Quick Easy Tech Tips, Tricks and Reviews, with a little bit of Dog Stuff!
Just like most browsers, Safari, on your iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad has a cache, it stores cookies, and keeps a record of your history. Also like other browsers, you notice a boost in performance if you clean it from time to time.
httpv://youtu.be/xVxjMinXP9M
The Atari 2600 wasn’t the only major Tech invention that took my interest in 1980. For me, this little beauty was another hot topic.
The Sony Walkman. My parents wouldn’t let me have one because I would go deaf from the headphones (not to mention satan penetrating my brain with his evil hip gyrating sin induced melodies such as Don’t stop til you get enough by Michael Jackson) . It wasn’t long before everybody at school had one. They were all the fashion, and they were all “The Craze”, but they were also “Really good”. This is one of those devices that is fun to reflect back on. We still carry music in our pockets today, but this battery powered audio cassette player really was the first portable music player of note……until the batteries went flat. Eventually I did get one, but it was long after 1980, and I bought it with my own money once I started working, in 1988. Today, some 23 years later, yes my hearing is damaged, but I can confidently say it is not from the Walkman. Perhaps fixing/tuning chainsaws and being the drummer in a fairly active hard rock/metal band for the majority of that time contributed.
Another welcome change in 1980 was the end of the HMV record player (My folks loved HMV and Rank Arena….in case you hadn’t already noticed) like the one pictured below:
It was replaced with (Surprise Surprise) a Rank Arena component stereo system similar to this Akai set.
We also saw the introduction of the Video Cassette Recorder. Ours was a “Top Loader”. This machine appeared way before infra-red, so the remote control had a looooong wire that you plugged in. It was pretty cool! The first movie we watched on this thing as a family was Benji – I cried, and cried, and cried.
I cant even begin to tell you the amount of times I got smacked down by my father for tripping over that remote cord.
There is one more device I really liked.
The Galaxy Invader 1000.
This was probably the first handheld gaming device I laid eyes on. My brother owned it, and I wanted it so bad – I did get to play with it from time to time, but would have much rathered it belonged to me instead of him
httpv://youtu.be/urINYCB-w0g
A recent addition to WordPress 3 is the “Admin Bar”. It allows you to view your site, and at any time skip to your dashboard, add a new post, and a plethora of other handy “Shortcuts” to places you will likely want to go after viewing your site. Initially, I hated it. I looked for, and found plugins such as “Global Hide Admin Bar” to remove it, so I didn’t have to look at it ever again. Although there are still a few sites I have the admin bar disabled on, it does remain on this site. I guess the reason is that on other sites I am the admin/creator/god, and I have no need for the options it offers, so it’s a pain when I am trying to see if my DIVS are correctly aligned. On this site however, it does come in handy when I look at a post, and realise that I have written gibberish that nobody but me could possibly understand, and I need to go back and edit my posts. Yes, I am admin/creator/god on this site, but I am primarily an editor/user, hence in this capacity the bar is slightly more appealing. My feelings towards the admin bar are definitely on a site by site basis. It depends on if I am the creator, or a user of a site. For the most part, I don’t like it, and I could go on living quiet happily without it, even though it has proved useful at times on some sites.
Loading ...
I have written about some bad WordPress plugins, so I thought it was time I wrote about a good one, and oh boy, is this a good one. This is one of those plugins that is “Bigger than Ben Hur”. If you are building a WordPress site for someone who is a bit of a newb, or in my case an editor of a major print magazine and celebrity national television sports commentator, who has no interest in the back end, and just wants a word processor to update their site, you NEED this plugin.
The point of Adminimize is to minimize the admin, or back end of a WordPress site. This is great for multi user sites. As an admin, you can decide what site users get to see, and more importantly, what they don’t get to see in their dashboard. In my case, my client comes from a purely editorial background. He wants to write his articles, and moderate his readers, and that’s it. So with Adminimize, I have been able to remove all of the other WordPress features such as the Plugins panel, Pages panel, Appearance panel, Tools, Settings, and the menu/settings entries for the twenty something other plugins I have had to install to make the site work to his requirements. He can create new posts, reply to comments, and ad links to his blogroll, because that’s all he wants to do. What I really like about this plugin, is that when you install other plugins, it knows about them upon a refresh, and you can decide how much of their admin capabilities is available to your different user levels as well.
You can remove that pesky admin bar, screen options, or admin colour schemes, and many other of WordPress’s “features” (depending on whether you love them or hate them) not only globally, but on a user level as well. So you can have the admin bar for yourself as an admin, remove it for your editors, and enable it for authors, if that’s what you want to do.
This plugin is one of those ones that I just can’t believe is free. There is a “Donate” option on the settings page, and I believe this one is well worth leaving a few bucks for the authors – It’s a killer plug in! Just one word of warning though, on installation and activation, you will be confronted with literally hundreds of check boxes. Even though it will appear overwhelming, it’s not. Keep in mind there is 5 check boxes, one for each user lever, per option. Just remember the options are down the left hand side in column one, and the rows are for user levels that you want to allow/disallow the privileged. Give it a go, and look at it one option at a time, and before long not only will you understand its simple layout (which appears complicated because there are hundreds of choices), but you will see why I hereby officially give Adminimize “5 Paws Up”!
Adminimize is available for download at the WordPress repository HERE.
If you are reading my blog, there is a very good chance somebody, somewhere, looks to you as their own personal tech/web help desk. We all know people who need some help, and some need it a lot more than others. Most of the time we understand that not everybody knows everything, and we try to help. However, there are some days when you just want to tell them to “Google it and leave me alone!” – That is the g-rated family friendly version of what we actually think BTW.
For those days when you just want that person to evaporate before your very eyes, there is a really cool way you can point them towards the answer in a not so subtle way, that is sure to get the message across – Let Me Google That For You. The sites description says:
For all those people who find it more convenient to bother you with their question rather than google it for themselves.
Last week I was asked “How do I re-size my browser windows?” You can view my answer on Let Me Google That For You HERE.
There is also a page where you can view a Live Feed of all of Let Me Google That For You searches occurring in real time, giving you an idea of just how many of those people there really is.
April 1979, I remember it so well. The next 8 months were to be the most painful of my life.
The girl behind me to the right is Lana Baynon – she was my first kiss!
She kissed me and I had no idea what she was doing. I really wanted her to do it again, but she never did.
After relentlessly pestering my parents for my very own Atari 2600, they caved in and said I could have one for Christmas…….8 months away. Now, this is where the story gets cruel. My parents were the most horrible people in the world to me and did something, that words just can’t describe. They went and bought it a day or two later, and made sure I saw them bring it home, and into the house. Then, they hid it until Christmas time. How could these people, my parents, be SO cruel to me. Just knowing it was in the house was a torture beyond comprehension. The anguish and mental trauma I endured would damage me forever. There was nothing I could do, but count the days. This actually made it worse. At any time I could tell you the amount of days remaining in my sentence. I was trying so hard to forget about it. I was trying hard not to count. Being aware of how long I had to wait seemed to slow everything down.
Eventually, the big day arrived. December 25, 1979. I walked into the loungeroom on Christmas morning, and there it was. I could see it, I could touch it, I could take it out of the box, but dad had to wire it in to the Rank Arena color tv, because I wasn’t allowed behind it. I got one game with it. Defender.
httpv://youtu.be/sFa5Lgu11DE
Now, you would think this was a welcome relief from 8 months of pure agony. To a point, it was. This is where family tradition became a factor. Dad took his sweet time wiring it in, and I got to play Defender for about 30 mins, before the command to “Shut it down” came. We had to go to my grandparents place, because that’s just what you have to do on Christmas day! I was like a freaking bomb ready to explode. 8 Months of pure suffering, a 30 minute tease, and then of to the grandparents place for the rest of the day, where they could pull my cheek, and rub my hair, and ooh and ahh over how big I had gotten.
Let your imagine run wild, and visual as far as your mind will allow, just how pissed off I was! Got it? Multiply that by 1000, and you may be in the same state as the ball park! I was ready to murder!
In time I did to get to use my new Atari 2600. I loved it so much. Mum would come and tell me to turn it off, and go outside and ride my bike and get fresh air. “What on earth would I want to do that for?”. She was as relentless in this instance as I was about the purchase of the device. She made it on to “My List” with this behavior. She was marked. I had my eye on her!
To repay my inhumanely cruel parents for the 8 months of brutality, I set about acquiring game cartridges. The “Defender” game was stupid now. I’d played it thousands of times. That was the beauty of the 2600. Unlike the Hanimex unit, which had four different games built in, the Atari was limitless. There were dozens of game cartridges available for purchase. And I made sure my parents had no doubt as to which ones I needed. It wasn’t “want”, it was “NEED”. The first on the list was “Indy 500”. A car racing game, that also came with new controllers. In place of the “Joystick”, Indy 500 required “Paddles”. These were similar to the controls of the Hanimex game console.
