Category: Computer bits

Computer stuff

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TeXing away

Spotted a new plugin for incorporating TeX into MT

[tex]x^2+y^2[/tex]
[tex]\Large f(x)=\int_{-\infty}^x e^{-t^2}dt[/tex]
[tex]\Large e^x=\lim_{n\to\infty} \left(1+\frac~xn\right)^n[/tex]
[tex]\Large\left.\begin{eqnarray} x+y+z&=&3\2y&=&x+z\2x+y&=&z\end{eqnarray}\right}[/tex]
[tex]\Large\hspace{5}\unitlength{1} \picture(175,100){~(50,50){\circle(100)} (1,50){\overbrace{\line(46)}^{4$\;\;a}} (52,50){\line(125)}~(50,52;115;2){\mid}~(52,55){\longleftar[60]} (130,56){\longrightar[35]}~(116,58){r}~(c85,50;80;2){\bullet} (c85,36){3$-q}~(c165,36){3$q} (42,29){\underbrace{\line(32)}_{1$a^2/r\;\;\;}}~}[/tex]

Very cool. I like it. Doesn’t work for dynamic publishing yet though.

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Palm software plug

As just about every PDA owner will attest to, there comes a time in a PDA’s life where digitizer drift sets in: the PDA registers a screen touch in a different location than where it actually occurred. My first Handspring Visor suffered from this before eventually dying. My Tungsten T3 currently has a mild case of this.

Palm PDAs have a built in digitizer program that’s supposed to help recalibrate the digitizer. Most of the time it works…for a while. Sometimes it doesn’t help things at all, or ends up making things worse.

There are a few programs out there to help stricken PDAs. DigiE was one that I used before that helped a little, although the middle of the screen would still be off. One problem with DigiE I had was that it kept turning the PDA on (software bug), so you either have to move it to the SD card, or uninstall it after calibrating.

Then I stumbled onto a new program called PowerDigi. It’s pretty slick, offering 3 different levels of digitizer recalibration utilizing different numbers of screen taps. Works beautifully and cured my T3 of digitizer drift (for now at least). One thing I have noticed is that Grafitti recognition is kind of slow when using the DIA. Otherwise I can tap all over the screen and not worry about guessing where I need to tap.

Severe digitizer problems? Try PowerDigi. 14 day trial mode, and it’s pretty cheap.

5 stars out of 5.

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Creating my own Planet

Now that Lowcountry Blogroll has hit the ground running, I figured since I’ve already got the Planet software running, I might as well follow in Jared’s footsteps and make my own planet.

Planet Imablog is a collection of blogs from around here and in my blogroll that I read on a regular/quasi-regular basis. Not sure yet what I’m going to do about the local blogs that might get replicated by the Lowcountry Blogroll feed. I’ll probably just leave it for now and see how things go.

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Planet Lowcountry Bloggers has a new home!

Thanks to Brian Muller (One voice out of billions), Planet Lowcountry Bloggers has moved to a new home and with a new name: Lowcountry Blogroll. It’s the exact same thing only at a URL that’s a little easier to remember. It’s also updated hourly so there should be less lag time between a blog entry posting and when it shows up. Those of you who had a link to the original incarnation should update your links accordingly. A re-direct on my server will send you to the new site if you still happened to be using the old URL.

Thanks for doing the hosting Brian!

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About Planet Lowcountry Bloggers

Well, now that news about Planet Lowcountry Bloggers has been blabbed all over the Internet, I guess it’s time for me to write a bit about it and how to get on it (if your blog isn’t already there).

First of all, Planet Lowcountry Bloggers is powered by Planet, a feed aggregator. The software vists all of the feeds (either RSS 2.0 or Atom) it’s configured with, grabs the newest entries and spits the entries out into a web page. Currently Planet LCB is configured to update every 3 hours.

To get listed in Planet LCB, I need a URL for your blog’s RSS feed. The URL for your blog just won’t do. Has to be an RSS or Atom feed (usually they have an .xml extension). Most blogging software (Typepad, WordPress, MovableType, etc) generate feeds automatically. Most of those blogs in TBB have already been included in the Planet already.

Some blogging services (Blogger/Blogspot for example) include it as one of their premium features that you have to pay for. If your blog falls into this group, FeedBurner is an easy way to get a feed for your blog. Just provide them with the URL to your blog and follow the steps. You’ll get a bit of URL you can place in your blog to advertise your feed, and they even have some neat widgets you can use in web pages and forum signatures to promote your blog.

Ok, so once FeedBurner gives you a feed URL to include in your blog, just email it to me or leave a comment here. I’ll add your feed you will have joined the Planet.

Simple huh.

Planet LCB isn’t the only Planet out there. There are plenty of others and even one other local planet (which looks much nicer than mine and doesn’t seem to have issues with strange text characters popping up all over the place). Hmm, a few more and we could probably form a solar system…

What Planet LCB isn’t going to be is a replacement for the daily round-ups in Lowcountry Blogs. It’s just a convenient location to go catch up on the most recent blog entries from around here and hopefully to make doing round-ups a little easier.

Oh, and don’t let the times and dates published in Planet LCB throw you off. All times are in UTC, so just subtract 5 hours (4 if it’s DST) to get the original blog entry time.