David Hewitt

Okay, so this post is going to be considerably shorter, because I feel a bit ill and I’m also quite busy with other things at the moment. But still I’ll be showing you a few completely useless tricks, like making it look like you have billions of friends and putting text where you can’t normally put it. (more…)

In this article I will be showing you how to remove various standard myspace objects that you may not want on your profile. (more…)

I suppose you’ve seen band profiles where they have an image at the top of the page, usually their band logo. And then the profile starts further down. (more…)

If you don’t already know what SocialVibe is then you should definitely join. It’s about the easiest form of charity work you can do. (more…)

I thought I’d just dedicate an entire post to links I use often or have found interesting, so here they are: (more…)

Myspace pages use two major web technologies called HTML and CSS. You may have already heard of these but I will explain in brief what they are and what they do and explain how they apply to your myspace profile. (more…)

As I write this I have the windows live installer running in the background. I decided that while all the browsers are getting bigger and bigger these days I may as well find some software that’s just designed for writing blogs. I remembered that there was a piece of software in the windows live suite that could apparently do just that. Okay, it might be a bit of a far fetched idea having microsoft software publishing to an open source blog. But it was still worth a try, I like messing with these sorts of things.

While I’m on the note of compatibility though, I was impressed to see that the new beta of internet explorer 8 had google as it’s default search engine instead of the less than google standard windows live search. It also imported bookmarks and other items from opera and safari. I didn’t have firefox installed on the computer, but it would be interesting to see if microsoft added support for their biggest web browser competition.

But anyway, the point I’m trying to make with this blog is that the Windows Live installer is about the worst installer I have ever seen. I’m only trying to download and install a 5mb program and it still isn’t done over half an hour later.

Firstly it started out saying it was checking my computer for windows live programs, I’m not entirely sure what it was doing here considering it should know what programs I have, since it installed them! So I sat here for about 5 minutes watching it do that. Then eventually the progress bar started again, and a little message came up underneath saying something along the lines of “Sorry, this is taking a little longer than expected, please bear with us”. Oh right, taking a little longer than expected to find programs that it installed in the first place.

But then again, I can’t be sure that it was actually doing what it was meant to be doing. Because once it got to the downloading stage the percentage went up in nice neat intervals at what seemed to be perfectly defined time spacings. The worst part was, there was no internet activity whatsoever. Downloading without the internet? Microsoft may think they are godlike, but I think this is no feat that they can pull of. The next thing was that it was taking far too long. 5mb of software on a 4mb/s link taking 5 minutes? I also think not.

There should have been another message that came up just to assure me that all was going well on the invisible internet connection, and there was no reason for me to cancel the install. But instead I just got a message saying “Installation may take a few minutes. Feel free to do other things while you wait.” Oh why thankyou, I think I may just write a 650 word blog and publish it with  this free time that you are kindly giving me.

But I left the installer running, just for shear amusement. And I’ve just checked now, all the way through writing this blog it’s been sat on 99% downloaded. So here I sit in the comfort of my google chrome web browser (which I reccommed if you like minimalistic) wondering how us bloggers would get by without a web browser. What would the world be like with microsoft dominating the blogging software market?

Yes, microsoft normally produce fairly decent installers, and recently half decent software. But come on, the installer was just a big joke, and I can only hope once I finally manage to run the software it’s 10x better than the installer.

Oh and, I know I promised a more myspace specific blog, but I felt that I needed to get this rant over with and my blogging system set up as well as possible before I get to the task in hand.

I know that the about page says that this is a myspace specific blog, but it can’t really hurt to go off subject once in a while. Myspace isn’t life (for most people). And I know it seems a bit controversial that this is my first post, but the majority of my blogs will be about customizing myspace.

I decided today that it would be a good idea to look around for beta testing opportunities. I read an article in PC Pro (I think, correct me if I’m wrong) on how to save/make money using a computer. It was basically stating that while beta testing won’t make you money, it may certainly bring some free goodies.

It stated that all the beta testers that were on board with vista got a free copy of vista ultimate which is still worth a fair amount of money. That shouldn’t of been too difficult, some could argue that vista is just a big walking, talking bug. Or that it’s just a bug in disguise. But nontheless the moral of the story still stands.

And while I’m still on the subject of flaming microsoft, I may as well mention that the microsoft beta programs don’t seem to do alot. Maybe I don’t understand the Microsoft Connect site or whatever it’s called, and I know patience is a virtue with things like that, but I really don’t see any beta trials coming in. I have been a member for a good few months previous to this blog post, and some of the software I’ve signed up to test has had a couple of releases in this time, and still no word. Maybe some of you readers could share some experiences of it actually working.

So if you happen to see any good beta testing opportunities that you think you could handle, take them on! But don’t waste a developers time by signing up with the programme and then not helping out with the whole testing process, because being a developer myself, I could see that as being slightly frustrating. And certainly do not leak the software onto the internet. We don’t want any buggy prerelease code out on the internet causing havok, do we?

On a lighter note, Hello, World! This happens to be my first blog. And all this seems a bit new to me, but I think I’ll pick it up fairly quickly