Goodbye XP - it's been a blast

Microsoft has announced the date that it will stop supporting Windows XP.  You have one year from today to before XP will become officially 'unsupported'.  Here's how the NBR reported it:


http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/microsoft-calls-time-windows-xp-still-used-500000-nz-computers-ck-138309


XP was released in 2001 - so is showing it's age with three iterations of Windows (Vista, Win7 and Win8) having been subsequently released.

It's a shame, but progress has to be made.  The fact that the operating system (OS) will no longer be supported does not mean that it will stop.  Microsoft will just stop issuing updates and support for it.  If you have an old XP system running on old hardware it will keep going.

I love XP.  It's a wonderful, faithful old companion.  I like it's simplicity and the way it worked.  I spent many thousands of hours playing Doom II on an XP system - these were some of the happiest times of my IT career.


What shall we do with old hardware which won't run the later versions of Windows?

1. Keep running XP on it.  As mentioned above, XP will keep going.  When the hardware breaks then dump it.

2. Upgrade the hardware.  This sounds great, but is not really an option.  The costs are prohibitive and you would be better buying a new system.

3. Install Android.  Yup - you heard me right.  I installed Android 4.0 onto a pen drive and use it to boot my old XP laptop up.  Android works wonderfully on old humble hardware and will become my laptop's OS should XP die on me.

The Android OS is free to download so you have nothing to lose.  Search the Internet for instructions using the keywords "x86 Android" to find out more or use this link to the Wiki page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android-x86

Paint.NET Plugin Index - February update (free download)

I've just completed the February update to the Plugin Index on the Paint.NET forum. Anyone wishing to have a look can find the latest version via the links below. 

I also upload a PDF version to the forum, which can be found in the Plugin Index thread: here

The Plugin Index is free to download regardless of the format. Donations to support this ongoing work are welcome via the Paint.NET forum or use the coffee cup image in the sidebar (on the right hand side of this page) to buy me a virtual cup of coffee.

Kindle Edition: Click Here

Epub Edition: Click Here

 

Introducing Blogger.com

I gave up trying to code my own blog.

Not that I failed in any way.  I actually liked what I had developed and it will form the base of the redesigned Scriptus web site some time in the future.  The reason I'm using blogger.com is for simplicity and ease of use.

I signed up and within 20 minutes had begun copying over my previous blogs to the new blog.  It was so easy!

So this is is.   The Scriptus Web Design blog lives here on blogger.com.

Reading web pages on your Kindle

Here's something I stumbled upon recently Send2Reader.com.

I've been doing a lot of research on HTML5 and CSS3 lately as part of learning these emergent technologies.  As usual, I found a wealth of information on the Internet.   The trouble was, I wanted to read this stuff off line when I had more time.

In steps Send2Reader.

With this little bookmarklet added to your browser tool bar you can send the current web page directly to your Kindle.   The bookmarklet wraps the text and images in a Mobi friendly format and wirelessly sends it to your Kindle.  Brilliant!   Even more brilliant, the ads are automatically filtered out too!

It takes a moment to drag the bookmarklet to your browser tool bar (thats right, just drag it there - no installation is required).  You do have to configure your Kindle to receive pages from Send2Reader, and also create and configure your account on the Send2reader website.   Neither task is onerous.

If you have a Kindle - grab this and start using it.  You'll wonder how you managed without it!

Hello Thingamablog

I decided to start blogging about web design in 2012.  Very quickly I found this new bit of kit called Thingamablog.

Thingamablog is a piece of blogging software that encodes your blog as XML and allows you to upload it via FTP to your website.  The really neat part is that it works with the static websites (that have no PHP or MySQL). 

Using Thingamablog, I can write my blog entries (like this one) and FTP the post to the static website.

How cool is that?