Oli’s Blog

Review: PCLinuxOS (PCLOS) 2007 Final

Oli reviews the final of PCLinuxOS 2007 to see if all the commotion about this quickly rising newcomer is really worth the weight people are pushing it with.

Review: Ubuntu Studio 7.04

Ubuntu variant of concentrating on three creative tasks: video editing, audio recording and graphics. I takes it for a test-drive.

Review: Gentoo 2007.0

After five years of abstaining from getting down-and-dirty with Gentoo, Oli revisits the distribution that was responsible for many a migraine all those years ago… But does it cut the mustard when compared to other modern distributions?

Review: MCNLive Delft RC1

Another Linux review and in my sights this time, Mandrivaclub.nl’s MCNLive ‘Delft’ Release Candidate 1.

IE6 usage is dropping like a stone

Six years old and still causing plenty of headaches for webdevelopers, IE6 represents everything that is bad and wrong with Microsoft… But there is hope! Figures show that IE6 usage is dropping right off, really much faster than could be expected.

Photoshop takes the RAM-Burning Cup

Oli weighs up the cost for the immensely improved photomerge feature in Photoshop CS3: 1.1gigs of RAM. Includes a comparison between CS2 and CS3 photomerge results.

Review: PUD GNU/Linux 0.4.7

Oli gives the PUD GNU/Linux project a run for its money over two computers and finds that the real let down is the XFCE window manager that, although fast, is nowhere near as usable as it needs to be to compete in the Linux desktop race.

Stop hacking my server!

Oli gets mad as hackers converge on his server… But the problem is none of them have a brain cell between them. Sigh…

Is 9rules the new Ebaum’s World?

9rules is a collective of bloggers that has had public forums called Notes for a fairly long time

Stop the server abuse!

Have a look at the silly things IconBuffet are doing.

Oli’s Desk of Opportunity +5

Following others’ “show us your desk”, I’ve decided it’s time to photographate my little computer area and give you an idea of what things look like at this side of ThePCSpy.com =)

Easter 07 Update

As I’ve been away from site, I thought I’d give you all a little update on what I’ve been up to before I saddle up and start churning content out again.

Virgin supports piracy?

Virgin’s a little too honest about the content they’re hosting in their usenet mirrors

Sony’s PS3 site

People might feel I have some form of vendetta against Sony. I don’t. Honestly! However, Sony continue on their downward spiral and I just echo that.

Make your website suck in 10 steps

Having preached to the choir for some time on standards, plug-ins and JavaScript best practices, I thought I’d pivot, work the reverse-psychology and give everybody a few tips on how to make a website bad

The worst 10 reasons to get a PS3

Yesterday The Register published 10 reasons why you should part with 425 (~$900) for a PS3. The reasons are so poor that I thought they might be joking as they often do but I don’t think that’s the case here.

CSS Table of Contents

Derek Punsalan’s take on a CSS version of a Table of Contents is a good effort, but he stopped a mile short of the finish line.

How not to service your customers

What happens when things go wrong is the great separator between web hosts.

Why use standards?

Over the past few years, people who’ve been watching the world of webdev will have noticed that the message of standards has been playing a major role in how people chose to develop things.

More Spam = Less Spam

It might sound like a totally crazy thing to suggest, but it can be true. If you play the “game of spam” properly you can find your email addresses receiving more spam but much less, even none, getting through to your inbox.

Sorting madness

I know me whinging on about programming the site is starting to look like a recurring theme here — I promise that once I’ve got this problem out the way, that’s it for a good long while.

I’m trying to sort posts for the forums by latest activity. That bit works fine — but I also

Mind-badgers

One by one, the VB.net-wielding mind-badgers rob me of my sanity and sell it to Steve Ballmer.

I’ve been up all night programming the forums. In doing so I decided that it was time to completely overhaul the structure of the back-end… Re-writing about 1000 lines of code. Suzie’s current

Help with an algorithm

Please help, my brain is mush

Possibly the cutest video ever

I’m sure there are others, and I’ve love you to link them in if you’ve found a contender but I think this is a good bet for the cutest video in the world.

Spring Clean 07

Cleaning a PC is full of horrors. A little look why it’s important to look in your PC regularly.

I’m a Windows enthusiast

Note from future: This probably won’t come back to haunt me.

Sony fail again

Sony’s fractured global structure displays yet another weakness in the PS3 release

Dear Browser Makers

An open letter to the companies making today’s browsers…

Pros and Cons of OpenID

So why should (or shouldn’t) you consider OpenID in your next project?

Movie producers don’t understand piracy

When you make it harder to buy and rent, people go to the easiest alternatives

63,000,000 new OpenID accounts overnight

Big movements in for this new authentication technology

One reason all XP users should upgrade to Vista

What I’m about to say will probably make some of the more hardcore Apple and Linux users cringe down to their bones but stick with me…

Viddler isn’t great

While I’m all in favour of people using diverse video services, they’re not all equal. Viddler has issues.

The SCO Business Model

Yet another low in abusive lawsuits, SLAPP suits are the new normal when you’re playing as dirty as these guys

Vista’s Additional Clocks

Windows Vista has quite a few new features, some of which take some digging around to discover. Look what I found when playing with the clock settings.

Flash isn’t flashy

A fairly common complaint from some webdesigners is clients want too much Flash and this is fairly easy to understand.

Gripe 802: Background Images

When making a design these days, people are far too keen to plaster background images around without wondering what happens if the site cannot load the image for some reason.

OpenID gets support

The distributed identity system, OpenID has received support from one of the most unlikely corners: Microsoft.

Apple fires on DRM

In an open letter from Steve Jobs to the recording industry at large, he said he would implement an open store “in a heartbeat” once they relinquished their unmanageable grasp over digital rights.

Lost interest yet?

Have you lost interest in Lost yet? These mid-season breaks are killing me!

Using JavaScript Correctly

There are too many mainstream sites that don’t understand the most important rule of the internet: If you’re going to make something, it should work in all scenarios.

XXX domains are bad, mmmkay

Steve’s just had a little rant over how he feels the proposed, dropped and now reproposed .xxx top level domain is good for the internet