If you are a blogger, you can claim your blog with your OpenID pretty easily. What this means is, for instance, you (a provider supporting OpenID) can verify that www.ken-mitchell.com is owned by ken-mitchell.myopenid.com . Add the following lines to your page:

<link rel="openid.server" href="http://openidservice.com/server/" />
<link rel="openid.delegate" href="http://you.openidservice.com/" />

where "openidservice" is your OpenID provider, and "you.openidservice.com" is your OpenID.

For example, my URI is www.ken-mitchell.com. My OpenID is ken-mitchell.myopenid.com. Take a look at my source.

<link rel="openid.server" href="http://myopenid.com/server/" />
<link rel="openid.delegate" href="http://ken-mitchell.myopenid.com/" />

Check out http://www.intertwingly.net/blog/2007/01/03/OpenID-for-non-SuperUsers for more detailed info.

In light of the new tracks available for Rock Band, I thought I’d share some of the tips and tricks I have learned while playing “Rock Band”. For now, I have been concentrating on guitar only. Other instruments may follow soon.

Preparation

1. Calibrate lag: This can be done from the “Options” menu. Different types of TVs induce different amounts of lag (or time difference between when the Xbox thinks something happens and when the TV shows it happening). Some audio systems also induce lag, though maybe purposefully to compensate for the TV. You can try using a preset, or calibrate it manually. the instructions are pretty easy to follow.
2. Get comfortable: You never see Slash sitting in a pod chair playing “Welcome to the Jungle” do you? I realize that may be comfortable, but a couple of minutes and your wrist will feel like jello. Try standing during the song with the strap let out enough so that your arm is almost extended (I’d say about 10-15 degrees). Tilt the neck up towards you a little. Note: When “Guitar Picking Band” is released, then we may incorporate a stool or something.
3. Check Volume: You don’t want the neighbors to call the law on you (I presume), but you need to be able to hear the beat of the song above the button clicking.

Strumming

1. Strum in both directions: This may be hard to catch on to, but when it comes down to eighth notes or fast quarter notes, you need to strum in both directions. This is also useful for long drawn out patterns, as it is easier to keep beat.
2. Keep the whammy bar close: Using the whammy adds a nice points boost. It isn’t as hard as it looks, just keep it close so that when a sustained note comes by, you can hit it a couple of times.

Fret-ing

1. Hammer-on and Pull-off: These techniques are invaluable when it comes to playing on “hard” or “expert”. When you see the notes that are a little shorter, those can be played without strumming.
2. Slide: Similar to a Hammer-on and Pull-off, a slide can help you out too. Though it’s really not a slide because you still have to strum, it helps when you have to change hand positions. I tend to slide alot between the 1 and 2 fret (green and red).
3. Don’t flip-flop between buttons: If you are playing a sequence of notes like say 1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2, try holding down the 1 fret the whole time. Like a real guitar, only the highest (closest to inside) fret counts. However, don’t expect this to work during power chords.

Practice

This of course speaks for itself. You don’t think “Mississippi Queen” was played the first time through do you? You have to develop habits to each song, and methods to move from one phrase to the next. This may not be a big deal on “easy” or maybe even “medium”, but there will come a time when you have to know what is coming before it comes across the TV. I recommend at least learning the major progressions of a song and how to transition in/out of the solo. Also, perfect the “Big Rock Ending” to cap off a nice score.

Conclusion

The most important thing of all is to have fun. It can get frustrating at times, but don’t let it get you down. Keep at it!

I have attended the school of “Google” for almost 12 years now. What do I mean by that? Google is such a powerful tool, they made it into a verb. Don’t know how to configure tool-x to do function-x? Google it! Don’t know how to hack the universe? Google it!

But Google is not the only tool useful for powerful searches. My quest for simplicity has led me to learn Live Search. Along that journey, I was surprised to learn that it too could be used powerfully. Don’t know how to turn invisible? Live Search it! Ok, not as catchy as I thought.

Advanced Search Keywords

Similar to Google, Live Search enables you to search for keywords in a special way. Say I want to search for the term “gimp” only on my website. I would use “gimp site:www.ken-mitchell.com”. Here are some of the keywords that can be used.

“filetype”

Restricts the results to file types that you specify. “filetype:pdf” would return only PDF files.

“contains”

Restricts the results to pages that links to a file type. “contains:pdf” would return only pages that link to a PDF file.

“site”

Restricts the results to pages within the site you specify. “site:www.ken-mitchell.com” would return pages within my website.

“ip”

Same as “site”, except using IP as opposed to domain name

“link”

Restricts the results to pages that link to the specified page. “link:www.ken-mitchell.com/about” would return only pages that link to www.ken-mitchell.com.

“linkdomain”

Restricts the results to pages that link to the specified domain. “linkdomain:ken-mitchell.com” would return only pages that link to a page within ken-mitchell.com.

“linkfromdomain”

Restricts the results to pages that link to the specified domain. “linkfromdomain:ken-mitchell.com” would return only pages that are linked to from a page within ken-mitchell.com

“inanchor”, “inbody”, “intitle”, or “inurl”

Restricts the results to pages that contain the specified term in the anchor, body, title, or url respectively.

Note: You can use “-” (dash or minus) to use the exclusive property of the keywords. For instance, using “-site:microsoft.com” would exclude results from microsoft.com

Putting It All Together

The keywords can be combined to make the search more specific. Let us say that we want to search for a readme file (either TXT or PDF) from the Wordpress.org site. “readme site:wordpress.org filetype:(txt or pdf)” returns all pages within wordpress.org that are of type PDF or TXT.

Examples

• Search for all pages that link to images on www.ken-mitchell.com
  contains:(jpg or gif or png) site:www.ken-mitchell.com
• Find all pages containing term “xbox” linked to from ken-mitchell.com
  xbox linkfromdomain:ken-mitchell.com
• Find all pages containing term “gimp” that do not contain links to images
  gimp site:www.ken-mitchell.com -contains:(jpg or gif or png)

Conclusion

I have barely touched on the combinations possible with these keywords. I hope you can get some use out of them. Don’t be afraid to play with them, the worst that can happen is you get some vulgar pictures pop up.

• The only jokes you receive are through e-mail
• At Christmas, it goes without saying that you will be the one to find the burnt-out bulb in the string
• Buying flowers for your girlfriend or spending the money to upgrade your RAM is a moral dilemma
• Everyone else on the Alaskan cruise is on deck peering at the scenery, and you are still on a personal tour of the engine room
• In college you thought Spring Break was a metal fatigue failure
• The salespeople at Circuit City can’t answer any of your questions
• You are always late to meetings
• You are at an air show and know how fast the skydivers are falling
• You bought your wife a new CD ROM for her birthday
• You can quote scenes from any Monty Python movie
• You can type 70 words a minute but can’t read your own handwriting
• You can’t write unless the paper has both horizontal and vertical lines.
• You comment to your wife that her straight hair is nice and parallel.
• You forgot to get a haircut … for 6 months
• You go on the rides at Disneyland and sit backwards in the chairs to see how they do the special effects
• You have Dilbert comics displayed anywhere in your work area
• You have ever saved the power cord from a broken appliance
• You have more friends on the Internet than in real life
• You have never bought any new underwear or socks for yourself since you got married
• You have used coat hangers and duct tape for something other than hanging coats and taping ducts
• You know what http:// actually stands for
• You look forward to Christmas only to put together the kids’ toys
• You own one or more white short-sleeve dress shirts
• You see a good design and still have to change it
• You spent more on your calculator than on your wedding ring
• You still own a slide rule and you know how to work it
• You think that when people around you yawn, it’s because they didn’t get enough sleep
• You wear black socks with white tennis shoes (or vice versa)
• You window shop at Radio Shack
• You’re in the back seat of your car, she’s looking wistfully at the moon, and you’re trying to locate a geosynchronous satellite
• You know what the geosynchronous satellite function is
• Your checkbook always balances
• Your laptop computer costs more than your car
• Your wife hasn’t the foggiest idea what you do at work
• Your wrist watch has more computing power than a 300 MHz Pentium
• You’ve already calculated how much you make per second
• You’ve ever tried to repair a $5 radio
• Your computer is worth more than your vehicles.

  MEncoder is a very advanced and complicated tool.  This is by no means a complete guide on using it, but I hope to point you in the right direction.  The documentation is on its website.  Basically, you need to tell MEncoder to read the DVD title “DVD://1″ (it knows how to figure out stream information based on that), then tell it what kind of output you want.  The output is specified by “-oac” for the audio and “-ovc” for the video.  The file format can be specified with “-of”, though MPEG and AVI are currently only supported (other types are possible, but are experimental). Finally, tell it where to output it using “-o”.  So, for example, I’m going to encode the first title of the DVD to an AVI file using an XVid video stream and the ac3 audio stream.  The DVD is already using the ac3 audio stream so I’ll just copy it.  There are some options that XVid requires.  Specifying the bitrate will satisfy those requirements.  Here’s what we got:

mencoder.exe -oac copy -ovc xvid -xvidencopts bitrate=1800 -o "C:\output.avi" dvd://1

Left to right, that says to copy the audio stream (whatever it may be), encode the video stream to XVid using a bitrate of “1800″, output to “C:\output.avi”, and the input is the first title on the DVD.  Note: Maybe you have the “VIDEO_TS” file structure on your machine, or wish to use a non-default DVD drive.  Specify the location with “-dvd-device”.

In this HowTo I will explain how to create website templates in Gimp that can be easily colored by adding a color layer and using the “Addition” blend mode. This is helpful when you want multiple color schemes for the template.

Theory

A little background as to how this is going to work. I will be referring to colors with their RGB values. For instance, the color #0066AA. #0066AA is actually 3 hexadecimal numbers together representing the values of Red, Green, and Blue respectively. Further detail would escape the scope of this HowTo.

Gimp has a blend mode known as “Addition”. What that means is that if a layer is set to “Addition” blend mode, it will add the value of the pixel on that layer to the value of the pixels beneath that layer. So to demonstrate:
#0066AA + #555555 = #55AAFF.
Note: Values can’t be higher than FF, which means I couldn’t use #666666 here because then the Blue value would be higher than FF.

So in essence, if you took a gradient tool to the bottom layer and faded from #000000 (black) to #555555, then made another layer above and filled it with #0066AA and set the blend mode to addition, the resulting image would be a gradient from #0066AA to #55AAFF.

Step 1 - Setup

Open a new canvas the size of your emblem or icon. Mine is 300×300. Make sure that your background color is black and open the color dialog by double-clicking on the foreground color. This is where you will set the difference in the colors. I used #555555. Remember that this will not represent the resulting color, but the difference in colors that you use in the end. Create a new transparent layer and name it “Shape”.

Step 2 - Create the shape

Select all by Select>All or by hitting Ctrl+A. Now go to Select>Rounded Rectangle and set it to “40%” then hit “OK”. With the gradient tool, drag from the bottom left corner to the top right. Make sure the “Shape” is set to “Linear”.

Now shrink the selection by 5 pixels (Select>Shrink) and drag the same gradient from the top right to bottom left corner. Shrink the selection again by 7 pixels and drag the gradient from the bottom left corner to the top right.

Select none (Select>None or Ctrl+Shift+A) and you should have something like this.

Step 3 - Add a letter

Create another new transparent layer and name it “letter”. Grab your text tool and favorite font and put a white letter in the center of the emblem. I used “Beware” which is a neat fat font. Merge the text layer down on “letter”. Right click the “letter” layer and select “Alpha to Selection”. Then invert the selection (Select>Invert). Add a drop shadow by going Script-Fu>Shadow>Drop Shadow. I put the Offsets to 3 and the “Blur Radius” to 5. The color should be “Black” and opacity “80″. Uncheck “Allow Resizing”. Select none again and set the blend mode of the “letter” layer to “Overlay”.

Step 4 - Color the Emblem

Create a new transparent layer between “letter” and “shape” named “color”. On that layer, fill it with whatever color you wish. Set the blend mode to “Addition”.

Now your finished. I realize the image is quite primitive here, but the idea can be used to far greater extent. Imagine building an entire website using this method. You could easily go from one color to the next. Experiment with it. Show me what you can come up with.

The anticipation was killing us. As soon as we got home, we popped that baby in and got to it. We were expecting to play until around 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning. But, before we knew it, 1:00 p.m. rolled around. Yes that’s 1300 hrs. We had played Halo 3 for almost 12 hours straight. At that point, we had all but the final chapter completed. I dropped the ball and decided to go to bed. Here is what I have learned so far, at least on Legendary mode.

A few tips
• Legendary is almost too much for 1 person. A tad bit hard for 2 people. 3 people is about right for Legendary.
• Use the environment. There are alot of rocks or debris in the maps. Use them to hide behind.
• Try to get headshots when possible. It will kill your enemies much faster.
• The sword lunge is much shorter. I almost found it in-effective against the flood.
• Keep your primary AND secondary weapon loaded. You may often not have time to reload and have to switch.
• Jackal snipers are awesome. You must eliminate them.
• Surround your enemies. With at least 2 people, many times you can surround your enemies. This works especially well against hunters, as they are slow to turn around.
• Don’t try to eliminate the flood, just try to make it through them.

I’m not exactly what I call a game critic or expert, but Halo 3 definitely hasn’t let me down. Even the lobby system is the best I’ve seen on the 360.

Good luck, make me proud!

What’s the difference?

Currently, there are 3 major standards for wireless networks. Those are WiMAX, GSM, and CDMA. Part of the definition of these are their air interface, or how the phones transfer information over the air to the base station. GSM currently uses a TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access) air interface which means multiple users are seperated into timeslots. CDMA (Coded Division Multiple Access) is where users are separated by coding packets, similar to IP. WiMax is based on OFDM (Orthoganol Frequency Division Multiplex), which is based on spacing multiple sub-carriers close together.

What is important to learn here is NOT where things are, but where they are going. CDMA will evolve into UMB, GSM will evolve into LTE, and WiMax, well it’s a little young. However, every single path leads to an OFDM air interface.

So why not WiMax

True, WiMax is already using the OFDM air interface. This means that it should evolve to 4G quicker. However, once it gets there, it’s a different story. And since WiMax is the new kid in town, it may not have the staying power it needs. Another thing is, WiMax is not as mobile as the other two technologies.

Final draw

The ecosystem for CDMA is simply not near as strong as GSM. CDMA is only really big in the States. Most other countries stick to GSM. Verizon realizes this, as well as the other advantages to GSM with its healthy worldwide ecosystem.

What does this mean?

For now, nothing. 4G is still almost a year from being released to vendors. That means that carriers probably won’t start testing it for probably another 2-3 years. I suspect though that since Verizon’s horsepower will be towards LTE as well as so many other major players, we should see big things happen.