WLW Cross-Post Plug-in Fixed!

For a while I was looking around for a better solution than my Blogger to LJ workaround to cross-post my entries here to my LiveJournal blog.  What I found was this for Windows Live Writer:

http://www.codeplex.com/clarius/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=6626

Technically, cross-posting is already possible with Windows Live Writer.  All you have to do is just switch blogs, and your blog entry will still be open for editing. Easy right? Yes! Is it really effective cross-posting?  Not quite. :(  That's where Kzu's WLW Cross-Post plug-in comes in.  You install the plug-in, set the target blog to your secondary blog, enable or disable post summary, and enable/disable previewing the post in the secondary blog. If you choose to preview your post on your secondary blog, you'll notice that your main blog has been linked to at the top of the post. Keen!

However, there are some things wrong with this.  For one, you can't cross-post to more than one blog. It won't bother me, but it can be a big deal with bloggers who have blogs for their jobs, families, and hobbies. Secondly, not everyone wants the link to their main blog to show up at the top; maybe the blog author wants the link at the bottom.  And there's no way to customize the wording of the link from the plug-in's options.  Not a big deal, as it can be moved and the wording changed (make sure preview is enabled). Lastly, it can't publish the blogs at the same time. You must publish the main blog first, and then use the "insert cross-post" function.  So all-in-all, this plug-in is for the purpose of grabbing the main blog post's permalink and auto-pasting it into the secondary blog's post.  A little less work to do when using Windows Live Writer for posting to multiple blogs.

The biggest problem many WLW users have had with the plug-in is the inability to install it properly!  This plug-in as been uploaded as is for the masses to use, but WLW is unable to load it.  In this Windows Live Gallery entry, a reviewer of the plug-in explains how he managed to get WLW Cross-Post to load into Writer.  An excellent post, but no one's ever thought of uploading a working version of the plug-in for those who don't have Visual Studio installed on their computers (though you can install VS 2008 Express for free).  Or at least I couldn't find a working version of it.  Srch skillz: I dun haz dem. =(

I decided to share my compiled version of the plug-in.  I didn't change or add anything to the plug-in, so support questions should still go to the author of WLW Cross-Post.  You  can download the WLW Cross-Post plug-in from here or here.

Las Vegas just took over your Mac

Ahh, poker. It's a game of skill, bluffs, and battling to keep your cool. It's a game that has a big payoff, and it definitely has a lot more to do with being brilliant than being lucky.

And just when you've finally started scaring your poker buddies into avoiding poker night, ya get all depressed instead of being proud of your achievement. "Well now who am I going to play poker with?", you sulk. Oh, stop your blubbering. Online card games have been around for quite some time. "But I have a Mac, not a PC!", you sob even more. I told you to stop your belly-aching. PokerStars, the hottest game for online Poker playing (not to mention playing to qualify for some of the biggest poker tourneys around) is about to hit the Mac harder than Fat Joe hitting the Vegas strip.

PokerStars has the largest poker room available than any other online poker game. There are more people to play which means more chances to win, which means more changes at world wide recognition, which means more chances to line your pockets with that popular green stuff.

PokerStars for Mac has its own site to tell you guys more. It's updated frequently, so if you want your poker fix, make sure to bookmark it. Perhaps in time you'll be showing the PC poker boys what you and your precious dual core Mac are made of. Hopefully it's cojones of steel, and then gold after all of your wins.

Mac PokerStars

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Next thing you know, the Ninty DS will have Open Canvas...Wait...

Colors! Is the next best thing for taking OC on the go. It is a fully functional digital painting application created as homebrew for the Nintendo DS. What's required is a flash cart, as is required for all homebrew programs. You can get a pretty good one here. This post was made possible by Kakkoii (not his real name of course), a web friend who referred me to both products. I'm going to get me a flash cart when I can afford it, and I'll play with Colors!. But this week is bill week. Bill week makes me cry. :'(

IBackup: Second to none while offering drag-and-drop simplicity

There are a lot of places on the web that offer storage space for all kinds of files. Maybe you went a little bat crazy converting your favorite vinyl albums to digital. Maybe you're a small businessman who has a lot of records to transfer to another computer but can't because your removable storage just doesn't have enough space. Maybe you have a huge collection of family photos that need saving, but the files are large in order to keep the pictures high in quality. In all of the above cases, sometimes your own local hard drive storage is not enough.You need web storage that's reliable, high in performance, and above all else affordable. IBackup has the perfect solution, its Online Storage system.

IBackup's online storage comes with exclusive access to either a web browser-based and desktop-based drag-and-drop file transfer protocol client. Both are made to be easy for anyone who's beginner to intermediate concerning using FTP for web storage. Just like Window's Explorer program, all you have to do is drag your file to your IBackup drive, mapped onto your computer as a network drive, and just drop it in the drive. With fast and secure access, you can access your IBackup account for storing files from anywhere. This service cannot be beaten by other competitors due to the high quality in service and affordable plans offered. If you need more file space, then please consider IBackup. It makes online file storage simple and convenient for everyone no matter the situation.

Online Storage

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Pixia English Version is back in action!

On June 3rd, Pixia ver. 4 has finally been added to the English Pixia web site. The site has been given a new look for the occasion, which has been a long time coming.

According to the site, Pixia has been rewritten (though it doesn't look like it, heh) to keep up with the times. What I would like to see happen is the addition of paint brushes that blend the colors as a person paints. Geez, even OpenCanvas 1.1 has blending as you paint. Alas, it doesn't look like it's in Pixia, but I'm sure there's a way to create brushes that blend colors.

Anyway, check the site, download the new version, and see for yourselves. If you're wondering where the link to the Pixia forums when, it's right here: http://graphicfree.proboards9.com.

Old site feature revisited

It's not listed in the menu, but I have a torrent tracker hosted here. It used to be used as a convenience for Ragnarok Online players to download the needed Korean RO client in order to play the many free servers that exist over the internet. That and I used to host Gunbound's installation file when it was [at first] difficult to download from Softnyx's download servers. Someone uploaded a torrent to some manga, but I never bothered to download the file to see what it really was [if it was really manga].

Well, it's back. I've upgraded the tracker to the newest version, so I've lost quite a bit of old shoutbox posts. I don't have much on the tracker, but the news update there explains it well enough. I've created and uploaded a torrent of Adobe's standalone Flash Player 9. It's the executable (no need for installation) program that views shockwave files created by flash programs.

This is a godsend for me. Some of my Graphic Design History classmates have given their presentations, but a few of them had difficulty getting their presentations to work correctly. This stems from a few problems: 1) The Mac computer they needed to use for the presentations didn't have the fonts used in their presentations. One girl was smart enough to save the fonts to her flash drive, but the installation of them to the computer was a failure. 2) Some guy had image embedding problems in Powerpoint (Despite that, the rest of his presentation went well.). 3) Some people have done their Powerpoints on a PC and not on a Mac, so we'll have to switch classrooms, where [on PCs] we can still encounter the first 2 problems. Yay.

All that being said, I'm going to try to approach this differently than everyone else. For one, I don't have Powerpoint at home on my PC; I have OpenOffice.org's Impress for slide show presentations. OOo Impress can save to Powerpoint and is mostly compatible with MS Powerpoint. A plus, but I'm not out of the woods. Secondly, the fonts I may use for my presentation may not be installed on the PC in the classroom. More than likely, converting my presentation to a flash .swf file would be ideal for cross-platform compatibility, whether it's going to be shown on PC or Mac. OOo Impress can save my file as a .swf file but without the transition effects. Not a total loss since the presentation itself doesn't get maimed in the process. But OH NOES!!! Lastly, the PC used for the presentations may or may not have the latest version of the Flash plugin...if it has any flash plugin at all.

That's where the standalone Flash Player 9 comes in. For as long as I can remember, the standalone player provided by Macromedia (and now Adobe) is the one true, always FREE, solution to SWF-to-EXE projector file conversion. Just go to File => Create projector => Save it to whatever directory you want => Done! It's as simple as 3 clicks.

Do not pay out the rear when one of the world's finest software companies gives you a great tool for free. There are software conversion tools that do the same thing, except they are created by 3rd party companies and are not free. I won't say don't buy them, but when the alternatives are shareware, and the tool that was produced by the very creators of Flash technology is and always has been free, what's the best choice? Don't be a dope, is all I have to say.