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	<title> &#187; Software</title>
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	<link>http://blog.gemmapeter.co.uk</link>
	<description>Gem&#039;s ponderings on PHP programming and other stuff</description>
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		<title>Lego Games</title>
		<link>http://blog.gemmapeter.co.uk/2008/06/09/lego-games/</link>
		<comments>http://blog.gemmapeter.co.uk/2008/06/09/lego-games/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 09 Jun 2008 12:40:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Gem</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Software]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blog.gemmapeter.co.uk/?p=174</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;ve completed two games to 100% this weekend, Lego Star Wars II and Lego Indiana Jones. For Lego Star Wars II all I had to do was to complete the Super Story modes on each film which basically means playing through the entire of the story mode again except you get timed. I was under [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I&#8217;ve completed two games to 100% this weekend, Lego Star Wars II and Lego Indiana Jones.</p>
<p>For Lego Star Wars II all I had to do was to complete the Super Story modes on each film which basically means playing through the entire of the story mode again except you get timed. I was under the impression that because the best time was defaulted to 1 hour that if you took longer you wouldn&#8217;t get the associated golden brick. This meant that I was restarting the Super Story mode if I felt I took too long on a level. I finally decided to play it all the way through to see what times I was currently getting and then found out that the under 1 hour completion time wasn&#8217;t mandatory. So off I went to get the last golden brick in Return of the Jedi which allowed me to complete the spigot outside the cantina which spews studs so I could finally afford the multiplier extras in the shop.</p>
<p>This Friday I got a copy of Lego Indiana Jones for the Wii. It is very fun and I spent the whole weekend playing it finally completing it at 100% on Sunday evening. It&#8217;s a fun game and like the Star Wars II Lego game you play through the original three films collecting characters, minikits and posting parcels (which unlock the extras).</p>
<p>Unlike the Lego Star Wars in the Indiana Jones Game I found it much easier to get the treasure multipliers. There was also a sub quest that unlocked Han Solo which involved finding Star Wars characters hidden in the levels. Here&#8217;s where I found 4 of the 5 characters (can&#8217;t remember the last one)</p>
<ul>
<li>Princess Leia I found in a detention cell in the Temple of Doom (ladder down a cliff face, metal barrier to blow up, nazi needed for guard)</li>
<li>Chewbacca &#8211; desert city in Raiders of the Lost Arc, door is behind where you find the vehicle which you use to smash the gate near the end of the level (door opened by academic, need short person)</li>
<li>C3PO in the first level of Raiders of the Lost Arc next to a minikit.</li>
<li>Luke Skywalker &#8211; found hanging by feet in snowy cave down a cliff face in &#8216;Into the Mountains&#8217;</li>
</ul>
<p>Also if you are on the level battle on the bridge the minikit detector will make it appear that there are two minikits beyond the gate just before the end of the level. I think what it&#8217;s actually showing are the two minikits hidden in the very beginning of the level, one requires you blow up a metal fence, the other requires you outrun the water.</p>
<p>I liked it better than Lego Star Wars II because you only needed to get the &#8220;True Adventurer&#8221; (like the Star Wars &#8220;True Jedi&#8221;) once per level rather than once in story mode and once in free play. I also liked that there wasn&#8217;t a Super Story Mode which had to be completed for 100%.</p>
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		<item>
		<title>Virtually New</title>
		<link>http://blog.gemmapeter.co.uk/2007/11/15/virtually-new/</link>
		<comments>http://blog.gemmapeter.co.uk/2007/11/15/virtually-new/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 15 Nov 2007 19:38:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Gem</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Computers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hardware]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Software]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blog.gemmapeter.co.uk/2007/11/15/virtually-new/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Last weekend I went to the Devon and Cornwall Linux User Group meeting in a Computer shop in Penzance (which is why I skipped the Termisoc LOTR marathon) and thanks to Viv I got to see Virtualbox in use. Virtualbox is virtualisation software that lets you run several operating systems on the same computer at [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Last weekend I went to the <a href="http://www.dclug.org.uk">Devon and Cornwall Linux User Group</a> meeting in a <a href="http://www.pzcomputers.com/">Computer shop in Penzance</a> (which is why I skipped the Termisoc LOTR marathon) and thanks to Viv I got to see <a href="http://www.virtualbox.org/">Virtualbox</a> in use. Virtualbox is virtualisation software that lets you run several operating systems on the same computer at the same time by tricking the guest operating system into thinking it&#8217;s running on it&#8217;s very own computer.</p>
<p>Today I went about installing it using the Debian packages <a href="http://packages.debian.org/virtualbox-ose">virtualbox-ose</a> and <a href="http://packages.debian.org/virtualbox-ose-source">virtualbox-ose-source</a> and installing Windows XP home in a disk image which I&#8217;m probably going to use regularly for checking sites in Internet Explorer. To me this looks like a much easier solution than trying to force a program to work in Wine although the downside is that you need a copy of windows.</p>
<p>The guest operating system runs smoothly at a resolution of 800&#215;600 but it feels bizarre to be using Windows in a window. I&#8217;m also considering installing some other things like maybe Solaris or BSD in other images just to have a play with them.</p>
<p>Since I thought I might want a bit more memory in the host OS before letting multiple other OSes have a chunk of it I decided to upgrade my PC (first major upgrade since 2004) this will probably be the last major upgrade it will ever get. It now has triple the RAM (now 1.5GB) and a slightly quieter CPU fan (or at least one that doesn&#8217;t make the case resonate).</p>
<p>Update: 2007/11/16 I&#8217;ve also replaced my NVidia GeForce 4 with a NVidia 7600GT unfortuantely due to my widescreen TFT and somewhat small desk I am unlikely to use the dual headedness feature of it (though if i did get another similar monitor I&#8217;d have a whole metre of horizontal screen space)</p>
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		<title>Upgrading WordPress from SVN</title>
		<link>http://blog.gemmapeter.co.uk/2007/11/15/upgrading-wordpress-from-svn/</link>
		<comments>http://blog.gemmapeter.co.uk/2007/11/15/upgrading-wordpress-from-svn/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 14 Nov 2007 23:41:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Gem</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Computers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Software]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blog.gemmapeter.co.uk/2007/11/15/upgrading-wordpress-from-svn/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Decided to update my WordPress install, something which I&#8217;ve been meaning to do for a while. This time though I&#8217;ll be upgrading wordpress using Subversion version control which should make things quicker next time. Previously I downloaded the tar file and then extracted it to a separate folder then tried to figure out which bits [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Decided to update my WordPress install, something which I&#8217;ve been meaning to do for a while.<br />
This time though I&#8217;ll be <a href="http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing/Updating_WordPress_with_Subversion">upgrading wordpress using Subversion</a> version control which should make things quicker next time. </p>
<p>Previously I downloaded the tar file and then extracted it to a separate folder then tried to figure out which bits I needed to keep and copy them across to the new folder.<br />
Using Subversion this should no longer be necessary as when you update it checks for custom files and keeps them safe.</p>
<p>This looks like it would be very useful for scripting the upgrade of lots of sites at the same time.</p>
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		<item>
		<title>A Waste of Hard Drive Space?</title>
		<link>http://blog.gemmapeter.co.uk/2007/01/18/a-waste-of-hard-drive-space/</link>
		<comments>http://blog.gemmapeter.co.uk/2007/01/18/a-waste-of-hard-drive-space/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 18 Jan 2007 10:04:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Gem</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Computers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Software]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blog.gemmapeter.co.uk/2007/01/18/a-waste-of-hard-drive-space/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Yesterday my / partition was 93% full, today it is only a modest 49%. The space was mostly taken up by uncompressed video files from my tuner card (>1GB each) and my cached apt packages. I really should keep an eye on that.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Yesterday my <tt>/</tt> partition was 93% full, today it is only a modest 49%.</p>
<p>The space was mostly taken up by uncompressed video files from my tuner card (>1GB each) and my cached apt packages.</p>
<p>I really should keep an eye on that.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<item>
		<title>Is your comment spam still there?</title>
		<link>http://blog.gemmapeter.co.uk/2006/12/22/is-your-comment-spam-still-there/</link>
		<comments>http://blog.gemmapeter.co.uk/2006/12/22/is-your-comment-spam-still-there/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 22 Dec 2006 16:41:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Gem</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Software]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blog.gemmapeter.co.uk/2006/12/22/is-your-comment-spam-still-there/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[After finding many (+1000) comment spams in my wordpress blog I took a look at my database tables. After marking something as spam it still lurks around in the wordpress database (table wp_comments) SELECT COUNT(*), comment_approved FROM wp_comments GROUP BY comment_approved; +----------+------------------+ &#124; COUNT(*) &#124; comment_approved &#124; +----------+------------------+ &#124; 68 &#124; 1 &#124; &#124; 3339 [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>After finding many (+1000) comment spams in my wordpress blog I took a look at my database tables. After marking something as spam it still lurks around in the wordpress database (table wp_comments)</p>
<p><tt>SELECT COUNT(*), comment_approved FROM wp_comments GROUP BY comment_approved;</tt></p>
<pre class="code">+----------+------------------+
| COUNT(*) | comment_approved |
+----------+------------------+
|       68 | 1                |
|     3339 | spam             |
+----------+------------------+</pre>
<p>If you want to reduce the database space that your wordpress is taking up I recommend permenently deleting spam comments using the sql below (for a default install). If you are running multiple wordpresses from the same db remember to check that you are deleting things from the correct instance first (your table may be called someting different, like myblog2_comments).</p>
<pre class="code">DELETE FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_approved = 'spam';</pre>
<p>Before deleting the spam my database (well a dump of it anyway) took up 5.6MB, afterwards only 494KB.</p>
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