Author Archives: Donncha

Easy Setup for WP Super Cache

One of the things that has bugged me about the WP Super Cache settings page was how it was laid out. Well, the next version of the plugin will display a simplified settings page to new users. If you’re upgrading, you’ll get the same old page as ever, don’t worry.

This version also adds a new method of serving cache files. It uses PHP, but serves supercache files. So, it’s a halfway house between using mod_rewrite (difficult to install for some users), and the legacy caching of WP Cache. That caching will be what is activated for users who use the simplified settings page.

There are lots of other bug fixes. The cache tester works if WordPress is installed in a sub directory, the admin page is separated out into tabs now to make it easier to find things. Error messages show up as “update messages” at the top of the browser now, making it easier for new users to figure out when mod_rewrite rules need updating and when other house keeping tasks need doing.

The code is red hot, liable to bend and break and may cause problems but it works fine here and on a test multi site install but I need testers to hammer on it and do things I don’t expect. If you’re brave, grab the development version off the download page. Thanks!

Android Battery Saving Tips

Battery usage on all so called “smart phones” is almost universally woeful. Big high-res colour screens, fast processors, sound, wifi and 3g networking all consume gobs of battery power.

Here are some battery saving tips for Android phones. I’m going on a long flight in a few days time so I’ll be trying these tips out before I go!

  • Go into Settings->About phone->”Battery use” to see what’s chewing up your battery.
  • Turn off haptic feedback. That’s vibration alerts when you press your screen. Turn off vibration as a notification too.
  • Apparently 3G uses more power than wifi so make sure wifi is always on. (Settings->Wireless and network->Wifi Settings->Advanced->Wifi sleep policy and select “Never”). My Galaxy S switches to 3G when the screen blanks by default but apparently this is a big battery saver. Only when you have a wifi network around I guess.
  • Always press “BACK” when you want to exit an app.
  • Turn off GPS. If your phone uses the cell network to find your location turn that off too.
  • Turn on power saving, and reduce the screen timeout so it goes black faster.
  • Turn off wifi when you leave your house or work. That stops your phone trying to connect to a network.
  • Turn off bluetooth when you don’t need it.
  • Turn off 3G and use 2G. (Ugh, slow!)
  • Turn off background data and syncing.
  • Turn down the brightness on your display.
  • Don’t use your camera.
  • Don’t use a live wallpaper, what’s wrong with a static picture?
  • Don’t use a homescreen widget that pulls data and updates all the time.
  • Task manager are generally frowned upon but some apps misbehave and don’t close properly. “Watchdog Lite” is a useful app that tells you how much CPU each app running on your phone consumes. Beware closing apps too much. They may look like they’re running, but they’re not. Android keeps them in memory, so they start up quickly next time.
  • Get Juice Defender off the Market. Besides a ton of battery saving features, the like of which I’m still trying to understand, it has a handy widget that will disable mobile data completely. Nice!

I’d love if Android phones totally disconnected from the Internet when I closed the browser, Tweetdeck or whatever app was using the network. My old Nokia 5800 did that. It connected each time I opened the browser and had wonderful battery life.

So, what other tips can you suggest for power hungry smartphones?

Update! With wifi and the 3G radio on the other night 6% of battery was used over about 6 hours. I switched off wifi and 3G (using Juice Extender) and the phone only burned through 2% of battery power over the same period last night.

Smoke rocked the games of Bad Company 2 …

Smoke rocked the games of Bad Company 2 we played last night. David and I joined a game of rush and I was mostly assault, and smoking it up on defense and attack for most games and it paid off. We won every game played I think!

On past experience I remembered running out of smoke grenades, even with an ammo box at my feet so I equipped the extra explosives perk giving 4 grenades. I was able to lay down a never ending barrage of smoke to protect us. We successfully defended on the first base on White Pass and Laguna Presa.

The enemy were down to about 30 tickets on White Pass. They had blown the MCOM station on the ground and did some serious damage to the walls surrounding the upstairs one. We had clear line of sight out to the construction site, and of course our backs were exposed through the window behind us. Eventually, the enemy took out all the cover inside the room too, and did arm it a few times. We had a few medics on our team who did sterling work reviving me after a few 40mm grenade deaths. We didn’t have a wall, but we did have smoke, and because of it the attackers couldn’t see into the room. We successfully defended by the skin of our teeth. Thanks David, Wiid, Ogga and later Tye for some superb games.

Oh, i’m 10 kills away from a platinum on my AN94. Wooh.

Can’t say the same thing about World at War. The evenings seem to bring on the loudmouthed idiots. Screaming, shouting, playing music through the intermission. Each time I’ve played earlier in the day that has never happened. Perhaps the kids are still asleep or at school. So, for the next session of Call of Duty I’m going to use a Skype session if possible, or at the very least mute VOIP. If you play WAW with me DM me on Twitter and we’ll sort something out.

We didn’t do so well at WAW team deathmatch. I read yesterday that Treyarch don’t try to match players of similar skills and I’d believe it.

Check out David’s post about the night’s gameplay too!

Update! David posted a great video of our attack and defence on White Pass. Like him, I was amazed when we won that game defending Alpha!

The Skorpian in COD4 Modern Warfare is a…

The Skorpian in COD4 Modern Warfare is a beast, for a starter gun. I leveled up to rank 4 last night and at random chose this gun in one of my custom classes. It’s incredibly powerful at close range. I won numerous 1 on 1 close quarter battles with it, even earning a few UAVs against more experienced players.


(Not me playing, obviously)

Score wise I didn’t do particularly well in any game as my KDR was rarely positive but later on we jumped into Bad Company 2 Conquest. I did alright, until the server started throwing me out at regular intervals. Level 50 medics with M60s are getting to be a bit of cliche in that game. After suffering one too many deaths at the hands of the AN-94 I swapped back to that weapon myself and rediscovered how utterly powerful it is. (Sorry Mike for scaring you, I wanted to practise rapid firing the fire button!)

I had a few games of squad deathmatch too, losing the first but then almost everyone backed out for the second game and most teams only had one player. I led the game for the first 11 kills. Good buzz, but it got so boring and it was late so I didn’t have time to waste.

The PS3 is broken, long live the PS3

You may have read that a USB dongle went on sale that basically put Playstation 3s into debug mode, thus allowing you to do things not normally allowed. Well, Sony sued and stopped them selling it, but of course the software on the dongle has been reverse engineered and made available online.

Where is the code? Well, slashdot linked to it. It’s on github and there’s a slight mod required to play “backups” of games. On a brighter note, any potential pirates will need a compiler to use the code but I guess it’s only a matter of time before a USB iso becomes available.

I hope Sony figure out a way to stop this working. It’s bad news for software publishers if users can copy their games by just plugging a USB dongle into their machine.

Tweet Tweet dives into the past

I overhauled my Tweet Tweet plugin for WordPress yesterday so it would work with the new Twitter OAuth mechanism. This morning I made it possible to download your older tweets, up to the max limit of 3,200 tweets that Twitter allows.

It’s still a work in progress but I want to get a new release out as soon as I can for current users who are using the basic auth that doesn’t work any more. If you’re feeling adventurous give the development version on the download page a go and tell me what you think!

99% of the OAuth code was ripped from Alex King’s Twitter Tools which in turn uses Abraham Williams’ twitteroauth.php library and OAuth.php from oauth.net. Thank you all for doing the heavy lifting required!

Call of Duty 4, not so much a “Game of the Year Edition”

I feared this might happen. I bought COD4 Modern Warfare off Amazon hoping that it would have a code to download the variety map pack but unfortunately it doesn’t. Looks like their “game of the year edition” is a cynical ploy to target those who do make that assumption. I’m not the only one. I love this comment from that page,

ya the map pack comes out to about $10 on the 360 as well. don’t buy it and just save your money for the sequel coming out this fall. we’re all pissed now, but once modern warfare 2 is in our hands, this map pack rip off will hopefully be a distant memory…

No doubt the forthcoming Black Ops will have it’s own map pack controversies. David asked if you’ll be buying that game or MOH but I think I’ll be holding on to my cash for now.

Disappointed? Yeah sure, but I’m looking forward to playing it later!

Charge the PS3 controller from your PC

You might not have realised it but you can charge your PS3 controller by plugging the USB charging lead into a bog standard USB port on a PC or Mac.

No need to have the PS3 powered up and draining your household electricity. Much better to use that PC you’re checking your email on and browsing the net. 🙂

Yes, I’ll freely admit I hadn’t thought of this, mainly because the controllers last quite a while and it’s usually when I’m playing a game that I notice there’s one bar of power left.

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