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  • Home Broadband Choices

    With a potential house move looming, it’s a good time to assess my future broadband options. I have a choice between ADSL (and, maybe, fibre broadband in the near future), cable and mobile broadband.

    I have to say, I find Virgin Media’s cable packages expensive. Yes, you get a fast speed but you do pay for it.

    I’ll probably end up sticking with ADSL as I simply don’t get mobile broadband as a day-to-day alternative. Ok, when you need mobile broadband abroad or generally away from the house, and wi-fi isn’t available, then it’s great. But that’s for a mobile phone. For home use, I don’t get why some people use a mobile option – it’s generally via a USB dongle that limits you to use on a single PC, it’s often more expensive than ADSL, has more limits and is slower. Ok, yes, you can pick up your laptop and just wander wherever and retain a connection. But does that really out-way the downsides?

    I accept that for businesses it can be excellent – using mobile broadband abroad on your laptop is a real boon. But for everyone else?

    For those new to mobile broadband on laptops, they usually come as USB “dongles” that you plugin, with a SIM card inside. They often have other functionalities too, such as memory sticks. Alternatively, and usually the business option, they come as cards that slot into the side of a laptop.

    Personally, I do have a mobile USB “dongle” but on pay-as-you-go – you can get them from as little as £5! I’ve only used it once – so my wife could access the internet when she was in hospital (yes, they do allow it!). I’d like to see more ADSL routers with connections for a mobile broadband dongle, so if the main broadband goes out it will fail back to the mobile. Then I can see the benefit of it at home.

  • WordPress 3.1.2 released

    WordPress 3.1.2 has been released.

    This release addresses a vulnerability that allowed Contributor-level users to improperly publish posts.

    The issue was discovered by a member of our security team.

    We suggest you update to 3.1.2 promptly, especially if you allow users to register as contributors or if you have untrusted users. This release also fixes a few bugs that missed the boat for version 3.1.1.

    The official WordPress announcement

    3.1.2 Codex Details

    Change Details

    A list of the modified files (between WordPress 3.1.1 and 3.1.2)

    Download 3.1.2 (entire installation)

    Download 3.1.2 (just the changed files between 3.1.1 and 3.1.2)

  • Damn you, Professional WordPress Plugin Development

    So, I’m finally beginning to get somewhere with version 2 of my YouTube Embed WordPress plugin. As a birthday treat to myself I bought Professional WordPress Plugin Development from Amazon.

    Now, completion of my plugin is even less likely to be soon as this rather excellent book has just left me with a raft of further changes to make. Everything from coding standards to widget development is covered. I’m only a quarter way through and already there are sticky note bookmarks everywhere – each indicating something I need to look at.

    It’s not just this plugin this will affect though, as I will then turn my intention towards all my other plugins as well – starting with my caching and feed plugins which will get major overhauls (as this book mentions methods of performing each with a lot less effort than I’m currently applying!).

    Even their section on marketing your plugin has left me with ideas of changes I wish to make – first up, I’m going to see about renaming my existing plugins.

    If you’re into WordPress development I can’t recommend this book highly enough.

    Now, if you’ll excuse me… I have a lot of work to do.

  • BT Infinity… but sadly not for me. Yet.

    So, I’ve been waiting (impartiently) for my town to receive BT Infinity. This weekend I visited my sister-in-law’s only to find she’d had it for weeks and it was a free upgrade. I did an online Broadband speed test and fount her download speed was around 32 Mbps and upload speed was about 6 Mbps. She hadn’t even realised that’s what the upgrade meant <sob>.

    Anywhere, it’s bizarrely provided in 2 pieces. A white Openreach modem and the black Home Hub wireless router. The router has the usual 4 Ethernet ports (one of which is Gigabyte Ethernet) and a USB port – didn’t find out what this accepts.

  • PS3 on its way!

    Yep, I’m late to the party but I’ve finally bought a PS3.

    It was my birthday at the weekend and I requested money or Amazon vouchers – these were then put towards the PS3 purchase. That was ordered Saturday night and should be arriving today or tomorrow. I’ve already made a space on the shelf under the TV 😉

    I’ve also ordered an assortment of games and accessories – more on that in another post.

    Now, one limitation I have is that I do indeed live in the dark ages (or so you’d think) as I still have a CRT, so it’s not HD. However, it is a rather good CRT and has component inputs, so I’m hoping that the PS3 image via that will be sufficient.

    And I’m fully prepared too – I downloaded the PS3 manual to my Creative ZiiO tablet last week and read it from front to back. I love the fact that Sony are not happy for you to be able to change the hard drive yourself but give you detailed instructions on how to do it – other manufacturers should take note!

    From what I can tell, it appears to do everything – gaming, video rental, watch catch-up TV… with an Eye-toy attached (or whatever they now call it) I’m surprised Skype haven’t even got in on the act – international long distance calls from your PS3 sounds an excellent idea!

    Once I’ve got it I’m sure there will a lot more content about the PS3 coming the way to this blog!