What on earth has happened to the last couple of months ? I have absolutely no idea whatsoever where January went, and no sooner do I wrap up with BugTrack, February has vanished as well…

Anyway, I digress… It has been a long time coming, but finally, RSD Bugtrack v2.1 is complete. With a rather radical make-over, and a spattering of new features and enhancements under the hood, BugTrack has quite literally “come of age”

With the new version of BugTrack, I have decided that I will no longer sell it through my own store, but instead I have submitted it to the rather brilliant Envato network, under the Code Canyon umbrella. In it’s new home, buyers will have instant access to updates as soon as they are published, and can benefit from a reduced price if using pre-paid funds.

If you would like to take the Online Demo for a spin, then please do. (some of the options in the demo have been disabled, but otherwise it is fully functional)

I hope that you enjoy the new version, and if you have purchased BugTrack in the past, and have not received your upgrade, then please do contact me

The last couple of days have seen some major updates to the Transporter Tycoon Game.

HQ Levels have now been increased, allowing all players (Premium and FTP) to upgrade the HQ to the same level. Previously, FTP (Free to Play) players were limited to level 7, and Premium players limited to level 15. The new level max has not been published, but left for the players to figure out for themselves.

With this change, the maximum level for the Warehouse and Workshop was increased, from a max of 5 to a max of 10, further increasing the bonuses awarded by them.

Today sees the Port level increase. In order to upgrade the port to maximum level, you will need to upgrade your HQ in line with it, but it will allow players to run many more ships.

Also today, upgrades have been activated on land based vehicles. These upgrades will increase the speed of the vehicles, or the size of the fuel tanks meaning that they can travel further, and at the same time, travel faster. A full compliment of upgrades to a vehicle will make significant time savings.

Once I am happy that the release today has gone through smoothly, without issue, I will extend the upgrade options through to the ships, meaning that port owners will be able to get those goods to their destination a lot quicker

Well, I finally did it. After going back and forth to the Apple Store for a few days, I decided to buy the newly released Magic Mouse, and a better name could not have been given to this technological wonder…

Right out the box (following the near 70mb software update required for it) it was working like a charm. Having used slim Kensington mice of late, most recently the slim-blade media mouse, I found that the Magic Mouse felt very comfortable in the hand and natural to use.

The scrolling is very smooth and intuitive, much more so than a conventional scroll wheel, and the buttons feel very positive. The mouse is a good weight, and feels comfortable and sturdy.

I read a lot of reviews before buying the mouse, and many people have had problems with it. To an extent, I can understand why, and I thought long and hard about making the purchase, but for me personally, this is what the mouse should have been years ago, and I could not be happier with it.

There is no shortcut on the mouse for expose and dashboard, but I only have one hand on the mouse, and find the other very useful for pressing the dedicated keys on my aluminium keyboard on the rare occasion that I need either (those with classic keyboards may struggle, but if you have the full sized alum model, you have no excuse)

My rating for the mouse.. for me a no brainer.. 12/10 but some it seems, a waste of money.

Each to his/her own

Being a 3 mobile broadband user for some time, I love the convenience of plugging in a dongle and getting online with my MacBook Pro just about anywhere I go… But upgrading to Snow Leopard fast put the brakes on that, as you will likely have seen in my previous post.

I spent a long time hunting for solutions on Apple’s site, and various third party sites, and found nothing at all that I could find to work (and I tried them all)!

Completely frustrated by what seemed like hours of “tinkering” I picked up the phone and called three. Initially I was connected to the first line tech support, that I assume was in Delhi, and was eventually passed over to a supervisor as I refused to go through all the “first line” bog standard “stab in the dark” fixes (no disrespect to tech support helplines, I have been there, done that). I was told by the initial tech before being passed to the supervisor that the only solution left was to wait for a fix that they had no ETA for.

I had the ZTE MF627 USB Modem. This worked brilliantly under Leo, (despite the fact that the 3 connect software was not terribly pleasant to use) but refused full stop to work under Snow Leopard.

The options I was offered by three was to get one of their Huawei dongle modems, and the supervisor seemed quite confident that it “might” work.

To cut a long story short, I had been browsing the three site, and seen advertised the newly released “MiFi” modem, which is essentially a small wireless hotspot in your pocket. You turn it on, then connect to it with any wireless enabled device that you want in the same way you would connect to any other wireless network. Quick, painless, and completely platform independent. It also allows you to connect multiple devices simultaneously, unlike the dongle.

Now, while the device was actually quite expensive (£69.00 on contract, £99.00 on PAYG) I have to say it is probably the best 100 quid I have spent in a long time. It just works. No faffing about, turn it on, drop it in your pocket, then connect your laptop. Flawless ! If you find your internet connection is not strong enough where you are sitting, unlike the dongle you can take this and place it on a windowsill.

Before I purchased the MiFi, I did check more than once that I could buy the PAYG modem, and insert my current contract sim in it, and was assured that I could.

For those of you that have upgraded your MacBook to Snow Leopard, and need easy access to 3 Mobile Broadband, I would not hesitate to recommend this device to you if you have the cash to spare.

It has occurred to me that there appears to be a number of links out there on the interweb for my BugTrack project, and google analytics has been telling me that I am getting a few visits from sites that can only be listing it (I can think of no other reasons for traffic arriving from these sites).

BugTrack is still alive and well, though is under the knife currently. It is currently undergoing a major facelift, tweaking the interface, and improving the workflow.

All the features of BugTrack v2.01 will be retained (though some of it is being re-written) and new features and functionality is being added.

If you want to dive right in and get your hands on v2.01 which is still available, then head on over to my RSD Site, where you will find more information and a link to purchase the software. Anyone that purchases the current version will automatically be notified when the new release is ready, and will be upgraded at no additional cost.

I will post more information as I get closer to release, complete with some screenshots, but wanted to make sure that those coming here looking for BugTrack were not left wondering what had happened, or where it had gone.

Worked this morning with Coops adding a new reward system to the Core Exiles Game. For active Participants in IRC Chat, we are now randomly awarding a fuel regen bonus, that will increase the fuel regen by 6 units per tick for a period of 6 hours!

To be in with the chance of winning the bonus, you simply need to be active in IRC chat, simple as that! We even make it mind-numbingly easy for you by providing an ajax mibbit widget to connect to the chat, so it really is as easy as clicking a button.

We do of course recommend that users install and configure a dedicated IRC client (many free clients can be found with a quick google search) but this is not a requirement for winning the competition !

If you are a fan of browser based sc-fi games, then get on over and check out Core Exiles, what do you have to lose ?

After an eventful weekend, I am back on track again!

My buddy and I managed to get all the boxes ticked for the new project this weekend, so it is now live, ready and waiting for the barns doors to be smashed..

Nexusfiles is back.. ! Our favourite old site has been raised from the ashes, which has been made possible with the various technology updates of the last few years, and also the general storage/bandwidth costs falling. The old .com domain has been snapped up and is plastered with ads, but we used to run .co.uk as well, and being as it was available, we went with that.

Hop on over to Nexusfiles if you are a fan of Unreal III, Forged Alliance/Supreme Commander or Total Annihilation. We currently have 6.5gb of maps, patches and mods online, and we will be adding to this over the coming weeks and months.

If you have files to share, then let us have them.. details can be found on Nexusfiles.

The last week has been little more than a nightmare.. I seem to take one step forward, then three back..

Run off my feet, working with my pet hate (windows!) and to wrap it all up I spend nearly an hour on the phone to my mobile broadband supplier.. the modem will not work with Snow Leopard. Expecting them to say they are working on it, instead I am told that it does not work, and that they recommend I downgrade to Leopard if I want it to work.. well of course I threw open my drawer of CD’s and dug out the Leo disk to get started… NOT !

After nearly an hour on the phone, being taken through the long list of “dongle” modems that they have, being told that “this one might work, but only in rosetta mode” I gave up, and spent a fortune on a new device that is platform independant.. I am told it will work with my current sim and contract, but my dealings with the Delhi helpdesk this evening leaves me feeling less than confident!

Delivery should be Tuesday with any luck, so we shall see what happens.. hopefully I will be back up and operational, but time will tell.

To keep me going until then, I am working with an old friend on a new project (more details soon!), so that has my attention at the moment, but here’s hoping that I will not need mobile broadband until then.. ? o.O

I had to take a moment to post for those that are interested on a little gem i happened upon last night.

www.sysctl.co.uk have an irssi client beautifully wrapped up for Mac users. Despite my preference for simplicity when it comes to IRC, I have never bothered with irssi in the past as I was more interested in “low maintenance” software.. well now I have the best of both worlds!

I have this running on a Snow Leopard build, and despite one single crash shortly after launching it for the first time, it ran like a charm. If you are running Snow Leopard, and use IRC, I strongly recommend you give this puppy a test drive..

Work on the bugtrack development server is coming along nicely. The layout is almost complete for the new version, I just have to get the page layouts in and tweak a couple of bits, then get a few testers in to see what they can find.

Waiting on a computer to be delivered for a friend of a friend of a friend (geez, I LOVE those jobs) that apparently will not start up.. when (if) it arrives I can see what’s what but not going to dwell on it till it hits the doorstep.

I have to run to the store to pick up a new switch, the current one is a few years old and getting a little temperamental, and with the recent hardware additions to the office, a gigabit switch will make file transfers a little quicker (though I may not have time to make the tea while I wait.. hadn’t thought of that.. bugger!)

Had a screaming headache all last night, and well into the morning (the type that feels like a ten ton truck is parked on your head) so as a result I had about an hour sleep.. gave me the opportunity to make a few tweaks to the Core Exiles Forum that I should have done a while ago.. still, all done now

That’s me for now… brain… shutting… down ugh!