Some of you may be wondering why i am cluttering the site with Advertisments. I work a day job, and i am also working on creating a custom codebase for this site so that i can have the custom blog. There are many factors that come into play when you run a website. Hosting costs, time, effort, etc. I am not looking to be paid for working on this site, however if you find the content useful and something that you plan to purchase is advertised, please purchase it by clicking through from my site. All i would like to see is the hosting costs covered, if not all well

I figured i would try out Kontera to see how it works, after this runs for a while i have another content publishing method that i am going to try out, i will then post a review about which method worked the best for my blog. This might be helpful information for others who run similar blogs.

If you absolutely hate the ad’s leave me some comments, i will take my visitors thoughts seriously.

gDisk is an application that will allow you to use your Gmail account as a storage disk. It will allow you to store files in your Gmail account and make it work as if it is an external disk drive.

I stumbled accross gDisk the other day, i knew applications like this existed for Windows but i had not seen anything for the Mac. I have been using gDisk and it seems pretty decent. It is obvious that it still needs work. There are a few issues that i came accross.

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Ok so i recieved an email alerting me that i could download the PreRC1 (shouldnt be much changed in RC1) of Windows Vista. I have installed this on one of my PC’s that have been collecting dust since i moved over to the Mac. I watched the keynote presentation that took place at WWDC and they stated that they put up a banner that said Microsoft should break out thier photo copiers. They have done just that. Let’s compare the new features in Vista that OS X has and has had for a while.

Vista has introduced something they call the sidebar. I have only played with this for a little bit but I only see one use for this. You can show or hide the sidebar. Windows also introduced something called Gadgets, these are interactive items that you can place around your desktop (or in the sidebar) that will tell you things like the current time, stock prices, machine uptime, etc. They also introduced a "Quick Search" in the control panel and start menu. As you type Windows will search for the application or Control Panel option that match your search term. They have also implemented something that is a quick application switcher. You click a button in the task bar, and it will stack the windows all in view, so that you can see every window. You can click the window which you want to see and it will bring it to the front.

Now OS X 10.4.6 has every feature that Vista is just Introducing. I know some of these features have been around for a long time, however i can only say what i know and that is that they are in OS X 10.4.6. Vista has just introduced all of the features listed above, but OS X has had them. I will show the similarities below.

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Quinn is a very addictive game that i stumbled accross. It is a Tetris like game that can be played over a network. I have yet to try network mode only single player mode. The keyboard keys are a bit hard to get used to, however once i master the keys i thing this will be a very fun game. You can read more on The Cult of Mac, or download the game on Simon Haertel’s website.

I saw on Digg that the prices of MS Vista were revealed

Full Version

• Vista Ultimate $450
• Vista Business $341
• Vista Home Premium $269
• Vista Home Basic $233

Upgrade Version

• Vista Ultimate Upgrade $269
• Vista Business Upgrade $224
• Vista Home Premium Upgrade $179
• Vista Home Basic Upgrade $116

Why is it so expensive, damn guys convert to Mac now and save yourself some money (since most of the new features are copied from OS X anyway) You can read more about this by going to the original blog post.

Look out FireFox there is a new Browser on the Flock, It has been a decent experience. It is based on Mozilla’s platform and seems to be a lot like FireFox, however it does have sone really nice features that FireFox does not have. For instance it has a built in news reader for RSS feeds. It has a photo manager which integrates with Flickr and PhotoBucket. I really like the ability to blog from anywhere as it has a built in editor for posting to your blog. You can even drag and drop pictures from any website right into your blog post. There are a few drawbacks that I see, one is the way the favorites are handled. When i went to edit my favorites and add a folder to my Toolbar Folder, it was not possible to do. You can only have single site bookmarks in the tool bar folder. The blog editor also does not allow you to specify a target when you link an image or text, i had to manually go into my blog and change all the links in this post. WHAT A HASSLE!

I think that they need to do more work on the blog editor, favorites editor and maybe beef up the plugins section as they only have 3 listed there. This browser is still new so i look froward to what they come up with next. I like the fact that i can read blogs, post to my blog, manage photo’s etc. right from within the browser. There is currently an issue with a memory leak which i read somewhere.
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If you are looking at how to use the Observer or Dispatcher patterns in PHP 4 you should take a look at this article written by Peter Goodman. It is focused on PHP 4 however it is pretty good on the how and why when explaining the patterns. Peter also has some good code examples to walk you through the process of using the patterns.

If you are looking for a PHP 5 version of this, you can convert it simply by removing the reference characters and adding the abstract keyword to the abstract classes. You also need to add the __construct methods.

Peter’s blog is called The Unfraggable Bulk and once you see the site, the title becomes self explanatory. Pretty clever name if you ask me. Thanks for this article Peter and i look forward to whatever you post next.

I have been a faithful Zend Studio user for about 2 years now, however i have started a new job and all the developers stand by Eclipse. I have been testing Eclipse, Komodo, Zend to compare the 3 and decide which would best suit my needs. This is not a full review on all of the IDE’s however only a review on the features that i require on a daily basis. I am going to start off by explaining my situation.

At work we have a sandbox environment setup so every developer can create a virtual web server for testing/debugging purposes. Every developer has thier own home directory which can be mounted as a virtual drive on our local systems. This is where all of our files reside. In order to mount that drive we must be connected to the VPN. I am evaluating IDE’s to see which will best suit this situation. Working with files on a remotely mounted drive is sometimes slow. Also loading the project files from this sometimes slow disk can be annoying.

Zend Studio
This is a very nice IDE, it is written in Java so it is cross platform. When you buy this IDE (Standard: $99, Professional: $299) it is a per computer license, which means if you put it on windows, you have to buy another license for your Mac or linux machine. This IDE i have found to be very nice, it is easy to use and the debugging capabilities are really good. This IDE (like others) allows you to debug locally or remotely. When this IDE first hit the market it was sluggish but they have since fixed that and it runs fast now. It has built in support for CVS/SVN however i am finding that it’s not the easiest to use, i cannot get it to checkout a certain branch for a repository (I am not saying it cannot be done, it’s just not easy like in other editors). I really like one feature this has and that is when you right click a directory/project directory, you can choose Find in Files, this will search all of the files for a string even if the file is not open. With Zend Studio you can edit files locally or you can create an FTP connection and edit files directly on the server. Zend has no problems what so ever when creating/opening a project that has 1000’s of files on a mounted virtual drive while connected to a VPN.

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A while back i saw a post online that was talking about a phone scam, pretty much people would leave messages on your answering machine or send you letters stating that it was urgent that you call the phone number for more information.  At times the letters/emails/messages would contain information from AT&T that is all bogus information.  Once they get you to call the phone number (usually an 809 area code) they would try to keep you on the phone for as long as possible.  This area code would work similar to a 900 number and would charge you on a per minute basis.  Rumor had it that once you dialed into the number (international call) it would charge you $2,499 per minute.  In this article you will find that AT&T themselves state that that rumor is false.  Typical charges are about $4 per minute for calls to these numbers.  Keep in mind that the location of the number does impact the cost per minute, however it will never be $2,499 per minute.

 You can read more about this on the AT&T article

Yesterday we took the drive up to Burlington Vermont, we wanted to get out of the house as we do every Sunday (Family Day). We were in the mood for some lunch so we stopped in Vergennes (was/is the smallest city in the USA). We found a place called Luigi’s Italian Specialties, they had a really nice sign on the front and through the window it looked inviting.

141 Main St
Vergennes, VT
(802) 877-6873

This is what we ordered

1.) Large Turkey sub
2.) Popcorn Shrimp
3.) Small Philly Cheese Steak
4.) Small Manicotti
5.) Small Boneless Rib Sandwich

Bill: About $40.00

To my amazement, we sat there for about 55 minutes while we waited for our food. When they finally were bringing out the food, they did so order by order, as if they were cooking each one and then immediately bringing it out. We had plans of things we were going to do, however they did not include spending almost 1.5 hours on lunch (we ended up having to change our plans). The waiter seemed to have a bland personality, however the prices on the food were decent. The rib sandwich that my girlfriend ordered, was not good at all. She thought it may have been her, so she had me taste it. I did not like it, it was just horrible. All of the other food was good (as far as i know, i heard no complaints)

This is not a fancy establishment, it is a pizza joint which you would expect to have your food in atleast 30 mins since none of the food was really that hard to make. The most difficult was the manicotti, and when i was working in a classy italian restaurant it did not take them more than 30 minutes to cook manicotti.

The only other complaint i would have against this restaurant would be the lack of inventory in the soda coolers. They were out of just about everything, the coolers was more empty than full.

Personally I think the price of the food was about average for the area, they were not over pricing items, if all of the food was good it would have made it even more of a value.

If you are going to Vergennes, i would suggest that you steer away from this establishment unless you have no plans.