Evan Sims

FYI: On Vacation

Just a heads up: I’ll be on vacation in Ireland until the 24th of October. I’ll have Internet, certainly, but it will be somewhat intermittent. If things go as they usually do during my visits, I’ll just be logging on at net cafes along the way to check my email, Skype voice mail, etc. If I don’t get back to you immediately, that’s the cause.

I’ll be sure to post plenty of photos and videos as time permits. Have a great October, everyone.

Intel Pro/Wireless 2200BG Disconnects on Apple Airport

I’ve had my laptop (a Dell XPS Inspiron Generation 2) for almost three years now. It’s still running strong, and overall I’ve been pretty happy with it. However, since day one I’ve had one majorly aggravating issue with it: the Intel Pro/Wireless 2200BG card disconnects. Like, a lot. Frequently. Several dozen times a day. I called Dell support on several occasions, and they were never able to really help. They replaced the card once to no avail. Now that it’s out of warranty, I kind of gave up on making the stupid thing work.

Then I decided to Google one day… go figure.

So it turns out the Intel Pro/Wireless 2200BG (and, I presume, other Intel wireless products) has a feature called PSP, or “Power-Save Polling”. Essentially the technique causes the wireless card to switch between an active and low power passive operating state, reducing power consumption and boosting battery life for your laptop. That’s all well and good, but the technology requires that the router you’re using supports this feature, as both sides of the process must cooperate in a unique manner to keep the connection alive during the lower power phases.

Surprise, surprise: Apple’s Airport line (Airport Extreme, Airport Express, etc.) doesn’t support PSP.

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Amazon launches DRM-free MP3 Store

Earlier today Amazon announced on their blog that they’re launching a brand spanking new online music store, simply called Amazon MP3 Downloads. Aside from the generic, easily forgotten name, I’m in love with what the site has to offer. DRM free, $0.89 (USD) a song, and a pretty hefty collection of very modern and popular music.

I’m going to hold off with any serious judgments of the service until I can get a few songs downloaded and give it a real test, but so far I’m impressed with what they’re offering. My only complaint thus far is the site design: it’s not very intelligent, or engrossing. The iTunes Store pulls you in and makes you want to browse for music; this gives me more of a “quickly in and quickly out” feel. At any rate, I’ll have a complete review in the coming week.

Update: Paul Stamatiou has a great write up on the new service, and a handy tip or keeping your purchases managed in iTunes.

WordPress 2.3 Impressions

So as many of you are certainly well aware, the long awaited Wordpress v2.3 was released today after a long series of betas and release candidates. 2.3 has had the blogging community foaming at the mouth for one reason: tags.

You might ask yourself, if Wordpress has had categories since day one, why do we need tags? What’s so swell about ‘em? Well, my dear friend, allow me to enlighten you. Categories and tags, while similar at first glance, help you manage your content much easier than either could do alone. Think of categories like manilla folders, and tags as post-it notes on the folders. Categories help organize posts in a strict structure, but tags help identify the content of posts in those categories.

Take my Web Development category for example. I think it goes without saying- everything in there is somehow related to developing stuff for the web. However, how those posts relate to web development vary wildly. I have topics ranging from writing for APIs to setting up Apache on a Windows box. Tags allow me to mark what kind of content these posts have, and in turn makes it easier for me to identify relationships between topics. From a reader standpoint, it gives everyone a quick, one-click search for finding similar content in my site.

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Final Fantasy XI Chat & Macro Commands

Decided to throw this together for my own quick reference. It’s based in part by a guide by Amanda Dean (Nalyr). These commands can be entered into the chat window (hitting space in the usual keyboard figuration on PC.) These commands can also be used to design macros for your convenience. Commands are broken into the follow syntax: /command [optional] {required}.

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