Sunday Times Online.. reading tonight

I bought the paper yesterday but it’ll probably be easier for me to browse it online anyway. I find myself skimming articles and on paper that’s hard to do.
I blame the web. First we grew accustomed to banner ads and flashing gizmos flying out of our browsers, then to suck down all the content blogging creates every day we learnt to quickly scan titles, then along came css so we don’t have to even visit websites any more! Now I can quickly scan the Sunday Times, and I’m waiting for the RSS feeds.
And, pron, Jeremy Clarkson’s article on security at Westminister was great!

The BBC, for instance, is supremely well guarded. The security personnel are programmed to allow nobody in, at all, ever. And if you do make it to the electric revolving doors they will respond only if presented with a computerised photo ID.

To get round all this I simply enter the building every day through the post room.

WPMU Update – Paging Categories Works!

Yay! I finally got around to fixing it! I noticed a while back that paging of categories didn’t work, but then got swept off by some other problem before I could fix it. Anyway, it’s a simple fix to your wp-inst/.htaccess file. Open that file up in your favourite editor, and add the following after the first line:
RewriteRule ^category/(.*)/page/(.*)/ BASE/wp-inst/index.php?category_name=$1&paged=$2 [QSA]
Change “BASE” to wherever your installation lives, ie. http://domain/wpmu/ will have a BASE of “/wpmu”.

WordPress Discussion Options – limiting spam annoyances and problems

WordPress 1.3 has much better anti-spam features than previous releases. It’s still relatively simple however but despite the existence of third-party hacks and plugins to catch spam here’s how I configured my site:

  • Disable email notifaction when comments are held for moderation
  • Before a comment appears, the comment author must have a previously approved comment
  • Hold comments if they have more than 1 link
  • Fill the spam words textarea with words, urls, emails, IP address, etc that you want blocked.

You’ll catch just about all the spam that gets posted to your blog this way!
Later… Feck ya spammer! None of yer crap got through! 🙂

Photography and Graphics Links

How to make a Button Set in the GIMP. Nice.
Solving Color and White Balance Problems: Using Levels – Works equally well in the GIMP too!
Slow Shutter Speeds and Long Exposure Photography – Here’s my tip. Hold the camera steady in your hands, suck in your breath and let it out slowly, hit the shutter. Hard to do, but easier with practise. Rick has a Sony F717 and took “infra red” photos with it in night-shot mode and a 5 1/4″ disk! Must try that!
Two on the iPod – Hacking iPod and iTunes, universal remote control, run Linux on it, put it in your car. Here’s a not very encouraging review of the iPod Photo from playlistmag. All I want is a device to store images while “out in the field” for extended periods so there are better suited products out there IMO.
A Killer Digital Lens – there’s so much happening in the digital camera world, it’s extraordinary!
Ken Rockwell updated with new stuff in the last month, including a review of the Canon 20D (and complains that sync speed is too slow) and an updated digital workflow article. Good thing he uses a Mac, “we just don’t have “computer” problems like that that people blindly using windows consider acceptable.” hehe.

Sandbags Everywhere

They’re all over the place but didn’t stop major damage to many shops and premises in the city center. I guess the road works didn’t make things any better for retailers or shoppers alike. Hopefully we won’t see floods as bad as that again this year. Did anyone see Clonmel on the news? Yikes! I had parked in places that were about 3 or 4 feet deep in water!

Dealing with Mobiles

It’s in the humour category, but this thread is actually quite serious. Motorists talking on their phone are a serious threat to everyone around them.

If I find a driver using his phone at the head of the queue waiting at the lights, I position my bike in front of their car and wait for the lights to go green. When the inevitable blasts on the horn start up after the lights phase, I get off my bike, lay it on the ground and walk over to ask the driver to hang up his call. Can also be combined with method one, above.

If the driver ignores me (as is often the case) then I simply lift up the wiper blades on his windscreen, forcing him to pull over and get out to put them down again. It’s simple, not dangerous and doesn’t damage property in any way. For some reason, though – it really annoys them!

(Thanks Liam for the link!)
Liam posted these two links too.. guestbook entry and georgewbush.com for everyone outside the US!

Site Updates

Working away at a new site design. I also made a few changes to the WordPress MU index.php and added a counter. With that you can do nifty things like adding a photo of the day after the first post, or whatever. In my post.html I put the following:
{if $count == '0'}
    {photoblog msg='' randmsg=''}
{/if}

I really need somewhere to put my “pic of the day”. It’s annoying putting it in-between posts. More reworking of code later possibly.
Anyway, after yet-another-aborted-attempt at another design for this site, I’m drooling over the designs at zengarden. Someone slap me!

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