Tag Archives: irishblogs

WordPress MU 1.3.2

WordPress MU 1.3.2 was tagged earlier today. This is a major security update that brings together the fixes in WordPress 2.3.2 and a number of critical WordPress MU specific security problems.

Details of the fixes will be posted to the WordPress MU forum next week to give administrators time to upgrade. This release should be seen as an urgent upgrade.
Thanks to Alex Concha for his help with this release.

Please note: If you have plugins that uses options.php to save it’s options you must whitelist those options using the new add_option_update_handler() API. More information on this can be found on this forum post.

Download WordPress MU here

I'll have a second helping, please!

One important element of a successful tech gathering is food. If you don’t feed the troops then your army isn’t marching. We’ve been very lucky this week with breakfast, lunch and dinner. We’ve been completely spoiled by David, the cook at the Ranch (and Diane too!)

dinner

I didn’t have a second helping today, there was a gorgeous cheese cake for dessert. Too tempting!

Biosphere 2

Can you imagine staying inside a sealed building for two years without physical contact with the outside world? That’s what happened at Biosphere 2 in 1991. It makes an interesting story and the Wikipedia page has a lot more on that mission and a second one that followed.

We visited there today, here are a few photos!

Biosphere 2
Matt wants us to go live in Biosphere 2, away from the Nintendo Wii distractions to help get WordPress 2.5 out on time.
Biosphere 2Biosphere 2Biosphere 2Biosphere 2Biosphere 2Biosphere 2
A room with a view
I asked for a room with a view and they gave me this. WiFi reception is spotty but the view is stunning!

Blogging in Arizona

Most of the Automattic team are in the wilds of Arizona this week. Looking out the window I see an environment as alien to the green Irish landscape I’m familiar with as I’ll probably ever see. Cactus grows everywhere, dark green bushes cover the hills and the dirt on the ground is bone dry. The sun beats down out of a clear blue sky. It’s warm outside, but so cold in the shade. It’s still winter after all, even if it doesn’t feel like it to me.

Cactus

It’s WordPress this, WordPress that. Despite the broadband going down yesterday there’s plenty going on here. Stay tuned for new developments!

PS. Act Two, Automattic Fundraising. Great news for Automattic and WordPress!

How do you backup to DVD?

One of my external drives failed yesterday and for an hour I thought I had lost a lot of family videos and other stuff. My photos are backed up on to another drive with backuppc, but there simply isn’t room to backup everything there. Luckily the drive came back after I unplugged it and let it cool down but I don’t trust it now. I think I need a RAID server with at least 1TB of space to be future proof for the next 2 or 3 years.

I would love an application that you could point at a directory or a list of files and directories and it would burn them onto multiple DVDs, filling each disk to it’s maximum. Backing up my photo archive has always been a bit painful, trying to find and remember which directories I had just burned, comparing file listings, etc.

Tar doesn’t cut it however. I want to be able to restore a single file or directory by looking at the DVD contents in a file manager.

I used to have a DOS app that did this. I can’t remember what it was called, but point it at a directory of stuff and it would prompt for a floppy disk, write to it, prompt again, write, and so on until finished. Simple.

Is there a Linux or Mac app that will do that? I think I’ll write a shell script to do it if nobody else knows of an alternative.

Everything is stupid

Some guy called John Waters says bloggers are stupid and can’t string two words together. Now, we all know that’s a bare faced lie, but maybe he had been trawling Bebo when he came up with that freakish idea?

I missed the radio interview where he said that and frankly I couldn’t care less. I only picked up on it when Irish bloggers went gaga over it. I did get a kick out of John’s new blog though. That’s funny. Thanks Niall.

John Waters

Lunch in the Long Valley Bar, Cork

We had lunch in the Long Valley Bar a few days ago. This is an old pub on Winthrop Street in the heart of Cork City. It’s a great place to go drinking at night, it’s full of atmosphere and lovely old decor. Unfortunately for lunch it’s only ok. Not that I can judge properly, all we ordered were toasted sandwiches but they weren’t great, and the staff member my wife dealt with was quite grumpy. Are we expecting too much of bar staff these days perhaps?

Anyway, great pub to drink in, but don’t go for the toasted sandwiches! 🙂

toasted sandwich

Here’s a more positive review of the pub, just in case someone tries to lynch me for daring to say a bad word about the dear old Long Valley Bar!

Your card has been captured

Irish Credit Unions recently announced that they would be rolling out an ATM system around the country. So far I’ve only seen one ATM. This one is in the Savoy in Cork and it looks like Credit Union members still haven’t got the hang of these pesky ATMs. It swallowed someone’s ATM card! Not a very successful start, eh?

Your card has been captured by the atm

How to replace and calibrate your new Macbook battery

Last week I bought a new Macbook battery from the Apple Store to replace the slightly aged one that came with the machine. I’m travelling shortly and I need enough juice to play MAME and Doom do some work while I sit in airports waiting for connecting flights.

Late last week a parcel came for me, my new battery! Here’s how I replaced the old battery and calibrated the new one, with nice pictures.

macbook battery box

Continue reading “How to replace and calibrate your new Macbook battery”

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Consider installing a browser extension that blocks ads and other malicious scripts in your browser to protect your privacy and security. Here are a few options.

  • uBlock Origin is a free, open source, ad blocker for your browser.
  • Use pi-hole if you have a spare Raspberry Pi on your network.
  • Set the private DNS settings on your phone to dns.adguard.com to block adverts and trackers.