April 30, 2009
Pooh Gets Worried
Another swine flu image …
Again – no idea who owns the copyright
Archive | April, 2009
April 30, 2009
Swine Flu Remedy
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock you’ll have heard all the coverage of this over the last few days
Well here’s the solution.. (via my mother, no idea who owns the copyright)
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April 27, 2009
Logging Email From PHP Scripts
This is more a note for myself than anything else …
By default a lot of php scripts will send emails that appear as coming from the Apache user, which makes tracking down a rogue script really annoying and time-consuming.
You end up with entries in the mail logs similar to this one:
Apr 27 18:22:29 servername postfix/qmgr[23581]: 0F53421C1FA: from=<www-data@servername.com>, size=929, nrcpt=1 (queue active)
Which isn’t particularly helpful if you have more than one site (vhost) on a particular server.
Making it a bit saner can be done via a simple addition to the Apache vhost config:
php_admin_value sendmail_path ‘/usr/sbin/sendmail -t -i -f address@domain.tld’
So now any emails sent from that vhost will reference the email specified instead of the Apache user:
Apr 27 19:40:34 servername postfix/qmgr[2469]: 16A8F21C1FA: from=<address@domain.tld>, size=358, nrcpt=1 (queue active)
There are other additions to Php that can log the path to the script itself, though until such time as someone makes it available for Debian / Ubuntu I don’t really fancy having to compile it in manually
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April 25, 2009
Cool Mugs Are Addictive
Last week I took delivery on a several more cool mugs from Despair.com. (You can never have too many mugs!)
The blogging one has a quote that brings a smile to my face:
“Never before have so many people with so little to say said so much to so few”
And since I work in IT the “consultancy” one took my fancy:
“If you’re not a part of the solution, there’s good money to be made in prolonging the problem”
Brilliant!
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April 25, 2009
Ubuntu Jaunty Upgrade Not A Pleasant Experience
So I decided last night I’d upgrade my Ubuntu desktop to the latest release…
The upgrade process itself was quite painless, but the post-upgrade “cleanup” is driving me mad.
After rebooting into the new version of Ubuntu the audio had stopped working. Loading up alsamixer from the command line and playing around with it for a while eventually resolved that.. though it was pretty much a case of “hit and miss” working out which option would resolved it.
So now I have sound again…
Tracker shipped without a full set of binaries and was eating CPU (see bug report here)
What I didn’t have, either, was the ability to click on links in Thunderbird. Sure, I could click on them, but nothing happened. The resolution to that issue was to do a fresh install of Thunderbird, as I may have had an “odd” version installed (no idea how, but since it’s now working I’m not going to complain too loudly!)
Evolution, which would have been an option to consider instead of Thunderbird, does not support Microsoft Exchange 2007, so that’s no use to me either.
I watch video files using VLC, but that’s also changed quite annoyingly, so instead of having the player controls in the same window as the video you’re watching, you now end up with two windows. I spent about half an hour trying to work out if there was some sane way of changing that behaviour, but I still haven’t found it.
Other annoyances …
Every time anyone logs onto MSN or ICQ you get a disproportionately large notification on your screen.
There are probably loads of really nice features in the latest release, but I wouldn’t rush to do an upgrade
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April 20, 2009
Good Sharp Knives Wanted
Again last night I was reminded just how terrible the kitchen knives I own are. Slicing up a bit of pork shouldn’t be that hard, but every time I have to do it the knives I’m using make it feel like a massive chore.
So can anyone out there recommend some knives? (For the kitchen obviously!)
I don’t mind spending money on a set that will “do the job” and last, but I don’t think I can take much more of the ones I currently have!
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April 20, 2009
RSS Feed Tweaks (Again!)
I’ve made another couple of minor changes to the RSS feed from this site, so any feedback would be appreciated.
What’s changed?
I’ve added a daily delicious bookmarks thing as well as my Flickr feed.
If you think these shouldn’t be there let me know and I’ll remove them
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April 19, 2009
Net Visionary Voting 2009
It’s that time of the year again…
So who should people be voting for in this year’s Irish Internet Association NetVisionary awards?
As usual I have no problem selecting in some categories, serious difficulty in others and almost feel like not voting at all in several.
Best Business Blogger – Mulley
Best Business Podcaster – Krishna De
Best Online Financial Services – no idea. I haven’t used any of them, so I have no idea.
Best Online Trader – Hostelworld
Best Use of Social Media – Krishna De
eGovernment – I’m confused by some of the nominations in this one. How is TG4 eGovernment?. In any case I’d probably opt for the Motor Tax one.
Innovation – Micksgarage for the simple reason that they’ve made me aware car parts.
Internet Entrepreneur – no idea – sorry
Internet Marketer – bit of a toss up here
Journalist – There are a couple of strong contenders .. I’d go for Adrian Weckler this time round
Mobile Internet – Trey Harvin from dotMobi – hands down.
Online Tourism – no idea
Social Contribution – Bernie Goldbach
Web Designer – Sabrina Dent
Web Developer - Iarfhlaith Kelly
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April 17, 2009
Irish Political Party Plagiarise BBC But Think They’re Cool
The BBC have a serious online presence which probably costs them a fortune to maintain every year.
None of the Irish political parties have an online presence that comes anywhere near it (and you wouldn’t really expect them to either… )
But when an Irish political party blatantly rips off the BBC’s design and thinks they can get away with it, what kind of message does that send?
They then try to cover their tracks, but obviously don’t do a particularly convincing job of it.
Now the thing that leaves me practically speechless is the attitude of the politicos that emanates from their comments on both of Steph’s posts:
Get over it Steph. The site is brilliant. Its really is superb. Its online, it works, and its not going anywhere.
As a matter of fact, the site online now, was ready to go last week, the .org site up yesterday was a bit of a teaser based on some very early work.
I think its great. Don’t think anybody else other than yourself and Dave Cochrane of p.ie are even the slightest bit bothered. My two cents, appreciate a brilliant website when you see it!
So the message is what exactly?
(Irish) Political parties don’t have to abide by copyright rules?
As I already learnt, they seem to think that they can abuse email without any censure, so why would design or any other intellectual property matter?
Of course the funny thing is that they don’t do a particulary good job of protecting their own IP.
Both finegael.tel and fiannafail.tel are registered to the same person.. I somehow doubt if that person has any links to either party and most certainly not both …
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April 16, 2009
Logitech Harmony One – Quick And Dirty Review
My home cinema setup has grown over the last year. First of all I had a TV and DVD, then I added more bits and pieces and upgraded various elements. While the experience of watching a bluray is definitely enjoyable, the number of remote controls I’d ended up with was proving to be painful!
The solution was to invest in a universal remote control and since Amazon are now shipping electronics to Ireland …
First off let’s have a quick look at the home cinema gear I’m using:
The tv is a 42″ LG, there’s also a Sky+ box. Of course you have to have an AV receiver, so I’m using an Onkyo TX-SR875, which has a healthy number of inputs and outputs.
Since I like watching bluray without having to worry about region issues I have a US import Panasonic DMP-BD30 as well as a Sony BDP-S350. I’ve also got a Toshiba HD-E1 for HD DVD. And since I also like music I grabbed a CD “jukebox” on ebay which can take 6 cds (Onkyo DX-C390).
Basically you end up with one remote control per device and switching from one audio source to another, one HDMI to another etc,. means interacting with 4 or 5 of them when you simply want to move from watching the TV to watching a DVD boxset.. Painful isn’t the word!
Enter the Logitech Harmony…
It’s an elegant device which comes with a docking station and USB cable, as well as instructions and software cd. The device is roughly the same size as a normal remote control, but that’s where the parallels stop.
The docking station doubles as a charger, so you don’t have to worry about batteries “dying” (last time that happened to me the volume control kept randomly adjusting itself from whisper to deafening!).
Setup is quite easy, though it does take a good half hour to an hour to get it right.
In order to preserve your sanity I’d recommend using a laptop for the setup process, as you will need to do quite a bit of backwards and forwards between various devices and the computer in order to get the remote programmed correctly in my experience.
Loading the software onto my Mac was easy and it automatically updated itself to the latest version as soon as it was installed. Once the software was installed on my laptop it was a simple matter of adding the various devices and their model numbers and telling the system how you wanted things to interact. You can choose, for example, to have any device that is not in active use power off, thus saving on electricity.
The first time you plugin the remote via USB it will do a firmware upgrade and then transfer your presets across – or what it hopes are the correct presets. I’m sure some people are lucky enough to get it right on the first attempt, but I had a couple of minor issues sorting out the switch over to the various video inputs etc., Fortunately the remote is “intelligent” and you can “teach it” using your old remote via infrared (it has an infrared input in its base).
After the initial setup and a bit of testing and tweaking I now have a single remote that “knows” how to seamlessly switch from watching TV, to a DVD or bluray with a single touch. It automatically powers on the various devices you need, rejigs the inputs / outputs / sources etc, and powers down any device you’re no longer using.
If, as seems to happen the odd time, it can’t switch the TV over to the correct input you can easily fix it directly on the remote which has a very simple and intuitive troubleshooter.
Is this device for everyone?
Probably not, as it would be complete overkill unless you had multiple devices hooked up.
However the setup is easy. You need a bit of patience to get it right, but the Logitech software is easy to use and incredibly flexible and intuitive. The fact that you can pretty much “teach” the device using your existing remotes over infrared means that even if you don’t know what model device you are using it can probably “learn” to replicate its actions.
Am I impressed? Yes!
The only question I’m asking is why on earth I didn’t get myself one of these when I had 4 remotes!
Pricing from Amazon UK would appear to be pretty competitive
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