Category: News

MacTF-EPG Currently Not Working

As I am a Topfield PVR and Mac owner I really like the software produced by Nathan Oates to support both platforms. My favourite program of his is the MacTF-EPG program that allows you to easily download an electronic program guide from the Internet and upload it to the EPG. The program works great (although intel version is buggy) except in the last couple of days it has stopped working. I have contacted Nathan and it seems that there is some problem with the EPG feed that is being downloaded, and hopefully it will be fixed in the next couple of days. Lets all hope because I really miss the complete EPG on my Topfield.

Keep up the great work Nathan.

Links
MacTF-EPG Home

Topfield Australia

egg-tech Site now up and running

Well I have been able to move everything over to the new egg-tech.com site and it seems to be working perfectly again. All that remains is for me to put in the redirects from the old site for all those out there who are to slack to make the updates in their RSS clients and web browsers :) .

Links
egg-tech Homepage
egg-tech Blog

New Domain Name: egg-tech.com

I have a new domain name now. Therefore over the next week or so I will be moving this site over to www.egg-tech.com. I will make sure that there is a redirect in place from the labf.org domain so that people can still find me. I will also post another article when the migration has been completed. The reason for the domain change is because Mof who was hosting labf.org has decided to go for an online website hosting service rather than do it himself as it ends up being cheaper and gaining better service. So we are now moving everything over to Dreamhosts, who have unbelievable prices. So what will you see as the user, well the first is the new domain name egg-tech.com and secondly it should be much faster and I will be able to do so much more. See you on the new domain.

Links
http://www.egg-tech.com/
Dreamhosts Web Hosting

World of Warcraft Virus

Wired has an interesting article about a virtual virus that killed numerous virtual characters in the World of Warcraft game made by blizzard. The virus started as a spell that was created for a new area of the virtual world and was created to spread to nearby players. However when the characters who visited this new area returned to the normal game map the spell hitched a ride and started to spread like a virus throughout the game until Blizzard released a counter-spell to remove the original spell.

This virtual computer virus does create for some very interesting thinking as it means that even virtual worlds have a type of balance that if tipped in the wrong direction can have serious repercussions. What happens if these virtual worlds become more real and we start to create the bridges between virtual and reality via some undefined hardware in the future. Will this be the complete downfall for the human race... got you thinking now.

Anyway World of Warcraft is still a really fun game and stories like these just make it even more interesting.

Links
Wired: World of Warcraft Virus

Apple OSX Tiger Release Date Announced

Apple has announced the release date of April 29th for its latest operating system.

Minor Delay

Sorry for no news, blogs, entries, info or anything else as I have a few minor problems at the moment. One is that my laptop that I do everything on at the moment is a little sick, it went buzz pffttt and smelt like burning electronics and is now in the local Apple store being fixed. The next problems is that it is christmas period so I am pretty busy with family and friends, which also means that it will take longer for my laptop to be fixed.

I hope to be back in action sometime next week.

Kudos for Me :)

I received an email today from an editor at the Biz/ed site informing me that they have used one of my photos on their site (click here). They found the image from the Stock.xchng site where I have a few images uploaded. Stock.xchng is a great site that allows people to share stock quality photos for others to use for free. Many photographers only ask for notification of people who use their photos. This is the second notification of people using my photos within a week and I am pretty happy.

Links
Biz/ed Site
Stock.xchng
My Page on Stock.xchng

OSX Tiger to have Burnable Folders and Smart Folders

AppleInsider is announcing that the latest beta of OSX Tiger released to developers has one new feature and a revised feature. The revised feature was present in earlier beta releases, this was to create smart folders that are now integrated with OSX Tiger's Spotlight searching capabilities. This allows users to create folders that can automatically fill themselves with the files that meet the smart folders capabilities. The second new feature is a Burnable folders. These allow for files to be dropped in a burnable flagged folder that creates a link to the original file rather than copying (or moving) the original file. By only creating a link to the original means that if the original contents change then when you initiate the burn the updated contents will be used. This feature will allow me to create release CDs for software that I build and then I can just update the original files and whenever I burn the CD I will always get the latest versions.

These are two of the new features in a long list of amazing capabilities to be seen in the future version of Apple's OSX operating system. I do not know about you but I can not wait for this next major release, I am already thinking of the cool ways that I can use some of these features.

Links
AppleInsider Article

iPod Photo

Well amazingly enough the rumours about an iPod with a colour screen were actually true. Apple has today released the new iPod Photo that contains a colour screen and can display photos. To help get the photos onto the new iPod Apple has also released version 4.7 of iTunes that understands the iPod photo so that you can transfer your photos from iPhoto to you iPod Photo. A new Dock is included and contains cables to connect it up to your TV so that you can display your photos on your TV. When playing music it will display the album art as stored in iTunes. And now you can play the built-in solitaire card game in colour. All this with an amazing 12 hour battery life, way to go Apple.

Links
iPod Photo Page
iTunes 4.7 Page

TV Guide Application Icon

As alluded to in previous blog entries I am building a new OSX TV guide application that will connect to a live web service feed to get TV guide information so that I can cache and display TV Guide information quickly and easily on my mac. Development of this program has only just started and I have started working on creating the site to provide news and forums for the application. So far I have created a potential icon for the application (see right). If you have any comments on this icon please add them to the comments section of this blog. I will be working on the site for this application soon. Updates about the TV Guide application will be posted to this blog until I have the new TV Guide site running with its own blog.

Ski Trip Photos

Now that I have the template created for JAlbum I have been able to create my online photo albums much quicker so I now can announce that I have my recent Ski Trip photos up online also.

100 Posts

YAY! I have reached the 100 posts milestone and still going strong. Probably have more posts than about 80% of other blogs on the Internet because the users have given up by this stage or realised that you actually have to put in effort to maintain a site like this with .... GASP .... content.

New set of Links - Blogs Around the World

I have added new section on my links page that will contain a set of links to useful blogs around the world. I will also contain RSS links that I use constantly to keep me up to date on what is happening in the world.

Links
Go to Links Page (Blog Section)

New page (resumé)

I have just added my resumé to my site. I have not included any contact details other than my email address, if you would like more information please send me an email. lt can be found at:

http://www.labf.org/~egon/resume.html

Welcome

Well here is the first of my entries. I will be posting articles about new gadgets, software, ideas and concepts that come to mind. I follow closely many different technical forums so I will try to keep an update of such technologies including XML, Web Services, Java Programming and web development. I will also announce any news for new entries on my personal site through this blog.