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BBC Micro Chuckie Egg Level 1 Guide

I was a massive fan of Chuckie Egg on the BBC Micro when I was about 10 years old. There have been a couple of ports, but it wasn’t until 2009 that Mark Lomas released the ultimate version built on an BBC emulator for the PC.

This is my guide to each Chuckie Egg level:

  1. Level 1

Level 1

Level 1 strategy

The first level is dominated by a central ladder running through all five platforms. Two hens start in the top left of the level, moving slowly towards the bottom. They can sometimes get in the way on the central ladder, but several nearby platforms can be used to wait them out.

The bottom two platforms have plenty of ladders to avoid getting trapped and to practice running and jumping.

Strategy path for completing level 1 of Chuckie Egg

Continue reading BBC Micro Chuckie Egg Level 1 Guide…»

Logging laptop battery life

1005 ha netbook in shiny whiteI bought an Asus EeePC 1005HA Seashell net book for Christmas with Windows 7 and have been very impressed with battery life and lightness. Still… I wasn’t sure if Sleep mode was working as expected, so I logged the battery life for a couple of days under normal use.

I didn’t use any rigorous scientific testing — ‘normal use’ for me was watching a bit of YouTube or iPlayer, checking my email, using Facebook and that kind of thing. If power was still being consumed in Sleep mode, then I would expect big falls in power levels as the net book logged the level after coming out of Sleep.

Results

Download BatteryStatusData for CSV data file of this graph.
line graph of battery life of my network in percentage remaining and calculated number of hours left
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Extract a web site’s colour palette

Hextractor is an awesome tool. From their website:

Hextractor will extract the colors from your stylesheet — whether they're hex codes, RGB, or named colors — and generate a color palette from them showing you exactly what you've got, displayed in the formats you prefer.

However, extracting the colours does rely on a server-side php script and I thought it would make an ideal javascript bookmarklet. An example of the result is shown on the right.

This page also helps me to documents some common javascript examples and links for reference.

How to install the colour palette bookmarklet

Try it now! Click this link to view the colours on this site.

To use on other web sites, click and drag this show page colours link to add it to your favorites or bookmarks bar. Visit the web site you would like to see the colour palette of and click on the bookmark or favorite. It will then show the 'Colours used on this page' table.

  1. What is a bookmarklet?
  2. Outline of the colour palette bookmarklet
  3. Code deconstruction
  4. Using JSLint for best practice javascript
  5. Compressing the bookmarklet

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Making a magic dragon

TROGDOR the BURNINATOR Magic Dragon on YouTube

You will need

  1. Template print out
  2. Scissors
  3. A tiny bit of sticky tape
  4. Socks to be knocked off

Templates

Cat Illusion

Cat Illusion template

download | source

Dragon Illusion

green dragon illusion template

download | source

Super Robot Dog

SuperRobot illusion template

download | source

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My development toolbox

There’s a core list of software tools that I find indispensable for development in the office and at home. This list helps me keep track of the tools I need when re-building a computer.

1. Visual Studio

As a .net developer, VS 2008 is a fantastic Integrated Developer Environment. From code snippets to Intellisense, debugging to stack traces, Visual Studio helps me develop swiftly while concentrating on the code.

2. Firefox + Firebug extension + Web Developer extension

I recently had a problem running Firefox on my new PC and boy, did I miss Firebug and the Web Developer extension. Although some of the features overlap, the simplicity of Web Developer means that it is very quick and easy to disable CSS, view all images or check page size.

Firebug is indispensable to hunt down CSS inheritance irritations, preview quick style modifications or unravel client-side javascript complexities.

Special mention to ColorZilla, User Agent Switcher and FireShot.

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Adding google.co.uk as a search provider

I found changing the default Google search from google.com to the local google.co.uk a bit of a faff. As IE 7 and 8, Firefox 2 and 3, and Chrome all support OpenSearch, there are two simple ways to set google.co.uk as the default search provider:

Click on the button

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Installing WordPress 2.8 on a Windows server: an anatomy of a web site

The company that hosts my website — CS New Media — provide Linux or Windows hosting. As I’m a developer who works mainly in Microsoft technologies, I’ve opted for the Windows hosting package which also supports ASP.NET 3.5, PHP 5, MS SQL Server and MySQL.

This guide details how I set up Bassett-Jones.com and dealt with any problems along the way. There was a learning curve as I hadn’t much exposure to PHP, but documentation is one of PHP and WordPress’s strengths.

  1. Setting up a basic Wordpress installation
  2. Setting user-friendly custom permalinks
  3. Designing the theme
  4. Creating custom theme pages
  5. Getting hugh.bassett-jones.com subdomain to work as a Wordpress page
  6. Installing standard plugins plugins
  7. Modifying and tweaking plugins
  8. Writing custom plugins

1. Setting up a basic Wordpress installation

Difficulty: One star out of five

WordPress’s basic set up and installation is wonderfully simple.

Things to check first with your web host documentation:

Following the Famous 5-Minute Installation Guide

  1. Create a database and database user e.g. wordpress1 and wordpress1user
  2. Download the latest version of WordPress and unzip
  3. Rename the wp-config-sample.php file to wp-config.php.
  4. Edit the following lines in the newly renamed wp-config.php. 
    /** The name of the database for WordPress */
define('DB_NAME', 'wordpress1');

/** MySQL database username */
define('DB_USER', 'wordpress1user');

/** MySQL database password */
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'userpassword');

/** MySQL hostname */
define('DB_HOST', 'mysql5.webhost.com');
  5. Copy all the files to your web server
  6. Visit the start page to complete the installation

Continue reading Installing WordPress 2.8 on a Windows server: an anatomy of a web site…»

Classic quotes

“Best of the best of the best, sir!” “With honors.” Yeah, he’s just really excited and he has no clue why we’re here.

James Edwards in Men in Black

Hi, I’m Randy

Randy Smith in Edge magazine

Ergo open your yapper one more time and I’m going to architect a world of pain all over your candy ass! Ergo! Vis-à-vis! Concordidly!

Larry The Architect in the MTV Movie Awards 2003

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Creating an offline Microsoft Xbox Points converter for the iphone

iphone screenshot of Microsoft Points converterMicrosoft Points are used for buying items on the Xbox such as arcade games and renting films. As the points translate differently for each local currently, it can be difficult to remember the exchange rate and local cost of items.

In the UK, each Microsoft Point costs 0.85 pence. A typical price for an arcade game is 400 or 800 points, which works out to be £3.40 and £6.80 respectively.

I thought it would be useful to have a simple Points converter on my iphone.

Features

Installation

On an iphone, go to this link to view the web page.

Add it to your Home Screen by tapping on the + at the bottom of the browser and selecting Add to Home Screen. Apple has more information on how to do this at www.apple.com/iphone/iphone-3gs/home-screen.

The link is the complete html page, base64 encoded (about 75 kb). It will work in most modern browsers that understand the dataURI such as Google Chrome, Safari and Firefox.

Continue reading Creating an offline Microsoft Xbox Points converter for the iphone…»

New IT offices ideal for University developers

In July 2009, most of the University of Winchester’s IT Services moved to the reburbished St James’ Hall building on the King Alfred campus. This move meant that for the first time, Desktop Development, Corporate Development, and Applications Development teams were all in the same office.

St James’ Hall | View from my window

St James' Hall View from my window

Continue reading New IT offices ideal for University developers…»

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