Borderlands, Game of the Year, for the Mac!

Benjamin SchollnickNo Comments

\"borderlands.jpg\"Well, there\’s a new December / Xmas gift that all of the Mac users will want. Gearbox Software and Feral Interactive.
This is the full-on, complete version of the title, and includes all of the expansion packs — \’The Zombie Island of Dr. Nex,\’ \’Mad Moxxi\’s Underdome Riot,\’ \’The Secret Armory of General Knoxx,\’ and \’Claptrap\’s New Robot Revolution.\’ The retail box will also come with a neat-o fold-out map of the game\’s world, Pandora.
Borderlands: Game of the Year Edition for Mac his shelves on December 3.
Oh, and here are you minimum specs for Borderlands Mac:
Minimum system requirements call for a 1.8 GHz Intel Mac with at least 2 GB RAM, 128 MB or better graphics card, DVD drive, and Mac OS X v10.6.4 or later. The following cards are NOT supported: ATI X1xxx series, NVIDIA 7xxx series and Intel GMA series.

Office 2011: Outlook FAQ

Benjamin SchollnickNo Comments

Macworld\’s faq on Office 2011\’s Outlook….
The quick summary is:

  • Better PC <-> Macintosh cross platform support (eg. PST file support)
  • MobileMe support only includes Contacts support, no calendar, tasks.  This includes no support for iCal.
  • No Gmail Calendar support (but includes Gmail Accounts & contacts)

There\’s more, but overall there are features incomplete & missing.  Typical for a Microsoft v1 release…

The Saga of a Geek Who (Once) Hated Apple

Benjamin SchollnickNo Comments

Check it out, what happens when your an Windows user, and dislike Apple.  Sometimes you are forced to re-evaluate your opinions.  Here\’s the story, of a \”geekmom\” who hated Apple, and yet due to job responsibilites was forced to use an iPhone 4.  (Cue dramatic music)
See how she was forced to re-evaluate her opinion.

I resisted.  I begged and pleaded and even drafted up an agreement for them to pay a portion of my personal bill.  I owned and loved my Droid and carrying an iPhone, even one as admittedly nifty as the fourth gen miracle recently hyped up, seemed so hypocritical.  I hated Apple.  They were pretentious and controlling and responsible for the technological travesty of the iMac.
But sitting on my desk Thursday morning was the over-packaged, shiny new iPhone 4, prepped and ready with everything I needed to wallow in self-pity.  I admit that the computer nerd who lives in my head was alternately screaming and fainting with joy at the prospects of exploring every nook and cranny of a brand new, highly coveted, piece of technology.  The shop-aholic in there was giddy at all the hours of app shopping in a store that all other app providers dream of holding claim to.  But the better part of my brain was weeping at the irony.  I held it, and noticed how surprisingly light-weight it was.  Especially in comparison to my Droid.  Now in defense of my still-beloved pink-encased baby of a data phone, I do own the original Droid.  The Droid 2, Droid Incredible, and Droid X came out long after my love affair with the all-seeing robot eye began.

Read the full story at The Saga of a Geek Who (Once) Hated Apple.

Automatic Login for Windows XP & Mac OS X

Benjamin SchollnickNo Comments

This feature allows other users to start your computer and use the account that you establish to automatically log on. Enabling auto logon makes your computer more convenient to use, but can pose a security risk since anyone can just turn the machine on and access your files.

Mac OS X
This may vary slightly depending on the Version of Mac OS X you are running on.  The steps should be the same, but the positioning of the buttons / prompts can be different…

  1. Open System Preferences
  2. Choose Accounts
  3. Click on Login Options
  4. Unlock System Preferences (if Necessary)
  5. Click on Automatic Login, and choose from the pop up the account you wish to use.  Verify the password.

Windows XP
You can configure Windows XP to automate the logon process if your computer is not part of a domain. Computers configured in a business environment generally have a domain and for those machines the option \”Users must enter a username\” is not necessary since password has to be used when accessing the local area network or domain.

  1. Click Start, click Run, and type control userpasswords2. This is a shortcut instead of having to click on Start -> Control Panel -> User Accounts.
  2. Uncheck the \”Users must enter a username and password to use this computer\” check box.
  3. Click Apply.
  4. Enter the user name and password you wish to automatically log on with, and then click OK.
  5. Click OK again and you\’re all done.

One Step Forward? One Back? Site performance

Benjamin SchollnickNo Comments

Over the last couple of months, I have been dealing with some oddities that would go away and them re-appear on the web site…
Several times, I have \”started virtually from scratch\” with this configuration or that configuration…  And I think, and hope, that I have finally solved the problems for now…
The Apache (web server) error log, is currently empty…  So, what has been changing?  Well, part of the blame comes from Google.  Yes, I partially blame their recent changes where the speed of your web pages can affect your ranking on the search results.
Why?  Simply because I started looking at optimizing the site.  I have tried several different caching plugins for WordPress, and the majority of them seemed to work fine but develope quirks and issues.
W3 Total Cache, seems like a excellent product, and works reasonably well.  But the error logs filled with issues, possibly I need a dedicated server to provide the power that it needs to work reliabily.
WP Super Cache is excellent out of the box, but the latest version makes it difficult to easily clear the cache…
I finally settled on HyperCache Extended, along with DB Cache Reloaded.  Both products work well together, and have reduced the demand on the server.
Another small issue I ran into is that Akismet seems to have been dramatically slowing down the system.  Akismet is a anti-spam package, which I have now replaced with another equivalent product…
Please let me know in the comments, if you have noticed any difference, or seen any issues within the last day or so.
Webmaster Tools – Site performance.