The game runs on both PC and Apple Mac, but I believe they’ve release a mobile version now for Andriod and iOS users. That said there is talk of a possible Playstation and xBox360 version, but we shall have to wait and see for that. I also recommend anyone who loved lego as a child to try minecraft, because it reminds me of the times when I used to build cool stuff with lego, Oh those we’re the days!

Here’s a quick picture of a basic castle built in game.

For those who are still unsure of what Minecraft actually is about then see the below wikipedia ref.

Minecraft is focused on creativity and building, allowing players to build constructions out of textured cubes in a 3D world. Gameplay in its commercial release has two principal modes: Survival, which requires players to acquire resources themselves and maintain their health and hunger; and Creative, where the player has an unlimited supply of resources, the ability to fly, and no concept of health or hunger. A third gameplay mode, named Hardcore, ratchets up the difficulty of surviving and forces the player to delete his or her world upon death. An outdated Classic version is also available for free, although it is no longer being developed. Creative Minecraft resembles Classic, but with many more features.

So I’ve been playing minecraft at least once or twice a week for a few hours at a time for the past year or so (Since around Beta 0.7, The current version is now Full release 1.1), and I must admit Im not bored of it in the slightest! I always find something good to make or an idea to build something cool.

Lately I’ve been building some good objects in the game either on my own or with a couple of friends (Multiplayer building is the best!), and so i’ve decided to create a few videos so others can see these. I’ve also made a few cool break throughs with the game play and so I’ve released a few video tutorials on my findings. If you’re interested on what I’ve built recently then check the embedded video’s below.

This weeks Creative Builds

I’m definately going to release more videos on the things I’ve created in minecraft, as I feel its an art form and agood way to express and possibly inspire others with things to create in the game.

Minecraft Pokemon Pokeball Monster Spawner

This weeks Tutorials

The below video is one that will help loads of you to create MASSIVE castles in the game with out much effort, So i hope to see some cool castles coming out of the wood work from you all rather soon!

Minecraft Fast Castle Building Tutorial

…and you know how we all need to eat in Minecraft, otherwise you die! Well this little creation is a good way to keep your food supplies up. That said its a bit hit and miss but if anyonecan tweak the way it works that would be really helpfull!

Minecraft Cooked Porkchop Machine

Your Comments and Idea’s

So i’ve done a few videos now and I have had a few comments back from these, and they’ve been really positive! What im looking for though is some idea’s from you guys on what I could possibly build next, So if you have one then you can post below in the comments section of this page or even by sending me a twitter mention – My twitter handle is @cun. I look forward to hearing some of your suggestions! Thanks!

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade
$ sudo apt-get install update-manager-core
$ sudo do-release-upgrade

So what i’ll do is walk you through how to update Ubuntu to Lucid and then the “fun” really starts. What you’ll find is when the update manager “apt” throws this message back in your face you’ll be stuck in a void of nothing and won’t be able to update without manually intervening.

Checking for a new ubuntu release
No new release found

I tried various other methods, and then I came across this method again of doing,

$ sudo apt-get dist-update

I thought I was onto a winner as the server started to update, only to find that when I did a lookup at the version my Ubuntu was using it reported that I was still using 9.04!

$ cat /etc/lsb-release
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=9.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=Jaunty
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 9.04"


How annoying this is turning out to be! Right back to the drawing board.
After a good bit of googling, and a bit of intuitive I managed to get the OS to update… Well not to the latest version, but I thought If i go from Jaunty (9.04) to Karmic (9.10) then I could update to Lucid (10.04)+ Which has the LTS (Long Time Support) which in my eyes is needed for LAMP Servers!

This is how I got it to work…

You first of all need to change your /etc/apt/sources.list and inside of that file you need to comment everything out with #’s and add these lines to the very bottom

deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty-security main restricted universe multiverse


Easiest way on ubuntu to edit said file would be to do:

$ sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

Once you’ve done that, and saved the file with CTRL + X then hit Y for allowed to Overwrite, and its just a case of running the apt update commands again like so:

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade
$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Once thats all updated you should be running a most upto date version of Jaunty, after this you need to update to Karmic.
So to do this we need to tell apt-where to look for Karmic update, So its back into the sources to change the url from Jaunty to Karmic

Replace these lines that we added earlier:-
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty-security main restricted universe multiverse


With these lines:-
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ karmic main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ karmic-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ karmic-security main restricted universe multiverse


Then save and overwrite it again, and continue to update in the same way with the following commands:-

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade
$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Now we and make sure its updated to Karmic 9.10

$ cat /etc/lsb-release
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=9.10
DISTRIB_CODENAME=Karmic
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 9.10"


Note: I managed to get an issue with a package or to, and it would seem that this is a common issue, so if you come into contact with this “/var/cache/apt/archives/kdebase-runtime-data_4%3a4.4.5-0ubuntu1_all.deb” You might want to try this (At your own risk!)

$ sudo rm /var/cache/apt/archives/*
Then once you’ve done that, do the updates again (Sorry it gets boring with writing the update commands, but this is a tutorial so I’m keeping it super easy and simple).
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade
$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

If that still throws an error, you might want to try this.

$ sudo dpkg -i --force-all /var/cache/apt/archives/kdebase-runtime-data_4%3a4.4.5-0ubuntu1_all.deb
$ sudo apt-get -f install
$ sudo apt-get autoremove

This fixed my issue, so I then moved onto checking my version with the overused command:
$ cat /etc/lsb-release

So you should be currently running Karmic 9.10! Great! You’re half way through this update.

Next time to tell the server to update to 10.04, So again we need to edit our Sources

$ sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

Yet this time we’re not looking for an older version so the URL are differnt.

Change this:
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ karmic main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ karmic-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ karmic-security main restricted universe multiverse

to this:
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid-security main restricted universe multiverse


Then its just a case of rise and repeat with the update commands

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade
$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Once thats completed, check your version!
$ cat /etc/lsb-release
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=10.04.3
DISTRIB_CODENAME=Lucid
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 10.04.3 LTS"


Thats you now running 10.04.3 and you now just need to repeat the exact same process for updating to Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick) and then to Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty).
It’s a lengthy process but I’m sure you’ll all agree keeping these things updated often saves massive future headaches!

I hope that helps anyone who has been struggling updating their server install from a very out dated OS version.
Any issues or questions then please leave a comment below.

Thanks Dan.

What I’ve found with facebook is that, I moved there because origianlly MySapce was “where it was at”, That soon lost its cool vibe when Facebook came along with its sleek looks normal user feel, without being run on the backend of the music scene and lack of adverts. Since then Facebook has grown and grown in size to what we know and see today, but the thing im finding now with facebook is people that I dont know adding me randomly, Im getting spam from other users who are getting “fraped” aka facebook raped, as its globally known as, and people requesting that I play farm ville because they need my help to make there farm better… Now im not sure if you to are in the same mindset as me but I couldn’t really care if Megan Fox added me, and if my nextdoor neigbour is posting a status of “I like man love, ok” or how good of a virtual farmer you are… All i origianlly signed up for with facebook was to see photos of me and my friends and organise the odd party or event!

So in my eyes Facebook has started to turn into Myspace, infact it hasn’t at all… its now worse! This is why Google+ has my vote, you’ll notice that the user interface of Google Plus looks a whole lot like Facebook, but better. The UI is cleaner, crisper and easier to navigate and currently it has zero adverts!

I’m in love with Google Plus maybe because I can follow other tech bloggers and journalists and some Google employees.

Lets just see how this lasts, and how long it is before facebook, or another site counter acts to this new Google Plus Service! I think they’re going to have a hard time matching something as clean and big as a good Google service like this! Its outright, brilliant!

Here’s a short video from the guys over at Google, and you’ll see exactly what I mean after watching this.

Also it’s not available in CentOS repositories so in this article I want to tell you how to installed manually used the tarball

First, download the OpenSSH source tarball from the vendor and unpack it. You can find the tarballs at http://www.openssh.com/portable.html

# wget http://mirror.mcs.anl.gov/openssh/portable/openssh-5.8p2.tar.gz

# tar -xvzf openssh-5.8p2.tar.gz

Copy the spec file and tarball:
# cp ./openssh-5.8p2/contrib/redhat/openssh.spec /usr/src/redhat/SPECS/
# cp openssh-5.8p1.tar.gz /usr/src/redhat/SOURCES/

Let’s make the specified files and do some installing:
# cd /usr/src/redhat/SPECS
# perl -i.bak -pe 's/^(%define no_(gnome|x11)_askpass)\s+0$/$1 1/' openssh.spec

Build the RPM
# rpmbuild -bb openssh.spec

Now if you go back into /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/ , Navigate into the folder that suits your OS install, (x86 was mine), You should then see three RPMs. Go ahead and install them:
# rpm -Uvh *.rpm

To verify the installed version, just type
# ssh -v localhost

You should get an out put like the following:
OpenSSH_5.8p2 CentOS *, OpenSSL 0.* **********

* = Version numbers so ignore those, as I didn’t want to disclose that information.

Just imagine, one evening, as you’re walking around your neighborhood, you see this thing zipping past you in the sky!

It doesnt stop there though, They do two versions, the above one is the full scale RcSuperhero. It’s 75 inches tall, weighs approximately 3 pounds, and has an “arm span” or wingspan of 45 inches. The other is one slightly smaller at 57 inch, but still just as impressive! Check this smaller one out in the video below.

RC Superhero Info

Flight characteristics: Great! This is due to the low weight to surface area and that it has a high wing like a Piper cub with a low center of gravity. In addition, he has plenty of vertical tail surfaces due to the double side bodies; which adds to the stability. Also, the RcSuperhero has oversized control surfaces and likes to fly upright. He takes off by being thrown or by standing upright in a stand and lands on his belly skids.

Thrust: The RcSuperhero has about 6 pounds of thrust; this allows for vertical take off. RcSuperhero Package Includes: laser-cut foam, substructure materials, control horns, a plywood motor mount, 2 sizes of rubber bands, carbon fiber fabric strands, two 4mm square arm spars and other various carbon fiber sizes, a picassa photo build album with captions, materials list, and e-support materials (directions and tech. information).

Degree of Building Difficulty: Best if you have previous modeling experience.
Pilot’s skill requirement: Although the RcSuperhero is not a trainer any average rc pilot can fly this. If you are inexperienced I recommend that you practice ahead of time on a simulator.

Now recently I’ve been asked alot about Search Engine Optimization, and how people can improve their own domain listings within Google, Bing, Yahoo and other Search engines without going into the whole symantic drama that is HTML coding.

Being a web developer I thought to myself there is no way to fix a ranking without editing the site! Or is there?… Apprently around 30% of company websites and other small organisations don’t realise that they are infact doing this and they kill off alot of their own rankings due to one little issue that is the www’s!

Still not with me? I’ll run you upto speed on what I’m referring to…
Believe it or not, you can actually ask Google, “How many pages of my website do you have in your memory?”… To do this you need to use the site:url syntax within a Google search, What Google will then do is reply with a list of all your domains pages. Fortunatly if you havn’t been savi and not added this very little fix you will see that Google will have dropped alot of originally decent content and placed it upon the other domain.

Google Search Comparisons

Without www’s

With www’s

Now the above is pretty obvious, I’ve requested all the pages that are in the google listing engine that are registered under the said sites. Obviously these two domains are the same… So why is google indexing them seperately? Thats down to how you have your server/site setup.

Ideally what you want is one domain that is either http://test.com or http://www.test.com and not both.

To fix the issue and gain your search engine rankings quickly you need to tell a visitor to go to either one or the other. Now the question I know you’re going to be asking is, “Which is better, www’s or no www’s?”. Now this is down to personal perference but I personally rather have no www’s, and i’ll explain why.

With the internet progressing with Twitter, Facebook, and other various mobile devices people are using urls more and more day in and day out. Now when you type addresses all day like I do you tent to get bored and annoyed at typing www’s time after time!

Also I actually prefer to go for with the other big reason, I love to use short URLs and www’s are annoying (In my opinion).

The mod_rewrite redirect fix

To impliment this into your site couldn’t be easier! Just FTP onto your webhosting and into the root directory of your hosting files, Usuallly that would be www/ or public_html/ (something like that) create a new file called .htaccess and open it up with your editor.

Paste in the following code.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.dancunningham.co.uk [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://dancunningham.co.uk/$1 [L,R=301]


Now if you have multiple Top Level Domains (TLD’s) then you might want to point them all to the same hosting server / directory. Again thats not a problem we can tell the site to handle these in a similar way. Just add the extra domains into your .htaccess like the below example and the apache server will handle the rest.


RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.dancunningham.co.uk [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://dancunningham.co.uk/$1 [L,R=301]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.cunni.co.uk [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://dancunningham.co.uk/$1 [L,R=301]


I hope that this tutorial makes sense and helps those who are suffering fundamental search engine ranking issues! I only know of these issues as I’ve experienced them for myself. So again im simply passing on some knowledge to help others learn from mine. If anyone has anything they wish to add or comment on then please do so below.

The Youtube how to…

I’ve thrown together a small video here for you to watch. Or play using the embedded youtube player below.

Update

This has actually turned out be to quite a popular video, Alot of people email me and comment on youtube thanking me for posting it, So If you have any questions then please feel free to leave a comment.

This is a common error that occurs when some element on a secure web page (one that is loaded with https:// in the address bar) is not being loaded from a secure source. This usually occurs with images, frames, iframes, Flash, and JavaScripts. There are a few ways to fix it:
1. Change all URLs to https

Just open up the offending web page and search for http://. Change the references on all images, iframes, Flash, and Javascripts to https://. For example.

<img src="https://www.domain.com/image.gif" alt="" />

This may not work if you are loading an image from another site that does not have SSL set up. Also, with this method you’ll be loading SSL images even when the client is loading from a non-secure page. This will add extra processing load on the server and client. This is definitely not recommended for a high volume site.
2. Change all links to // or make them relative

Rather than changing all the links to https://, change them to just //

<img src="//www.domain.com/image.gif" alt="" />

Alternatively, if the images or scripts are located on the same domain, you can access them relatively, rather than absolutely:

<img src="image.gif" alt="" />

Using this method, the browser will know that it must load the image securely if the web page is being loaded securely but it will also load the image normally if the page is not being accessed securely. The image will still need to be available on the other server securely. This is likely the best method of getting rid of the pesky “Do you want to display the nonsecure items?” warnings.
3. Change the browser settings

It is best to change the code of the page that is giving the error, but if you don’t have access to change the code, you can always tell your personal web browser not to display that message. To do so follow these steps for Internet Explorer:

1. Go to Tools, Internet Options.
2. Select the “Security” Tab and then click on the “Custom Level” button.
3. Scroll down until you see the option: “Display mixed content”. Select “Enable”.
4. Click Ok. Then you will get a “Security Warning” pop-up. Click Yes.

One common reason that this warning shows up is using normal Google Analytics code on a secure page. It is a simple fix to enable Google Analytics on a page using SSL.

If you use the unsecure Google Analytics code on one of your secure web pages your web browser will warn that there is some page content that is not secure. This problem can be easily solved by slightly changing the code used to load Google Analytics.

Instead of:
<script src="http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js" type="text/javascript">
</script>
Use:
<script src="https://ssl.google-analytics.com/urchin.js" type="text/javascript">
</script>

If you still get the "page contains secure and nonsecure items" after changing that code you should check for other page elements that are using http instead of https.

Google’s information about using SSL with Google Analytics is also available.

Update: Google has now updated the Google Analytics code to use ga.js instead of the urchin.js file. In the process, they have implemented code that will automatically detect whether http or https needs to be used. The new code will also enable new features so it is recommended that you upgrade. This will solve the SSL problem so you won’t need to worry about the solution above. The upgrade instructions can be found here.

This I openly admit has nothing to do with that either! So I set out looking into VoIP one night after reading that I could make calls world wide without actually spending alot of money, which im sure apeals to most people. After reading for a good few hours, I already had multiple accounts with various voip websites all of which where offering different services, but mainly they consisted of the same basic needs.

After a few hours I had 3 Land Line PTSN numbers directed via VOIP to my PC and I could make calls to any UK landlines for free. After now finding out how to setup a PBX server and have all the PSTN calls forward to that server and I can now recieve calls from my old phone line to anywhere in the world, and if I really want to be cool I can call them back from my home landline, even if im on my jollies anywhere in the world! Technology, You’ve got’a love it!

I moan a hell of alot at work about the annoying browser that is known as Internet Explorer 6, I hate it with a passion!

Reasons:
- It’s outdated (was introduced in 2001!)
- It incapability to handle PNG transparencies!
- It’s very slow at rendering PNG Hacks
- It’s very unstable especially with Javascript.
- It’s rubbish with alot of the common CSS values and functions.

This list goes on and on… So im not going to point any of the more obvious things like the fact that its very hackable via ActiveX, and various other back door loops.

Anyways to further this rant, i’ve added the “Bring down IE6″ logo to the bottom left of my page.
You can read the full article on the .NET website here.

If you wish to join this following, then follow the link and add the CSS and THE BDIE6 Logo to your own site!

/end of rant! (for now, at least!)

Im currently connected to Quakenet (shame) sat in #cunni as I used to for the last 7 or 8 years. I’ve still got my Q bot fortunatly which I didnt know!
So if anyone one is after me either at work or home, then you’ve got direct connection to me via IRC now.

Recently I’ve taken a new hobby up with my girlfriend, Jen (my girlfriend) being the finder of this actually quite cool globally played game!

Geocaching is a worldwide game of hiding and seeking treasure. A geocacher can place a geocache in the world, pinpoint its location using GPS technology and then share the geocache’s existence and location online. Anyone with a GPS unit can then try to locate the geocache.

Also, for the record you pronounce it Geo-cashing, like cashing a check!

This weekend we managed to bag a handfull of items tresure and goodies! Also we’ve been introduced to the “Tracking Bugs” and “GeoCoins” which are items that travel on certain missions all around the world. This is am image below of a large GeoCache, (Ammo Crate) Caches come in many shapes and sizes but this is one of the better ones.

Currently In our possession me and Jen have 3 Tracking Bugs and 1 Geocoin. Two of the tracking bugs have come from the United states and one has travelled over 5,000 miles and the other nearing 10,000 miles!

It’s very addictive and anyone interested in a tresure hunt thats so big its global should definatly take a look into it! Plus it gets you out the house and off the PC so you can see exactly why girlfriends and other halfs absolutly love it. Plus if you have a dog, they will love you more than ever for the walks that you take him/her on just to find these geocaches!

Best thing is, you dont need a standalone GPS device now as the iphone is yet again here to help! For a mere £5.99 you can get everything you need to get geocaching!
Once you have an account on the geocaching website, you grab the iphone app, and you’re as ready as ever!

So no matter where you are, at home, work, on your jollies! If you want to get out and do something geocaching is the prefect way to pass sometime and also pickup some cool items, see some cool views, and even meet some fellow caches!

Website: geocaching.com
My Geocache username: cunni – Visit my profile