For some time now I have been looking at wordpress themes to use here. I started with the free themes at WordPress.org but didn’t find anything that really stood out. Then a blogger I follow, Matt Brett, released some themes on Themeforest so I paid for one. I liked it a lot but it still was not what I fully wanted. So for the past two weeks I have been checking out so called premium themes.

The style that I like the most is clean and smooth with and nice layout. Something that makes it easy to read and keeps you on the content and not on everything else that going on. So after thinking about it for a few days I paid for Thesis and so far it is everything that I have been looking for. It is very clean and easy on the eyes and the best part is that it is very easy to tweak.

Now the reason that I have been looking for a new theme is that I have a itch to start posting again. Not that I think what I have to say will change the world but from what I have been reading about, tech stuff and gaming, my view on a lot of it is very different then most. Maybe some of you out there will look at things differently and what is the harm it that?

So the iPhone 3.0 update came out last week and I have been looking forward to it since it was first announced months ago. That was till the WWDC keynote where Apple said MMS was going to work on day one from about every one but AT&T. That put AT&T down there with Sprint in my book but lets look at the other stuff that the 3.0 update brings to the iPhone.

Cut, Copy & Paste – This is by far the most long awaited feature. There is not really much to say other than it does what it says. But I would say that this should of been in from the start or at least in the 2.0 update.

Landscape Keyboard – Again this is something that should of been in phone from the start but since it wasn’t and the iPhone is my first smart phone I had no idea what I was missing. I can say now that I love landscape keyboard and if I every get something other than a iPhone its going to have it.

Spotlight Search – For me, I have no real use for this since I don’t have a lot of notes and I don’t get a ton of email. But for people using the iPhone for work or people that get a lot of email, Spotlight Search must be a god send. Plus being able to search in apps is great.

Voice Memos – Once again something that I have very little or no use for. Its a new app that does just what it says, recored voice memos. You can then send them in a email or MMS (unless your on AT&T of course).

Internet Tethering – This lets you use your iPhone as a modem for your computer. Once again this doesn’t work if your on AT&T but when it does there a strong chance that if you want to use Internet Tethering it going to cost you extra.

Find My iPhone and Remote Wipe – This only works if you have a MobileMe account (I do) but I think this is the best part of the 3.0 update. When you log in to MobileMe you go your account page and you can see on a Google map where your phone is. Then you can send a message to the phone and the phone will display it and make a sound for two minutes straight. If you get no reply to your message you can then wipe the phone clean from MobileMe.

There are a lot of people that don’t like MobileMe for one reason or another. I have had no problems with it and find it very useful for keeping my contacts and calendar synced between my iPhone and my MacBook. I was starting to think about using Google to keep everything synced because its free but with Find My iPhone and Remote Wipe in MobileMe now I am not moving anything.

All the stuff above works on the iPhone 3G. Apple launched a new iPhone called the 3G S (the S means speed). This new phone has a better camera and can record video, the 3G cannot. But not only will the 3G S record video you can also trim your video on the phone. You can then send that video to YouTube, MobileMe, send it a email or send it in a MMS (unless your on AT&T).

The 3G S also has something that should of been in from the start and that is Voice Control. It works just like you think it should but being a Apple product they took it a little further and added Voice Control to the iPod part of the iPhone.

One of the new apps in the 3G S that I would love to have is the built-in digital compass. This would be very handy to have while driving because with the 3G phone the map is pointing north at all times. On the 3G S with the built-in digital compass the map will rotate depending on the direction that you are heading. Very handy.

So I have mix felling about the 3.0 update. Most of it should of been in the phone from the start but at the same time I am glad there here now. Other then the MMS crap AT&T is pulling. Then there is the new 3G S iPhone. There is enough added to the phone that makes me wants to get one plus it faster. But that also means a new 2 year contact and $200 and I am not sure I want to stay with AT&T that long.

So what do you think of the 3.0 update? Did you get the new 3G S iPhone?

Back in May I took a trip back home to Chicago. We just hung out with family, walked around Navy Pier and had some Chicago deep dish pizza. It was a fun trip but the fun really started when we tried to get back home. First the service that was going to pick us up and drop us off at O’Hare had the wrong day. So now we’re not going to make our flight home and had to pay $400 to get a new seat on a plane. We finally get to O’Hare and wait for our plane to show up. Now this is a small plane with just two seats on the right and just one on the left. We get on and now were on our way home but wait it gets better.

During the week they were storms in Wichita every night. I checked the weather for the time our first flight would be landing and all was good. But now we are going to land at around 9pm. Right when the storms start popping up. So I check the radar on my iPhone as we are getting on the plane and wouldn’t you know it – the storms are going to be right over Wichita right at the time we are going to land. Fucking great.

So were flying along and I am just playing with my iPod when the pilot comes on and say that we are going to be landing soon and that there are storms in the area. I have no control over the plane so I just go back to my iPod while we make are way though the clouds. The plane is just bouncing around and there is lighting everywhere (that was cool). Then as we just get below the clouds the plane drops for about 3 seconds. Some women in the front screams and the two older couple next to me look like they’re about to freak out. My heart picks up for about a minute after that then were back to just bouncing around as we come in for the landing.

I am in the left side of the plane were there is only one seat so I am looking out the window. I know Wichita and can tell that we are coming in from the north. As we get close to the ground the plane start bouncing around more and more but I see that we are really close to landing when the plane takes a sharp turn sideways. I hear the engines pick up power and the pilot pulls up and quits the landing.

Once he got the plane just below the storm clouds again he gets on the mic and tells us that he really didn’t like that landing and that we are just going to fly around for awhile and wait for a gap in the storm. Then he says that we are the last flight into Wichita and that all other flights were diverted to Oklahoma City and if we don’t get a gap in the storm we are going to have to go there because of fuel. Now I am thinking great, all the shit that has happen today and now we’re going to OKC to sit around some more and wait to fly back to Wichita. And I have to go to the bathroom now.

After about 15 minutes of bouncing all over the place the pilot says that we can’t wait anymore and that he’s going to try one more time to land and to turn off all radios and phones. At this point the old couple next to me looks over and sees that I still have my earbuds in and ask me if my radio is turned off. I wanted to tell them that it’s not a radio and that it’s not transmitting anything but they were still about to freak out so I just put it away.

So the pilot brings us back around and starts to bring the plane down and we are still bouncing around as much as the first time. I kept waiting for him to pull out again but then I fell the wheels hit the runway. For about 20 seconds nobody made a sound then everyone started to clap. And to top this wonderful day off then don’t bring the plane up to one of the covered loading docks. They stop the plane at the end of one of the terminals and bring a latter over for us to get off in a downpour.

So ya…that is how I almost died.

I got a beta invite to Dropbox last week and have been playing with it ever since. You can think of Dropbox as a free version of Amazon’s S3 service. It allows you to sync any files from your computer, PC or Mac, to there web interface. But unlike S3, any changes make to any file in your Dropbox will will be updated on any computer that has that file. Lets dig a little deeper.

Getting Started

To get started you have to install a small file on your system and it sits in your tray. You then link through there site your computer to your Dropbox. After that your ready to go. On Vista it puts a new folder inside your Documents folder called My Dropbox. On a Mac it’s under your Home folder. Now your ready to share.

test

Public vs. Private

To start any files that you have are private and can only be seen and changed by you or any computer linked to your Dropbox. But if you wish to share a folder with another user its as easy as making a new share folder through the site and putting in the email address of the person you want to share it with. But if you only want to show someone some photos its even easyer. On your system just go to your Photos folder and right click on it and go to down to Dropbox and click on Copy public gallery link. You now have images that anyone can see like this one.

Simplicity by Design

One thing that stands out the more I use Dropbox is that how easy it is to use. Now I am not your average use but even the so called “AOL user” should be able to understand quickly how to do anything. Most people would use this just to keep files backed up or to be able to get files from work and home. And if they wanted to add new files its just drag and drop. Everyone knows that. The web layout is also clean and easy to understand. There is no real Web 2.0 stuff going on. Just the info you need.

Deleting Files and more

No such thing as losing files here. If you or someone else deletes a file its not really gone. Just go back to the web site and there is a link at the bottom that says show deleted files. From there you can restore any file that you have recently deleted. Dropbox also saves the changes to your files each time and labeling them different versions. Again you don’t lose anything.

Overall…

Overall i really like Dropbox. It is easy to use and understand. Can be used on PC or Mac at the same time (sorry Linux). It is free and you get 2 gigs of space. That is not a lot once you start adding files but this is still a start up and still only by invite. The only thing that I wish Dropbox had is a way to add files through email. I was thinking of this when I was checking my email on my iPhone. If I receive a Word file or a picture on my phone I could forward that email to my Dropbox address and have it pull out all the files and put them in a folder that I choose. That would be nice.

This is a very nice and will thought out cloud computing idea. I can tell I am going to be using this for some time. And being in beta I hope it only gets better. If you would like to check out a good screencast of what Dropbox can do check out getdropbox.com.

This is just a post to see how the WordPress 2.5 gallery looks with this layout. The photos are from just random pics that I have on my system. So far the only problem I have is with the uploading of large photos. When tiring to upload them I am told there is a error but when clicking on the gallery tab at the top the photos are there. Not sure what the problem is just yet but it still works so no big deal.

Pownce is the web app/site made by Megatechtronium that is a small company with four people – Leah Culver, Daniel Burka, Kevin Rose, and Shawn Allen. The best known in that list is Kevin Rose, founder of Digg.com, and Daniel Burka, lead designer for Digg. What is Pownce? The best way to say it is Twitter on steroids. A mashup of a instant messenger program, a microblog and a file sharing app.

What do I get?

There are two ways you can use Pownce and that is with there desktop software that runs on Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) or the web site. When you signup you get your own page where you can see all the messages/links/files you have sent or your friends have sent to you. How it works is you pick if you want to send a message, a link, a file, or a event. After you pick what you are sending you get to pick who your going to send it to. You can choose your friends, the public, one friend, or any groups that you have made. After you have made your post people can then comment on it. If you add a friend after you have made a post but want your new friend to know about it you can forward it to them or if you wish to just delete any of your post you can do that to.

There are two types of accounts you can have. A normal one that everyone has when they sign up. With that the limit on file size that you can send is 10mb per file. The other is a Pro account for $20 a year where the ads are eliminated and the size of files you can send is pushed up to 100mb per file. So as you can see there isn’t much you can’t do with Pownce.

Not everything is great

If you go to the about page you will read the following.

Pownce is a way to send stuff to your friends. What kind of stuff? You can send just about anything: music, photos, messages, links, events, and more. You can do it all on our web site, or install our lightweight desktop software that lets you get out of the browser.

One problem that I have found with there desktop software and it “letting you get out of the browser” is that you can see if there is a reply to your post but you can’t read them. You have to go back to the site to do that. In fact if you want to reply to a post or get a file someone has uploaded you have to go back to your browser. Some other things that I hope are fixed are not being able to minimize the program to the system tray. Also I can’t seem to send files using the program. I have reinstalled it a few times but when I click on the file I want to send nothing shows up in the browser box. Overall the problems are small and as you can see in the image above the program is still in alpha.

Who is this for?

The people that will get the most out of Pownce are any group of people that are working on something that are not close to one another. The best example that I can think of is a group of people making a mod for a game. With Pownce you can share ideas and keep them in a organized manner (try doing that with Twitter). You could share all the files you want without having to host them yourself and if you all need to get together on Skype or IRC just send a event post. So if you want to do more then just send text messages over the web then then Pownce might be your thing.

For people that are showing there Twitter post on there site, and there are a lot of them, you can use the Pownce for WordPressplugin by Ronald Heft. Just go to the top of this page to see it in action.

If you have gotten this far and would like to try Pownce I have 6 invites left. Just leave your email address or if you want to be safe a link to where I can get your email address below.

What were going to do here is have a moving point_viewcontrol. Were going to have it track Barney where ever he walks. What this is good for is having a movie like cut scene or making your own in game machinima. This is really eazy so lets get started.

The first thing your going to need is, you guessed it, is something to track. In this case we are going to use Barney. So put in a [e]generic_actor[/e] entity and make it the Barney model and give it the name of barney. Next you going to need your point_viewcontrol entity. So put that in your level (in my example map its right in front of barney). Here is the list of keyvalues to change.

Name: point_viewcontrol
Pitch Yaw Roll: click on the Point At button and point it at barney’s eyes
Entity to Look At: barney
Target Attachment Name: eyes
Path Corner: path_track01

Under the Flags tab check only Freeze Player and Infinite Hold Time.

Now that we have our point_viewcontrol ready we need to get it to move. To do this we need a path_track entity. When you put this in your level it needs to be in the same space that your point_viewcontrol is. This is because when you trigger the point_viewcontrol and want it to start moving your going to have the point_viewcontrol playing catch up to the path_track. Its eazyer to have the path_track and the point_viewcontrol right with each other so you know how its going to move. Here is the list of keyvalues to change.

Name: path_track01
Next Stop Target: path_track02
New Train Speed: This is up to you. Example map is 90

I should point out that you can also use path_corner in place of a path_track or both. The nice thing about using a path_corner is that it has a Wait Here value so you could pause your point_viewcontrol.

And thats about it. In the example map I have it set up to start as soon as you walk into the trigger. Once triggered your view will switch to the point_viewcontrol. It and barney will start moving and the point_viewcontrol will track barney.

As you can see there are endless ways to use this. The one thing that I haven’t got working yet is how to contol the speed that the point_viewcontrol looks at what you have it set to look at. It seems to have just one speed. For example, if you set the point_viewcontrol in one spot and have barney walk right pass it, it will not speed up to keep tracking right on barney’s eyes. It will move at its set speed and sort of play catch up. If anyone knows how to fix it please let me know.

Video: Half-Life 2 Tutorial: Point Viewcontrol

Where going to make an elevator with two props and have it close the door once you press the button inside and go to the next level. Once at the next level the door will open and wait from you press the button again.

First you want make a prop_dynamic with the models/props_lab/freightelevator.mdl. Give it a name of prop_elevator and make the Parent elevator (we will be getting to that in a moment). Now make another prop_dynamic with the model models/props_lab/elevatordoor.mdl. Give it the name prop_door and parent it to elevator. If you look at the front of the elevator model you will see a dark beam on both sides of the door and wouldn’t you know it the elevatordoor.mdl fits right in there.

Now we come to the parent I was talking about. Get the nodraw texture and make a brush the size of your elevator from the top. Here is the important part. Make sure the top of the brush is level with the floor in the elevator. If not, wherever the top of the brush is where the player will walk. So it’s better to have even with the elevator floor.

Now make the brush you just make a func_tracktrain (Ctrl+T) with the name elevator and change the Max Speed to 50 (the default of 100 is a little fast). Also change the Height above track to 0 and for First Stop Target put path_track_01. Go to the flags tab and check only No Pitch and No User Control.

To make it clear what we have done so far is get our elevator and door and tied them to the func_tracktrain. So where ever the func_tracktrain goes so will the elevator and the door. Now we just need to tell it where to go.

To do that you need 2 path_track entities. Name the first one path_track_01 and for the Next Stop Target put path_track_02. Go to the Outputs tab and add these 2 outputs.

My outputs named: OnPass
Target entities named: elevator
Via this input: Stop
With a parameter override of: none

My outputs named: OnPass
Target entities named: prop_door
Via this input: SetAnimation
With a parameter override of: open

Since we changed the Height above track to 0 for our func_tracktrain we can set the floor of the elevator right where we need to. In the x/y (top) view put the X in the middle of the path_track entities right where the X for the func_tracktrain is at. In the y/z (front) or the x/z (side) view put the X for the path_track even with the top of the floor you want it to start on.

Do the same as above for the other path_track but name it path_track_02 and set the Next Stop Target to path_track_01. Of course put this one above or below depending on what way you want it to go.

Now we need to trigger all this. To do that we get our nodraw texture again and make a small brush that covers the button inside the elevator.

Make this brush a func_button (Ctrl+T), give it the name of elevator_button and made the parent elevator. Go to the Flags tab and check only Don’t move and Use Activates. Now go the Outputs tab and add the following two outputs.

My outputs named: OnPressed
Target entities named: prop_door
Via this input: SetAnimation
With a parameter override of: close

My outputs named: OnPressed
Target entities named: elevator
Via this input: StartForward
With a parameter override of: none

Video: Half-Life 2 Tutorial: Freight Elevator

And there you have it. The door will start open, you get inside and press the button, the door will close and the elevator will move. But theres one more thing. If you try it now you can just walk out the sides and back. To stop this get the Player Clip texture and made a brush for the sides and back. Select all of them and make it a func_brush (Ctrl+T). Make the parent elevator and your set.