Asian Tiger

I have been experiencing erratic mouse movements using my DELL Optical Mouse. Every so often, the mouse will jump from where it was to either the 4 corners of my LCD screen.
For the life of me, I could only think of 2 reasons why my mouse was behaving in such manner:

1. My mouse is possessed (insert Twilight Zone soundtrack here)
2. Someone is taking control of my laptop remotely

Some details of my mouse:
Brand: DELL (duh!)
Model: MO56OU
Product No.: 0C8649
Leaning towards reason (1), I did a search on the Internet looking for mouse exorcists but to my surprise, someone else halfway around the world had the same exact problem as me using the same exact model of mouse. Here’s what I found:

Walt Stoneburner had wrote an article on this exact same problem but he did extensive testing compared to me. After reading his post, I proceeded to send an email to DELL support detailing the problems I am facing and even gave Walt’s article link as a solution.

Surprisingly, DELL reverted after a couple of hours to ask me if the erratic pointer movement happened without attaching the DELL mouse. I replied the email saying “No” since I was able to use my touchpad and pointing stick with no problems in lieu of my mouse.

Within 30 minutes, DELL replied that a logistics partner will get in touch with me to replace the mouse. Woohoo! As simple as that. DELL’s technical support is truly awesome. I’m expecting my replacement mouse to arrive on the 3rd January 2006.

Update: 3-Jan-2006. Received my replacement mouse in the morning and the mouse (Model: M-UVDEL1, apparently a Logitech OEM) have been working diligently and flawlessly.

Boy, am I sick of testing wordpress plugins one by one (Don’t mind my facial expression). During my 12-hours of testing, some worked and some did not. It’s particularly frustrating that some of my favorite plugins do not work; e.g. the famous Automatic Meta & Technorati Tags plugin. My Wordpress is now littered with numerous plugins in both activated and deactivated form.

I hear some hysterical laughs behind my back right now because everyone knows that the Internet is your best friend as well as a source of wealthy information. A search and filter on Google revealed a list of compatible Wordpress plugins for the highly anticipated Version 2. I would like to share this list with all Wordpress 2 users to spare them from tedious testing. Here it is:
http://codex.wordpress.org/User:Matt/2.0_Plugin_Compatibility

If you have other known lists of plugins compatible with WordPress2, do post it here.

I have been a Wordpress user for sometime now and it has never failed to amaze me how simple it is to use WordPress. WordPress 2.0 was released on the 26th December 2005 and staying true to my nature of being an IT geek and my love for webmastering, I just could not resist trying it out.

Therefore, instead of upgrading my previous blogs to version2, I have opted to create my own personal blog using the latest WordPress. As usual and expected, it was a breeze setting up WordPress2 using their famous 5 minutes installation guide. Here are some of the stuffs I noticed when using WordPress2 out-of-the-box:

• Interface - The new WP2 interface is so much more captivating. Everything is well organized and functions are easily located.
• Akismet - Comment spam prevention control is enhanced with the built-in Akismet plugin. All you need is a WordPress API which is easily obtainable. Enter your API key, click Submit and it’s done.
• Post Preview - WP2 has an AWESOME post preview. You can now see how your post looks like exactly the way when it is supposed to be published (including the layout and CSS). This is a big difference compared to the earlier version that shows your posts in plain text.
• From what I’ve read around, WP2 has lots of upgrades under the hood. Believe me, try it out and you will know.

The only drawback I’ve seen so far is that some theme thumbnails are not loading up in the preview but that’s no big deal. Optimal_Title plugin is not working for me and that’s sad news. Now, where can i lay my hands on those plugin to reverse my page titles…

Update: Found it! Optimal Title still works on Wordpress2. Instead of editing the index.php file, locate and edit the header.php file within your theme folder.