Archive for the ‘General’ Category

It is apparent that I have been a lapse lately with most of my hobbies and interests for the last couple of months. This site is not regularly updated, I have not been out with my camera (though it is getting plenty of use!), I haven’t sat and used my computer for any length of time and finally… I haven’t been out sailing much. What could be the problem? Well I have some answers….

Having just bought a new house, I have been very busy with a bit of renovation. My computer is on the verge of meltdown (it keeps hardware resetting itself). And most importantly… its summer… and its time to be outside whenever possible… not sure how this explains the sailing!?!?

My mind is starting to yearn for some techie things again now and so the building of my custom ‘Digital Darkroom’ will be taking a step up within a week or two. If only I could fix the computer!!!

As I have not written to this site in a long time, it seemed like fun to actually take up on Gringod’s Wikipedia Meme… so …

1. Go to Wikipedia.
Done.

2. In the Search box, type your birth month and day (but not year).
May 16

3. List three events that happened on your birthday.

• 1568 - Mary Queen of Scots flees to England.
• 1866 - Charles Elmer Hires invents root beer.
• 2005 - Sony officially unveiled its PlayStation 3 game console during an E3 conference.

4. List two important birthdays and one interesting death.

• Birthday: 1953 - Pierce Brosnan, Irish actor
• Birthday: 1966 - Janet Jackson, American singer
• Death: 1990 - Jim Henson, American puppeteer (b. 1936)

5. Post it.
Done.

As far as memes go… this is actually quite an interesting one!! Give it a go… I will pass it on to anyone!!

A panoramic stitch made from 5 portrait images of the Colloseum in Rome… where else??!

Thanks to a link from Gringod, I downloaded the ‘New Microsoft Color Control Panel Applet for Windows XP’ from the M$ website. This great tool finally gives you control of the colour profiles installed on your system and switching between different profiles for different tasks is a simple matter of selecting what you want.

The real benefit for me came in the added bonus side effect of the tool overcoming an issue with the ATI X800 graphics card installed in my system. By reading the ‘Readme’ file after installation (something I never do but may start now) I discovered that it is possible to use flags on the application. By altering the application to start with a /L flag, the tool will load up the default profile in stealth. This shortcut could then be placed into the startup folder to be run when logging in to Windows.

I was keen to try this because I have been having a long term problem with the ATI drivers. My calibration tool has a profile loader that will load the profile when the computer starts but the ATI drivers would then override the proper profile with something akin to nothing! I discovered a year ago that I had to remove the profile loader from startup, wait for Windows to load then use the loader. All would be well with the LUT (Lookup table) and I could continue as normal… this was a complete pain though and now that this has been solved on my PC, I am quite pleased!!

• From the M$ site, the tool has the following features;
• • Install and uninstall ICC color profiles
  • Inspect, rename, and compare two different color profiles
  • View a 3D graphics plot of color profile color gamuts
  • Associate color profiles with devices such as printers, monitors, and scanners
  • Apply custom color gamut adjustments to one or more displays on the fly
  • Set up display calibration reminders at intervals you specify

My 2006 chili challenge has begun. This will involve growing everything needed to create a selection of chilli based products! Ideas of the cusp include chilli ketchup, chilli mead and general chilli dip!

Yesterday ‘H’ and I sowed a selection of seeds in the new virgin propogator. Other than the tomatoes which should be sweet and juicy, the rest of the seeds belonged to some heavyweight heaters as shown here!

The next stage of the challenge will begin after germination.  Place your bets now as to what might make it to the land of the living and check back in a couple of weeks for an update! 

Having been completely oblivious to the fact that the world reknowned exhibition was in the wee island of Guernsey, it was lucky that one of my cultured friends let slip he was going yesterday. All plans were put on hold… well shifted around… and we went for a look at the WPOTY yesterday afternoon!

The amazing thing to me was the number of entries that had been taken on digital cameras. The quality of the prints was excellent too. Perhaps the most interesting point is that anyone can enter and stand a chance of being one of these top winners. We have everything we need on this island as far as subjects go. If only I could work on having enough free time to research and photograph something worthwhile… seagulls anyone?!?!

Bye Bye, Mac! After 14 months of fun and karting to work, it is now time for me to part ways with Mac, my Mini! After the initial difficulties that I had with the garage and warranty, he has run perfectly every day since. There is a sense of guilt on my part as I never held up my end of the bargain with him. You see, I promised to get the small bits of rust fixed but I never got further than the driver’s door and scuttle panel. I promised that he would have an upgraded engine and I even promised to add a new stereo to replace the factory standard unit. Sorry Mac, I just didn’t have the time to do it! With my larger plans for a vehicle restoration project, its time to get a ‘normal’ car again.

This is the moment when I was going to announce the purchase of a Mitsubishi Shogun that was to be my protest against all the 4X4 protesters out there! It was going to be my symbol of defiance against those that are clearly scared when they see one coming and feel the need to spout off about mothers and school runs! It may (probably would :-D) have gone off road but I would have kept it shiny on the road just to show that I dont like it dirty (you know what I mean Leigh)!! I was looking forward the pub arguments and the games of chicken that I was clearly going to win against all the Fiestas and Saxos out there!! The problem is, this is going to have to wait a while. When I went to pay for the Shogun, I found something else entirely… and I’ll be picking it up at the end of the week!!

If you have a keen eye, you may have noticed some very slight changes to the design and features of the site. Over the last few days, I have been upgrading the backend and cleaning up my old code. The site is now running on Wordpress 2.0 and I am pleased to report that there were only a few issues with the upgrade. Luckily, everything seems to be working as normal (Please let me know if it isn’t :-)).

The theme for this site has had a big overhaul and has seen a 50% reduction in file size… not too bad. This includes the new elements I have introduced such as the new style menu on the right and the post navigation you can see when you view an individual post. The best news is that it still passes validation. For my next tricks the new gallery will be opened as soon as I figure out how it all works and the media pages will be seeing some cool features and content when I have finished writing my next plugin!

A new plugin that I made for myself but you may feel free to use for own uses. PXS Analytics is a small plugin that will insert the Google Analytics code into the head of your WP blog. It’s main feature at the moment is the ability to ensure that google does not log users of a set admin level. For example, if you have level 10 as as an admin, you may not want your activities to cloud the analysis of your website. You would tell the plugin to ignore all users of that level and above. This means that if you have registered users that had level 9 and were logged in, their activities would be recorded but yours at level 10 would not. Likewise, if the limit is set to 5, all users with level 6-10 would be ignored and all others would be logged.

Goto the plugin download page here.

Yet another stormer of excellence in Googles attempt to rule the world!! Having signed up to the Analytics program, I am looking forward to seeing the detail in the reports available. So far… I am VERY impressed!! If anyone is interested… I have created a small and reliable plugin to easily put the code into the pages. The benefit of this method is that you can easily disable the tracking just by turning off the plugin. Please leave a comment if you are interested and I will be happy to supply the code. If there are a few requests… I will create a page for it!!!

Statistics is an interesting area of maths but try to figure out these odds and most calculators will haemorage from the ram banks.

About a year ago I sold my Integra Type-R to someone that lives in the UK near to Oxford. This week-end, I have spent a couple of days at my Dads house which is really close to Oxford. What are the odds that I would get to see my old car? At first this seems impossible, but I am not so sure anymore. Why do I want to know this? Well… when we parked on level 4 of The Oracle car park, we parked next to an Integra Type-R that ‘H’ joked was my old old car. This was quite a funny joke when you consider that it actually was my old car. It took a double-take to check but it had the right dents, indicators and exhaust. There are no doubts at all… it was my old car!! So now I would like to know what the odds are of this happening? Perhaps Ladbrokes can help!

Having just completed the 4th series of 24, it seems like a good time to reflect on the experience. This might sound a little extreme for a TV show but 24 is so intense and immersive that you really feel like a part of the action.

If you have never seen 24 before, you should understand the principal; 24 episodes of 1 hour each. The entire series is based on the actions of some Terrorists and the CTU (Counter Terrorist Unit) over the course of 1 day. The episodes have obligatory cliff hangers every week and at least one shocking plot change. As it turns out, spreading a whole day into half a years worth of TV shows is just as exciting as being there. Kiefer Sutherland once again takes the starring role as Jack Bauer but with the old CTU crew making a gradual appearance, the whole cast come together like family… unless they die suddenly and unexpectedly!!! So many things happen in this series that you just can’t recover from one thing before the next emergency is upon you.

Over the 4 series it seems that the content has been getting more intense. This fourth series certainly doesn’t disappoint in this respect. It doesn’t seem possible that any more action could have been fitted in to the very tight plot without going into another day!! Without doubt, this was the best of the four series and certainly seems like the end of the run, or the start of it(if you have seen the ending, you know what I mean!) …but this is 24 so who knows… well I do actually… Season 5 starts in January !!

Having spent the last few years trying to get you lot of Spammers to pee off.. I would really appreciate it if you could send a few to me please! I have just installed and activated the Akismet plugin and want to know if it works. If you are unable to complete the challenge then I know it is working… if I get spammed out… I will switch on Spam Karma again!!!

UPDATE: Thanks Spammers… it seems that your attempts are indeed being stopped! Thanks Akismet team aswell… this is excellent work!

Apple are at it again! It seems that as soon as I let my impulses cool… a few weeks later I want to spend money on their website again. After the recent announcements of new iPods and an amazing new iMac, there are now new Powerbooks and PowerMacs.

As soon as I saw the new iMac G5 last week, it was very tempting to actually go ahead and buy one, after all, it does everything and a lot more. For a regular use computer, there would be no additional accessories required (well… maybe a TV tuner!). The specs and features are way above anything that the usual programming and web browsing might throw at it. The all in one design and new software make it very desirable. The built in iSight and remote control are just extra bonuses on top of an already well presented bit of kit. It seemed that it would be the ideal stop-gap before the Intel PowerMacs were released…. until today! I mean… who wouldn’t want a PowerMac with 4 processor cores running? The processing power of the new PowerMacs is nearly pornographic in it’s appeal. For the rest of the year, I will have to walk around telling myself to believe myself about not wanting one just yet… but I do! I cant imagine how the Intel based Macs could top the performance of these beasts. It can only be described as REAL power.

The new Powerbooks have seen some nice enhancements aswell such as new displays and longer lasting batteries. Perhaps this is to make them better suited for working with Apple’s new software aimed at photographers. Aperture is a completely RAW based workflow, editing and printing tool. Is this software alone enough justification for a new PowerMac quad? Maybe… the recommended system specs are a Dual 2GHz Power Mac G5 or faster, 2GB of RAM, a powerful graphics card and 5GB of disk space just for the application, templates, and tutorial. I am thinking that it must be good!

Having conversed via comments, it seemed that a slightly more aggressive exploit protection was required and so the plugin now has 2 strong mechanisms that also cross check with each other before a mail is created. I hope that this will help completely stop any exploits but of course, the spammers are getting wise so please let me know if you have any ideas or evidence of vulnerabilities. As I cannot easily check the exploits on the code myself, your information is valuable to all of the other users! The comments on the plugin page have been archived as the list was getting very long but there is a link for anyone that wishes to read through them. Please read the instructions carefully as things have changed and it should run out of the box as usual! PXSmail page can be found here.

Update:
If you are running version 1.3 please ensure that you get the latest update (1.4) to fix a bug that was preventing emails from being sent out.