December 2011 – Something Odd!

Charlie Chaplin’s Kerry Accent

Charlie Chaplin, the star of silent movies of a bygone era spoke with a Kerry accent. Well, he did when he spent time in the town of Waterville in that county of Ireland. So his daughter says in this RTE documentary called “Kerry and the Tramp”.

It’s a wonderful documentary to listen to, especially as they interviewed his family and people who met him who all had their own stories about the actor.

I did not know that he was practically forced out of the United States because the authorities there suspected he was a communist. They let him back in the 70’s, but only for 15 days. He joked that they were still afraid of him!

I installed the RTÉ DocOnOne app but it’s stuck on the “Loading” page so best to not use that if you’re on Android. Does the iPhone version works better?
Then I was left wondering how do I subscribe to an itunes podcast without itunes but thankfully searching for “documentaries on one” in Podkicker worked!

Now playing: Saints Row the Third

It’s wacky, it’s crazy and it’s insane. This is part of the intro level. Absolutely love it!

I also got Skyrim and various other games in the Steam sale but SRtT has to be my favourite recently purchased game.

Makerbot 3D Printer makes a Church

Last Saturday I went to the Coderdojo party in the NSC with my son Adam to see what it was all about. We arrived late and all the pizza was gone but there were loads of balloons for the younger kids to play with!

The adults and older kids watched a 3D Makerbot printer demo. I love the open wooden case the printer is made from and when it started making a replica of St. Anne’s Church all eyes were glued to it as layers of plastic were laid down layer by layer. I posted some more photos here too.

One that was made earlier

Thanks Ann for tweeting about this on Saturday morning and reminding me it was on! Hopefully I’ll get to more Coderdojo events in the future!

Kids Place Android Parental Lock

My new favourite app is Kids Place. It’s an application launcher for Android that only allows access to the apps you want. The parental lock is protected by a 4 digit PIN but the launcher can be disabled by rebooting the phone.

A launcher app, with child lock, for Kids to protect your personal data & apps.
Creates a safe area on you device for kids. Child lock protects your personal information when kids are using your phone or tablet by restricting them to apps you approve

My son loves playing games on my phone and I usually put it into Airplane mode so he can’t go online accidentally but once in a while he’ll move the icons around or make new folders. Luckily he never deleted any contacts or messages but with this app I don’t have to worry any more. Parents, go get this app if you have an Android phone!

WP Super Cache 1.0

WP Super Cache is a fast page caching plugin for WordPress that can significantly speed up websites.

The first release of this plugin was in September 2009 so this has been a bit too long in the making. Back then the main caching plugin was WP Cache, which this plugin is based on, but now there are quite a few including W3 Total Cache, Hypercache, Quick Cache and many more.

Version 1.0 is an incremental upgrade from the previous release but it has a number of bugfixes and new features:

The all new scheduler and admin bar link should please many people, especially those who want to clear the cache on their site at particular times. The “Delete Cache” admin bar link is something people have been asking about for as long as WordPress has had that bar!
You can preload categories and taxonomies although this hasn’t really been tested as well as I’d like. It works for me but YMMV.
There’s better support for mobile and https users now. Mobile support should scale a lot more than previously.
The cache tester is fixed now and the plugin traps as many errors as possible. It’ll also spit out some helpful text if there is a problem. 99% of the time it’s because the server can’t request a page from itself.
At the risk of annoying users who comment on your site you can make them appear to be anonymous users which will drastically help your server if they like commenting a lot. Unfortunately it stops the comment form populating with their details so it might be worth using an external comment system like Intense Debate or Disqus!
The Advanced Settings page now lists a “do not cache page” secret key. Use this key to view any page of your site uncached.
The cache file listing and delete links should work again now.
And many many more bug fixes.

Once you upgrade go visit the settings page and check out what’s new there. The upgrade worked fine for me, but there’s no harm looking. Pay close attention to the new garbage collector. The scheduler is rather powerful and flexible so it’s worth setting up right.

If you have any problems please leave a comment here or use the support forum.

Your favourite iOS and Android Games in Real Life!

Cut The Rope, Airport Mania, Angry Birds and Plants vs Zombies all feature in a new music video by HeyGeronimoMusic. My favourite part is the dog in the Cut the Rope scenes but the Plants vs Zombies bits come close!

Great fun!