Monthly Archives: June 2013

Google Reader Alternatives

Google Reader, an online app that allowed you to read and be notified of updates to blogs like this, will close on July 1st. It’s unlikely that anyone reading this isn’t aware of that but just in case. Export your data now!

google-reader

There are a number of alternatives to Google Reader, each one has it’s own quirks and advantages. Gamma Goblin has listed a few on his blog but I’ll recommend my favourite one, Feedly.

After the frankly stale and unmaintained user interface in Google Reader the UI in Feedly takes some getting used to. At first I hated it but in the last few months they’ve improved it. I could try and describe how they’ve changed it but I’m just a user of the service. I notice when things go wrong but when they work right I don’t notice. However, I was reminded by Joseph Scott that Feedly doesn’t have an export option so make sure you backup your data out of Google Reader or you won’t be able to try other services quite as easily as you can now.

Feedly is moving at a great pace. Make sure you follow their blog (in Feedly, or the WordPress app as it’s on WordPress.com!) for further updates.

Also make sure you subscribe to this blog if you haven’t done so already!

Oooh, look at the size of that will ya?

games

Games and apps are getting bigger and bigger. It wasn’t so long ago when games that came on more than one CD were a rarity. Yes, those were the times when a packet of crisps cost 15p and you’d have change from 30p when you bought a Mars Bar.

Oh, ok. It was long ago but you know what I mean.

This is the output from Space Sniffer after running it on the C drive. Besides the massive Steam folder there’s also GOG.com at 22.3Gb, the Witcher 2 taking up 22.2Gb of that, and the “Origin Games” folder makes an appearance in the app where Battlefield 3 consumed 34.2Gb of space!

The unfortunate thing is that I haven’t played many of these games but I’m consoled by the fact they were almost all bought during the insane Steam sales where price cuts of 75% are common. Thankfully backing up Steam games is easy but Origin doesn’t have a backup plan. You have to manually copy files to their backup destination!

Integrate Google+ and Facebook Comments in your WordPress blog

screenshot-1

If posts are the life blood of a successful blog, then comments are probably the heart as they encourage the author and provide a discussion mechanism around a story*. The problem is that blogs can be seen as an island in the ocean surrounded by social media continents such as Google Plus and Facebook. The islands may not get much attention.

That’s where the plugin Google+ Comments for WordPress comes in. It’s simple to install and adds a tabbed comment interface at the end of each post where visitors can comment using their identities on their favourite social media site.

I left a Google Plus comment on a previous post and allowed it to be shared on Google Plus. I got a few replies on that post which also appeared on my blogh. I wouldn’t go sharing every comment you make from your blog. Spamming is spamming, whatever way you do it.

* On Youtube of course it’s usually the reverse. Never read the comments on a popular Youtube video. It’ll hurt your brain.

Jump Around in Bad Company 2!

I spent way too much time in Bad Company 2 when it came out. I’m still rubbish at it and haven’t played the PC version enough to unlock the much coveted “magnum ammo” upgrade! It’s just not the same without the guys I used to play with.

Regardless. EA have never allowed mods in the game but with NexusBF, a reverse engineering of the BFBC2 server, you can install mods. This is a video of the jump mod and it looks insane!

Dinosaurs of Computing

The Dinosaurs episode of This Developer’s Life struck a chord with me. Not because of Fortran or Dataflex although hearing about developers dealing with small memory constraints or attempts to convert an archaic piece of code into something shiny did make me grin stupidly.

No, there’s a bit about the Commodore 64 in there and some great SID chip music throughout the podcast. That sealed the deal for me! 🙂

YouTube keyboard shortcuts?

From the “so obvious I should have known” department.

I was watching a gaming video and the start of the video was really slow. I realised that I rarely fast forward through YouTube videos and when I do it’s with the mouse to skip big chunks of video.
I only wanted to skip the bit about the game menu and the mouse would have been painful clicking on the progress bar all the time. What about the keyboard? I had read that using j and k goes back and forward but it didn’t work for me so I searched for this most obvious of answers and found this page.

J and K still don’t work but right and left arrow do the job and there are also many other controls!

/Captain Obvious