Mark Dalton

Okay I took the plunge this evening and upgraded the web site software to WordPress 2.7.1 and thankfully the latest version has fixed all of the problems I was having, including the Photo Gallery, and has allowed me to improve a couple of the features including the search function.

However in doing so I seem to have corrupted the folder that contained all the images that are contained in the blog posts.

I have logged a ticket with my hosting company to see if they have a backup and hope this will be resolved soon.

[Update 16/03/09 13:33] My hosting provider has sucessfully restored the folder in question and everything looks to be running as it should be once again (Thanks Allen).

Well some people have emailed asking what happened to the Photo Gallery. Well when I moved the site over to WordPress I also moved to a new Linux based server with a new service provider. My previous supplier was a friend and wasn’t too worried about the amount of disk space used so it wasn’t a major issue uploading all my photo’s. However when I moved to my new provider the package I signed up for came with a fixed amount of disk space. I could upgrade this but at a cost and as my Photo Library just keeps growing and growing the costs would eventually become prohibitive. So I started to look at alternatives, inevitably arriving at Flickr.

I then started looking at plugin’s for WordPress that would allow me to display my Flickr photo’s as part of the site. I found one that I like in Slickr Gallery and all was working fine until I upgraded to WordPress 2.7, which somehow broke the custom Permalinks meaning that I had to go back to the default Permalink setting which broke the Slickr Gallery Plugin that required the Permalink setting be set to anything other than the default. Doh!

So at this point in time the Photo Gallery isn’t viewable directly on the site and wont be until I fix the Permalink issue. What’s even more frustrating it that WordPress has been upgraded to 2.7.1 which I am hoping fixes the issue, but I now have problems upgrading to WordPress 2.7.1.

In the meantime my photo’s are available directly via my Flickr Page.

Okay so it has been a mad couple of weeks at work and I have felt like I have done nothing but work, sleep, eat, and work some more. Not that its a completely bad thing, as I prefer to be busy but gee it’s left me feeling shattered.

So last weekend I decided on some retail therapy, nothing to stressful, a little clothes shopping and a “TOY“. Well it’s been a while since I purchased anything with flashing lights, so I opted for a Play Station Portable 3000 (PSP). I managed to get a package deal that included a couple of games. It took me most of the week to figure out but I finally got the hang of it. Now it wasn’t completely a rash purchase. I had been looking for a while, but hadn’t been able to make my mind up between the PSP and the DSLite. However at the end of the day I decided I wanted mindless violence and not brain training. The graphics were far better on the PSP and it also doubles as a media device (Not that I need another one). I am still working my way through WALL-E but so far it’s good fun and occupies some time during the daily commute.

This weekend I once again opted for a little bit of retail therapy, but this was a lot more aligned to my plans. There was a little more clothes shopping (well since coming back from India the washing powder seems to have shrunk all my trousers). This is something I have been meaning to do for a while, and has gone hand in hand with me cleaning out my closet and throwing out (donating to charity) all those items that I know will never come back into fashion / fit me ever again.

I also purchased myself a new sound system for my computer. I spend a lot more time playing now than I used to and quite enjoy listening to some tunes or a PodCast while searching out the latest bargains. I opted for the Bose Companion 5 set after listening to them in India and the UK, and finding them absolutely amazing. This however was all part of my getting organized resolution and my tidying up the office project (A project under the “Sort the house out” program).

So yesterday after returning from my shopping spree I set about pulling my desk apart and removing everything from it, including all the cables. I then positioned everything so it was where I wanted it, and then reran all the cables so I wasn’t getting tangled up in them. It’s quite surprising how long something like that takes, and I still need to get some cable tidies to ensure it stays organized, but it was well worth it.

This morning I popped round to Mum & Dad’s as they had picked up a Malware program called A 360 that basically pretends to be Anti-Virus software but is nothing more than a pain in the ass. I am still connected in remotely running scan’s and updating it, but it now appears to be clean (thanks to LogMeIn.com). At the same time I have been going through my study and emptying all the old cables, keyboard, mice, discarded gadgets from the toy cupboards, and working out what to eBay and what to trash. I have three black bags worth of cables and an assortment of other junk that I will need to take to the recycling centre next weekend and am still only about 25% of the way there. The remainder however is putting all the stuff that is pilled up into the spaces that I have freed up, nicely. A job for the evening I think!

The other main thing I have done this weekend is apply a new theme to the web site. I was getting a little tired of the old theme and thought a change was due. What do you think?

So a friend, let’s call her Sarah, hurt her toe to the extent it’s been put in a splint. So being “slightly crazy” we, okay I, decided it needed a voice.

Yup Sarah’s Toe dot com was born!

For anybody that noticed the site was out of action for about 30 minutes this evening while I upgraded to WordPress 2.6.2. The upgrade went pretty smoothly seeing as it was the first time I had upgraded it since moving from RapidWeaver.

While the site was down I also took the liberty in install a couple of new plugin’s that I had been testing. One called Akismet, which scans comments to check for spam, and another that allows me to automatically update the site in future, which should reduce downtime.