The S Site

Happy New Year!

Smiley — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 01:25:27 -0500

Happy New Year everyone and a happy new decade.

I thought this would be a good time to make a New Year's resolution. I am going to post more this year and update my site. I might also make some video posts instead of just the regular text posts.

Also, stay tuned for a site redesign. Hopefully I will be able to make The S Site have a much nicer, cleaner feel to it. Feel free to make suggestions in the comments section for this post.

So that's all I had to say. Once again Happy New Year and I'll talk to you soon.

My Predictions for 2010

Smiley — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 00:26:11 -0500

It's New Year's eve and I thought it would be a good time to make some predictions for the year to come, it seems everyone else is, so here we go.

Apple and Google's relationship will deteriorate; Google has released products and is planning to release products that will compete with Apple's products. I also see Google getting into the music business in the future, which will not be good for Apple.
There will be a major internet scare in privacy; more and more of people's information is being stored on the internet and that increases security risks. No one can guarantee complete security online, someone will find a way to hack into it, it's just a matter of time. After all, as they say, "If you're looking for security on the internet you're looking in the wrong place."
The Apple Tablet will be released; there has already been so much hype about it, so I think it does really exist. It will run a stripped down version of OS X, but will have more of an iPhone feel to a Mac feel and it won't have a stylus, because that's just not cool. :D
Optical media will become obsolete; With the internet offering us so much media we won't need things like CDs or DVDs, or Blu-rays.
Google Chrome will pass Firefox in popularity; Chrome is a very fast and sleek web browser. It has already overtaken Safari (or so I have heard) and with the release of Linux and Mac OS versions it is sure to increase in popularity even more.

Freeware Addon - DeHavilland Dash-8 for FSX

Smiley — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 20:01:47 -0400

Well, here I go with my first review.

The Air Canada Jazz DeHavilland Dash-8 is a quality freeware addon for Flight Simulator X. It features a very realistic model with animated parts, a fully functional virtual cockpit, inside and outside lighting and a fully functional autopilot. This package comes with four Air Canada Jazz liveries, but if you don't like any of them there are other repaints available.

In these two images I was using the Olympic Airlines livery.

To get this aircraft:

Go to FlightSim.com
In the file name box type "d81jaz4x.zip" for the aircraft, or "oa_text-1.zip" for the Olympic livery
Download the file
Follow the instructions in the Readme of the file

I hope this was useful and I hope you enjoy the addon.

New Project

Smiley — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 01:44:18 -0400

Oh dear, it seems that I haven't been posting for a while. Oh well, on with today's post.

I love avation, I love flying, I don't know why, I just do.

I've been using Microsoft Flight Simulator X for years now and I really enjoy using it. It is probably one of the best flight simulators out there and, unlike other Microsoft products, it is open to third party developers to make addons for, like aircraft and scenery.

So my idea was that I would write a review of some of these addons (mainly freeware addons) so that any aviation enthousiasts out there can find out what addons are good and which ones to stay away from.

I am really looking forward to starting this, but I won't be able to post every day but I will try my best to post on the weekend.

Get a Performance Boost in Windows Vista or Windows 7

Smiley — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 08:12:37 -0400

If you have a Windows Vista machine, or are testing Windows 7, you may find that it sometimes runs slow on your hardware. You may have not noticed, especially if you do not have the power icon displayed in the notification area, that both operating systems have a feature which allows you to change power schemes. These schemes typically include: 'Power Saver', which saves power, but reduces system performance, 'Balanced', which balances power usage with system performance, normally your system is set to this by default, and 'High Performance', which uses more power, but makes your computer perform faster'.

To make your computer run faster, you can choose the 'High Performance' option. You can choose this setting by doing the following:

Open the start menu
Go to 'Control Panel'
Choose 'Hardware and Sound'
Choose 'Power Options'
Select 'High Performance'

After you follow these instructions you should notice a boost in performance.

Windows 7 and Netgear WG111T wireless adapter

Smiley — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 08:16:35 -0400

I have been using Windows 7 RC1 for a while now, and I really like it. Even though it is only for testing I have found that I have been using it a lot. I really think that it's ready for release, except for its Netgear wireless adapter support.

You see, I have a Netgear WG111T wireless adapter, and the computer I have Windows 7 on is a desktop with no wireless card, which is nowhere a wired access point. So what do I do? I try to install the driver for the adapter. Unfortunately, the CD that I have for it didn't install the driver correctly, so after a bit of experimenting I finally found that to install the driver I had to do these steps.

Download the installer from the Netgear website, http://kb.netgear.com/app/products/model/a_id/2559
Right click on the installer in Windows Explorer and click 'Troubleshoot Compatability'
Click 'Troubleshoot Program'
Click the check box about the program working in earlier versions of Windows, then click 'Next'
Choose 'Windows XP (Service Pack 2)' and click 'Next'
Run the installer

With these steps it should work for the WG111T and maybe other Netgear wireless adapters, so try it if you have one, and let me know, and if you know of any forums that have threads discussing this problem, feel free to help them out, and please don't forget to link back here.

More Apparent Transparency

Smiley — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 06:08:16 -0400

You probably would have noticed that I recently made the backgrounds of my blog posts and my nav bar slightly transparent and if you read Four Island you probably would have read a post entitled RGBA Layout, and you probably also would have noticed that Four Island has a transparent background. Now before you go and tell Hatkirby I did not copy Four Island's design. Hatkirby used a RGBA color, which doesn't work in every web browser, whereas I made a transparent 1 px by 1 px image, which works in every browser...except Internet Explorer 6 or lower, in which case my site would look like this:

Praising Ubuntu

Smiley — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 19:07:42 -0400

Why isn't anyone commenting? Oh right I'm not posting. Well... sorry about that. I'll try. I know I said that the last time, and the time before, and possibly the time before, but this time I actually mean it, maybe.

Anyway, I was going to write a tutorial about installing Ubuntu, but seeing as Ubuntu is the easiest Linux distribution of Linux to install known to the human race, I thought that would be quite pointless. So instead I'm just going to write about how great it is.

Linux, or GNU/Linux is a family of open source Operating Systems that generally speaking, can be downloaded for free. Ubuntu is type, or distribution of Linux, which focuses on being easy to use. It comes with many free and open source programs, including OpenOffice an Office suite very similar to Microsoft Office, except it's free. Not only is Ubuntu easy to use, it is also easy to customize to suit one's needs.

To find out more about Ubuntu, or to download a copy, visit Ubuntu.com.

More Excuses and an Open Source Flash Media Player

Smiley — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 18:55:00 -0500

OK, firstly I'm sorry (once again) that I haven't posted for ages, I was umm... err... busy.

Anyway I recently found a flash video media player which can be embedded into webpages, like the media player YouTube uses. What's more is that it is open source, and did I mention that there are add-ons for it, which include plugins, skins and modules?

Seeing all this, I decided to try it out. I also downloaded a skin, and now I'm using the player on my site. I have one video using the player: Mac OS X or Ubuntu 8.04

Please leave a comment about your thoughts about the player in the comments section of this post.

Excuses and iTunes News

Smiley — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 17:37:56 -0500

Ok, so I guess I've got some explaining to do about why I haven't been posting, well it goes like this. A while back I somehow managed to break my router, either that or it commited suicide. Either way I'm now using the broadband modem that my ISP gave me when I signed up with them, but it might as well be a narrowband modem because from the 21st of December and the 1st of January I managed to download 15 GB of data, exceeding my limit for the month. So now my speed has dropped to 50 KB/S, and doesn't go back up again until the 20th. I don't even want to know how I managed to download 15 GB in a matter of days.

Anyway in other news some of you might know that Macworld '09 happened recently. As well as a lot of other interesting stuff, or boring stuff, which ever way you look at it, the iTunes Store is going to start offering DRM free music, this means that you will now be able to take that song anywhere and put it on multiple computers and devices. At the moment there are only a few DRM free songs available but soon iTunes will be offering every song on iTunes DRM free. That's great!

Oh yeah and one last thing,

Happy New Year!