May 2008 – Page 2 – Something Odd!

WordPress MU 1.5.1

The long delayed version 1.5.1 of WordPress MU has just been released. If you don’t want to read the rest of this post head to the download page and grab the zip file or tarball but make sure you come back here to read the upgrade docs.

This release of the popular multi-blog version of WordPress is synced with WordPress 2.5.1 and so has all the great features as well as bug and security fixes that went into that release.

Upgrading from a previous release
As long as you haven’t modified any core files, you can copy the files in 1.5.1 over your current install. Database upgrades will happen transparently in the background. The new salted hashing on passwords requires two constants, SECRET_KEY and SECRET_SALT to be defined in wp-config.php. If you upgrade and you don’t change wp-config.php your users will appear logged out when they go to a different blog. That’s why MU will display an ugly warning message to site admins with the two lines when they log in to the backend.

If you run into trouble, remember to check the forum and Trac. Someone else may have already answered your question.

Twittering by voice on Twitterfone

Pat Phelan launched his new service, Twitterfone to much excitement last night.
Techcrunch had the scoop and as Michael Arrington offered a free account to one of the commenters, he got some interesting responses!

In the third grade, a crazy, spooky looking girl chased me with finger paint, and smeared it on my shirt, cackling like the wicked witch. It left emotional scars (at night I still hear the laughing, and I constantly check the back of shirts I’m wearing in the mirror).

The Twitterfone account would help with the healing.

If you haven’t guessed by the title of this post already, Twitterfone allows you to speak your tweets instead of texting them or typing them on a device. You can hear my Hello World voice tweet as well as read it. I have to admit, I found it harder to articulate a short sentence under the pressure of speaking into a phone than to type it, but that’s just me. My next oral masterpiece will be me saying my own name so Charles doesn’t murder it on the WordPress Podcast next time! 😉

The absolutely gorgeous Twitterfone website was created by the talented Sabrina Dent. When Pat first spilled the beans on his newest project he had nothing but good things to say about her!

How Google Search Really Works

I’ve always wondered, ‘What really happens behind the scenes at Google when I hit the “Google Search” button?’

(via Scott)

Macbook Porn

After I destroyed my Apple Macbook I thought I’d never get to put stickers on a Macbook again. Luckily the machine was insured and the replacement Macbook came this morning.

Compared to the previous machine this one is a huge upgrade! The new Macbook has 2GB of RAM, a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, 160GB drive and comes with Mac OS X Leopard installed!

Now, where did I put that Ubuntu install disk ..

Taking Woopra for a test drive

John Pozadzides sent me a Woopra invite several weeks ago and I eventually signed up last week so it’s been collecting stats on this website for a while. John did an interview with Cali Lewis of Geekbrief which goes some way into explaining why Woopra is worth checking out. It was after watching that video that I decided to sign up.

Woopra has a neat Java based desktop interface but initially I only used the web interface. That’s not so bad, but it’s static and doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of the desktop app. I have to confess, I was slow to install the desktop client, simply because I have a “Oh no, Java is too much trouble” switch in my brain from long ago when I attempted to install the JRE. This time it was much easier, thanks to Ubuntu’s repositories.

$ sh woopra_unix.sh
No suitable Java Virtual Machine could be found on your system.
The version of the JVM must be at least 1.6.
Please define INSTALL4J_JAVA_HOME to point to a suitable JVM.
You can also try to delete the JVM cache file /home/donncha/.install4j
$ rm -fr .install4j
$ aptitude install sun-java6-jre
$ sh woopra_unix.sh

After installing the Java runtime, installation of Woopra was simple. I’ve been looking at it now for a few hours and it’s nice. The ticker tape stats at the bottom are a neat touch, especially the up and down markers that give an indication of how your traffic compares with the day before.

Unfortunately I don’t obsess about traffic stats any more. If I did, I would absolutely love this application. If I was targeting a particular keyword and honing the SEO aspects of my site then I would find this Woopra invaluable. Like Google Analytics, I’m confident Woopra will become a useful tool I’ll come back to when it’s needed. It doesn’t even use that many resources. I barely see it ping home for new data and the Java app is reasonably light.

Oh yeah, I haven’t obscured any of the stats in the screenshots. This blog gets several thousand hits a day if you’re interested, although none from Turkmenistan apparently. I guess if I had Woopra running when Turkmenbashi died it may have showed a blip or two of traffic from that region!

How to upgrade Ubuntu

I hit the Upgrade button and I presume it’s doing it’s thing. The Ubuntu 8.04 ‘Hardy Heron’ Release Notes have just popped up so it’s time to click the “Upgrade” button again. Tom has some great tips for post install configuration.

I’ll be happy if SDLMame, mplayer, UAE and Vice continue to work as normal after the upgrade. Finger’s crossed. It’s getting easier and easier to upgrade Linux distros these days!

Update! Ubuntu Hardy is now installed and it appears to be working fine. There was a problem with SDLMame unfortunately. This dialog appeared at the end of the upgrade:

I didn’t think that would be a problem to fix but then the same dialog appeared saying the “update-manager” had failed to upgrade! Oh no! Anyway, I clicked Close, thinking it was related to the SDLMame problem and then this shocker appeared:

Ah crap! It took over a day of downloading packages to get this far. Sheesh. I closed that dialog and then, nothing. The update manager closed too and I was left looking at a blank desktop. Thinking I had nothing to lose, I rebooted and to my joy up popped Ubuntu Hardy!

I reinstalled SDLMame which fixed the problems with that. Everything else works ok and I’m just wondering if I’m missing anything because the upgrade aborted? Who knows. It works. I’m happy.