April 2006

See this site here for a review of the Azureus, uTorrent and Transmission (mac only) bittorrent clients.
As per my recent A-List, uTorrent comes out on top:

When you see my results, just remember that I was running a specific case. My hardware probably isn’t close to what you are running and I doubt you would be downloading such a large amount of data as I was, or at least from such an active torrent. However, in my case uTorrent seems like the definite choice for a simple BitTorrent client. uTorrent does everything you could ask from a BitTorrent client and it does it without breaking a sweat. Azureus still has its place in this world, besides being compatible with nearly every operating system, Azureus also supports plug-ins and has an extensive Wiki that can answer nearly any question you have. Either way, no matter which client you choose, I am sure you will be satisfied as both clients make it very easy to enjoy the benefits of BitTorrent and open up this large world of networks to the common user.

During the testing, the author observed Azureus taking up 80% of the CPU and 160MB of memory.  uTorrent however was only utilizing 9mb of memory and up to 30% of the CPU.

Dave Winer over at Dave’s Wordpress Blog has written an editorial on the Next Steps for Bittorrent.

In the article he describes the recent milestones of the technology and outlines the future needs in regards to software client integration and usability.

In my opinion, Bittorrent has probably hit its peak.  Over 50% of all internet traffic is Bittorrent based.  The only thing that is holding back the further use of the technology is “ease of use”.

For the lay-man or basic computer user, obtaining the correct software, torrent files and working out which file has the best seeds and peers ratio is not really making the process easy for people to understand and use.  Bittorrent clients such as uTorrent do go a long way to make things easier for people to use the technology - but I envisage something alot easier.

If a user could sign into a website and select a torrent from a list to download and then have the website download the torrent file for them into a folder held on that website - then that would make life alot easier.  The user could sign off the site and still have the torrent downloading for them.  People could be forced to share the files back to a preset ratio and also, locally held completed copies of the torrents could be made available immediately to the user and then seeded back too.

If anyone has ever used the Easynews website to download from Newsgroup servers - then you will have the basic idea of what I mean.

This facility would make the interface to the Bittorrent network accessible, faster and less open to file leechers.  Of course this is just an idea of mine and the resources to run such a service would be huge but would bring benefit to basic users.

I am already amazed by the Wordpress blogging platform!

Just this morning I have been able to:

• Import all of my posts and comments from Blogger
• Set up my sidebar using a drag-and-drop widget editor.
• Add a page that Blogger users get directed to with my popular posts listed.

So far, I am more than impressed.

In the (near) future I will be moving this to my own webspace, so the URL will change again.
Wordpress has many, many templates available but here at Wordpress.com you cannot edit the template code (at the moment).

Thats it!  I have had enough! 

I have decided to switch my blog from Blogger to Wordpress pending the purchase of some webspace.

At the moment, Blogger is having real issues with publishing and is sticking at 0%.
All the other Blogger users over at the Blogger Support Group are reporting the same thing too.

I have been planning to get rid of Blogger for some time now as they seem to have alot of publishing issues. I still have my "Bling Your Blog" series underway in Writely which focuses on customising a Blogger template so I might still publish that here.  When Blogger sorts themselves out, I will also import all my posts to here and make a new template that auto-redirects to this site.

Fancy that! A Blogger "how to" posted on a Wordpress blog!

I know there are lots of "lurkers" who read my blog but never leave comments or feedback. Of course you are more than welcome to come, read and go - but the idea behind blogging is about sharing, discussion and feedback.

So…

• Say hello or ask me a question.
• Tell me you hate it or that you love it.
• What would you like more of?
• Should I buy www.taoskiblog.com and move there and dump Blogger all together?

Some of you may have seen that picture on here recently.

Sorry for the confusion. This blog is NOT closed and will continue to operate normally under my usual mis-management.

And no, Robert… it's not a Butterfly! It's a hacked image I did on Illustrator, of an XBox360 controller. Tsk.

Had a great Easter weekend over the last four days.

Friday:
Went to the Cotswold Wildlife Park with the wife and kids. We went with Mr and Mrs Swimpig and their daughter too. A very nice day out all in all and ended off with some late night card playing and Jack Daniels drinking fun. As usual, Mr Swimpig won.

Saturday:
It was the mother-in-laws birthday, so we were over at her house for dinner. The kids got to play easter egg hunting in the garden, so we have again got a cupboard full of chocolate eggs, chocolate bars and assorted chocolate bunny shaped sweets. And all that after we just threw away the eggs that never got eaten from over two years ago!

Sunday:
Had a lazy day around the house and then went for a dog walk with friends through the local fields. Very nice.

Monday:
Went to my first ever football match to watch the MK Dons beat Hartlepool 2-1 at the Milton Keynes National Hockey Stadium. My eldest son took part in a Football In The Community scheme where the MK Dons came to his school to teach them football skills. As part of a fund raising Penalty Shoot-out competition, we got a free pass for one adult and one child. I then bought two more tickets so that the wife and my other son could come too.

It was quite exciting being in the crowd and we only just won after trickling a shot off the post about 4 minutes before the final whistle. As you may know, I am a seasoned FIFA player on my XBox, so it was nice to see the real thing for a change. There was only a few times when I got confused and thought I would watch the replay of the goal again… only to find I was pressing the head of the bloke sitting in front of me instead of the start button…

Hartlepool were certainly the best side and at times The Dons were quite comical, falling over the ball and passing straight to the other team. Some decisions did not go their way though after Hartlepool scored by barging the goalie down after he had grabbed the ball and vollying the shot in.

I did enjoy it though and might go to the next, and last, home game later this month.
Anyone else up for that?

Report: BBC SPORT | Football | League One | MK Dons 2-1 Hartlepool

Tuesday:
Back to work on the push bike. Microsoft Patch issues ahoy! Great…

Technorati Tags: mk dons, easter, football, hartlepool, walk, eggs, chocolate, jack daniels, cards, dog

As per a wish in my recent gripes about Whats Missing From Gmail, the Google Calendar has now been released!

Shame it still does not appear to be bolted into Gmail though…

Its about time of the year that I did another A-List. A detail of my favorite software that I am installing/using these days. It's probably not going to be much different from the previous list, but here goes…

OS:
Windows XP Media Center editon with Office 2003.
Installed this version of Windows so I could stream video to my Xbox 360.

Virus/Spyware:
I have ditched the Symantec AntiVirus 10 and the Giant Anti Spyware (now known as Microsoft Defender) and am using ZoneAlarm Security Suite. Since having this installed I have had nothing unusual turn up on the PC, only cookies. Even with Symantec and Giant installed before, if I ran a scan it always found something, but ZoneAlarm seems excellent! Plus with the ZoneAlarm firewall built in you can't go wrong.

Browser:
Firefox, firefox, firefox!!! Get it! This is a no-brainer really. Since using this my spyware infections have literally dropped off the planet. I have also installed the FasterFox extension which makes it even faster! I also have the Web Developer Toolbar installed into Firefox which makes checking and testing CSS changes in my blog all the easier. It also makes me into a god when helping people over at the Blogger Help Group.

Torrent Sites:

• Demonoid
• Mininova
• ISOHunt

I still use torrents frequently and they are the three sites that I use most often.
I have started using uTorrent to download torrent files as I found that the webs most popular torrent client, Azureus was big, bloated, built from Java and made my router hang all the time (despite its numerous awards) . uTorrent is small, runs from a folder with no installation needed and is fast! I have also found that on my 2mb ADSL line, if I limit my upload to 18kbps on each torrent, the download speed goes up like a rocket (seeds pending out course). I am thinking of doing a basic "uTorrent users guide" soon - so watch this space.

P2P Apps:
None.
Yep - thats right - none!
I have given up on using these. The last time I was bothering, Warez was still my favorite but now that the torrents have really picked up and downloading stuff does not seem so important any more, I have stopped using it.

Bookmarks:
Some new bookmarks that I go to each day are the Del.icio.us popular links, my Bloglines subscriptions and the Digg.com homepage. There is always something new and amazing on there to look at over lunch. I have started using Del.icio.us more to store my bookmarks now. With Firefox's Live Bookmarks feature, they are available immediately regardless of if I am at home or work.

Recap:
Away Goal:
ZoneAlarm, uTorrent, Del.icio.us, Digg, Torrents

Own Goal:
Symantec, Giant Antispyware, P2P apps, Azureus

Technorati Tags: a-list, symantec, zonelabs, zonealarm, spyware, virus, microsoft, defender, bittorrent, utorrent, azureus, firefox, media center, fasterfox, delicious, bloglines, digg
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