Whilst I remember…

Monday, April 30, 2007 ~ 7 comments so far

Did I mention we are off to Spain on Friday morning?

Well, we are, and there are loads things still to do. Not all are related to going on holiday but the holiday has an impact on them all.

1. I’ve not even considered packing but then you do get rather blasé about it when you are returning to the same place, and will be frequenting the same haunts (for new readers; my father-in-law lives in Spain, and has done for a few years now). We don’t even bother with anything ’smart’ as we eat out at the more local restaurants than anything fancy, and that’s when we eat out at all.

2. Then, of course, the iPod needs to be loaded, books need to be chosen, and I really MUST start using that alarm to make sure I get to bed on time as we need to be at the airport at 4 a.m. on Friday morning… which means leaving the house sometime around 3 a.m. which in turn means that I am seriously considering just staying up.

However, on Thursday, which we both have off, we are heading up to Perth for lunch with a family friend, nipping in to the butcher to buy some rib-eye steak for my father-in-law, and then I’m hooking up with friends in the evening for dinner and some diet cokes, whilst Louise will be acting like a teenager again and going all wobbly for some oik called Justin Timberloch, or something…

3. Of course there are somethings that need done on this site (search not working?), and that’s before I even bother my arse about thinking about email addresses and whatnot - I reckon I’ll stick with my ‘name’ domain for that, and leave the email address for this domain dormant for now.

And yes, I’m still looking into the whole “coloured name” for my mum (which for some reason is harder than it should be!).

4. Ohh my head, too much going on. I have a new guy starting today, and loads of stuff I really need to get done to give me a reasonably clean slate to come back to, although why we continue to do that is beyond me, what difference does going on holiday make, there is ALWAYS stuff to do.

5. I have a package that I’m quite keen to get my hands on which, currently, looks like it will arrive at my office on… ohhh go on, guess which day…

6. I’m also hoping to pre-publish a few posts to carrying things over whilst I’m away, one of which is quite intriguing, if I say so myself, so keep yer peepers peeled people!

7. The great Scottish Blogs cleanup continues and, whilst I’ve had over half the batches back now, I’ve yet to sit and go through the database and start whacking dead sites. It’ll be a long slow job that one, and I’m not sure I’ll have the time until I get back from my holiday. Ohh and the blogmeet is now organised, Edinburgh, 19th May at 2pm in the Jolly Judge. Be there!

8. Last but not least, I can’t for the life of me get some simple CSS floats to work. A sidebar on the right, main content on the left and the sidebar KEEPS DROPPING BELOW THE MAIN CONTENT!! It’s killing me, and no end nor combination of tweaking margins, padding, widths, nor clearing left, right or all, is making the blindest bit of difference. ARGH!

And breeeaaaaaaatthheeeeee…

Finally, before I dash off, some links/apps that I’ve found useful over the past few days.

1. If you are moving your WordPress installation, to a new domain, or just to a new directory, you must must MUST head over to this wonderful site. This is the page I used to move my WordPress domain, and it went without a hitch. All in it took me about an hour to do, tops.

2. That alarm thing I was asking about the other day, well Banshee Screamer Alarm seems to fit the bill. Ignore the fugly look, it meets all my criteria. It has a “start with windows” option (ok, everything has that via the Startup folder but hey, it’s worth mentioning), minimises to the system tray, needs set only once and will repeat on chosen days at the set time, can start an application or open a URL when the alarm time is reached, and can be used silently.

It’s currently running, and will launch a custom HTML page I knocked up which states, in large red (not yet blinking) letters GO TO BED.

Many thanks to B-Rad for suggesting it.

3. Thinking Rock is a GTD style application which I’ve been using for the past few weeks. I’ve mentioned it before but it’s getting a second mention because, frankly, the past couple of weeks have been frantic and without it I’d be lost. Whilst I have been busy over the past couple of weeks, knocking quite a few things off my to do list, the number of items and tasks that I needed to capture grew exponentially and Thinking Rock has helped me keep on top of all that.

Case in point is the site move, with multiple little things to remember, and new items being triggered as I stumbled across something else I hadn’t considered, the ability to quickly dump a one line ‘thought’ into Thinking Rock, processing it later on to add more detail and group it with other similar items, has been a life saver.

Even if you don’t ascribe to the GTD method, it’s worth a look. You WILL need to understand how the app works though as it’s maybe not immediately obvious, but the site has some good info on that front. Think of it as GTD-ish..

Right, that’s enough for now. Things to do, coffee to drink.

Not Planned

Tuesday, February 20, 2007 ~ 7 comments so far

I’m a planner. I plan. It’s what I do.

But sometimes things happen and plans need to be adjusted.

I received a somewhat alarming email from 34sp, an ISP I use for a couple of sites I run, including this one. Apparently a couple of my sites were hacked recently. I don’t visit the sites in question very often so it wasn’t something I noticed, although as they were both only ‘down’ for a few hours I seriously doubt that anyone else noticed either. Thankfully both sites have now been restored to their previous state.

Of course this mean that I’ll need to change my FTP passwords and review my internet security in general. I very much doubt that my machine has been hacked, and I’m fairly careful when sending emails around but it pays to be vigilant, and a few additional precautions won’t do any harm. Of course I don’t want to go over the top but it’s funny how these things make you more paranoid than usual.

And whilst I’m at it I need to get the miniblog working again. I’ve tried a couple of plugins and neither have worked. Admittedly I think recent changes to WordPress haven’t helped much, but until things settle down on that front I’m just gonna go with some custom code. More hassle for me but at least it should work, and will protect me a little the next time I upgrade WordPress.

These things were not planned.

However I did manage to go out for a run this morning, that WAS planned, and there will be more on that, later.

WordPress permissions

Thursday, February 15, 2007 ~ 4 comments so far

Because I said I would and because this type of thing is still very much a “black art” as far as I’m concerned (networking in general falls into that category), here are the permissions I have set in my WordPress install.

This is what I have setup for my Wordpress Theme folder (wp-content/themes/MYTHEME/) but I guess it’s likely to be similar if you have a custom WordPress install. I had loads of problems not being able to edit files through the WordPress admin interface, and various timeouts and 404 errors. I’ve not had any problems since I did the following:

Set the permissions (CHMOD for tech speak users) for the theme, or WordPress, FOLDER to 755.
Set the permissions for all the FILES in that folder to 776.

And that should help. Maybe. As ever with these things, YMMV.

To do this using FileZilla users, connect to your site, then right-click a folder or file, and select File Attributes. In the dialog that is displayed, type in the appropriate number and click OK.

Here’s hoping it helps. Someone.

Feeds? My aRSSe

Thursday, February 8, 2007 ~ 18 comments so far

Ohh yes, hitting top form with the witty post titles now!

Two posts today, both of which may hold limited appeal. First up, a few questions about my RSS site feeds, and later a nice tale about good customer service.

If you don’t use the RSS feeds, then I’d ignore this post.
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Miscellany

Thursday, February 1, 2007 ~ 5 comments so far

Right there are a few things that have zipped past the McLean radar in the past few days, none of which are THAT big they warrant a mention outright but I do just want to say that:

• I’m beginning to see the appeal of the iPod Shuffle (the new ones come with newer headphones ya know) since getting Louise one at Xmas. The simplicity of it, plug in and press play, hits home hard during the past few weeks of hectic activity. Yes, choosing a playlist has become a hassle. Yes, I am one lazy bastard. I’ll have a blue one please.
• Creating a theme for WordPress has been hugely rewarding. Mainly because I now understand more about the platform than I had previously. Still some way to go, but there will be some spiffy new pages coming… soon.
• Still jogging, and currently trialling lock laces (bought from the wonderful wiggle). They were too tight last night so some minor adjustments required but I liked them. Yes, my ‘gadget’ fetish knows no bounds!
• Still not taking that many photos though. However I still find it odd when people compliment me on my photos as, honestly, I don’t think they are all that great. Don’t get me wrong though, compliments are good.
• Post of the Week is moving along nicely. Still got some bugs to fix and new features to implement but on the whole I’m quite pleased with the design and functionality. You are visiting, aren’t you? And I’d encourage you to take a turn being a judge as well. The site is very much BY and FOR the people.
• That reminds me, I must add a Post of the Week link/badge to my sidebar.
• Which is much easier to do as I have finally sorted my access permissions on my server, I can now edit my WordPress theme files using the WordPress admin page. If you visited a couple of nights ago and the site looked funny, that was me mucking about with CHMOD settings.
• The football transfer deadline wasn’t that exciting, but the rolling BBC page tracking the gossip was hilarious. Amongst various players being seen all over England the best ’spot’ was reported around 9pm, I’ll let you read where Robbie Fowler was spotted.
• Switching hosts - following on from Ian’s recent move I’ve started to look into doing the same. Like him I’m finding 34sp a little limiting, and can get better deals elsewhere. Multiple databases will allow me to install web apps on MY server, something I’m wanting to do more and more. I’m truly becoming a ‘web worker’. A Small Orange is in the lead at the moment, but other options are welcomed.
• And finally a new version of a ‘must-have’ app has been, um, launched. Launchy now supports plugins and comes with some default examples including a web search, calculator and a new way of quickly navigating your computer. Yes, it takes a wee while to get used to but when I used another PC the other day I was amazed at how much longer it took me to get stuff done without my favourite little app. AND it comes with documentation, better than a little of open source apps I’ve tried.
• New music filter - none, nada, nothing. Will be picking up the new Arcade Fire album and… well I’m out of the loop. Who should I be listening to this year??
• Holy shit. It’s FEBRUARY!
• Air Travel Tax has gone up. Why the hoo-haa now? It was announced last year, and let’s be honest, an extra fiver on a trip sure ain’t gonna stop anyone from flying. What was the aim of this tax? If it was to reduce flights then it should have been bumped up to something more substantial, £30 say? More? At what point would it start to have an impact on the number of flights? Of course it’s not about that at all but I wouldn’t doubt if that becomes a reason to hike the tax higher in the future.

Yeesh. That was longer than I thought it would be… I do prattle on, don’t I.

[Ed: Yes you do, I thought you were supposed to be writing better posts these days, you know, concentrating on the writing? You'll never win a Bloggie posting random lists like this.]

Coming soon, a post about the Bloggies, and possibly a list or two (yeah yeah, big surprise).

Snippets

Thursday, April 20, 2006 ~ No comments yet

Money for old rope? Or is it possible to blog full-time? Last year Jason Kottke tried it, couldn’t make it stick. Now John Gruber is heading down the same road.

The reason I ask is that yesterday’s somewhat tongue-in-cheek post seems to have… well not quite enraged but definitely “irked” a few people somewhat. I guess for a lot of people it comes down to personal values, namely what you value most in life.

Me? Cold hard cash. Piles of it. Enough to burn.

OK, not really, er well maybe just a small pile..

Web design posts have been few and far between on here of late. There is a very good reason of course, namely that I want to setup a blog on onemandesigns but haven’t had a moment to do it. Ideally I’ll cross-post an excerpt on here as well but I’m not exactly sure on the details yet.

Need to get it done though, I’ve a stack of things to write about, and my head is gonna burst if I don’t get them out soon.

I don’t blog about work on here, well not directly anyway just the occasional “ya boo sucks” kinda nonsense that everyone goes through. It’s just as well too as —and don’t ask me why this has just occurred to me— my referrer stats have shown up somebody (people?) searching for my name in conjunction with my employers name. I’m guessing it may be interview candidates as they know who is interviewing them and who I work for… or it could be someone else who is checking me out in a “professional” capacity.

Either way, a lesson to you all. Careful what you say!

WordPress questions. I seem to have developed a penchant for my old friend the mdash (—). However, it’s becoming a bit of a drag having to type out the HTML entity code each time (& mdash ; ) and I’m wondering if there is an easier way around this problem. It’s the same for & pound ; and letter accents. Annoying.

I’m guessing I’ve missed something really obvious but CBATG.

.htaccess files are fun, aren’t they?

Well, no not really. They still fall into the realm of black magic as far as I’m concerned but I’ve been mucking about (on a test system) with something I hope to implement here. I mentioned it, er, last week I think. A homepage.

Problem is this blog is the default page for the domain, but I’m sure I read somewhere I could do some clever redirecty thingy using .htaccess… I don’t mind moving the blog to, say, /blog/ but it’s a bit of a pain in the ass for everyone else.

Mind you, as I’m linked to under so many different monikers (as previously discussed) it might be good to force people to update their links! And yes, the most annoying one is most definitely the “Gordon McClean” links. One “c” people, ONE!

SQL Injection attack anyone? Scottish Blogs has, suddenly, has a huge amount of rogue “submitted sites” (over 100 in the past hour, as opposed to 20 or so a day). I’ll see how many there are in the morning but might need to turn … um… something off somewhere! Balls.

AM update: Seems to have calmed down and, in the cold light of the morning I think it’s more a concerted attack on the form rather than SQL Injection. So far, so quiet(er).

I have a new method for dealing with cold callers. Last night, Louise had gone out to dinner with friends, I was sitting at the PC doing some work when the phone rang. The phone upstairs doesn’t have a caller id display so I picked up… only for some woman to immediately start yakking down the phone at me about how I’d “won” a mobile phone and how wonderful it was and how lucky I am. Now, would I give her my mobile number?

“No…” said I, and before I could complete the sentence she was off again… I was mid-way through hanging up when I decided against it. I listened to her for about 30 seconds, and with no sign of her abating, I gently placed the handset on the desk and let her enjoy a little bit of Kate Bush. She finally stopped after a further minute (34 seconds after I put the phone down, I was counting by now) and I could just make her out.. “hello? HELLO?”.

I held my breath, expecting her to disconnect. She didn’t. Over the music I could faintly hear the next round in her glorious eulogy —this one timed at a full 77 seconds— before she paused again. “hello? HELLO?”.

Click.

Slimline

Monday, April 3, 2006 ~ No comments yet

There are two things I’ve been meaning to fo with this website for a while.

1. Slim the number of categories.
I went a bit mad when I first installed WordPress, and I’m pretty sure I can trim the number down from the 22 I currently have (although not all are used, grand plans and all that) to a more manageable and sensible 6 or 7. More on that in a minute.

2. Categorise all of my archives.
I started this about a year ago and after slogging through some of the backlog - I’m tidying up, and adding titles as I go - I began to realise that I should have slimmed the number of categories FIRST. Yes, it’s obvious now but I was all caught up in just HAVING categories that I went a bit OTT.

Weird. Just got a massive dose of deja vu…

Anyhoo, onto the task at hand. Firstly I’m going to list all the categories I have available to me at the moment, and then I’m going to take a stab at a shortlist. If you have the time or inclination, I’d appreciate some feedback on the shortlist. Is it too short? Too long? Do you guys even USE the categories? Etc etc. I’m sure you know the drill by now (e.g. you leave comments stating your opinions, and I come along later and either correct you or ignore you!). First up, the current list of categories:

• Articles - in a pretentious moment I deemed some posts should be ‘articles’. Usually the long waffling ones that no-one reads.
• B.B. - the stuff I wrote before I had a blog.
• Blogs - posts about blogs and blogging.
• Books - reviews of books and posts about books
• Diary - posts about stuff wot I have done in my daily life…
• Firefox - posts about Firefox
• General - the default category, used for stuff that doesn’t fit anywhere else.
• Gigs - reviews of gigs
• Meme - posts about… ohh you get the idea…
• Movies
• Music
• My site - stuff about this very site
• News - commentary on current affairs.
• Personal Musings - largely written B.B.
• Software
• Technology
• TV
• Web
• WordPress
• Writing - writing about writing… again with the pretentiousnessness!

Phew, far too many. What WAS I thinking? So, let’s trim that lot down, merge a couple and see what we end up with:

• Articles - in a pretentious moment I deemed some posts should be ‘articles’. Usually the long waffling ones that no-one reads.
• B.B. - the stuff I wrote before I had a blog.
• Diary - posts about stuff wot I have done in my daily life…
• General - the default category, used for stuff that doesn’t fit anywhere else and the posts with multiple topics.
• News - commentary on current affairs.
• Personal
• Media
• Books - reviews and whatnot
• Gigs (not strictly media I guess…)
• Movies
• Music
• Technology
• Software
• Firefox
• Hardware
• Web
• Blogging - posts about blogs and blogging.
• Meme - posts about… ohh you get the idea…
• My site - stuff about this very site
• WordPress
• Writing - writing about writing… again with the pretentiousnessness!

Right. Looks OK to me, over to you ladies and gentlepeeps. Set your inner librarian free!

Actually there is a further question relating to the usage of websites. Categories can be found all over the place these days… how useful are they? Do you use them regularly or only on certain types of sites? My own opinion sways on this. For my site I think the categories are useful as I tend to veer onto different topics as my mood takes me, so finding similar topics as the one you are currently reading can be tricky as there might not have been one for a couple of weeks. For sites that are a lot more focussed than mine they can sometimes seem like overkill, but then again, if you are surfing a knitting site and don’t want tips on needle choice, then a “patterns” category would be useful? No?

And then there are tags. Useful? Perhaps. The ones listed on this site should fire technorati searches allowing you to find other sites with similarly tagged posts (hmmm should maybe make that a bit more obvious), but maybe they’d be better used to navigate this site. Tag clouds are possible, but are they better, or worse, than categories?

Comments please (ohh and the bit below is just to remind myself that I am occasionally capable of reasoned discussion, it’s all a bit ‘overly analytical’ and may bore the pants off you.. if you are wearing any..
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