An EVE Signup
Filed under: Computers, EVE Online, Entertainment, Games, MPOGs, Technology
actual post page).
Seems like a perfect opportunity to encourage more.
EVE Online is a persistent universe MMORPG. This means it’s a multiplayer game played over the Internet with thousands of other people. Since “thousands” is vague, I’ll be more specific. There are over 100,000 players subscribed as well as many other free accounts. When I go on (about 18:00 GMT) there are between 15,000 and 20,000 logged on.
As you can hopefully tell from the banners (again if you’re reading from the actual post page) it’s space-based sci-fi. Sort of like a modern day
If that sounds like fun then sign up for a free trial account now 
Sky to offer free broadband?
Orange’s. Personally a shame for me since we probably qualify as a top subscriber (with all the Movies and Sports).
Zend Framework
Filed under: Computers, PHP, Programming, Ruby on Rails, Technology, Web Programming, XML
I started writing my clever language thingy in it.
The biggest problem I had was getting it to work with IIS. Which I couldn’t. I decided since I had IIS installed I’d give it a go. Unfortunately you require mod_rewrite which IIS doesn’t have. So I installed ISAPI_rewrite, a version for IIS. After an hour of trying to get it to work I went and downloaded Apache 2.2. Which was my second mistake You see it seems PHP doesn’t work with Apache 2.2. Not sure why but I found a vague mention of it on a forum after trying for another hour to get it to work. So I got Apache 2.0 and everything worked.
Of course there are reasons not to use PHP 5 with Apache 2, but meh.
There is one little problem with the Zend Framework, I think. It seems to be printing a space somewhere before any other output. It wouldn’t be a problem except I need it to output XML and a space at the beginning makes Firefox (and probably Internet Explorer) explode.
Back to language learning
Filed under: Computers, PHP, Programming, Technology, Web Programming, XML
work, my interest in foreign language learning with the aid of a computer has returned.
My main goal is a Pimsleur style system but with the repetition handled by computer – i.e. with just the individual phrases (and words and syllables for earlier lessons) as audio files, the program should generate complete conversations with sensible parts repeated and useful instructor comments in between.
That sounds like it requires some sort of script in some sort of markup language. Since it needs to be highly structured I guess that only leaves XML as a sensible possibility. So I marked up a conversation from Pimsleur’s German I. There was an unexpected result. It’s fairly straight forward to have multiple source languages in one script file. Although there are certain things that would not work best this way, a lot of things in German (for instance) would be taught the same regardless of what language you are learning from. Ultimately source-language-specific scripts would have to be supported though.
Zidane – The son of a terrorist whore
Materazzi called
If you’ve no idea what I’m talking about, Zinedine Zidane, apparently one of the best footballers in the world ended his career on a low note by getting sent off for headbutting an opponent in the final of the 2006
Here are some images of the headbutt in all it’s glory – and then some…
I don’t know where these images come from. If you can reasonably prove they’re yours I’ll give you credit.
Don’t get cocky in EVE Online
Filed under: Computers, EVE Online, Entertainment, Games, MPOGs, Technology
EVE for a few weeks now. I ventured into low sec (0.3, 0.4) space a couple of times and killed some NPC pirates. So I got arrogant and decided to hang around to mine some better ores. I’ve since lost two ships (well four technically – one of them was a freighter with two shuttles) to player pirates and moved back to safer space.
Although I didn’t lose my escape pod during either attack.
No more outages
the script to work that was supposed to restart it. I eventually diagnosed the problem as an incorrect path setting for the cron daemon.
Anyway, it should now never be down for more than a few minutes…
EVE Online and Pimsleur
Filed under: Computers, EVE Online, Entertainment, Games, Languages, MPOGs, Technology
Pimsleur makes the perfect companion to EVE Online, especially when you’re doing cargo runs or other things that don’t meed much concentration. Why not learn Spanish nipping out to buy that new Battleship? 
I’m not sure if you can alter the in game music that EVE uses (and changing it to Pimsleur would probably be a hassle since you’re only going to play each track once) but you can run EVE in a window and therefore use whatever media player you like in the background.
10% off dedicated servers
Miniserver or Fully dedicated server.
The Miniserver is what I’m hosted on. It’s half way between virtual hosting and a dedicated server. The server is essentially partitioned across all it’s resources with each user getting a guaranteed usage depending on the number of users. Of course you usually get more than this since most users don’t use a server to it’s limits. The advantage over a dedicated server is simply the price – they start at £19.95 a month. The advantage over virtual hosting is you can do almost anything to it that you could do to a dedicated server except change the hardware or alter the kernel (they’re running Linux). You can even install a different distro on them (they come preinstalled with your choice from a small selection).
The bandwidth is unmetered, but you’re only guaranteed 1/40 of a 5Mbps line on the cheapest option (and this doesn’t allow adult sites – you need the metered option for those).
For anyone like me who needs the freedom to install software but can’t afford or justify a dedicated server, they’re perfect.
New player corp in EVE Online
Filed under: Computers, EVE Online, Entertainment, Games, MPOGs, Technology
One thing I've noticed is an apparent lack of information regarding running a corporation. Most of it I can work out, but what the hell is gold for instance? If anyone could point me at a guide I'd be much a appreciative.