[IMPRESSION] WordPress App Test

Apparently, WordPress has an app for blogging to their website and I am testing the capabilities of this app to see if it does live up to the ratings. From current usage as of now, this app was clearly intended for tablets with a good keyboard app such as SwiftKey and a screen size of at least 7″.

Upon inspection, it is not possible to edit current hyperlinks without inserting a new one at the cursor mark. Pictures do not have this problem and are easily removable from the post. One can easily set the position and size of the picture. However, copy and pasting pictures is a hard endeavor, even with a good keyboard app. Therefore, pictures should be inserted last unless one is 100% sure that he or she has no intention of moving that picture. Photos must be stored locally, or anything stored in the Google Android Gallery app.

All in all, this is a pretty solid application for general usage as long as one has all the pictures or videos stored locally or in the gallery app. Of course, there is always room for improvement such as more detailed interface (ie. Bullet or numbered lists). One could try syncing a keyboard and mouse, but that would defeat the purpose of traveling light with a tablet. For now, it has lived up to my most common needs of a blogging app, which might encourage me to post more often to the net.

Pentadactyl Woes

I browse the web religiously with keyboard, and the firefox extension “Pentadactyl” allows me to do so. Unfortunately, this extension has some kind of bug or error that I cannot fix at the moment. The extension “functions” like it is supposed to but it will not open the site that I want in the window. The inability to navigate the web with just a keyboard is rough. Once a person has learned how to navigate the web with just the keyboard (like Vim), one does not want to go back to a keyboard and mouse setup for efficiency sake.

For the time being, I’ll be experimenting with Opera and Chrome until I fix my Palemoon installation.

Info: Palemoon is a Windows optimized Firefox.

Bitlbee – IM and Twitter Combined via IRC

Trying to keep up to date with Twitter is cumbersome and often a chore.  Using browser addons is more often a waste of resources and a distraction.  Same also applied with instant messenging.  As much as I loved Miranda IM and its minimalistic, yet complex infrastructure, I opted to make my instant messenging as barebones and convenient for maximum productivity.

Therefore, I set off on a quest to find a bridge between the two and consolidate all of my online social life into one application.  After a couple hours of endless browsing and testing, I arrived to the conclusion of using an IRC client and Bitlbee.

Why use IRC (Internet Relay Chat) to combine the two?  Simply because IRC is the easiest and least distracting form of communication in contrast to any twitter convenience site or IM client (excluding miranda IM).  Additionally, IRC is not as fearsome as most people might think it is.  Also, IRC is very light on resources too (It’s just text).

Bitlbee is one of the cleanest and most useful service ever offered for online instant messenging and keeping up to date with twitter comrades.  Bitlbee can work as a standalone program on a server.  For those who do not know how to install it to a server or don’t own a server, one can register a account on any of the free Bitlbee servers and use it immediately.  Registering an account and setting it up is rather a painless process and the Bitlbee bot will walk the user through the whole process.  Right now, Bitlbee currently supports XMPP/Jabber (including Gtalk), Yahoo, MSN, AIM, ICQ and Twitter.

So far, Bitlbee allows the user to see the most recent activity of his or her twitter account since the last time that person logged in.  By most recent activity, Bitlbee will fetch all the twitter updates from one’s followers as well as the tweets that the user made.  Bitlbee will also tell the user what the current tweet of his/her username.  Although it is still undergoing development, one can still use the interface to make new tweets, retweet, reply, follow, unfollow, and update one’s twitter status.  As a result, I never had to go back to my browser or any other client to peruse through my twitter feed.

Bitlbee does not require any extensive IRC knowledge.  The only IRC lingo that one needs to know is how to connect to an IRC server.  That is all.  As far as IRC clients are concerned, I recommend using X-chat-2 since it is free and more user friendly than mIRC.  X-chat-2 can also be made portable with ease.

Bitlbee site: http://www.bitlbee.org

X-chat-2: http://silverex.org

[Impressions] Daum Potplayer

It is not as great as I would have suspected, seeing how it is developed by the same creator of KMPlayer.   The internal codecs are definitely superior to KMPlayer’s internal codecs with the fact that it can playback just about anything without hiccups and without relying on external codecs.  On the other hand, KMPlayer requires an external codec like CoreAVC (for less capable machines) to playback 1080P movies, videos, etc.

However, there are still two things that I would like to see before jumping onto the Potplayer bandwagon.

1. Lack of subtitle options like real time playback support.  Hence subtitle karaoke effects are broken. (Not very good for music videos or animes)
2. Full english support, especially for the latest versions.

These impressions are currently based on PotPlayer1.5.23507beta (english version).

More info and download link available here

**UPDATE 11/09/10**

In reply to XenonMagazine, I have tried the latest beta for PotPlayer (Daum PotPlayer 1.5.24134) and the two features I mentioned above are still lacking from Potplayer.  Additionally, KMPlayer is still in active development and has a solid foundation to be on par with Potplayer.  When Potplayer incorporates real-time rendering of ssa/ass subtitle support, then I would most likely replace KMPlayer with Potplayer.  For those who do not need real-time subtitle support like karaoke effects, Potplayer is the obvious one step forward from KMPlayer.

Here is a better link to a more updated thread and download information for Potplayer.  Link

[News] Evil Empire broken links

More old news since July 01,2010. Due to mediafire deciding to drop/purge one of the evil empire’s main uploader member, over 3,000 files had broken links (including manga and anime). In the latest announcement, Evil empire is looking for willing uploaders to help restore the broken file links destroyed by mediafire. So far, there has been great progress in restoring those missing file links, but Evil Empire could still love to have more contributors.

Other old news is that the Evil Empire moved to a new forum infrastructure so please be patient with the blue-white forum until the dark and evil forum skin is finished. Also, there has already been another member purging within the last few months, but has come to pass. The rules are still the same as before. As long as one maintains active status within the forum (1 post every 2-3months?), that respective account will not be deleted.

Nothing else has changed, so drop by the forum and enjoy being an empire knight.

http://www.the-evilempire.net

[News][Impressions] Btaccel -> Torrific

Old news, but BTaccel recently changed their name to Torrific.  In addition, Torrific started a new premium plan which allows users to have the site fetch torrents on demand and have better service overall.  For the most part, Torrific is still free (basic account) for the general user.

The site is still good overall, but I still have a few qualms about the service.

1. Some sites like demonoid and BTJunkie always seem to be maxed out, which disables btaccel users from even downloading its contents even though Torrific says that they 100% completed the torrent.

2.Flaky torrent fetching.  Sometimes the torrent reaches a certain percentage, then defaults to zero percent because it could not find another seeder to complete the file.

3. Flaky Torrent downloads.  Whenever downloading a big file (500mb-1000mb), the connection somehow gets lost during the transfer and the direct link to that file expires.  This basically means everything is for naught.  This is the least bit helpful for file download managers (Jdownloader, Downthemall, etc.) for people who just want to set it and forget it so they can do better things in their day.  Either Torrific likes to reset connections and rehash direct file links to torrent files for leecher-proof protection or that their server are still under heavy load from millions of torrent requests.

Torrific’s service is still good, but I doubt I’ll use it for any considerably large torrents (which are a big chunk of my torrents).  Therefore, I will probably use this just for torrents around 300 mb filesizes, whatever that might be.  The convenience is good when the local bandwidth is maxed out, and that is probably the only reason I would use this service.

Official website – http://www.torrific.com
Sign up is free.

[Impressions] Btaccel

BTAccel.com is probably one of the most innovative and useful sites to ever touch the bittorrent world.  It’s general purpose is to do all the bittorrent on their server and then send the user an email when the torrent is done.  This action in itself saves the user plenty of time when 1)bandwidth is limited 2)away from home PC 3)one does not want home PC on all the time.

Although the rates at which Btaccel grabs files is impressive, there are some caveats.  In an attempt to spare processing/bandwidth power, btaccel will remove torrents that it cannot connect to after 30 minutes of inaccessability.   Other times, btaccel might not even download or start the torrent (or report accurate seeder/leecher statistics) when the user has handpicked a very healthy torrent (cause unknown).

While the site is within the alpha stages, one can gain an invite by asking for one on the website itself or following them on twitter.

Main site: http://btaccel.com

Alternatives to Evil Empire while it is down

Seeing as how the Evil Empire has been down for a couple months due to harddrive failure, manga collectors are a bit in the rut when it comes to convenient manga depots. There was always the direct visit to the scanlation group (which is a good thing), but that also becomes very tedious and time consuming.

Therefore, I have compiled a few sites for those who haven’t already started using them.

mangatraders.com
Very large user-generated depot site for manga.  The site also has some good weekly picks.  However, this site is prone to inaccurate/unorganized manga chapters/volumes along with requests by licensing companies to take down respective manga series.  Free membership required.

mangashare.com
Very extravagant and useful manga warehouse.  Some of the download links are third party.  Although not as big as other depots, this place does tell the viewer which scanlator has done the chapter.  Online manga viewing is also available for some of the series.

mangadownload.net
Another excellent manga depot.  However, there are even more series available if one has the premium account (it’s not a very big fee either).  This site just recently had a renovation so all one has to do is just register for a free account and pick from their selections.

stoptazmo.com
This was one of my most frequented sites in the past.  At the moment, the list of series has increased almost exponentially.  This site also requires a free account registration.  The nicest part about this site is that it tells the reader which series are complete from a quick glance at the homepage.  Just recently, stoptazmo started hosting anime files.

gotlurk.net
This is one of my most favorite sites of all time.  However, one must be familiar with internet relay chat (IRC) in order to download almost any scanlation available on the nets.  Because it is IRC, downloads are relatively painless.  However, the IRC channel requires a registered nick and it would be even better if one donated money to this site to keep the place running along with fast downloads.  From what I remember, there is a beta FTP going around for those who donated money to lurk.

Evil Empire Rules Updated Again

The gracious admin of Evil Empire has decided to lower the post count to seven non-spam posts.  This means a post that is constructive and at least more than 30 words.

Also, the 60 days of inactivity (non-posting) still applies as of now.  On December 15th, the admin will perform a mass deletion of accounts.  Therefore, one should make a post anywhere in the forum to keep their accounts for a very nice Christmas, otherwise tough luck – get used to it.

Melty Blood Act Cadenza English Patch is Out!

The patch was released just today from mirror moon.  I just gave it a test run and there seems to be no issues so far.  At least now anyone who doesn’t know japanese can enjoy this great fighter game to its fullest extent.

http://mirrormoon.org/news/2008/11/melty_blood_release_flurry