March 2008 – Page 2 – Something Odd!

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1800 seconds is such a long time, right?

It’s 30 minutes.
It’s 0.5 hours.
It’s 0.0208333333 days.
It’s also 5.70397764 × 10^-5 years.

And it’s not long enough for me. phpMyAdmin logs you out after 1800 seconds, obviously for security reasons. That’s fine if there are other people about, if I was in an office with people coming and going, but I work from home. All I see for most of the day is my family, the radio, my messy desk, computers, and the view out the window. Time to figure out how to make that 1800 second limit a little longer or remove it altogether.

After a little digging, I discovered that extending the time limit to a day is actually quite easy. Open your phpMyAdmin’s config.inc.php and search for or add the following line:

$cfg['LoginCookieValidity'] = 86400;

Refresh your logged out phpMyAdmin and presuming you haven’t left it idle for 24 hours, you’ll be logged in again!

If the time limit really bugs you, you need http authentication. Look for the “auth_type” line in the config.inc.php and change that to “http”. phpMyAdmin won’t log you out as long as your browser is open. Perfect!

If you’re concerned about sending your MySQL username and password in the clear each time you make a request to phpMyAdmin you can either use SSL or try the “config” auth_type. Make sure you fill in the username and password fields in the config file, and secure the phpMyAdmin directory with a htpasswd file.

How to Insult the Mac Brigade

I’ve insulted the Mac Brigade. I am so sorry. I didn’t realise that putting stickers on an Apple Macbook was such a heinous crime. HOW COULD I HAVE BEEN SO STUPID?

Well, that’s how Bernie puts it anyway. Sort of. He posted a photo of my Macbook at BlogTalk and the response surprised me. Hahahaha. Thud! (Laughing my head off)

For those who missed the original shot, here’s one I took moments ago. There are stickers from Laughing Squid (and a button too), getfirefox.com (Thanks Nikolay), Zooomr.com, Hyku, that WordPress crowd who get everywhere, and 2 from Om Malik: FoundRead and NewTeeVee.
The other button says, “hard bloggin’ scientist” and I got that from Jan Schmidt last Tuesday at BlogTalk. Thanks!

Lovely isn’t it? Who’s on your laptop? Anyone got a Dell sticker to put on the Apple Logo? It’d shine through nicely!

A Photowalk in Cork on Sunday

If you’re not subscribed to my photoblog, In Photos, you may have missed my photowalking announcement.

Next Sunday, the 9th of March a number of us will converge on the scenic Lough area of Cork for a few hours walking and snapping. The Lough is a protected wild life area (and one of the oldest in the country), it teems with swans, ducks, geese and I don’t know how many other types of birds. There are always people about, kids feeding the birds, sometimes fishermen, couples walking by the water’s edge. It’s a beautiful place to go for a walk.

And at 3pm we’re going to descend on the area with our cameras. If you’re around Cork and free, why not join us? It doesn’t matter if you only have a point and shoot camera, or you’re only starting out in photography. A photowalk is a great chance to practise and learn. There’s also a local bar giving us a chance to put our feet up and relax, even if driving home means minerals are the order of the day.

So, see you on Sunday?

PS. there’s still time to buy a Daffodil picture before lunchtime tomorrow!

Please sir, can I have more?

A poor urchin goes up to the headmaster, “Please sir, can I have more comments?”
The headmaster looks down from his perch and with a grimace says, “Not before you show me your cookie!”

Well, the poor lad never did get any more comments. He didn’t have the right cookie, but you can. Just grab my Cookies For Comments plugin and anyone who leaves a comment on your blog will need the correct cookie. That will stop quite a bit of comment spam dead in it’s tracks.

It’s the first release and fairly simplistic, but it should give some comment spammers a headache for at least 10 minutes. It’s about time they upgraded their spamming tools anyway. According to my log file, it had stopped over 18,600 spam comments in the last week or so. The rest got handed to Akismet and it stopped several thousand more. They’ve been busy haven’t they?

So, should you use this instead of Akismet? Not a chance. This will only stop the brain dead comment spammers who use automated bots to post to the comment form. Trackback and pingback spam and spammers who either use poorly paid human slaves or browser based user agents will defeat this.

If you use a caching plugin such as WP Super Cache make sure you clear the cache after enabling this plugin. Also, I’m not sure what will happen with those plugins that merge CSS files together.

Thanks Dan for the idea!

Paul Walsh is a true woman

Go chat with him in Oslo. Better than all that reality tv stuff!

Oh, this is good, if the web business doesn’t work out Paul should consider reality tv. He’s here now. He has possibly missed his flight because his laptop time is on UK time. He’s number 4 in the queue with the airline. Good luck Paul!

Edit: check Paul’s Twitter for further updates. The video is here now!

On Tuesday I join the Bebo Generation at BlogTalk

Sigh. The local free newspaper, The Cork Independent, covered BlogTalk 2008 here in Cork and lead with the headline, “Bebo Generation descend on Cork”. Bebo? *mutter* *mutter*

Anyway, I’ll be sitting on a panel titled, From blog-style commentary to conversational social media which pretty much spans the entire blogging and social media experiences. On the panel with me will be Stephanie Booth who I have conversed with a few times on IRC but never met, Bernie Goldbach who I have met a number of times and always has something interesting to say, and finally, Jan Schmidt who I had never heard of but his bio suggests someone who will know a lot about the topic of social media!

How do I feel about the current crop of social media sites? I quit Facebook! Well, no I didn’t, but I will, soon!

Three killed at Dunboy Castle

Three young men were killed today when their car fell into the water at Dunboy Castle just outside Castletownbere in Co Cork.

Investigating gardaí say that the three local young men had been driving in the grounds of Dunboy Castle when their Ford Fiesta got stuck in grass close to a laneway below the castle which is currently being renovated.

Two other friends came to their rescue with a jeep, but for reasons which are not yet clear, all five were in the Fiesta when it slipped from the embankment and into the water.

Sad and shocking as it is, I wouldn’t mention it here except that I drove down there with my family only a week ago. We enjoyed a lovely meal in Castletownbere during which we were told that Dunboy Castle was worth a look. On the way out of the town the castle is signposted so we decided to go look. Here are a few pictures. Judging by the picture on the RTE website I’d say they went into water very close to where I parked a week earlier. That freaks me out a little bit.