29
01
2006
Everyone in the peer-to-peer file sharing community is talking about “BitTorrent”. It seems that this technology is the favourite among file sharers these days, but setting it up to work correctly can be a challenge. Unlike many other click-and-go P2P clients like the infamous KaZaa or the now legitimised Napster, BitTorrent takes some getting used to. Perhaps the most difficult part of BitTorrent configuration to understand, is just what you need to do with those bloody ports! Forums such as Whirlpool are flooded with threads asking “why are my torrents so slow?” and equally-many would-be-gurus giving contradictory advice. In this article, I will aim to demystify the issue of ports in BitTorrent, without getting bogged down in details.
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Categories : Tech
23
01
2006
We finally joined the 21st century in mid-2005 when we signed up to Telstra BigPond Cable broadband. I had been trying to get ADSL for some time, but despite living ridiculously close to an exchange, all attempts had ended in vain. I opted for the wireless option, which included a Motorola SBG900 modem/router, agreed by many on Whirlpool forums to be a more than adequate device. Originally all the computers in the house connected wirelessly, with Chewbacca (my old Celeron 1000, now relegated to file server and download-monkey) using the Telstra-supplied Netgear WG111 802.11g USB dongle.
From day one, I had intermittent problems with using BitTorrent. Almost immediately upon beginning a download, the router would drop the connection and restart. Often this also occured a number of times during a download - not a good thing to happen when you’ve just reached 100+ KB/s, as the torrent would restart and would take a while to reach a decent speed again. To make matters worse, Chewbacca would occasionally restart spontaneously, killing the download for good. All of this caused me great frustration, but (for lack of time or desire) I was never able to pin down a cause. Med school holidays finally gave me enough of the former, and I managed to solve the mystery.
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Categories : Tech
23
01
2006
The release of WordPress 2.0 (codename “Duke”) two weeks ago made me immediately very keen to give it a go. It took a little while for Fantastico to offer a one-click upgrade, but thankfully the wait wasn’t unbearable.
The feature that most made me sit up and take notice was the completely redeveloped post-authoring interface. Finally a WYSIWYG editor was included by default, something I sorely missed since leaving Blogger. I tried numerous third-party plug-ins but none had me entirely satisfied. The WordPress crew didn’t stop here however. Other features that stood out as soon as I began using the upgrade included:
- a resizable text editing area
- a new post preview option, which shows what your post will look like with your current theme applied (much like Blogger does)
- a preview thumbnail in the theme selector page
There are many additional features, including many non-cosmetic, more technical ones. As this post is not intended as a proper review of WP 2.0, I will not elaborate on these. Have a look at the full WordPress feature set on the WordPress website.
Finally I can honestly say that WordPress satisfies my requirements entirely. I was originally a little disappointed after migrating from Blogger (see The New Blog Lives) but this new version has put all of my previous concerns to rest. It’s now time to settle in and begin using this great content publishing platform.
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Categories : Tech
