Google, in competition with Internet Explorer and Firefox, is set to release their own browser tomorrow - named Chrome.

The good news is that the beta release of the browser will be open source. It promises to be complete, yet simple.

Google have have released a comic book telling you about the new browser. In typical Google fashin, it is innovative and works quite well. Better than just a simple web page full of text.

One thing I have found intersting is what I’ve read about the tabbed browsing. I have found with other browsers that when you close a tab, the moemory that it uses is not reclaimed fully and there is a it of fragmentation (or bloating of memory). Chrome claims to fix this …. according to the comic book.

Let’s see how it gos.

I wouldn’t normally write about stuff like this, but I grew up with Space Invaders and I think it changed the video gaming world as we know it today. Well, it actually was the very beginning.

Ahhhh the memories…..

Europe’s biggest games convention has marked the event with a homage to the alien “shoot-em-up” as well as 500 exhibitors showing how far the industry has come since then.

The classic (I would say more cult) title first hit gaming arcades in 1978, setting players the challenge of shooting a swarm of hostile extra-terrestrials descending at an ever increasing pace, before they destroyed you.

Space Invaders has been immortalised by Guinness World Records as the number one arcade game of all time.

Game developer Taito is commemorating the game’s anniversary with a worldwide Space Invaders tournament, which will conclude on August 26th.

The Space Invaders shrine can be found here, where you can play it online also.

I love using Mediawiki, but my first install I completely forgot the Admin password. And not having an email address setup in my profile (for the admin user) made me wonder how to reset it.

I knew I had to get into the SQL database, and I don’t pretend to be an expert in playing around with tables etc, but I have done some (very) basic editing via PHPMyAdmin.

The problem with Mediawiki was that I unable to overtype a new password, and select MD5 to encrypt it as it was showing a binary field (as shown in the full post):

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Reset Mediawiki Admin Password

SP3 have now been added to Windows Update, and from all reports does make a difference in performance. A few people that I have spoken to have all said that boot times are reduced, and overall running seems to be quicker.

If you need to download it manually and/or hate windows update, here is a link to a page that lists the locations of the SP3 ISOs ready to download.

The most common/popular one will no doubt be the English ISO, so here’s the direct link from Microsoft for it.

Having used VMWare to build virtual OS systems on one PC (mainly for testing applications), I wondered if there was a open source (and free) equivalent.

I found VirtualBox. It looks to do exactly the same thing as VMWare, and can be installed on a variety of platforms. VirtualBox runs on Windows, Linux, Macintosh and OpenSolaris hosts and supports a large number of guest operating systems including but not limited to Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista), DOS/Windows 3.x, Linux (2.4 and 2.6), and OpenBSD.

I haven’t yet tried it but would be interested in any comments or opinions from anyone that has.