02 Oct 08 Info: Wijinote
Info on Wijinote:
Well, this website has been up for just over 24 hours now, and I thought I should start off my series of posts with an introduction to my first “major” project, Wijinote. Before getting into it, let me reiterate some of what I said in my previous post. ‘Wijis’ to me are small programs that perform simple, useful tasks, and nothing more. It can be a desktop application, web script, shell script, or whatever. I do tend to develop a lot of ‘Wijis’, and intend on releasing them here from now on. Anyways, here’s more on Wijinote.
Wijinote
Background: As a student, I spend a lot of time taking notes. Fortunately, I’m able to take notes digitally in some of my classes, and am blessed with the ability to type faster than I can write, hence why I need a simple, fast, and efficient solution to taking intellegent notes with simple markup. During my quest to find the holy grail of note-taking applications, I’ve come across some pretty cool programs. I’ve never been a fan of BBcode markup or WYSIWYG text editiors, but I’ve grown very fond of textile (click for demo) markup, a really fast and simple text styling markup. The only solutions that I’ve found offering this markup, though, have either been pay services, or services with far too many features for me to use. What I wanted was a simple place to keep my notes and todo lists. No frills, just a solid, reliable, uncluttered solution. I’ve finally decided that I just need to build it.
Wijinote will accommodate my requirements, and hopefully will assist others in their note-taking as well. Here’s Wijinote’s offerings in a nutshell:
- Simple, easy access place to store notes and to-do lists.
- Limitless note-taking with a simple text styling markup: Textile.
- Plain-old, no frills to-do lists.
And regarding deployment:
- Use either my in-place service or run Wijinote on your own server.
- Modify my code to your likings when you run on your own server.
- Built on CodeIgniter for fast, easy development and modification.
Progress: If I had to put a number on progress, I’d have to say that I’m 40% to the first publicly usable release. I intend to first deploy a test installation here and allow users to register and use it, and then release the source further into development. I can’t put a date on it yet, as I still have a decent amount of milestones to meet first, but I’ll keep readers posted as I get further into development. I hope to have a usable version available by the end of October.
29 Sep 08 Art of Wiji
I’ve launched yet another ‘Frankster-inspired’ website today: The Wiji
Welcome to ‘The Wiji’. If you’re here, you were either unfortunate enough to click this link through Google, or I coerced you to visit my website personally. Regardless of your means of arrival at this website, you’re probably dying to know, what the heck is a Wiji and why did I create a website about them? There are two major reasons behind this website.
1) Domain Addiction - As a web developer, I find myself fighting the urge to buy another domain every single time I think I’ve come up with a name that equates to all sorts of awesome. You could say that I lost this time.
2) Tiny Projects - I find myself building all sorts of small tools for my personal use. Most of these projects are not polished enough to be used by other individuals (you’d break them, I promise), but recently I’ve been working on small tools that I feel could be useful to someone else. Because of this, I plan on releasing these small projects in the form of ‘Wijis’. I didn’t coin the term, but when I hear it, I think of a small program, much like a widget. It’s not a widget, though. It’s a wiji.
As of now, I don’t have anything to offer you to use. Projects are in development, though, and new concepts are constantly (more often accidentally) being thought up every day. Stay tuned for more information in the coming weeks.
Tags: project
25 Sep 08 Work, New Project, a little Crysis, and some WAAAGH!
It’s been a little while since I’ve had a chance to write another post. Recently, I’ve been getting by surviving homework, working on clients’ websites, working on my new project, and finding time to play some of my long awaited games. The homework load and resulting stress has lessened, mostly because I’m finding new strategies to getting it done before I approach my deadline.
Project
I started a new project which will hopefully eliminate my need for a simple, reliable, and free solution to managing notes and keeping todo lists. I started building myself an application to store on my thumb drive, but decided to build a web-based solution that I could allow other people to use as well. It’s really for my needs, but figured that if it’s something that I need enough to build, then hopefully someone else will find it useful as well. It’s pretty early in development, but I’ve got a fully functioning login and registration system, as well as working notes and todo lists. My favorite feature so far is the textilize markup support. I love the textilize markup and wanted a free solution for use with unlimited documents. I plan on releasing more information on this as I get further into development. It’s developing rather quickly, faster than I expected. I’m not ready to release the URL, but it will probably be in the next month or so.
Games
A gamers gotta game, and that’s what I’ve been doing when I’m not working on homework or my new project. I picked up Crysis Warhead, which looks and runs great on my rig, and Warhammer Online, which is infititely more entertaining than WoW has been for the last two years. I am converted and do not plan to return.
Tags: games, pc, programming, project, school
08 Sep 08 Hackintosh-Macintosh Throwdown: Benchmark Results
For kicks I figured that I would post my Xbench results for both hackintoshes in comparison to a Mac Pro and MacBook Pro. I may add an iMac to the mix later on.
Xenomorph 2.5
- Motherboard: GA-EP45-DS3R
- GPU: evga GeForce 9800GTX
- Memory: Corsair 4GB XMS2 DDR2 800 (4x 1GB Modules)
- CPU: Intel E8400 Core2Duo (3Ghz)
Overall Score: 211
Details: http://www.fsandoval.net/xbench/xeno.pdf
Frankintosh
- Motherboard: GA-EP45-DS3R
- GPU: evga GeForce 8800GT
- Memory: Corsair 4GB XMS2 DDR2 800 (2x 2GB Modules)
- CPU: Intel E8400 Core2Duo (3Ghz)
Overall Score: 205
Mac Pro
- CPU: 2x Intel Dual-core Xeon (2.66GHz)
- GPU: Nvidia GeForce 7300 GT
- Memory: 3GB DDR2 667
Overall Score: 171
Details: http://www.fsandoval.net/xbench/macpro.pdf
MacBook Pro
- CPU: Intel Core2Duo 2.33Ghz
- GPU: ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 Pro
- Memory: 2GB DDR2 667
Overall Score: 119
Details: http://www.fsandoval.net/xbench/mbp.pdf
Tags: benchmark, hackintosh, mac, pc, project
08 Sep 08 Further Hackintosh Details
As promised, here’s a little more detail on what I used when installing Kalyway to our Hackintoshes.
- In BIOS I enabled AHCI mode for my SATA controller.
Within the installer, I used these customizations:
- Motherboard: All Checked
- Network: Realtek R1000
- Kernel: Sleep Kernel 9.2.2
- Audio: None Checked
- Wifi: None Checked
- Misc: Time Machine Fix
- Graphics: None
As for fixes performed within Mac OS X:
Upon setup and installation of Mac OS X, we had working LAN and basic video out of the box. Sound needed to be patched via the following kext files. These were obtained here: http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=76404
HDAEnabler.kext.zip
Lastly, we patched the graphics with NVinject 0.2.1 (NVInstaller v.52), which we found here: http://scottdangel.com/blog/?page_id=20.
Before applying any of these fixes, I suggest using Kalyway’s 10.5.3 combo update and following the instructions. You can find it at your favorite BitTorrent tracker.
Also, before installing the kexts to /System/Library/Extensions, make sure you chown them to the root:wheel user before placing them in the extensions folder. If you try to do it from within your system extensions folder, you’ll most likely only get permission errors.
As for LAN, make sure you’re using port 2 (the bottom port) if you’re using the same board as I am. For some reason the ports are reversed when in Mac OS X, and I haven’t been able to get LAN working on the first port.
Lastly, I’d use the graphics fix (NVInstaller/NVInject fix) after applying Kalyway’s combo update, Apple’s software updates, and the rest of the fixes listed above.
Tags: hackintosh, mac, pc, project
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