The End of an Era, but what a Way to Go
Posted by Malcolm Micallef in Documentaries, Future, Technology on February 8, 2010
I can’t remember a time of not being obsessed by space. I still remember building space ships with Lego and spending hours playing with my brother using the ships we just built. Till this day I still love most games involving space. Descent is one of my favourite games of all time. I recently managed to find a copy of the game and after some playing around I managed to play it on a Windows 7 machine.
Today was the end of an era. This morning NASA launched the last shuttle mission to the ISS (International Space Station) and as a parting gift decided to launch it at night. Click read more to read more about the mission and to view the shuttle launch in glorious HD.
Wordpress 500 Internal Server Error and GoDaddy
Posted by Malcolm Micallef in Errors, Guide, Technology on February 7, 2010
This weekend I didn’t have much time to write on this blog. One reason is because of parties and the other is the sheer amount of work I had to perform. Apart from electronics failing left, right and centre a site I am working on failed this week for no apparent reason.
The site uses wordpress where I was creating a theme and some custom widgets and applications. I wasn’t working on it when the Internal server error occurred. I immediately went onto Google for the solution, what any experienced trouble-shooter would do. My search immediately lead to a problem between wordpress and my webhost, GoDaddy Shared Windows hosting.
I started by removing all the plug-ins as some people did to fix the problem. This had no effect on the error. I changed the theme name to try force wordpress to use the default theme and Houston we still have a problem. I even resorted to emailing customer support of GoDaddy but they were as helpful as most customer support around the world. Completely useless.
After some thinking and debugging I noticed the web.config which in the subdirectory which I never created. I decided to rename it and presto the site was back up and running like nothing ever happened. Hopefully this little piece of information will find its way onto Google so that if someone has the same problem as I did would be able to notice and fix the problem quicker than I did. Since I wasted a few hours on this problem.
This problem occured on a site I am developing but I was worried that my site would crash too since I was using wordpress too. So it was very important I solved the problem just in case this site decided to bite the dust too. At least now I am more confident that I can fix the site quickly. I don’t want anyone not to be able to read my crazy thoughts for a day.
Forget About Solar and Wind Power
Posted by Malcolm Micallef in Future, Technology on February 7, 2010
The planet is heating up there is no doubt about it. The only way to stop this is from burning fossil fuels and releasing more CO2 gases into the atmosphere. The future however won’t be saved by solar or wind power the future is football.
Soccket is aimed for developing countries which depend only on renewable sources of energy for power. The Soccket is a football that generates and stores electricity during play. The ball works by capturing kinectic energy through an inductive coil mechanism, it draws a magnet through a coil. Creating current that is stored in a battery.
Child labour would have a completely new meaning when this ball becomes mainstream in Africa. Whenever you want to make a phone call or use use a torch you can just get the local village children to go have a kick around.
The designers say that the ball weight little more than a standard football, and that 15 minutes of play produces enough energy to illuminate a small LED for three hours. The designers also say this ball will be sold on a buy one give one model. Similar two the OLPC laptop. This device will allow people to move away from dangerous Kerosene Lamps to a safer and cleaner light source.
Source [1, 2]
Windows 7 rapes batteries and leaves them emotionally scarred
Posted by Malcolm Micallef in Technology on February 5, 2010
I am a big fan of windows 7. I have been using it on my desktop PC since Microsoft announced the beta testing stage. I also proceeded to installing it on to my own laptop and the laptop given to me by work.
Recently I have read news sites claiming that Windows 7 permanently damages batteries on laptops. This is no myth or just someone competitors releasing bad press. Windows 7 damages the battery of laptop computers. And for those thinking that they will just format and install another operating system if windows 7 damaged your battery there is no going back.
This is a quote from Microsoft:
“We are investigating this issue in conjunction with our hardware partners, which appears to be related to system firmware (BIOS), The warning received in Windows 7 uses firmware information to determine if battery replacement is needed.”
Below is a quote from a user who’s battery just got raped by windows:
“I have tried charging the battery while the computer is off or in another OS, and it does not work,” said someone identified as “DanLee81″ today. “It will charge for a few minutes, and then stop. The battery will say it’s full when it actually only has a few minutes of charge, and when you take out the A/C, it will either last for a few minutes, or completely shut off your laptop. This behaviour happens in all [OSes] after Windows 7 damages the battery, not just within Windows 7.”
Luckily (for the people I work for) my current laptop seems to be immune to these effects. However, the power management is handled by propriety software from the laptop manufacturer. On the other hand my personal laptop is completely unprotected. However the battery life was always bad on it.
Source [1]
My Next Pet…
Posted by Malcolm Micallef in Funny, General on February 4, 2010
When I was young I only had two types of pets; fish and birds. The fish weren’t much fun. The birds were a bit more fun but still nothing like a dog. Today I was thinking if I had to a have a pet what would it have to be. I made a list of requirements that this pet must accomplish. The pet must be playful, loving and helpful.
When I say helpful I mean that for example if it’s a dog it must bring in the newspaper, scare off intruders and finally change my graphics card and optimize my computer. Most of you were thinking I wanted a dog. I wanted a dog before I found out what this monkey can do.
My pet will be this monkey. It would be a perfect relationship. I would buy him a small netbook, it would be like a normal laptop for humans. Maybe even start a new company which would compete with the Apple Geniuses. If Steve Jobs reads this he might get an idea of replacing all his geniuses.
An original way to get fired
Posted by Malcolm Micallef in Funny on February 3, 2010
It’s me again. A guy decided to do what the video I posted earlier showed. The only thing difference that he did it while (pretending) to work. While talking to a colleague. While another of his colleagues was doing an interview on live television.
What’s classic about this video is it seems that his friend seems to tell him that someone is doing a live interview behind him and his face is a classic s**t.
Has this ever happened you?
Posted by Malcolm Micallef in Funny on February 3, 2010
College Humour is a site I visit when I am in need of a lift. It has amazingly hilarious videos and photos. If you are having a bad day I dare you to go on this site and check out some of the videos and if they don’t put a smile on your face you are either having a very bad day or there is something wrong with you.
Ironically if you are trying to work this video explains why you are not managing…
Leave your computer on overnight?
Posted by Malcolm Micallef in Guide, Technology on February 2, 2010
Technology, unlike its fleshy creators, does not require sleep. I often have left my PC on overnight to allow it to do some processing and other very important things (movies and TV episodes). If you are going to leave your PC on overnight below is a guide of how to utilize the computer completely. With electricity prices rising faster and faster this article might save you cash and heart break in the future.
This is also my first HOW-TO or GUIDE post I have ever done in my life so you going to have to bear with me.
The future of mobiles and our pockets…
Posted by Malcolm Micallef in Future, Gadgets, Smart Phones, Technology on February 1, 2010
All this iPad, Droid, Nexus and N900 talk made me start thinking today about the future of mobile phones. In this post I attached two videos.
Check out the videos after the jump.
Read the rest of this entry »
Most Visited Sites of Malta
Posted by Malcolm Micallef in Funny, General, Internet, Technology, Wierd on February 1, 2010
Today I worked on making my website more accessible to Google. This is known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and it is a very popular and profitable service some are capable in offering. It involves making a sitemap for Google to know the pages you have on your site, adding the proper meta tags, etc.
During this process I decided to check out Alexa to see what the most visited websites in the world are. I was pleasantly surprised when I found that I can see the most visited websites by country.
For Alexa to track these sites the user must have some adware installed on their computer. So this won’t be the whole Maltese population but still it’s quite shocking when you see some of the sites that are up there.
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