I've been listening to Leo Laporte's network of podcasts for the past two years.......or at least it feels that long......and lately he's been plugging SquareSpace. SquareSpace is supposedly the latest and greatest in content management and publishing. Simply put, it's a cool website that allows you to design, manage and publish a website or blog.
- SquareSpace offers the ability to export and backup your blog entries. This is critical for someone who's investing so much time and effort to create content. Vox has been saying that they're gonna offer an option for users to backup their stuff since 2007 and it's still yet to surface. I guess that's the price you pay for a "free" blogging platform.
- SquareSpace offers me the ability to make money off your blog by placing ads on it. Vox currently runs their own ads on my blog, which makes them money to cover the cost of my free blog.....I guess.
- SquareSpace has some cool management tools that gives statistics of visitors, referrals, etc. We don't get any of these here at Vox.
- There are many more options to manage the overall look, feel and layout of the blog. Some of which are even beyond what I know......and I'm supposed to be from the IT industry.
- SquareSpace allows me to use my own domain name on my blog, if I had one. This is available on their Pro plan though.
- There's much for freedom in terms of allowing me to embed widgets on the blog. Vox is kinda restrictive in that sense.
Warning: Totally geeky post below......might cause reader to doze off!
I got a new Macbook about a month ago and immediately moved all my main computing activities there. Lately, I've been trying to figure out why all the photos that I took looked great in iPhoto and in Preview, but when uploaded to Flickr.......it looked like shit. By shit, I mean the colours were dull and unsaturated.
Initially I thought it was a problem with Flickr, so I did some Googling around and found that there were others who also noticed the same thing. A couple of discussions on the Flickr forums on how it could have been caused by the different colour profiles used on the Mac, and how thats interpreted by Flickr when the picture is uploaded. Some even suggested changing the colour profile in the Mac to sRGB to fix the problem. I didn't want to go that because I don't know squat about colour profiles and might risk screwing up my display.
A bit more digging around and I found another thread which said that Apple's Safari browser was rendering pictures that were more saturated then Firefox or Opera. I launched both browsers and confirmed that to be the case as shown by the picture below:
To my eyes, it sure seemed that Safari was rendering the picture alot closer to how I remember seeing them in iPhoto. So a little more digging around the Web and I found out that Safari 3 has the ability to identify and render pictures that have other colour profiles embedded in them. Most browsers like IE and Firefox (v2.x) are only able to render pictures using the sRGB colour profiles.
It seemed that the latest version of Firefox, v3.0b1, also had the ability to support multiple profiles of colours but this "feature" is turned off by default. I have no idea why the guys at Mozilla chose to do this. Anyway, enabling the colour management feature in Firefox is easy enough. Just open a new tab and type "about:config" and then search for the "gfx.color_management.enabled" property and change value from "false" to "true". You'll need to restart Firefox after doing this.
After I did this, I opened pulled up the same picture on Firefox 3 and Safari 3 and they both looked closer to the real thing, although I still feel that the picture in Safari 3 appears more saturated then it really is. Heck, at least I know now that it's not a problem with my camera or the way I was taking photos. All the pictures I uploaded looked so pale and dull before I found out about this thing.
Learn something new everyday.
Anyway, one of the features that I read about the Wii was it's ability to surf the Web right from the console. Now how cool is that! Just think of being able to browse your favourite sites on your TV without having to boot up your PC. And to top it all off, it had built in wifi......so not need to pull cables all over the house like how I did in my previous apartment.
So a couple of days ago, I finally got round to trying to get this thing online. I'm configured many wifi connections for PCs so this shouldn't be any different. Pull up the Wii settings menu, go to "Internet" and then "Search for an access point". It managed to find my wifi router......great!......."Testing connection"........"Error code 52230 - please contact support.nintendo.com" or some shit like that. WTF!
I tried to manually set the wifi configuration, but still no luck. Three night of trawling through numerous Wii forums and gaming sites provided me with some comfort that I wasn't the only sap facing this problem. Some suggestions on how to solve this problem included disabling my wifi encryption......no way. Others suggested disabling my firewall or changing my wifi channel. Both of which didn't work. However one post was interesting in that it highlighted that the Wii could only do 802.11b and not g. So I set the wifi router to mixed mode so that it could handle both b & g connections........still no luck. "Error code 52230 - please contact support.nintendo.com". At this point, I was seriously considering a Xbox 360.
In the end, I came across this forum post on GameAxis where some other people in Singapore were also facing the same error. It seems that the solution was to use Singnet's proxy server to get the Wii online. I was like "What the hell?!!". I've never needed to use the proxy for anything to get online so what made the Wii so special that it had to use it? So I put in the proxy server settings and.......whaddaya know.....the bloody thing is able to connect and download the latest firmware update. I shake my head in disbelief.
But this was only just the beginning. I then tried to search for the browser to surf the Web but couldn't find it . More investigation on the Wii forums revealed that the browser, made by Opera, had to be purchased for 500 Wii points through the online WiiShop. ARRRRGGGHHHHHHH! **Bangs head on wall**
OK.....no problem.....I worked out that 500 Wii points came up to around SGD$7. Ok-lah.....try for fun. Navigate to the WiiShop channel on the main menu and what do I get? "WiiConnect24 is not available in your country".
I give up. Want to give them money also cannot. Sigh. Maybe should have gotten the PS3 or Xbox 360 instead.
At least the Wii is good at generating these sort of photo opportunities
Crappy weather and a tired Mommy meant that I had to keep an eye on Her Royal Majesty for a couple of hours this afternoon. Here's what I managed to catch on my phone with Her Royal Highness in her playpen.
At least we now have proof that this girl knows how to set her sights on something and get it.
Erin turned 6 months old yesterday and according to the book (don't ask me which one), she's supposed to be ready for her first try at solid food.
Over the past few weeks Yen and I suspected that she's reaching the stage where she's ready for solid food, mainly because her normal feeds from Mummy doesn't keep her full as long as it used to.
Anyway, today Erin took her first step towards becoming a big girl.....and here are the results.
However, the truth is also the fact that I've been having a heck of a lot of fun being a Dad to the most adorable thing I've ever had in my entire life. No toy or gadget could ever give me the sense of joy and pride that this little girl has given me since she appeared 6 months ago.
Anyway, I guess it's only fair that I get off my lazy ass and start writing some of it down all these remarkable events become hazy in my mind over time. I've got a new addition to my family, a new life and a new job. So it's time to start blogging again.
Erin's slowly learning how to control her arms. She's managed to get the snake to curl around her arms and she's grabbing Fick's ear all by herself.
