Keeping my digital life in-sync (2)

Some months ago I wrote the post Keeping my digital life in-sync. At this moment I still haven’t found a good working solution to keep my bookmarks in-synch. This mainly concerns the bookmarks within (Mobile)Safari on my iPhone. FoxMarks does a pretty good job for anything bookmark related in Firefox, which is my preferred browser on all platforms (Windows, Mac and Linux).

When it comes to being able to access the same documents from different machines I started to use Apple’s MobileMe by using its iDisk functionality. But for whatever reason it didn’t really work well for me.

Since the time I started using Macs I have been listening to the The Mac Geek Gab Podcast by Dave Hamilton & John F. Braun. For some time now I heard them mention Dropbox. So after hearing about their good experience with Dropbox I decided to give it a try.

At the time of writing I have installed Dropbox on four machines (two Macs and two Windows machine) and I like it! It has a nice feel to it, just by looking at the Dropbox folder I can see what the status of my files are (All done or still folders/files to be synched).

One thing that I have found that does not work (not sure that it should) is when you use Dropbox for folders that also contain hidden files. I have some folders that also have files that start with a dot, making the files invisible on Unix based platforms (Mac, Linux, etc.). When these files got synched to the Windows machine the files and folders where created but where visible. When synching between two Windows machines these attributes are also lost. So it is my guess that file and folder attributes are just always lost.

For not a real big issue but I can imagine that for others it is a big deal, so let’s hope Dropbox will find a way of fixing this issue cross platform.

You can get Dropbox for free including free 2.0GB of storage, which if needed can be upgrade to 50GB for $9.99 per month or $99 yearly.

One important note when using the free version of Dropbox. If your account has been inactive for a period of 90 days Dropbox may delete any or all of your files. This is done without prior notice.
Just so you know…

Strange people those Belgian folks

For my job I am spending a lot of time in Belgium lately, around 2-3 days per week.

Near the hotel I am staying there is a supermarket, nothing special about that. Like any supermarket with its own parking area there are some parking spaces reserved for handicapped visitors to the supermarket.

To my surprise in between the parking spaces for the handicapped I saw another sign (see picture on the left).

Are they telling me that having a small child in Belgium is the same as having a handicap?!?!

But seriously I think it is not a bad idea to have special parking spaces for people with small children. This same treatment is exercised by airline operators, but it looked a bit silly and made me snicker.

New version available for BagTips, MailTips and UberInventory

New versions are now available for the following addons, all are updated for the most recent version of World of Warcraft (3.0.2)
  BagTips (v 0.6)
  MailTips (v 0.9)
  UberInventory (v 1.1)

New versions have also been posted to curse.com
  BagTips (v 0.6)
  MailTips (v 0.9)
  UberInventory (v 1.1)

For BagTips and MailTips only the .toc files have been updated, for UberInventory the following changes have been made
  - Changed: Updated TOC for WoW 3.0.2
  - Changed: Removed forced garbagecollecting (speed improvement)
  - Fixed: Moved guildbank updates to separate handler to prevent disconnects due to high volume of addon messages being sent
  - Fixed: Removed unused events (speed improvement)
  - Added: Additional mailbox events are being monitored
  - Added: Pending sales are now also recorded as actual cash stored in your mailbox

Preparing for Wrath of the Lich King (and 3.0.2)

Just finished a quick test with the three AddOns I have created (BagTips, MailTips and UberInventory) under Wrath of the Lich King.

The AddOns BagTips and MailTips work without the need of any modifications. UberInventory is in need of some changes due to the numerous documented and (sadly) undocumented changes. Most of the changes I have already implemented, but there are still some minor issues to be tackled.

I hope to have those issues sorted within the next couple of days.

When UberInventory passes the test of running fine in Wrath of the Lich King, new versions of all three AddOns will be made available on curse.com

Installing World of Warcraft – Wrath of the Lich King – PTR

To get Wrath of the Lich King I have spent the better part downloading and installing patches. Why don’t they just from time to time put up a new base download kit that includes of of the patches since then, would have made my life a lot simpler. How I had to do this;

1. Download the downloader application (1 MB)

2. Run the downloader (1.07 GB)
3. Patch 3.0.2.8916 to 0.0.2.8962 (280 MB)
4. Patch 3.0.2.8962 to 0.0.2.8970 (104 MB)
5. Patch 0.0.2.8970 to 0.0.2.8982 (223 MB)
6. Patch 0.0.2.8982 to 0.0.2.9014 (76 MB)
7. Patch 0.0.2.9014 to 0.0.2.9038 (31.6 MB)
8. Patch 0.0.2.9038 to 0.0.2.9056 (8.7 MB)

The downloading is fine, the only thing that is extremely annoying is that after each install you have to accept the TOS and EULA, just to notice there is an additional patch that needs to be downloaded and installed. Come on, really?!? Why not just first check if there is a download available (so before logging in) and apply any patches.

Okay, I know I am making a bit of a fus, but I just had to get this of my chest. Now I am fine :)

BTW, when logging into WotLK the authenticator linked to my account is not used. Not a big issue, since it is just on a test server using account that get wiped anyways, but it was a bit unexpected.

State of UberInventory

Lately I have received some notes from users that UberInventory seems to be causing World of Warcraft to respond slow when performing any inventory related activities (looting, visiting bank/guildbank). Also there was a post on UberInventory causing game sessions to be ended unexpectedly.

Over the last couple of weeks we have been mainly doing debug work to try to figure out what might be causing these issues. Here is what we have found so far

• After a visit to the guildbank data is sent over the guild channel to other guildies so they too can see what is in the guildbank without needing to visit the guildbank. Of course this only works when they too have UberInventory installed. For each unique item within the guildbank a message is sent, normally this works fine. Things start to go wrong when the World of Warcraft servers are slow, lag is higher than normal or your guild has a very well stocked guildbank. The message system in WoW has its limit.
• QuestGuru is causing a lot of additional events to be triggered in the game when looting any Quest item. One of these events (GUILD_ROSTER_UPDATE) was also handled by UberInventory
• The method currently used to keep data up to date for UberInventory needs refactoring
• After each update of the inventory garbage collection is performed trying to keep the memory footprint of UberInventory as low as possible

For some of the issues identified solutions have been implemented and are currently being tested.

• Instead of sending all of the messages instantaneously, the messages are added to a queue preventing the system from getting overloaded and causing game sessions to end
• The event GUILD_ROSTER_UPDATE is no longer tracked and handled by UberInventory
• Garbage collection is no longer forced by UberInventory, this is now totally up to WoW to decide when garbage collection is needed. What we can see so far the difference in memory used is about the same

Hopefully we will be able to post an update for UberInventory during this week.

Currently we have the following known issues

• When logging out of a character of leaving the game, the message ‘You are not in a guild’ sometimes appears

• When playing WoW from different platforms (Windows, Mac) using the same set of data (content of WTF folder) the “Days since last visit” reports a very high negative number.
• When you do not have access to all of the guildbank tabs, no data should be sent to other guildies

No timelines are set for these issues, but we will try to get these sorted as soon as possible.

Using the Blizzard Authenticator

For little over a week now I have been using my Blizzard Authenticator and it works nice and easy. Not as invasive I had anticipated, so that is great.

The process of linking the authenticator is easy, maybe a little too easy. When you link the authenticator to your account just only need to input the 10-digit code from the back of the authenticator and you are done. From that moment on you can only log into your account on the web or within the game using the authenticator.

I would have expected that I would be asked for a code from the authenticator so it can check if your are linking an authenticator currently in your possession. So make sure you double, or better yet triple, check the 10-digit code you enter on the webpage before hitting the submit button. Once linked without the proper code from the authenticator you will have to got through a lengthy process to get things undone.

Following are some (partial) screenshots on the process of linking the authenticator to your World of Warcraft account

Step 1) Login into you account page at Blizzard and choose ‘Blizzard Authenticator Security Token’

Step 2) Enter the 10-digit code of your authenticator

Step 3) Success message (hopefully)

After these steps your will be presented with the following entry form when logging into your account

World of Warcraft – webpage

World of Warcraft – Game client