I haven’t been posting updates or writing as many articles here as I’d like to, and it’s mainly because I’ve been busy putting the final touches on a website I’m about to launch. I don’t want to give away too many details or build too much hype, because frankly it’s not that big of a project and was never intended to be.

However, it was a project that I intended to learn from, and in that regard, I think I’ve succeeded - and that’s really what I want to continue doing for the rest of my life. Furthermore, while the project was an exercise in improving my web and software development skills, the end result will also be something that I will actually use myself - not just some pointless academic exercise. Another nice effect was the experience of seeing a self-directed project come to fruition over the last few months - albeit at a slow rate, usually only several hours per week, but nonetheless I’ve improved my self-discipline as a result.

I will say that you can get somewhat of an idea of what this site will be about by browsing through some of my previous posts. But, that’s all I’m going to say at this point.

With the recent rumours that Beatles representatives met with both the makers of Rock Band and Guitar Hero to discuss the possibility of a Beatles-themed game, I’ve been more than a little excited at the prospects of rocking out to these tunes. (See more coverage at Wired and the original FT article)

Whatever the outcome, it could be a deciding factor in what console (if any) I decide to buy. I’m already feeling the pain of no DLC for the Wii version of Rock Band, which is putting doubts into my mind as to whether I should have bought the Wii version.

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I’ve just starting playing around with the Google Static Maps API as a complement to the regular Google Maps API, which as you probably know, is for JavaScript. The Static Maps API, on the other hand, provides a way to display static map images. This is useful in situations where you just need a non-interactive map and don’t want the overhead of an Ajax/JavaScript-based one.

However, I ran into some minor problems related to the API key usage with the Static Maps. Basically, an API key is tied to a certain domain name so that Google can keep track of your site’s usage. This means that the API key is tied to the domain name of the web site where you’re using the Google Maps API.

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I ran into a weird problem while testing one of my sites that used jQuery with Opera 9.26. (I happened to be using this older version of Opera because I am lazy to upgrade; I’m still using Firefox 2 despite the successful launch of FF3)

The issue was with an Ajax request I was sending. The return value was an array in JSON form. More specifically, the server was returning something like:

{tag:[{id1:'A',id2:'B'}, {id1:'A',id2:'B'}, {id1:'A',id2:'B'}]}

This was perfectly valid and worked fine in both Firefox and Internet Explorer. However, in Opera 9.26, I got a JavaScript error indicating that the JSON was not valid. It was then that I realized I was using an older version of jQuery, v1.2.2. Upgrading to the latest, 1.2.6 fixed the problem. Strangely, I could not find anything on their bug tracker indicating that such a problem (JSON and Opera) had been fixed.

What was even more interesting was that upgrading to Opera 9.50 also solved the problem independently; that is, things worked fine even with the older version of jQuery. This goes to show the importance of keeping your software up to date and highlights the complicated interactions between different browsers and client-side code in a web application.

I’ve waited for this day - June 22nd - for a while, since today is the day that Rock Band finally comes out for Wii. While my PS3 and Xbox 360-owning friends have had access since last November, I had to be content with Guitar Hero III while I gazed with jealousy at the wonders of Rock Band and its superb multi-player aspect.

Was it worth the wait? For me, it was. However, there are some obvious shortcomings when comparing the Wii version of Rock Band to those on the Xbox 360 and PS3, most of which were expected. Whether these were the fault of Harmonix (the developers) or Nintendo is a matter of debate.

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When Bell instituted their throttling of Internet services back in March, it was almost universally-reviled. It wasn’t so much the throttling that was disliked but rather the secrecy with which it was done. Bell did not notify any of their customers of this change of service, nor did they change their advertisements to reflect this new “level” of service. Thankfully, the CRTC has ordered Bell to publicly disclose the full details of whether Internet traffic levels warranted throttling. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to include the full explanation of their throttling policies.

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This Thursday, Minister Prentice tabled Bill C-61, otherwise known as “Canadian DMCA”. This move was widely expected as well as the contents of the bill. Though there have been provisions added for some “fair use”, the details reveal DMCA-style rules that may leave consumers in legal limbo when it comes to making personal copies. In fact, these rules are even more stringent than the US DMCA, and for a bill that’s been paraded as “Made in Canada”, there’s been a frighteningly small amount of feedback that the Federal Government has taken from its citizens. Add to this the rumours that Prentice met with “U.S. trade representatives and entertainment industry lobbyists to discuss the legislation,” and you have to wonder just who wrote this bill.

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I was at EBGames last week and they were having a sale. Many of the titles with the red-discount mark (of shame?) were laughable and typical of the “shovelware” companies throw out just to capitalize on a popular gaming system like the Nintendo Wii. However, one caught my eye: Bully: Scholarship Edition for Wii was only $24.99 CAD. It’s easy to justify an impulse buy like that, especially when I had heard great things about the original, which was released for PS2-only back in 2006. (The “Scholarship Edition” is a re-released version for the Xbox 360 and Wii and contains additional content; it debuted on March 4th, 2008)

Turns out this “bargain-bin” game has been one of my better purchases for Wii. If you like the GTA-style of games, you’ll probably like Bully, as I learned.

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If you’re running GNOME and have enabled Compiz effects, you may have noticed that title bar text - the descriptions at the top of windows - have inexplicably got smaller. This problem is especially relevant and noticeable in Linux Mint and other Ubuntu-based distributions, as I learned when setting up a machine for my Mom to use. You can see an example of the small/broken title bar text size below. (This was with the default settings)

A quick fix would be just to increase the title bar font size in the appearance settings, but this would result in larger-than-normal title bar text if you were to disable the Compiz effects. This smaller text is actually a slight bug, and can be fixed by entering the command compiz --version in the terminal. After doing this, you’ll see the title bar text increase back to the normal size - invoking compiz seems to cause the manager to reset the size back. However, the changes do not persist after a reboot or after logging back in and it’s impractical to have to do this every time.

As with all tedious tasks, the best way to accomplish them is with a script. Here’s a nice workaround.

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After much anticipation and waiting, Wii Fit has finally arrived! I pre-ordered my copy from EBGames, which was good since it’s apparently sold out in many places. Wii Fit has been hyped up ever since the release day for North America was pushed back in order to increase the strength of the balance board to support more than the 300 lbs of the Japanese version. (The NA version supports 330 lbs) I picked it up on the release day, May 21st and have been using it on-and-off for the past few days.
Here are my initial impressions.

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