David and Megan
Three sisters
Half Life 2 Orange Box – the perfect way to unwind
The weekend is coming up, and, perfectly on time, my copy of the Half Life 2 Orange Box for Xbox 360 has arrived. The box combines the original Half Life 2, plus the followup Episode 1 and Episode 2, and the Portal and Team Fortress 2 -- all of which should easily help you unwind after a long week of IT troubles. The original Half Life 2 is largely unchanged, even though it's just 360 version of the Xbox original. Unless you've played it, it's difficult to describe just how good a combination of puzzle solving and first person shooter the game is. The game switches between the different elements at just about the right time, so you flip between full on gun fights and having to find your way around a dangerous environment without there being too much of either. It's also wrapped into a engrossing story that would be interesting to watch on the sidelines even without having to play the game in the middle. Normally I'd start playing again from the start, but I've only recently completely a run and while I'd happily go again, I've been itching to play Episode 1.
Half Life 2 Orange Box – the perfect way to unwind
The weekend is coming up, and, perfectly on time, my copy of the Half Life 2 Orange Box for Xbox 360 has arrived. The box combines the original Half Life 2, plus the followup Episode 1 and Episode 2, and the Portal and Team Fortress 2 -- all of which should easily help you unwind after a long week of IT troubles. The original Half Life 2 is largely unchanged, even though it's just 360 version of the Xbox original. Unless you've played it, it's difficult to describe just how good a combination of puzzle solving and first person shooter the game is. The game switches between the different elements at just about the right time, so you flip between full on gun fights and having to find your way around a dangerous environment without there being too much of either. It's also wrapped into a engrossing story that would be interesting to watch on the sidelines even without having to play the game in the middle. Normally I'd start playing again from the start, but I've only recently completely a run and while I'd happily go again, I've been itching to play Episode 1.
Skype auto-credit seems a little
I have four Skype accounts that I use regularly and I manage all of them through the Skype Control panel, all of them are configured to automatically have credit applied from the pool of credit.
But out of the accounts, only one of them auto-updates the credit. One of them is a SkypePro account, and I fully accept that there is an issue there. But the other three are standard accounts with nothing special on them, so why doesn't it work?
The fact that it doesn't auto update causes some problems. I've run out of credit a couple of times now, fortunately not mid-way through a call, but it kind of defeats the purpose of auto-credit.
Skype auto-credit seems a little
I have four Skype accounts that I use regularly and I manage all of them through the Skype Control panel, all of them are configured to automatically have credit applied from the pool of credit.
But out of the accounts, only one of them auto-updates the credit. One of them is a SkypePro account, and I fully accept that there is an issue there. But the other three are standard accounts with nothing special on them, so why doesn't it work?
The fact that it doesn't auto update causes some problems. I've run out of credit a couple of times now, fortunately not mid-way through a call, but it kind of defeats the purpose of auto-credit.
Skype auto-credit seems a little
I have four Skype accounts that I use regularly and I manage all of them through the Skype Control panel, all of them are configured to automatically have credit applied from the pool of credit.
But out of the accounts, only one of them auto-updates the credit. One of them is a SkypePro account, and I fully accept that there is an issue there. But the other three are standard accounts with nothing special on them, so why doesn't it work?
The fact that it doesn't auto update causes some problems. I've run out of credit a couple of times now, fortunately not mid-way through a call, but it kind of defeats the purpose of auto-credit.
MySQL and DBD::mysql on Mac OS X
I’ve been investigating some recent issues with installations of MySQL on Mac OS X and the Perl DBD::mysql module for accessing MySQL from within Perl through DBI.
The problem exists only with binary distributions of MySQL and is related to the installation location of the libraries for the MySQL client that DBD::mysql uses.
By default these are installed into /usr/local/mysql/lib, but the dynamic libraries are configured to be located within /usr/local/mysql/lib/mysql.
It’s possible for DBD::mysql to build and link correctly, but trying to use the library will fail because it can’t find the library in the latter directory, even though it linked to the library in the former location. To get round this, the easiest method is to create a link within the directory that points to the parent. For example:
$ cd /usr/local/mysql/lib
$ ln -s . mysql
That should fix the problem whether you run the commands before the DBD::mysql build or after it.
ZFS in OS X
There have been rumors that Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) would include support for ZFS and it appears, with the latest preview from Apple (see Ars Technica), that that rumor is reality.
This has caused an unsurprising fuss and state of excitement in developers and users. Everybody knows that HFS and HFS+ (the current filesystem choices) are really bad. They are comparatively very slow and inefficient and archaic from the perspective that they put some interesting restrictions on how files, file naming and individual partitions of a hard drive are used.
ZFS in OS X
There have been rumors that Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) would include support for ZFS and it appears, with the latest preview from Apple (see Ars Technica), that that rumor is reality.
This has caused an unsurprising fuss and state of excitement in developers and users. Everybody knows that HFS and HFS+ (the current filesystem choices) are really bad. They are comparatively very slow and inefficient and archaic from the perspective that they put some interesting restrictions on how files, file naming and individual partitions of a hard drive are used.