Identifying cables.
Take a look here. A neat solution to a problem many of us have suffered from many times i’m sure. (And a lot simpler than the things i’ve created in my head before now to solve it too.)
Two point eight.
I’ve just upgraded this thing to WordPress 2.8 using the automatic-built-in-updater-thingy.
It appears to have worked OK but you never know, i might find something amiss soon. If you spot anything looking decidely wrong or behaving pear-shapedly please do let me know (via a comment/email/smoke signal/etc). Thanks.
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Update: Aw, shit. The “Tag Cloud” widget (the bit you see as “Common Tags…” on the right) is no longer cloud-like. It’s just a list. Ug-er-lee.
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Update #2: Ah-ha. Sorted the Tag Cloud problem. Turns out that the cloud was known as #Tag_Cloud but in WordPress 2.8 has become #Tag_Cloud-2 (why?!). So to fix, i’ve had to alter all references appropriately in the CSS files (/simplex/style.css and /simplex/css/default.css). Lovely.
Neglect.
I joined twitter out of boredom and curiosity. After a little exposure to it, I imagined that i’d use it to pass simple commentary or post links, thereby replacing the really short posts i made here. Twitter for the trivial stuff, Blog for the opinions and thoughts worth expanding on.
Only it hasn’t quite worked out like that. I’ve been posting on twitter (just about) daily since i joined up but posts here have gradually fallen off in that same period. Yesterday I realised that i haven’t written anything here since the middle of May – that’s about 20 days ago.
It seems that by posting instant opinion on the latest (tech) news, i allow myself to then forget all about it. Before using twitter i’d digest the news and where my interest was perked, ponder things a little more then release a stream of opinion onto these pages. Twittering about things, however, just seems to purge them from my mind.
The only story i can remember thinking “I’ll write about that on the blog” in the last 20 days is the release of the O2 Joggler. Hopefully i’ll get around to writing that entry very soon. In the meantime, here’s what i said regarding the Joggler on twitter…
Dear O2, you could have been onto a massive winner with the Joggler. Unfortunately, you appear to have fucked it up. Kindest regards, Mark.
And
Dear OpenPeak, you could be onto a massive winner with the OpenFrame. Hopefully someone will use it better than O2 have. Regards, Mark.
What wit. I’m sure that’s wet your appetite for more.
Collecting pictures.
There are plenty of blogs out there that collate theme-specific images and in the past i’ve linked to some good examples (about food and poor english) but lately there seems to have been a bit of an explosion of these sites (Or perhaps it’s just twitter that’s exposing me to them more?). FAILblog, Engrish Funny, Cake Wrecks, Awkward Boners and Awkward Family Photos are all excellent examples but my new favourites of this genre just have to be Photoshop Disasters and Passive Aggressive Notes.
Here are some great Photoshop Disasters…
Boart Longyear: Corporate Report And Death To America
Mystery Meat: Knee To No Basis
Meanwhile, this Passive Aggressive Note is probably the funniest thing i’ve seen since the Bruno movie trailer…
WordPress.com Stats problem solved.
My long-time readers reader may recall some grumbling about the WordPress.com Stats widget not working properly for me in Firefox3. Well, i’m happy to report that i appear to have solved the problem. And i’m also awfully embarrassed to tell you the solution.
Seeing that the widget has been updated recently i tried looking at the stats in Firefox again (i had been switching to other browsers if i wanted to see the stats) but was disappointed to see no change in behaviour. Given that a bigger issue has never been made of this problem i decided that it must be an error on my part and undertook some more searching. It didn’t take too long to come across this blog entry where something sounded very familiar in the comments section…
Is this what’s blocking WordPress.com Stats from working on my self-hosted blog via the Blog Stats tab in the Dashboard when I’m using Firefox 3.0b3 and Epiphany?
If I click the Blog Stats tab, I get a login dialog, even though I’m logged in to WordPress.com already.
If I go to dashboard.wordpress.com and access my stats directly (without the iframe), it works fine.
Actually, yeah, I can confirm that setting network.cookie.cookieBehavior to 0 in about:config fixes the Blog Stats tab.
I scrambled to load about:config myself, gave this a try and lo… it worked. I could see my graph within Firefox3. O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
Of course, my joy turned to shame when i realised that network.cookie.cookieBehavior is available in Firefox’s preferences for any idiot to see. It is simply the set of cookies checkboxes in Privacy options. I’d just had “Accept third-party cookies” turned off. What a fucking berk I am.
