Almasch

Due to heavy workload during the last week I haven’t had any time to write something. For the coming week I will be busy, too. So the blog will be a little bit orphaned again.

I am involved in a project which has a deadline at the beginning of october. It seems to be in the nature of projects that the last weeks are everytime to short…

The game of life is very old and everybody has seen it many times at least on the home pc as screensaver. As I visited a museum in Shrewsbury If found the biggest game of life I have ever seen in my life.

On the frontside you see a big “living area” of little lights and on the backside is no single computer which control the life. No! There is a complete wall of computers!

If you want to visit it, too, than go to The Museum in Shrewsbury and play a bit. Setup your starting cells on the big wall with a little joystick lay back and see what will happen. Or if you still ask “what the hell is the game of life?” read a bit here.

Its fascinating to see what is possible to do with computer. In all parts of life these machines are so deep involved that even simple things like getting a cup of coffee are controlled by them. Thas also the reasons why I am sure to have chosen the right subject of study in my life.

Especially for two fields i am very keen on. Computer Graphic and mobile Computing.

Computer graphic enables you to creates from simple data arrays a virtual world. More than just a result on a command line. Simple pictures which show you the way of a robot on a map. Or even complex visualisation of a complete world with trees and animals. A pictures says more than thousand words!

Mobile computing brings you the benefits of computer to every place you are. Not only at your desk. Everywhere! And in the moments I need my computer at most I am not at my desk. Devices has to adept to humans and not humans should adept to their devices.

In my blog I will write about my experiences in private software development. As you can easily guess the both fields above will be the main topics here. You will finds links to useful software and resources for development. You also will find short tutorials and descriptions of making things easier. The most useful in

You will not find plans of how I plan to become the ruler of the world… You recognise it on other ways if I was successful

Now big brother is watching me. And you. And everybody else, too.

I searched for some plugins for WordPress to improve it a little bit and I found Stats This plugin collects data about visitors and show what are the interesting parts for others on my blog. A friend gave me a hint that there is also Google Analytics which works in a similar way.

For both systems a small script has to be included on the website which triggers a countable event on a remote server. At this server are collected information about the number of visitors, from where they came, how long they stayed and which pages they viewed.

I have choosen Google Analytics to give it a try and see the results.

Instead of trying to dig information out of the apache logfiles a the java script from google does this job actively. One advantage of this active approach are more accurate results. One disadvantage is that information about your visitors are stored at a extern server.

The system rely on java script. So if you do not want to be tracked there is a effective way to be invisible for google. Disable java script! For firefox exists a very good extension called NoScript which let you easily disable and enable java script at your will.

While uploading files to WordPress I have had no problems until I tried the first file which was not a media file. I got the message that it is not possible because of security reasons. In the backend I didn’t find any configuration to select which files are allowed and which not.

After a short internet search I found two solutions.

One is a plugin from Peter Westwood which is integrated into the admin backend and allows comfortable editing of types which are allowed to be uploaded.

The second way to solve the problem is more straight forward. In the function wp_check_filetype() which is located in wp-includes/functions.php you can find an array with all types wich are allowed to uploaded. Just add the type you want to upload.

But be aware what you are doing! There is a good reason why types of files are checked before upload to server. Just thing a few minutes before changing the code and allow .php, .exe, .sh and so on…