole thing likes to crash in the middle of a game with a witty "C++ runtime error"... Not only that, but everybody ends up flying around the map with huge pings if someone makes the cpu usage go above 10-20% on the host machine. Why is that so? I have no idea, but obviously SRCDS is so awfully designed, that it's a surprise that so many dedicated servers exist online. To run this thing on a typical Windows system, you need a 2-3GHz machine that is completely stripped off any unnecessary services, and *maybe* then you can run a server that can handle 7vs7 players. Don't even think about copying a file, or running any other app except SRCDS, otherwise your players will give you the "glowing red eye" routine...
In a nutshell, go to hell, Valve...
August 28th, 2008
I'm just so freakin' glad to live in a free and prosperous country such as this one... In fact, Serbia is so great and righteous, that it has to remain the last on the list for all things good, and at the very top for all things bad, just for the sake of feeling important while pouring sacks of 10 day old manure on the head of every normal person that resides within.
If you haven't noticed yet, I'm pissed. Very much so.
What I tried to do today looked too good to be true (needless to say, it was) - I tried using Microsoft DreamSpark to download some free software for students (for educational purposes). The process includes a verification procedure that confirms that you are truly a valid student of any listed university. Allot of countries in Europe are supported, but not mine, nor does it look like it will be any time soon. It sucks not having an unified student filing system, like that's so hard to accomplish. Although loads more laws, decrees, important people, general democracy realizations in Serbia are on my "I will slice your spine in two" list, this made my stomack do a 360 degree spin. Thank you, oh so great country of mine...
July 4th, 2008
I needed to install a Linux distro on a server machine for (currently) testing purposes, and it's quite weird to not be able to find any install CDs when dozens of them are just lying around - either it's a prehistoric version of Ubuntu, or SuSe 9.x, or Ubuntu for PPC (how the hell did that get there?) or the fist two CDs of SuSe 10.1 (the remaining 3 probably ened up being somebody elses beer coaster).
So, I managed to grab a Slackware 12 install DVD and slipped it in the server's drive bay. The greeting I got was certainly not as graphically pleasing as one might expect it to be with Fedora, Mandriva, SuSe etc. Only text based dialogs were letting me choose a font, keyboard map etc. The setup is started by running a command called (obviously) - "setup". Although the setup procedure it's pretty ugly (non-graphical), it's quick to do and is quick to finish (but I can't stand the fact that there is no progress bar while installing).
Eventually, the setup finished - telling me to reboot... After the first startup, a text-based login was waiting for me. Every successful login spits out a "message of the day" which are usually some quotes. So, how to go graphical? "startx" didn't do the trick, so I ended up running "xorgsetup" which got me going. KDE quickly popped up without the unnecessary bloat that most other distros put in - it was quite refreshing to see. But, I needed fluxbox, so I changed the default window manager to that and logged in again.
To give a hint about the ease of use for Fluxbox - here's how to change the default desktop wallpaper:
fbsetbg -f /home/me/.fluxbox/backgrounds/wallpaper.jpg
The conclusion? When using "KISS" distros, such as Slackware, allot of effort is needed to get things going, but once it's done, don't touch ANYTHING else! To be honest, although I feel a bit proud for configuring such a disasterous user-unfriendly (yet stable) Linux distro, I would trade it for OpenSuSe or Fedora any time! (if anyone asks, the server is a test HTTP server... it works.)
May 23rd, 2008
Previous Posts
After almost a full year of using this personal project as a neat TeamSpeak addon, I decided it was about time to tidy it up a bit and release it into the world.
