Owens L'ill Slice of the Web

I’m so proud… I finally managed to add a block of random images from my gallery to the right-hand side of my homepage (You can probably see them now). I wasted loads of time playing with the wrong plugins to WordPress for this. Finally I just created a new RSS feed on my gallery set to dynamically provide random imagesfrom the whole gallery site. Then I used the Photo Sidebar Widget to display the first three images off the feed. This plugin does exactly what I want with no additional baggage, all the other solutions I found were vastly overcomplex (WPG2) or buggy (External Gallery2 Image Block Plugin).

But! I had to modify it to work with Gallery2.3 on my system like so:

Edit file: (you can do this via the WordPress inbuilt plugin editor if your system is setup to permit it.)

.../wp-content/plugins/photo-sidebar-widget/photo_sb.php

Find the following line:

case "Gallery 2 RSS Module, version 1.1.0":

And add a new line below it:

case "Gallery 2 RSS Module, version 1.1.0":
case "Gallery 2 RSS Module, version 1.1.7":

This allows it to grab a RSS feed from gallery 2.3 (the original line is for Gallery2.2). It totally failed to display any images for me until I worked this out, adding the above made it instantly spring into life.

The bandwidth is terrible, but it’s free, and the view of the coast of France is good.. though not deeply exciting.
Looks like they only open a few ports though, no SSH session to my server, and Instant Messenger (MSN) protocols are blocked too.. which is not so good.  Google came back in Swedish/Danish by default, but this is a Scandinavian owned ferry, and Google is no doubt detecting that the request comes from Maersk’s IT department.

Still, full cludos to Norfolkline for giving some access anyway.. and for not charging me when Belgian stupidity forced me to miss my booked crossing, they just smiled and put me on the next one.

Edit: On the way home I noticed another passenger using MSN (Windows live) quite happily (I didn’t peer too closely over their shoulder, but it was definately working for them) so maybe I caught them on a off day.. or aMSN on linux has particular issues.. I also had a meal in the restaurant and it was not exactly great value for money, SeaFrance is much better for food.

So, I just had a sudden message from an infrequent MSN contact.. It went like this:

Danger.. Phishermen at work.

Looks like a phishing attempt… no reputable site would ever ask for your MSN username and password.. The alarm bells went off for me immediately. I’m sure http://ImageStoriez.com/ is a scam.. Now who do I notify? :-S

My other concern is that this probably means that one or the other of us has had their MSN account or system compromised in order to send the initial IM to me in the first place. So who has the infected machine.. is it their end or mine.. or is it somewhere in between? Irritating stuff.. and all just because the world is stuffed full of antisocial greedy people and ruled by a profit at any cost motive.

Lots of Theme customisation has been done, but it’s not totally visible since the overall style has not changed yet, all the improvements so far are ‘peripheral’. There is a lot more to come.

I’ve been trying (and failing) to import my old weblog from Blogger.. Problems with WordPresses import function driving me nuts.
Yippeee! my old blog is now restored!

Please drop by again

“Remember, we call it an “operating system”, not an “operated system”, for a reason: it’s the OS’s duty to run your machine, not your machine’s duty to run the OS – but just try making that point..”

The Register touches on something that I discovered this weekend while investigating whether my Laptop is worth upgrading to Vista.

I must confess, I am quite impressed by this! If only it had native SMB or FTP support. Sigh.. but a FreeBSD port is available.

This is probably just what I need to read..

I’ve decided to start tracking FreeBSD CURRENT. Building my own kernel and world worked like a charm. And now the system has all the most current FreeBSD security patches and technologies, plus it is highly optimised for my hardware and now runs a bit quicker.

And if it´s not your flag. Please go here and tell them.
A very cool resource, I will be updating my webcam page soon, and I plan to use that to humurous effect.

I’m going to try this out, a simple concept. If you only listen with a MP3 player, then why have your podcast reveiver software on your computer, when you can just have the software on the MP3 player itself.
Very simple concept, very innovitave, great.

Because they do things like this:
Relatively Einstein
And then broadcast it over the Internet

MS critisizes Openoffice for being ‘behind the times’.
No bad thing say I, as one Slashdot poster puts it:

“Precisely; it is remarkable the number of people who hanker back to the Word or indeed Wordperfect of the mid 90′s. This was a time before feeping creaturitis had led to a situation where the user could spend several minutes navigating menus looking for a particular function.

Sadly, if I were to be brutally honest, I would say that this is one area where OO.o really isn’t 10 years behind MS Office, it is jam-packed with seldom used functions, that however is the price of getting involved in a tick-box war with MS Office (which open office really has to).“

- Angostura