Top Google and Yahoo Search Terms Announced

Posted on December 4, 2007 by Goody

Just looking down the list of top searches of 2007, you can see a huge difference between Google and Yahoo. Within the past few days they both announced what people had typed into their search bar the most, here are the results.

Google

1. iphone
2. webkinz
3. tmz
4. transformers
5. youtube
6. club penguin
7. myspace
8. heroes
9. facebook
10. anna nicole smith

Yahoo

  1. Britney Spears
  2. WWE
  3. Paris Hilton
  4. Naruto
  5. Beyonce
  6. Lindsay Lohan
  7. Rune Scape
  8. Fantasy Football
  9. Fergie
  10. Jessica Alba

It’s safe to say that Yahoo is a favourite with the teenage male market!

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25 Years of Water Effects in Computer Games

Posted on December 3, 2007 by Goody

While browsing the interweb, I stumbled upon these rather cool images. It shows how games have represented water throughout the years, and it really shows how far the technology has advanced in a short space of time. It makes me wonder what we can expect in the next 10, 15 even 30 years. Here are a few:

1982: Flight Simulator 1

Flight Simulator

1991: Sonic The Hedgehog (Master System)

Sonic

1998: Half-Life 1/ Counter-Strike (PC)

HalfLife

2004: Far Cry (PC)

FarCry

2007: Silent Hunter 4 (PC)

SilentHunter

You can see the whole bunch more here

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Man Told He Owes $211 Trillion

Posted on December 2, 2007 by Goody

Everyone gets into a bit of debt at some point in their life. Sometimes this causes checks to bounce which can be a small wake up call that you need to do something. But imagine being told you owe $211,010,028,257,303.00. That is what what happened to a man called Joe Martins.

He decided to close his bank account, so he paid off the small debt he owed the bank, and got a big surprise when he opened the confirmation letter. Joe said “… I open up the letter and I look at it and I’m like, ‘No, you’ve got to be kidding me’. I didn’t know what to think. Obviously $211 trillion is a little above what I put in my bank account.”

$211 trillion is a huge amount of money, around 80 times what Bill Gates earns in a year. The bank have blamed a word processing error and are sending Joe an apology. I think he made the right decision closing his account, don’t you?

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What will YouTube look like in HD?

Posted on December 1, 2007 by Goody

YouTube announced a while back that they are working on making YouTube videos appear in High Definition. The current player isn’t the best quality, however most of it depends on the original video that is uploaded. A problem with HD videos is that they take longer to load, just like the video below, take a look:

YouTube Preview Image

The video quality is great but I think YouTube will need to sort out the streaming times. Although better quality is good, people do not want to be waiting 3 minutes for a 1 minute clip.

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Talk Show Host Pays 80 Salaries!

Posted on November 30, 2007 by Goody

I don’t know whether anyone has been following the Writers Guild of America strike over in the US, but it has been going on for around a month now. It hasn’t really affected me over in the UK. In fact, it hasn’t affected me at all. However, it does have an impact on television over in the US. They have been playing repeat after repeat after repeat of talk shows that require writers to come up with topical jokes.

The writers are taking a stand and want money from DVD’s and something called ‘the internet’, which is fair enough. Why should the studios get paid gazillions when the writers only get a small % of the profits? However, a problem with the writers striking is that shows have to shut down. This means that all the people behind the scenes are out of work. The make-up girl, the assistants and even the coffee guy all paying the price, while the writers strike because they want more millions.

A good soul named Conan O’Brian who hosts his own talk show, has took it upon himself to PAY for those people who have not been paid since the strike began. I don’t know whether he is doing it for the brownie points, so he can turn around and say ‘I am paying you dammit, work!’, or whether it is because he feels for the people who work on his show, and has a stupid amount of money to help them.

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Increased Blog Activity

Posted on November 30, 2007 by papa_face

Just to let readers know that this blog will be updated at least twice a day from now on as I have hired two posters lowboman and Goody.
The reason I have hired them is because I probably won’t be able to write something up every day, so they’ll give you something to read if you’re bored 😀
I’ll try to post something interesting when ever I can though 😉

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Xbox 360’s are plagued. Still!

Posted on November 30, 2007 by papa_face

A few months ago I bought an Xbox 360 because Halo 3 was coming out (yes I like Halo that much… anyway). If I recall correctly it was due for release on the 26th of September 2007. I knew my luck was bad, I just didn’t realise how bad it was. The day before release my 360 broke down.
I phoned Xbox support, who I have to say were very good at handling my issue. They arranged for a courier to come and pick the 360 up, all I had to do was find a box to put it in. That is when my laziness comes in. I put it in the original 360 box even though they tell you not to as you won’t get the box back, but meh.
Anyway it took about a week and 3 days to come back, apparently its graphics engine was broken, so they replaced the entire inside of the 360. Ooooo and they gave me a free month of Xbox Live for the inconvenience so it was all good.

On the 18th of November I bought another 360 for my dad. I got the new HDMI enabled premium 360 this time, which I was quite chuffed with.
Now I am presuming that these new HDMI 360’s were made AFTER they discovered a lot of issues with the 360 (and set 1 billion dollars aside for repairs). I opened the box of the 360, it was nice and white with silver highlights, just like my other 360 so nothing new there.

Plugged it in, ready to go and I get a E68 error argh!
So once again I had to phone Xbox support. They’re sending out a new hard drive this time lol.
It seems that the problems with 360s will never EVER end.

Oh and the broken Hard Drive was made in Taiwan, and the working one (mine) was made in Singapore, so watch out anyone with a hard drive made in Taiwan! 😀

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Protect a PHP page the easy way…

Posted on November 30, 2007 by papa_face

Updated code: http://www.papaface.com/2010/03/07/simple-php-page-protector/
Have you ever wanted to protect a PHP page to prevent people from viewing sensitive information?
Well I haven't but that doesn't stop me showing you how to do it if you ever need to 😀 .
The code below is extremely simple indeed. Anyone with a basic PHP understanding will see how simple it is.

All you have to do is paste the code below to the top of your PHP page and change these values:


$pass = "YOUR PASSWORD HERE";
$user = "YOUR USERNAME HERE";

Here is the code that I wrote, enjoy.

<?php
	session_start(); //initiates the sessions
	if	($_POST[&apos;submit&apos;])//checks to make sure the login form has been submitted
	{
	$pass = "YOUR PASSWORD HERE";
	$user = "YOUR USERNAME HERE";
	if	($_POST[&apos;pass&apos;] == $pass && $_POST[&apos;user&apos;] == $user)//checks if the password submitted by the user matches the password stored in the $pass variable
	{
	$_SESSION[&apos;access&apos;]	= 1;//if login is successful create a session that can be authenticated 
	header("Location: " . $_SERVER[&apos;PHP_SELF&apos;]);//reload the page. The page will now not load the login form (see the first if condition)
	}
	else// if password is incorrect reload the login form
	{
	header("Location: " . $_SERVER[&apos;PHP_SELF&apos;]);
	}
	}
	else if	(!$_SESSION[&apos;access&apos;])//if the "access" session is not accessible show the form (not logged in)
	{?>
	<form action="<?php echo $_SERVER[&apos;PHP_SELF&apos;]; ?>" method="post">
	<table align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3">
	<tr>
	<td bgcolor="#F7F7F7">Username:</td>
	<td bgcolor="#F7F7F7"> <input name="user" type="text" /></td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
	<td bgcolor="#F7F7F7">Password</td>
	<td bgcolor="#F7F7F7"><input name="pass" type="text" /></td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
	<td colspan="2" bgcolor="#F7F7F7"><div align="center">
	<input name="submit" type="submit" value="Login">
	</div></td>
	</tr>
	</table>
	</form>
	<?php
	exit;
	}
	?>

What is interesting about this code is that you don't need to keep logging in everytime you return to the PHP page. It stores your valid login session 🙂 .

Feel free to post a comment about the simple script, or indeed ways to improve it.

You may test the script here
Username: username
Password: pass

Posted in Coding | 11 Comments

Sony Is Environmental Friendly, Its Competitors Not So Much

Posted on November 30, 2007 by papa_face

Sony Is Environmental Friendly Its Competitors Not So MuchIt was announced by the activist group today that the company known as Sony is re-rated as environmentally friendly in there book. Now this is good news for the Large technology corporation as its major competitors and rivals like Microsoft and Nintendo did not get approval by Green space. Now Green space was not entirely happy with Sony Ericsson because they apparently claimed having recycling programs in countries like Thailand and Russia but when further investigated by Green Space it was found that these programs where non existent and some what of a lie from the company. Sony got the award because they have eliminated certain chemicals form their headsets and plan to take out all deadly chemicals in their phones starting in 2008, Microsoft and Nintendo have no such efforts and were ranked as non-environmentally friendly because their continued use of harmful chemicals in their products.

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University On Your Phone

Posted on November 29, 2007 by Goody

Mobile phones being used to hire and fire employees, surf the internet, watch videos and now you can…get an education.

A University in Japan is giving 1,850 students a chance to get almost 100 courses directly onto their mobile phones, in the form of a Power Point presentation. 71% of the University is owned by a mobile service provider named Softbank (so I suppose it isn’t that much of a surprise) and is currently called the ‘Cyber University’.

The head of the University says that “the technology will allow those with jobs or who have disabilities greater access to education,” He also added, “…our duty as educators is to respond to the needs of people who want to learn, even if the course is interrupted by an SMS.”

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