In the same way that you should always make backups of your computer’s operating system as is, plus your files; so, in the same way you should back up your WordPress blog.

Backing-up your blog doesn’t mean just keeping a copy of the files that are immediately available via your blog’s FTP server though; those aren’t the only files that you should back-up. Although those files are important, there are other files that are equally if not more important: Those files are the files in your database.

Think of your database as a simile of the Windows Registry: All the files that appear on your blog’s FTP server have corresponding entries in the database, in any one or possibly more of a number of specific tables in the database.

I won’t get too technical here; but I’ll just say that without the correct database a WordPress blog on a Linux server doesn’t work. – So you need to back-up your database as well as your files. How do you do that?

Well there are several ways of doing that; but here’s the one, possibly most unorthodox, way of doing it that I find the easiest by far.

Before I go into backing up your database I thought that I’d have a word about database optimization. – You see everything that is ever a file on your blog itself gets an entry in the database, but if you remove a file from your blog the database entry corresponding to it remains in place. For instance, say that you start writing a post on WordPress itself, and after you’ve written a page you decide that what you’ve written isn’t a good enough standard of writing for publication. You therefore decide that you’re just not in the right frame of mind to do it right now, that you’ll delete the page you saved, and come back to it and start again later on. You delete the page, but its database entry remains. When you start again there’s another database entry, which you save half-way through writing it when you have a coffee-break; and that’s another database-entry. (No;  the saved page, silly, not the coffee-break.   )

So as time goes by, as you can imagine, the database gets cluttered with junk, in the form of entries for saved, revised pages, etc. One page may be saved and revised many times, each creates a database entry, though the only copy you actually want is the latest revision, in most cases. – Therefore you could find that the amount of space that your database takes up on your server’s hard-drive could almost equal the amount of space taken up by the other files eventually, even though most of it is occupied by unwanted junk-entries.

Optimise first

This is where database-optimisation comes into its own. Optimizing your database means clearing out all the unwanted crap that’s making it huge, and only keeping the entries that are needed. In the old days you had to learn MySQL, install and operate phpMyAdmin, etc, to do that. These days the geeks associated with WordPress have built a plugin so that you don’t have to.

The free plugin is called WP-Optimize, not surprisingly, and it does what it says on the tin: It automatically optimises (Yes I spelled it the English way that time.) your WP database. It’s exactly like any other plugin to set up, it goes into the plugins directory inside the WP-content folder, and you activate it via the plugins section of the WordPress user interface. You’ll find the settings configurations for it in the ‘Dashboard’ section.

This plugin will optimise your database so that it doesn’t become too huge; fat with unwanted junk, causing wasted time when you back it up.

- Which brings us back up to the subject of back-up: I’ll now tell you how to back-up your database pretty much totally automatically, with very little interaction, so that there’ll be a copy of the backup of your database files retained on your server, and also you’ll have one handy on your computer too, along with the files you back-up via FTP, should the worst come to the worst.

In a while I’ll tell you what I do to accomplish this: You might like to copy me, or you might like to adapt my method to suit yourself. Whatever is the case, you’ll first have to install another plugin: -

Database back-up

This time the free plugin’s called WP-DB-backup, and it once again avoids you having to learn MySQL and phpMyAdmin by automating the backup of your database.

Install and activate it in the usual way, and set it to back-up all your database tables to your server on a daily schedule. It’ll create a folder in WP-content called ‘Backup-oc879′, if I remember correctly. Inside that folder it’ll deposit a zipped backup of your database as an .sql.gz file on a daily basis as per your settings. You’ll find the settings for this plugin in the ‘Tools’ section of WP.

I’ll mention, at this point, that when your blog starts to get big like mine is, with over 500 posts, the backups are also rather large. – You only need the latest backup (+ the one before that, for ‘luck’.) – So every week I go into that folder and erase all but the last 2 backups, which are around 12MBs in size each in my case, because I find that they take a long time to download, and if there’s less of them, considering I really only want 2 of them, then getting rid of the trash makes a lighter load.

FTP it

OK – So your database now is backed up daily to your server, and you back-up all the files on your server on a daily-basis, manually, via FTP. – That way you’ve backed up everything, including your automatically-backed-up database too. (Unfortunately you will have to install and learn phpMyAdmin if you ever need to restore your database files; but at least you’ll have a backup or more to hand should the need arise.)

I have 9 backups at a time for reference purposes on my computer.

"NINE!?"

Yes, nine: ‘kkomp latest backup #1′, ‘kkomp latest backup #2′, ‘kkomp latest backup #3′… all inside a single folder. Whenever I need to make a new backup, I find the oldest backup and delete everything inside the folder, then I back-up the entire blog including database backup(s) to the empty folder via FTP. – That way, if I do something, try it out, and then decide that it was better the way it was x-days ago, I have a back-up of just that.

Yes, it’s a little extra work, (- And you have no idea how extremely slowly and laboriously each of those backups transfers across a LAN at an average speed of somewhere around 167KB/s. It also takes over an hour to FTP them up from the server too; but I just do something else while that’s going on.) but it’s all part of the job to me. I even copy a backup to another file after renaming it by adding the word ‘old’ to its title once in a while, just for posterity’s sake.

Anyway; that’s how it’s done in my case.

Enjoy the rest of the week.

Buy “WordPress on Crack” – Build your own WordPress plugins: Click Here!

Ping Optimizer? – What is “Ping”?

Although the future-post ping problem has now been fixed in recent versions of WordPress, the update pinging problem still exists.

The Solution:

• When you create a new post, your blog will ping and notify all the ping services that it has been updated. This encourages search engines and different blog directories/services to index your updated blog properly.

• When you edit an existing post, it won’t send an unnecessary ping to any ping services and saves your blog from getting banned.

• When you post a future post by editing the time stamp, it will ping only when your post appears in future. It won’t unnecessarily ping many times when you schedule posts as WordPress does by default.

The plugin is free; but it’s released as “Reviewware”: This means that if you find the plugin useful then a decent review of the plugin in your blog would be highly appreciated by the writers. Not only will this give due credit, but it’ll also spread the word and thereby notify others who would also benefit from installing the plugin. If you don’t want to write a review than it’s not compulsory to do so; but it would have been appreciated.

- So how do I get hold of this plugin?

Easy: Click thisdownload link. It’s free and, unless you really want to be in constant danger of being labelled a ping-spammer, it’s a must-have.

Feel free to comment.

This code has been designed to be run on a WordPress blog.
(You can see this code working in the header of this blog.)

I positively encourage everyone who reads this blog to show their support for the "IE6 Must Die" movement by displaying the anti-IE6 twibbon on their Twitter avatar: http://twibbon.com/join/IE6-Must-Die

As with all ancient and obsolete objects, IE6 must eventually become extinct: And the sooner the better.

I urge everybody to assist devoted web developers to hasten that demise, and stop this retarded relic from holding up progress on the internet.
There follows a download link to some code that you can add to your header.php file, or elsewhere, if you like.

(From version 1.0 (No longer available.) documentation.): -

This code will display a small line of text (Ariel, font size 10) stating: -

"This blog does not support Internet Explorer 6 or earlier. If you are using IE6, please upgrade to a decent browser: – "

Immediately underneath this text will appear four tiny linked symbols: FireFox, Opera, Internet Explorer 8, and Safari. The links allow the reader to download the latest version of any of those browsers.

Current version documentation: -

This is version 1.1 of the code: Download URL.

*This code is designed to be run on a white background: Spacing characters are camouflaged against the background. If running on a coloured background; please alter the hex code #ffffff to match the hex code of the colour of your blog’s background.*

What’s New in v 1.1?

The browser icons now have their names printed underneath them, and the spacing + the design/appearance of the entire piece has been improved. The wording has also been slightly altered to

"This blog does not fully support Internet Explorer 6 or earlier. If you are using IE6, please download a decent browser: – "

Also the font size has been reduced.

This code is supplied totally free of charge and under my own "Open Source" license: You may copy and distribute this code at will. You may also alter it in any way you want. I rescind all rights of ownership of this code. This code is not supplied with any warranty. The browser icons themselves are downloaded from my dedicated server. – However I make no guarantee that this service will be continuous at all times, nor do I give any warranty that the service will continue indefinitely. You are advised to download the icons themselves to your own web space and alter the URLs within the code so that the icons are downloaded from your own web space when the code is run on your page.

Caution: Bug detected. Unidentified. Causes some pages to use all font size 1.
Version 1.2 out soon. – When I’ve found & cured this bug.

Version 1.1.1 Released

What’s New in 1.1.1?

The piece that wrote the browser names underneath the icons was causing the bug. I haven’t identified why yet; but I’ll hopefully come up with a fix for version 1.2.

For the interim I’ve released version 1.1.1; which is v 1.1 without the browser names underneath the icons: Otherwise it’s identical.

Version 1.1.2 released

What’s New in 1.1.2?

A bug caused by a piece of badly-formatted html code has been removed, and the entire display has been made more compact.

Download only. ‘Same URL.

Welcome to Part Two of this series.

In Part One we looked at the situation that I was facing, having moved to a dedicated server from a shared-platform server. Being a noob as far as Linux is concerned, I followed leads from other people who were more experienced in using Linux, (Although one of them did in fact confess that, although he used Linux more than anything else at work, his main area of proficiency was, in fact, Windows.) which ended in a dead end.

Not to be outdone I eventually discovered a blog post from February 2008 which appeared to contain part of an interesting line of php that turned out to be the answer to my problem.

In Part Two, which you’re reading now, we’re going to look at that line of php, as well as add it to our respective blogs to prevent unnecessary 404 errors.

First, though, from my experience, although somewhat limited, I suggest that only bloggers who are hosted on a dedicated server use this code: I don’t see why it would be necessary to run on a shared-platform server. If you are on a shared-platform; that is sharing a server at your hosting company’s depot with others unknown, then your web-host’s engineers will normally be tending to the server and keeping it problem-free. (Which, in my case, is why it costs more to host 4 individual websites on separate domains on shared-platform servers than it does to host those 4 domains on a  single dedicated server: Because the engineers will only fix hardware faults and occasionally give limited advice on dedicated servers.) If you get unexpected 404s on a shared-platform server, phone customer support and they’ll ask the engineers to put it right. – Only use this code if you have no other alternative.

Note 1: – Which brings me on to thinking: There must be some setting somewhere in the server which will prevent the 404 issue from occurring. The engineers can sort it on shared-platform servers; so why can’t I on a dedicated server?

The answer to that is; a) I’m a technician. – Engineers are much better trained and have a wealth of experience. b) I’m a trained electronics technician, rather than a trained computer technician. c) Er, read on: You’ll see that I have sorted it out; but not in the server settings (Linux) themselves; rather, on a third-party application, namely WordPress, that is on the server, using php.

OK; so first, as promised, I’ll reveal where I found this code and give credit: The site is called “The Moonlight Blog”.  I’ve linked the name to the relevant page.

As you’ll see, the writer gives this information: -

Note the php. When rebuilt by myself it looks like: -

<?php header("Status: 200 OK");
?>

Yes I did say a single line of php; well it sort of is; it just works if it’s typed like that; so that’s how I’m presenting it.

“That was the fruit of a week’s work?” you ask; bemused.

In itself that was the fruit of a few minutes work; it just took me a week to find it, as well as many other things besides.

Note 2: In Part One I stated that the author’s php notation was incomplete; that’s true and then again not true: You see if you’re working with php all the time you know what goes where, and you come to expect a pattern. – so much so in fact that you only need write the information that’s not obvious to the trained eye.

header(“Status: 200 OK”); is the bit that the developer needs. The developer knows that it’s php because the semi-colon shows that it’s the end of the statement. The machine won’t know that it’s php because the machine hasn’t been told that it’s php. The bit that I added tells the machine that it’s php; otherwise, to the experienced developer, it’s simply not required.

OK so we have our line of php code; written so that the machine can understand it.

Where do I put it?

Well; since it’s an instruction for the header of a page to return a html 200 code when executed; it appears logical to put it in the header.php file in the theme folder; located at ~\wp-content\themes\<name of your theme>\header.php. if you have more than one header folder; for example: page_header.php and post_header.php, put it in all of the header files.

Where exactly do I put it in the header.php file(s)?

Right at the very top; above all the other text. Why? Because it works.

How do I add it to my header.php file?

There are 2 ways to do this: The first is possibly the easiest, and is from inside the WordPress GUI itself: -

(This method will only add it to the currently active theme installed on your WordPress installation.)

Click on the arrow on the Appearance tab and click on Editor. On the page that follows, look on the right-hand-side of the screen and click on Header (header.php).

In the text editor in the centre of the screen, type or copy & paste the php from this article above all the other text. You might have to click at the start of the first line and press return to create a clear line at the very top before you insert it.

Below the text editor window you’ll see a blue button with white writing on it “Update File”. Click it and wait for the function to execute. – That’s it.

The other way of doing it is to open up your FTP client and navigate to the wp-content folder on your server. On an Ubuntu server the path could look something like

/home/default/yourdomain/user/htdocs/wp-content

(Various servers/hosting companies may vary.)

Inside that folder you’ll find a folder called “plugins”. Open that and you’ll see a folder with the name of your current theme. Open that folder and download the header.php file to your local computer.

Use a text editor program to open the file and insert the php from this article at the very top of all the other text. Close and save. Use your ftp client to overwrite the existing header.php file on your server with the edited file. Do the same with any other themes you may have loaded as you wish.

-It’s as easy as that: The word “easy” depending upon your previous experience.

Just to recap: We’ve added some additional php to our header.php file in our header.php file in our WordPress blog to instruct the page headers to return a html 200 – OK when executed. This should stop them returning a html 404- not found error. The server then has no choice but to execute the other php on the page in question  and serve the product of that execution to the requesting machine.

- And that’s about all there is to say. This php did the trick for me. Why not let me and all my readers know whether or not it did the trick for you too? Leave a comment. Leave a comment also if you have anything further to add. I’m not a php expert, whereas you might be though; so do feel free to add something.

That’s all.

- And now; some adverts: -

Please excuse the semi-cryptic title; but the whole issue was a rather large conundrum for me; so I do think it fitting:

I’ve just done a week of self-imposed intensive Linux study: Although it certainly and without doubt expanded my mind, it wasn’t actually necessary, as in “vital”: -

In this and the following article; I intend to relate how I surprised myself by solving what appeared to be a major problem on an Ubuntu dedicated server, by inserting just a single line of php into WordPress.

Here is the situation that I was faced with: -

I needed to move this blog onto a dedicated server, as it was hogging resources on the shared-platform server that it was currently on; and my hosting company have a policy of moving sites that did this onto a backroom scripting server that was virtually inaccessible to the net, as it was full of other sites that also hogged all the server’s resources, leaving none for the victim’s resource-hungry blog to use. They do this without warning ; and they tell you after they’ve done it.

Because the shared-platform server is shared between a number of websites belonging to any number of customers, there’s no way that I, as a user, could pre-empt this in advance. No server resource-indicator was available, and as I clearly stated; the hosts didn’t send an email saying “Your blog is using too many resources. Please see to it within 24 hours or we’ll stick it onto a backroom server…” – They just did it anyway, regardless, and any notification followed that.

The third time that this happened, a week before writing this blog post, I decided that I was going to rent a dedicated server: I had 8 active domains, 7 were hosted, and all on shared-platform servers. It was costing me a lot more to keep them each on a shared-platform server than it would do to put them all on single a dedicated server, and since only 3 of them were active, 2 noticeably so, it wouldn’t overload a single low-calibre server, at least for the time-being.

I asked to upgrade to a dedicated server, and one was set aside for me, and was online within 24 hours. Expecting things to be much the same on a dedicated server as on a shared-platform server, minus the resource issues, I moved this blog to the new dedicated server: I copied the database to the space I’d reserved for it on the new server using the mysqldump feature, following which I copied all the files from a backup of the shared-platform server and FTP’d them up to the new server in the domain-space that I’d pre-created for it.

Under normal circumstances that would have been that, and I’d have got straight up and running, and continued the blog from that point. What I didn’t notice straight away, until I had egg on my face because I’d just sent out a bulletin to my mailing list that the blog was back in full operation, was that every link on the welcome page resulted in a 404 when clicked. – Oh s—t!

What now? I phoned the web-hosting company: fasthosts.co.uk. The guy I spoke to told me that I’d forgotten to install a WordPress plugin, and suggested that I look in the WordPress plugin directory for it. I asked if he knew which one it was, or had a clue what it was called. He replied that WordPress was a third-party application that the support department don’t support, and therefore he was not allowed to tell me even if he knew.

Thanks for nothing. To cut a long story short I made so many calls to the support department over the last few days that I think I must have spoken to everyone who worked there at least once. I learned that there were 3 people there who were quite technically astute, and that 2 of them were very nice friendly types. The others were either distant and matter-of-fact, or as unhelpful as possible. All will remain nameless for the purposes of this article.

I developed a friendship of sorts with a couple of them, and we discussed the issue to some degree without breaking any company policies. One of them suggested that it could be that the database hadn’t connected with the files because I’d initially negligently forgotten to allocate the database to a particular domain when I created a reserved space for it in the system. After uploading all the files and the database again, this assumption proved to be incorrect.

Another one of them suggested that the reason why a lot of the “pretty” URLs that WP uses were resulting in a 404 was that the server’s mod_rewrite feature in Apache was switched off by default for security reasons. Once again it was against company policy to discuss this to any more helpful extent. On investigation I found that indeed mod_rewrite was off by default. I asked around as well as scanned Google and posted on this blog, asking for people to tell me ways to turn it on, and I used pretty much all of them, without result. (I notice that during my week of cyber-abstinence my viewers have mainly deserted this blog; but I suppose if there’s nothing much there to browse it might seem pointless trying to browse it.) I even ran a script to see the state of mod_rewrite; which told me it was now on, so seemingly my switch-on operations had worked.

I could have asked the host’s engineer to check it and do it himself if it wasn’t done properly; but at £60 + VAT per 1/2 hour, charged by the 1/2 hour, there was no way that I was going to be ripped off that way.

The result was…no change: I still got the 404s, even though I’d changed the URL structure to default in the permalinks section, which did give me less 404s to worry about it’s true. –Any 404s where there shouldn’t be 404s, nevertheless, is too many. – Worst of all the RSS feed still wasn’t working.

It appeared that the blog was dead. – I made a logical assumption that something somewhere had corrupted and that was that. It was at this point that I made another announcement that would leave me with major egg on my face: I announced to my mailing list and also to Facebook that the blog was dead, and that I’d get another newer domain set up in its place, and copy over as much content as I could get hold of that I felt was of any value.

I built shazzalive.com on the server; which immediately suffered from the same problem as that described above from the word go. Major problems!

I decided to see if there was a different solution to the problem available. Somehow I inadvertently stumbled across a blog article written in February 2008. (I’ll give credit + link & trackback in the follow-up article.) In it the blogger, who it seems knows php well, was saying that he’d had a similar problem, and that he’d used a line of php to solve the problems. Although English clearly wasn’t his first language; and his php notation was incomplete, it gave me ideas: This might be the solution that I was looking for.

First came the job of rebuilding the line so that it looked like actual php, as you’d expect to see it written in a WordPress php file: It did look like a piece of a php line (The structure of it indicated that.); but it seemed that it needed a beginning and an end. Since all I had to go on was what I saw, I enclosed it in the usual angled bracket used mathematically to mean “is less then”, followed by “?” and “php”, and ended it with “?” and the greater-than sign on the following line. It now looked like a proper php line.

The second task was to determine where in WordPress he’d put this line. He said that he’d put it in the “php application”, (Remember; English wasn’t his first language.) and further down he’d indicated that he’d placed it at the top. From the look of it, it just gave me the impression that it should go inside the header.php file; so that’s where I put it, at the very top.

‘Moment of truth: All the URLs appeared to be working as they should, even the “pretty” ones, and no 404 error from the server; but I was going to have to have better than that before I settled on it. – I went into permalinks and set the URL structure for the “prettiest” format I could: Date and time etc. – Now would I get results? YES! Everything worked; including the RSS feed! (I reset the URL format to the format that I’ve always used, in order that my URLs as listed and linked in search-engines synchronised, despite it not being the most SEO-friendly format.)

Target neutralised! (At last!)

So what was the line of code I used? Part 2 will reveal all; including a step-by-step guide to including the php in your own blog. Make sure you don’t miss Part Two; coming soon here on kkomp.com: – Taking you beyond the comfort zone.

I’ll admit to being no expert in this area. Why do I say that? Well my current British webhost for this domain is utterly incompetent: I’ve been unable to remember a single day in the last few weeks where I haven’t encountered at least one server error. If I email them about anything, whether it be a complaint or anything else, they ignore it. That means I’m forced to phone them on their premium line at 10p a minute, which charge starts when you hear the “Welcome to Fasthosts” message; after which I’ve known it take anything up to 15 minutes or more for someone to answer the phone. – Only to be told that they don’t have any problems with their server: Rather the problem lies with what I’m running on the server. Also they don’t service 3rd party applications… In other words total disinterest: WordPress works everywhere else without a hitch; but on their servers it doesn’t work, so it’s my fault. What’s wrong? They can’t be bothered to find out and they don’t care. End of story.

There is, however, light at the end of the tunnel: A different tunnel, but one with light at the end nevertheless: -

- After all that you probably won’t be feeling too happy about using a British web-hosting company: Nevertheless I’ve found one that bucks the trend, so to speak: They’re called “Daily”: Not Arthur Daley, just Daily; and they seem to be a pretty good host.

One particular thing that I notice that they offer, which not a lot of other hosts do, is a Windows 2008 hosting package, complete with MS SQL 2008 and ASP.NET 3.5. Of course, as with most hosting providers, you can transfer all your existing domains to them, and they even have a 30-day money-back guarantee: Something that I wish I’d had with fasthosts.co.uk, or “slowhosts” as I call them.

Maybe you Ozzies think it’s just pure luck that we Pommes finally beat you at test cricket; but there is still some good things yet left in this excuse for a country. – Even though we exported David Beckham to America. (I think, from the way the LA Galaxy fans are behaving, we’ll soon be having him sent back.) Daily is one of those good things; so do click here to find out more.

Generally I think a lot of British businesses have a serious attitude problem. Here on Beyond, however, I hope to be promoting a number of British businesses which are not only still ethical, but also competent, legit, and which I believe that my readers will gain a benefit from using the services of for their own purposes. I do vet the companies which I advertise to a reasonable extent or to as great a degree as is possible. There are some British companies that I wouldn’t even consider advertising, despite the rewards on offer for doing so. Whilst I don’t personally underwrite any claims that I make about any organisation, good or bad, I won’t wilfully advertise any crap services on this blog that I know to be not as good as they seem.

So there you have it: if you’re looking for a decent British web-host I suggest you give Daily a try.

“God Save The Queen” – The Sex Pistols.

Hi Everyone.

This week I’ve changed things about a bit with regard to the appearance of this blog. Basically I’ve decluttered the theme by removing the distracting artwork at the sides of the screen and replacing it with a slightly-pink-tinted plain background. I also changed the overall background colour from that slightly-over-intensive pinky colour to white. To remove the resultant overall blandness of the site I added a recurring light violet-pastel-coloured oval, which is visible but hardly noticeable, to the centre column.

I redesigned the header; putting the RSS link at the very top of the page, raising the menu-bar up above the logo-banner, and moving the advertising-space from the header into the page-body, further down. This will hopefully improve the “too-much-going on” feel of the blog.

In addition I further decluttered the Welcome page by removing some of the junk that had built up over the last few months, including the derogatory negative comments of Syphilis Syndrone (posting as “Sarah Palin”), which add absolutely nothing whatsoever of value to anything and were just wasting space.

Do you find the new design elements described above easier on the eye and less distracting? I’d be interested to hear your comments on this.

Moving on; and on Monday I came up with some more gumph on Microsoft’s war with the EU over windows: -

EU’s Latest Antitrust-Stab at Microsoft: Furthermore –

Tuesday had me giving you a guide to the minimum spec.s to look for or build into a new computer, with the future in mind: -

What Are the Minimum Specs Required for a Desktop Computer?

For the newbie, and those who need to know as a one off; a step-by-step pictorial guide on how to do the following: -

How to Find and/or Change Your Computer’s Name in XP

I did an article, back in April, about the basics of the extremely common (If you did but know it.) process of changing AC current into DC. Conversely, this week I did an article on the less-common but nevertheless widely-used and equally-useful process of changing DC current to AC: -

How to Change Direct Current into Alternating Current

Lastly, there are still so many self-wired UK 13 Amp plugs in homes across the country, even to this day; many of which are so badly wired by total first-timers that they’re rather dangerous. I transposed my original papers on the subject from my City & Guilds college course in electronics as an article on how to do it properly and safely: -

How to Wire a UK 13 Amp Mains Plug

I hope that you enjoy those articles.

Lastly, as a note for WordPress self-hosted blog users, I’ll remind you that WordPress 2.8.1 is now out and ready for you to use. It resolves a number of issues found in 2.8. For more information on this, click here.

That’s about it for now. I hope you have a generally relaxing and profitable weekend. Look after yourselves.

Shazza.

Hello, and welcome to another newsletter here on kkomp.com. In the last week I’ve produced some pretty good articles; although I say so myself. If you haven’t had a chance to read them yet I suggest that you click some links in the list below and have a look at anything that takes your fancy for a short to medium read: -

WordPress 2.8 Baker

The above post was more of a link than anything else. Quite obviously WP 2.8 has already been released, and it’s most likely that most WordPress-user-bloggers have already upgraded, even by the time the article was written,and sampled it for themselves. The thing is that not everyone will be aware of exactly what’s been changed straight away, unless it’s staring them straight in the face. – Therefore I thought it a good idea to do a little piece about it and link to the WordPress blog for further details; even if only to somewhat enhance the traffic to the WordPress blog as a thank you.

Something that carries a lot more weight is a computer’s PSU. It supplies quite a vast amount of wattage at low regulated voltages for its size. Only 30 years or so before it was invented and prototyped you’d have been looking at a box at least twice the size of your computer, if not bigger, just to perform the same function and supply the same output. That huge box would have also probably heated your entire house as a side product.

Due to significant advantages in manufacturing technology since then, a lot of miniaturisation has been made possible through component integration and also further advances in technology. Voltage regulators no longer require a set of differential amplifiers built from individual large aluminium-canned power-transistors. (2N3055 keeps appearing in my mind’s eye.) These days the differential amplifiers, multiple-output-stages, everything, is all integrated into a single hi-current regulator package about the size of a matchbox or thereabouts, making the unit cheaper, saving resources, producing less in the way of heat and outputting more in the way of power.

-But, despite higher tolerances and vastly better performance, things still fail eventually: Nothing lasts forever. – When a computer power supply fails the result can be quite catastrophic in some cases; with damage occurring to other sensitive CMOS-based parts.

If you know and understand the warning signs of impending PSU-failure then you can avoid this scenario happening in the case of your machine: Saving you you time, money, and resources. This article will give you some ideas about what to look for: -

‘Dodgy PSU? Replace it Before it Damages Anything Else

Perhaps I’m a bit intolerant, or maybe I just don’t have a high-threshold when it comes to the thoughtless acts of others. – Now when people are thoughtless towards others then that’s just plain wrong, and those people need an attitude adjustment along with having their brain switched on and their thought-processes enhanced in my opinion. However, when a person’s thoughtless actions are detrimental to themselves and/or to the company that they work for, then the expression “thoughtless” takes on an entire new meaning: Brain-dead might be a better description?

OK maybe that’s a bit harsh. I have to take into account that not everybody’s a geeky-type; but it should come as no surprise to anybody that if a computer remembers their data it must be stored somewhere. – When the power’s switched off and switched back on it still remembers the data that’s been inputted into it, so  it must be filed somewhere inside the computer; it’s just obvious logic.

- So when someone puts their old computer in a public place for disposal because they don’t want to use the dinosaur any more, you’d think that they’d remove their sensitive personal data from it wouldn’t you? …But no; many times people don’t bother: They just trust to luck or have too much faith in human nature and hand their identities over to all and sundry to do as they wish with. Likewise when someone sells their old hard-drive on eBay. – Do they bother to clean their data off of it? Do they even attempt to conceal it? In my experience not always, no. If I was a criminal I could now be operating under at least two identities other than my own and have some sort of racket going on with at least one business because of this. – All without even trying!

Read this article: -

Don’t Leave Sensitive Data on Your Old Hard-Drive

The following post was one that I pushed out in a bit of a hurry as an extra article, firstly to explain how I seemingly managed to miss the Summer Solstice; or at least I certainly missed posting about it, and secondly to warn about an unpatched security hole that Microsoft don’t appear to be that bothered about; even though exploit code has been written and released to the wild with regard to it.

Extra: Summer Solstice + Advisory

Is it Worth Running a RAID Array?

Above is a brief article in which I basically share my opinion, for what it’s worth, on the idea of using RAID on servers and also on workstations.

OH WOW! You Simply MUST See This: Is a post that, if I told you was an advert, might put you off reading it. – So what I did was give it an heir of mystery and allow those who are curious enough to drift towards it to do so. It’s not just any old advert though: Firstly, as my regulars will know by now, I don’t advertise crap on this blog. Secondly even I’m excited about this product, and I’m living proof that it’s worth getting excited about as I’m already part of it as a customer who’s benefitting greatly from the quality information-input from it.

In further marketing language; don’t just take my word for it: Read this: -

I’m just about to link you to a video that shows you, step-by-step, how to optimize your YouTube videos to help you drive an insane amount of traffic back to your website.Gideon, the guy who is not only a half of the Become A Blogger course that this article advertises, but who also created the video, tells me that he tried these exact same strategies on one of his own YouTube channels, and got like 67,400 views in just 8 weeks! At first I thought he was just kidding me but then I saw his channel, and my jaw dropped at the
results (He actually shows the same channel inside the video).

- So, yeah… if you want to get more traffic from YouTube, you’ll like this stuff…
http://www.becomeablogger.com/go.php?offer=kkomp&pid=4&u=http://www.becomeablogger.com/blog/youtube-x-factor/

But that’s only a part of it: Read the actual blog post itself for more links, on to an instructional video that actually features in the Become A Blogger course. – At absolutely no cost to yourself. – and another to a page where you can get another 10 instructional videos to do with the course.

Now that’s value in just the advertising alone…

Wednesday 24th June 2009 was this blog’s official first birthday: -

Happy Birthday Beyond

Lastly; when Microsoft launch Windows 7 on October 22nd 2009, they’ll be charging more for the Professional and Enterprise versions that have XP Mode included with them. – But why should you pay Microsoft more for the pleasure when there’s a way to scrub round it using free software? Read this article to find out how you could save yourself a few dollars more: -

How to Avoid Paying Extra for XP Mode(?)

That about sums up the week that was here on kkomp.com/Beyond since the last newsletter. Enjoy your weekend. ‘Next publication is scheduled for Monday; but you never can tell; I might get the bug like I did last weekend and publish something impromptu before then, and maybe I might not – ?

Namaste’

Peace.

It’s Wednesday 24th June 2009 and it’s kkomp.com’s first birthday today. It feels like I started this blog aeons ago, (Really, it does. It feels like I’ve been blogging for a number of years; yet it seems like only yesterday I had my 40th birthday.) and also only a few days ago too. In the year since this blog started I’ve made about 430 posts in 24 categories. – That’s not to mention the pages. My initial intention of enough content creation to place this blog on the blogosphere map has to all intents and purposes come to fruition, and some.

A year ago the world was facing the fact that we were in a global recession courtesy of the greedy international banking system. From what I hear lately, the UK appears to be pulling out of it: The economic growth report for March 2009 appears to indicate that GDP and growth returned to a positive figure in the case of UK. Although one leaf doesn’t make a summer; it appears that there are definite signs of a recovery on the way for Blighty.

- But; as some prominent bloggers have asked; where exactly is, or where exactly was, this massive economic downturn? More than not it appears to have been largely created within the minds of negatively-biased individuals by a media-led frenzy. The press will do anything to sell newspapers. A few businesses disappeared, true: That can and does even happen in times of economic prosperity though. Were there people claiming that the end of the world is nigh, that the commercial system as we knew it was going into meltdown? Of course there were: ‘Probably the same doom-mongers who did the same thing in the last recession, and the one before that too. – But the car-parks are still just as full at the shopping-malls as they always were, the traffic still flowed as per usual on the highways and byways, the world continued turning.

I accept that the world financial institutions made crazy speculative investments which lost them billions: perhaps they’ll now learn that putting spotty teenagers with a constant hangover and greedy out-of-control excuses for businesspeople in charge of the world monetary system is a definite recipe for its doom.

As we hopefully begin to emerge from this major economic turbulence we find that the world is still changing in our favour: By “our” I mean those of us who are building our world online. Social networking and global communication has, and will most likely continue to, cause the storm-clouds to depart and to build bridges of co-operation and opportunity for businesses globally. The remainder of the commercial entities will be forced to follow suit. Unfortunately for those of the old-school; opportunity and inter-corporate/interpersonal connectivity will continue to elude them, and they will fade away to be replaced by those who are operating under the new electronically-connected socio-commercial framework that has arisen from technological and societal advancement and the evolution of civilisation that has ensued as a result of that progress.

As I pointed out earlier, during the last year this blog has accrued around 430 posts, mainly of late technologically-orientated material dealing with basic practical and theoretical electronics and/or computer hardware and software, punctuated here and there by a news item or two which stood out to me, along with the odd mystical/Pagan-themed post.

Like a human child; this blog started without form, just a cell of an idea, fertilised and conceived a year ago on a whim, following a suggestion from someone who was already a blogger. Having no womb to mature within, it slowly took form in the wild, evolving with the mainly indirect assistance of a number of professionals who advised and directed with regard to its construction, renovation, changes, layout, and to a limited extent its content.

My naivety during the first couple of months of managing this blog was a little more prolific than I’d imagined it would be. I remember my first move as my brainchild came into existence was to announce on the social media channels, which I’d only recently become familiar with and had managed to pick up 1 or 2 followers, that I now have a blog: here’s the URL; please come visit. Well 1 or 2 people did visit, for about as long as it took to hit their back button on their browser.

I’d heard of people making fortunes on the internet; but somehow connected it with the dot com boom of the turn of the century, and regarded it as a thing of the past. Spring 2008 turned to Summer, my web 1.0 website at kustomkomputa.co.uk didn’t appear to be attracting much if any business, and I was starting to become extremely despondent. – Then a pro-blogger by the name of David Risley suggested I start a blog using WordPress. – Well what I was doing at the time wasn’t working; so in for a penny… Why the heck not?

I had been using Word 10 as an html editor to build kustomkomputa.com: It was difficult, cumbersome, and the resultant pages were full of so much unnecessary html that they took quite some time to load even with a broadband connection. Despite this I’d become used to Microsoft Word, and I even understood most of the crap html in it.

WordPress was a totally different kettle of fish though. I downloaded it, looked at the files and their contents, and screamed inside. .php – I’d never learned any php. .css – I had even less idea about css. Html: No problem; even Microsoft Word. – Especially Microsoft Word. Php and css, though, looked like Chinese to me.

By the time I’d installed WordPress on the server my head was so drenched in sweat I thought I’d just washed my hair! – But I’d done it. – And it didn’t work. Check: Had I done everything right? Yes. I’d triple checked everything before I started, and triple checked it again after every stage while I was doing it. having triple checked everything afterwards I eventually discovered that fasthosts.co.uk Windows servers were no good for running WordPress on. I’d specifically asked them beforehand: -

“Are your Windows servers able to run WordPress?”

Answer: “I don’t know. Nobody’s ever run WordPress from our servers before.”

- When pressed: “Well I can’t see any reason why it wouldn’t work on a Windows server. If you install it and it doesn’t work properly then we can always put you on a Linux server instead. The transfer won’t cost anything, our Linux servers cost exactly the same price to use as our Windows servers, and it’ll only take a few minutes to swap over.”

It didn’t work on their Windows server. – As promised they transferred me to a Linux server, and I installed WordPress again. This time it worked straight off and without problem.

Advice:

1) If using fasthosts.co.uk as your host for a self-hosted WordPress blog; always choose their Linux servers as your server.

     1a) Always use a Linux server wherever possible: Linux is a much better server platform than Windows.

2) Don’t use fasthosts.co.uk, unless you want to be wound up in red tape.

I hope you like reading; There’s more: -

To start with I didn’t really bother too much about presentation as far as the pages were concerned, which was my first mistake: After a false start earlier in June 2008, where it ended up that I took the entire blog down and restarted from scratch due to some kind of major problem. – I can’t remember what exactly, I downloaded and used a pre-built theme, threw up a Welcome page – almost literally by the previous look of it, and concentrated on turning out content.

I decided to break the mould of how most blogs were operating early on, by having a Welcome page initially, which visitors not linking from a link to an article would arrive at, rather than having the entire content of my posts appearing in chronological order on that initial page. Unfortunately the element that was missing was a contents listing, other than a table of the ten latest posts in the sidebar. This was a matter that wasn’t remedied until 2009, which was another major mistake I made. I agree that it would have been more sensible to attend to the matter earlier, but as things turned out it didn’t happen that way. We live and learn.

Although I’d written a number of papers over the past few years; I didn’t then classify myself as a writer, and maybe it showed. A few of my articles at the time were articles featuring content throughout that I’d created myself, but they were mainly seemingly less than quality content. In the main I concentrated upon relaying news items that I found to be of interest more than anything else.

Quite obviously, since there were an almost infinite number of alternative and better-known sources of the news that I was relaying; people stuck with what they knew, and other than a few visits sent by Google I didn’t get much traffic at all. Also, although I’d downloaded and installed the tools for search-engine-optimisation, I hadn’t configured them properly, (- As I actually wasn’t aware that they required further configuration in the early days, and I also didn’t know how to do it anyway, had I even been aware.) which didn’t help either.

During July 2008 I’d started to introduce advertising via advertisments that I’d created myself with links back to Clickbank. This however generated very little, if any, revenue.

By September 2008 I’d started to relay the news items whilst also including my personal take on them. Although this helped, it still didn’t have that much upwards-effect on my traffic figures. Despite having trained in electronics, as well as having a number of years of experience with computers, I felt at the time still very naive and vulnerable when it came to blogging, pretty much throughout 2008. Despite this though, I noticed that this blog was nevertheless ranked 5-million and-something-th at the time.

In October 2008, I think it was, I began to properly configure my SEO plugins, such as All-in-One-SEO-Pack, Google XML Sitemaps, etc. This did begin to have a positive effect, and the number of unique visitors began to increase somewhat. I also began utilising further free tips from David Risley, which also helped.

By December 2008 the blog was attracting a more realistic audience figure, and I set my attention upon the blog’s homepage, as well as the header and footer.php files, with the intention of tidying it up and making it look more attractive. Php still worried me, as although it was quite easy to understand, I was constantly having issues with the syntax of anything I wrote. Also most of what I wrote clashed with the style.css file of my theme. Although my effort eventually improved the page considerably, the resultant page was too crowded, not designed well, and the colour scheme failed to convey the theme of the blog. Many female readers liked it; but since the blog was attracting a mainly male, older, audience, I felt that it wasn’t a sensible option to allow things to continue that way.

I worked on and designed an entirely new home (Welcome) page, in addition the the header and footer, and implemented in during January and February 2009. I also edited and redesigned the theme to be more in tune with the central subject material of the blog.

Previous to this, although the subject matter had been mainly of a technical bent, I hadn’t really had a theme for the blog as such, nor had I used the blog’s design to clearly indicate the subject matter to my readers; which probably left some readers in somewhat of a quandary as to exactly what it was that I was trying to convey herein.

Also the footer, (footer.php) at one point during 2008 had a serious php error in it which caused a number of problems. These issues were rectified when I almost totally rewrote the header using a lot of html in addition to attending to the php already present – which was enhanced, and also in addition I repaired and enhanced the footer.

In doing so I introduced a header banner, which I enhanced over a number of weeks. I’ve since moved the RSS link into the header, and provided the mailing-list-subscription link high in the sidebar, above the fold, by writing its script into the sidebar.php file. I also introduced a contents page,clearly linked to from the header as well as the Welcome page.

A lot of the inspiration for the redesign came from Yaro Starak and Gideon Shalwick’s “Becomeablogger” course, which I bought into earlier this year, admittedly a little late. Whilst I haven’t yet implemented all of the suggestions within the course material by any means yet, it has nevertheless helped me out no end. The Becomeablogger course will be having its second run soon, and the enrolment window will be between 29th June and 3rd July 2009. As soon as the window opens I’ll be advertising it in the header of this blog, so if you’d like to join up you’ll have the opportunity to do so via this blog.

One of the biggest issues for me over this past year has been avoiding clutter, both in the sidebar and on the Welcome page. The sidebar is an area which I’ve particularly concentrated upon in this respect, along with its appearance, as the sidebar appears along with almost every page and post. My intention has been to not let it detract the reader’s attention overly from the main article. I hope I succeeded in that.

That’s summed up some of the main points of the blog’s evolution over the time since its creation. No doubt it will continue to evolve further with time; hopefully in a positive manner.

The Future

So what will I be doing on this blog in the future? For the immediate future nothing much is scheduled to change. I’ll be writing more free content fairly regularly, plus making the odd tweak to the theme perhaps. I’ll be adding further advertising of top-quality products from other bloggers and online businesspeople, plus also I will probably be writing more reviews of a number of them.

At some point I’m hoping to be adding podcasts to the mix – Maybe followed by video too. I don’t have a schedule for doing so planned out at this point, so I can’t be any more definite than that at this present moment.

A year has passed, and the blog is still up and running. I have the feeling that the following year will contain many profitable and beneficial additions; both for you the visitor as well as for me the blogger, plus any help in the form of people that I take on in the future.

That’s about it for this post then: A year older and wiser.

Enjoy the rest of the Summer if you live in the upper Northern hemisphere. If you live in the lower Southern hemisphere you can take heart in the fact that midwinter has passed. Wherever you are, enjoy the rest of the year, and don’t forget to return regularly to kkomp.com to see what’s new. If you happen to be in space or on another planet then enjoy the break, and if you aren’t part of the Human Race from Earth and you actually live on another planet then I invite you to make contact with the us Humans. – We’re a peculiar civilisation, but most of us still have some semblance of normality left I believe.

If you’re not on the mailing list then it would be a good idea to subscribe to it and get notified by email. You might also like to subscribe to the RSS feed for notification too.

Finally I invite comments/constructive criticisms/remarks… You know the drill.

I was intending to take it easy this weekend; but I’ve got the bug, so here’s a supplemental post: -

- Just a quick post for those of you who haven’t yet upgraded or don’t yet use WordPress to run their blog; here’s a short video covering the latest developments.

Download WordPress 2.8 here. Over 790 bugs were fixed, and themes, widgets, taxonomies, and overall speed have been improved. This release is named in honour of noted trumpeter and vocalist Chet Baker.

If you’re thinking of starting a blog at some point then I do suggest that you use WordPress as a platform. Also if you’re going to start a blog the right way I suggest that you read my latest Newsletter. You could quite possibly find the content very helpful.

If you want even more detail about WordPress 2.8 then click here.

Today I found a new WordPress plugin produced and developed by Ajay D’souza: It’s called Better Search; and that’s exactly what it adds to your blog.

I’ve just started using this plugin on kkomp.com, as of this post: On other blogs that don’t use the plugin, WordPress finds the posts that contain the search term as you’ve entered, and lists them out. – Very simple logic. Now, on this blog, when you conduct a search, the posts which are most relevant to the search term are listed out in order of their relevance. – A step in the right direction which makes searching easier and better.

The plugin replaces the inbuilt WordPress search functionality – adding contextual and relevant searching,rather than just matching the search term.

The plugin is supplied with the relevant widgets; which display up to two types of “heatmap” in the sidebar, or wherever else you’d like to display them if you hack about a bit.

Being a new plugin – this being only version 1.0 – (I suppose you might describe it as a beta in a way.) – it’s a work in progress, as are most plugins, this blog, most other blogs, and even the WordPress platform itself. Expect new and improved features to appear as time goes by.

In fact; if you’re a php whizz and have time on your hands then why not help Ajay improve it? If you’re like me and unable to make any reasonable donation in that form, (I’m not much good at php, and I don’t have much time to spare.) then you might like to help Ajay out with an unspecified financial donation if you have a spare dollar or two perhaps, especially if you decide to use the plugin on your blog.

In my opinion, anything that makes life easier for the reader is a bonus for a blog: It makes the visitors want to come back because that blog seems to work better than others. – So as an aide to boosting traffic, every little helps. This plugin does just that in its own way, and therefore the blog that it’s installed on will appear more attractive because of the extra functionality that it adds.

- So go forth; install it and/or try it out in your sandbox. Please do comment about it on this blog and/or the author’s blog too.

‘More here.

___

If you’re using a Wordpress self-hosted blog, then depending upon your theme that you’ve chosen you might find that the widgets that you use in the sidebar tend to run into one another; making the sidebar appear cluttered and untidy. This happens especially where two pre-created widgets meet: -

Example: -

<< If these two widgets (Left.) on this blog didn’t have any space between then they’d appear to merge together and could be indistinguishable at a casual glance.

End of example.

When I write a widget myself, or I insert the code from an external source such as a box on another website offering code for a particular widget, the job appears fairly simple; as all I have to do to space it from the one above or below is to write this code at the top or bottom of the existing code: -

<p>&#160;</p>

This leaves a blank gap; the size of a paragraph space, between the widget and the next one up if it’s written at the top of the text, or the next one down if it’s written at the bottom of the text.

Sometimes that gap just isn’t big enough though; so  it calls for 2 identical spaces thus: -

<p>&#160;</p>

<p>&#160;</p>

Now that’s OK providing that I’m writing the widget myself; i.e. grabbing an empty text-widget and filling in all the php or JavaScript or html code in text myself. If, on the other hand the two adjoining widgets are pre-built with the theme, as a number were in the theme I’m using, ( I chose a free theme to begin with, and I customised it to suit myself.) and present a GUI when opened for editing; then it’s not possible to add that line or lines of text. (See illustration below for an example.)

If, as it happens, a widget directly above or below that widget is also pre-built and presents a GUI when opened for editing; then it’s not possible to use that code on either widget as a break, and thus the two widgets are too close together and appear to merge untidily into one.

The solution to that, without having to delve deeper and rewrite the underlying pre-written widget php code, is to think outside the box: Create a “spacer-widget”: -

Create an empty text-widget and enter the line  <p>&#160;</p>  as many times as is necessary, depending upon the amount of space you require between the two (pre-built) widgets, into the text-box.

Click “Done” and drag the spacer widget that you’ve just created between the two pre-built widgets.

Click “Save Changes”, and voila; you now have a gap between the two widgets.

Target neutralised.

I am still working on this and another blog right at this moment as promised. The changes will be largely unseen as regards this one. The other blog is my new second blog called Shazza-Live – which you can view now if you like. It’s still in its infancy at the moment and is extremely light on content. Even the pages and posts that exist are in most cases only half-built and need further attention. Nevertheless, if you’d like to check out the proceedings then please feel free to mosey on over using this link.

Although the blog has a dot co dot UK URL, you can also use the dot com URL as an alternative, which redirects to the former.

“OK; so what’s going down then?” You ask. “In the last post you made on this site you said that you were working hard and wouldn’t be posting anything until Monday. You’re not very consistent at sticking to your decisions are you?”

You may have a point there, to some extent. The reason I’m making this post is due to a number of circumstances. I thought it prudent at this point, although it may be a little late in the day for some, to post the following: –

Part of the work that I was intending to undertake was a manual upgrade of my Wordpress installation. had I done this it would have been a first for me, as I’ve only done the initial install, – twice now, with both this blog and also Shazza-Live too, – but I’ve always relied on automatic upgrades. These have all gone smoothly for me up until recently: -

…And that is the main reason for this unscheduled post. – That, as well as the fact that I have possibly cut an hour or two out of the weekends’ schedule by avoiding manually upgrading.

Wordpress 2.7 has a built-in upgrading feature; whereas in previous versions of Wordpress you either had to rely on a plugin to do the auto-upgrade, or manually do it yourself. I always used the plugin option without any problems other than fear that things would screw up in the middle of the process and I’d have to take an on-the-job crash-course in rebuilding the database. Fortunately that never happened under the old WP Auto-Upgrade plugin; at least not in my case anyway.

When I upgraded to WP 2.7; almost as soon as it was released in RTM format, I noticed that it had its own built-in upgrading feature, and I wondered if the WP Auto-Upgrade plugin would interfere with that. – Despite the fact that it had handled the upgrade to 2.7 without problem. I made a mental note and put it to the back of my mind… And forgot all about it.

When it came to upgrading from 2.7 to 2.7.1; which I wanted to get done as 2.7 was rather overly buggy for an RTM release, I clicked on the “Upgrade Automatically” button: CRASH! : -

Upgrade WordPress

Downloading update from http://wordpress.org/wordpress-2.7.1.zip

Unpacking the core update

Fatal error: Cannot redeclare pclziputilpathreduction() (previously declared in /538/linux/kkomp.com/hdoc/content/plugins/wordpress-automatic-upgrade/lib/pclzip.lib.php:5421) in /538/linux/kkomp.com/hdoc/admin/includes/class-pclzip.php on line 5498

‘Pretty obvious really – Like RTFM (Read The F…ing Manual.). I failed to spot the obvious, however, and nothing jogged my memory either. I even showed this to an alleged php expert; who said that it was probably due to a fault in the server’s php and that I should get on to the host about it. I did; and even the advisor at Fasthosts.co.uk missed the obvious; advising me that my Wordpress install had screwed up and that I’d have to manually upgrade to fix the problem.

Fortunately I’d also put out on Twitter, but not getting a decent response for 24 hours wasn’t helping. I took my attention off Twitter and began planning the manual upgrade; going through every step with a fine-toothed comb.

I was distracted by my older computer, which had been acting strangely for a while, crashing with a repeated BSOD. I put that problem right, and as I reinstalled Twhirl I looked at the replies in my Twitter account: –

My thanks to @kwbridge, who came straight up with the solution:

“Do you have the WP Auto-Upgrade plugin installed? If so, delete it and try again.” Brilliant!

I found and deleted the WP Auto Upgrade folder in Root\WP-content\Plugins directory, attempted the auto-upgrade, and everything was accomplished in a matter of seconds.

Target neutralised.

I’m rather embarrassed that I failed to spot the obvious though. Rather than “RTFM”, analyse, diagnose, rectify; it was more a case of LATFM (Look At The F…ing Manual.) and panic:

“Oh sh.t my blog’s crashed: There goes my blogging career before it even started properly.”

Panic stations. Dial 999 and ask for the technical assistance squad. Shut down all operations. ‘Houston we have a problem.’ Gather all available financial resources and put them on standby. Go to red alert status. Battle stations. Evacuate all non-essential personnel. Mayday, mayday…

In hindsight the problem was obvious: The php code had already declared and set a value for the function “pclziputilpathreduction()” when the plugin activated, hence when the built-in Auto-Upgrade function was activated and attempted to redeclare it, it was unable to do so and caused the fatal error. It’s all there in the error description FFS; but me being a php novice caused me to go into a flap.

As @kwbridge said in a reply to my reply:

“…I wonder how many people have that plugin installed and are going to run into the same problem?”

Well if any of those people happen to be you then here’s the solution in case you missed it like I did.

Kkomp.com – Taking you beyond the comfort zone and ensuring that you don’t miss out in getting your geek on. I so hope pcmech.com don’t mind me combining their motto with mine. Lol.

And now, with that out of the way, back to the grindstone. Onwards and upwards with panic asunder…

Panic set in at kkomp.com office when first it was discovered that the blog posts were no longer being notified on Facebook, followed by the discovery that Ping.fm had vanished. In the broadcasting social-network’s place was a Go-Daddy advertisment but no ping.fm dashboard.

kkomp.com use ping.fm’s free broadcasting notification service by means of a plugin attached to the WordPress blog which you’re reading now. This plugin allows notification of any new posts to be sent to ping.fm, and then subsequently onwards from ping.fm to Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, FriendFeed, Plurk, and the like.

I immediately Googled for any further news; of which there was none, and consulted Twitter. I was told that ping.fm were having domain problems. During the short rally of tweets the ping.fm site reappeared and seems to be back to normal operation. I have no idea how long exactly the site was down for: All I know is that it was for somewhere between 0 and 36 hours.

This post is partially news and partially a request for further enlightenment: If anyone knows any further details then perhaps they’d be good enough to add a comment below? Is there an ongoing problem or was it a one off outage? How long were they down for? … And other information of that nature.

In the post I made earlier entitled “A Geek’s Toolkit Supplement: Loaded USB Drive ” I spoke of what I described as “branding files”: Files that I add to the operating system to indicate that I am supplier, builder, and maintenance tech for a particular computer.

I can hear your brains whirring; so before you start thinking that I’m up to something naughty I’ll show you exactly what I mean. Oh yes; this only works if you have Windows XP installed, so don’t go trying it with a Linux or a OSX installation and then comment that I’ve messed up your operating system or “I can’t find those files in Ubuntu!” – “It doesn’t work with Leopard!” You’re quite right; it doesn’t – So be forewarned.

If this information has already been added to your operating system by the manufacturer then I suggest it best to just leave it anyway.

(Why are you playing about with your computer like this anyway? What do you hope to achieve? Oh well; your problem, not mine.)

The aim of the exercise is to customise Windows XP’s general tab in the System Properties dialogue box that you call up by right-clicking the My Computer icon and selecting Properties.

This customisation involves adding support contract information and a logo. It involves using only Notepad and whatever program you like to use to create a 256-colour bitmap.

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OK let’s start with the details: I won’t tell you exactly what details I put for computers that I build; so for this exercise we’ll assume that these details are regarding a computer built by the Acme Computer Corporation:

The computer is a Datamax, model 55102. Support line is 1-800-ACME…

Open Notepad and type the following text, replacing the example with your company’s details etc:

[General]

Manufacturer=Acme Computer Corporation

Model=Datamax 55102

[Support Information]

Line 1=Call 1-800-ACME for technical support

Line 2=  ">.invalid

Line 3=500 Billion Byte Drive

Line 4=Pixelgraphicsville, USA

Save this file to %windir%\Windows\System32 as Oeminfo.ini

Create a 256-colour bitmap of your company’s logo that is no more than 96X96 pixels in size. Save this file to %windir%\Windows\system32 as Oemlogo.bmp

Yes I deliberately soiled the picture: ‘Better safe than sorry.

To see the results either right-click on the My Computer icon or press the Windows and the Break key simultaneously.

And that’s how it’s done – No registry edits, no hacking into anything. This is a white box system builder’s trick; but it’s no massive secret. The files aren’t permanent anyway; if you remove them or reinstall your operating system the dialogue box reverts to default.

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Being a geekette; that is a female computer designer/builder, as well as a blogger, I often get asked by my girlfriends (And some of their boyfriends too – Shh!) to pop over for a cuppa and attend to some problem they’re having with their computer. Most of these problems turn out to be software-related, so it’s always a good idea to come prepared – Although I can download most of what I need from the internet, sometimes their internet connection is not working for whatever reason, and more than one is on dial-up – Which can make downloading a program a 2-hour job in itself.

To combat this I have a 1Gb USB flash drive with most of anything I might need on it; plus loads of links to anything useful on the internet itself that might be useful which I haven’t bothered to include because I probably won’t need it.

A Topless and Bottomless Photo of Me

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I pop the cord from which the USB stick hangs around my neck, and go to sort out their issues.

I mainly have program installers in the form of .exe files on the USB drive: These are always useful. I also am able, in a worst-case scenario, to provide them with a temporary internet connection via my mobile device, for which I also carry a USB bluetooth dongle to plug into their computer on the rare occasions where it is necessary; such as an instance a year plus ago where a friend somehow lost the driver for their network interface device and was unable to communicate with their router as a result: I removed the old driver which was faulty but obviously didn’t have that particular driver on the USB device; so I set up a temporary internet connection via my mobile phone/bluetooth and downloaded a new driver, installed it – Target neutralised.

The items I have on my USB drive are listed below: I’m sharing this with you as I’m assuming that as a geek you too get called out to similar situations; but being unable to fix it on the spot you end up taking their computer home, doing the work in your spare time, and returning their computer at a later date; which causes inconvenience to both parties.

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The files I carry around on my USB device are as follows:

1. AVG Anti-virus.exe installer: You’d be mightily surprised how many people don’t run an anti-virus program! They might find that their computer slows down with use; and, not realising that it is caused by the registry getting cluttered with crap among other things, they start removing programs which they think are unnecessary in order to attempt to get the machine to speed up again, one of those “unnecessary” programs being their anti-virus program.

2.. A free anti-spyware program; such as AdAware and Spybot Search and Destroy – For the reason stated above or that they didn’t even know what spyware was etc. The latest AVG antivirus has built-in spyware-protection, but that protection is not exhaustive, so it’s always a good idea to install extra spyware protection supplemental to that.

3. Free FTP clients in .exe installer format, such as WS-FTP-LE and FileZilla: They do occasionally come in handy.

4. Diagnostic programs; such as Core Temp.exe, Diskcheckup.exe… I know; rather than listing them all here I’ll show a picture of all the icons below and to save a lot of my time I’ll let you Google for them all.

Obviously the folders are of my own making: Batch Files contains some useful batch files that I wrote or copied, Dragons Websites contains the URLs of the websites of the millionaire entrepreneurs from the BBC series “Dragon’s Den”, Glint(Program) contains the .exe file of the Glint System Monitor program, KK contains pictures which I use regarding Kustom Komputa; Suppliers, Parts, and Circuits contains URLs to suppliers of computer hardware components, plus a few electronic circuits, Web Shortcuts contains hundreds of various useful URLs, Websites contains copies of all my website files from some of my various sites, WP Plugins contains some useful WordPress plugins. Some of the files, such as DSC00* are photos from my mobile phone. aports.zip shouldn’t be on there as it’s a program that contains malware. OEM Exel and OEM INXP are folders containing branding files which I add to the OS to indicate that I am supplier, builder, and maintenance tech for a particular computer. The file “Kustom Komputa” is a copy of some files from my Kustom Komputa website. WP Themes contains WordPress themes. The Folder “Self-Installing Scr” contains a number of screensavers that I created and which automatically install on the computer upon activation of the .exe file thereof. (No malware involved.) The folder Paint.net contains the program Paint.net, and the folder “Sounds” contains some alternative Windows sound effects as spoken by the Daleks from the BBC TV series “Dr Who”.

There are also a number of shortcuts which you don’t normally see on any Windows desktop. These shortcuts; such as “Sound Recorder“, “Volume Control“, “Command Prompt“, “Device Manager“, and “Sleep or Hibernate” are described on this site, including the method to create your very own icon(s).

So that’s pretty much it: Carry this lot plus your own personal files around on a USB flash drive and you won’t go far wrong.

HTH (‘Hope That Helps.)

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BEWARNED: BT’s new Home Hub could cost you nearly twice as much as advertised as an existing BT customer; and you won’t know that you have to pay extra until after you receive the unit:-

Home Hub v2.0, released in July 2008

Last week I was looking at the BT website and I noticed that they had brought out a new model of the BT Home Hub router – a version 2.0. http://www.frequencycast.co.uk/homehub2.html It had a stylish curved polished black plastic design and 4 ethernet ports. I decided that I was going to have one, as the one I was currently using was white which clashed with the colour of the rest of my equipment, was chunky and fairly ugly in comparison, and I was using both ethernet ports out of the 2 available and would prefer an additional 2 ports for future expansion.

I rang BT and eventually managed to get the Indian at the other end of the phone to understand what I was saying and take my order. He said that I’d have to pay £44.99 for it, (About $90USD) which I thought was fair (That was half-price as an existing BT customer.): I’d had the existing BT Home Hub (V.1.1) free with the full package including VOIP phone, unlimited bandwidth, and their biggest and most expensive residential phone package. The VOIP phone uses a separate BT telephone number on the same line, and was channeled over the internet from the BT exchange; thus the cost of calls was allegedly cheaper. (As well as worse quality.)

(*Note: The recent BT Home Hubs; 2.0 and above, require a working voltage of 15 Volts. The older BT Home Hubs, before 2.0 require a working voltage of 9 Volts: Therefore if you’re replacing an old Home Hub with a new 2.0 or greater, you would probably have problems with it, if it works at all, if you don’t use the power adapter supplied with it and use the old one instead. (I don’t advise using the new adapter with an old Home Hub; although it may or may not work as a temporary measure. (Then again it might damage the old Home Hub due to over-voltage – I don’t know and I don’t intend to experiment in this area.)))

Today I received delivery of my new BT Home Hub; exactly as described in their advertising material. It was a snitch to set up; the only thing I had to do really was replace the old mains power adapter with the supplied adapter; as the new hub ran on a voltage of 15 Volts, whereas the old one ran on 9 Volts. I already had the required software installed, (I don’t use their free Norton security software as it’s ineffective resource-hogging crap. I only use the BT Desktop Help software.) and it picked up and worked a dream. I then realised that I hadn’t attached the VOIP handset’s cradle or configured it to work with my existing handset. The existing handset was white – Hmm; a new one would cost me so I decided I’d live with it until I had enough spare balance to buy a new black one.

I removed the cover from the cradle socket on the new hub and it suddenly hit me that there was no way that my old cradle was going to fit. I checked the package for a new cradle but none was supplied. I phoned BT. :

The Indian went all through the most stringent interrogation for identity verification; and then said he’d transfer me to the relevant department; who did it again. This time I was talking at last to a Brit – Yippee!.. But my happiness was short-lived:

The reply was that they don’t supply a new cradle separately; and that I’d have to buy one along with a new handset for £35.99 (About $70USD)> I said that this was a con: I already had a perfectly good handset; all I needed was a cradle which should have been supplied with the new hub: I’d like a free cradle by itself or I’d be taking the matter to the Office of Fair Trading. I’d also like BT to make it clear in their advertising that the new router would require a new cradle and handset BEFORE the customer chose to buy it; or I’d be taking that matter to Trading Standards as well.

To cut a long story short she wouldn’t budge; so rightly or wrongly I went ahead and ordered and told her that I’d be referring the matter to the relevant powers that be – Which I’m about to do.

If you’re a BT customer and you’d like a new BT Home Hub 2.0 with a usable cradle and phone included; the cost isn’t £44.99: That’s a con – You can’t use your existing handset as the cradle won’t fit. The true cost in total is £80.00 approximately. (Somewhere around $160USD.)

Another example of Bullshit Telecom’s dishonesty and unethical advertising.

They WILL be sorry: I’ll make sure of it!

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Today I had a tiny tweet-up with jaditelefae; who suggested that she’d make me a looney-hat so that the local weirdo riff-raff element could have something better to talk about other than how I was  making myself an outcast from their idea of society by striving to be a success and that I was a tight bitch because I refuse to “lend” them any money toward their drug and alcohol habits.

They’re not all like that round my way, but there are a number of that type; as is probably the case in many if not most neighbourhoods worldwide.

(Jaditelefae’s internet connection is currently down; which is why she’s not currently around online.)

On a different note; I thought the Olympics were to blame for two days of the worst visitor-figures for my blog ever. The figure plummeted from the norm down to a single-figure amount on Friday, only to my surprise to do even worse on Saturday. (Yesterday.):

Today, however, the trend has fully reversed: I have already seen the best visitor count ever when I last looked at 2PM, and with almost half the day still to go from thereon  I’m hoping for a landslide count at the end of the day.

Many thanks to all of you who’ve visited.

Today I was up at the crack of dawn since I never really went to bed last night, and I did an all-nighter optimising and improving this blog and my computer: So here’s to dawn; whose crack I was up at.

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So that’s all for now: Enjoy what’s left of the weekend and keep visiting kkomp.com: There is/are usually new post/s every day.

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As you may or may not be aware; I’m constantly attempting to improve and/or update this blog in as many ways as I can. Current news items relating to technological issues in particular have been the main thrust of the recent posts, although I do intend to broaden the scope somewhat in future to cover more electronics (Basic/theoretical/practical electronics.), and other subjects, as well as introduce more categories.

Also in the near future I intend to start up a mailing-list as well as a separate subscription-only mailing-list. To accomplish this I have bought an extremely efficient plugin from Tribulant Software : I know that there are various online services that take a subscription and manage mass email distribution on your behalf; but to be honest I fail to see the point when, for less than the price of a month’s subscription in some cases, one can buy this plugin as a one-off including support, and target neutralised; no more fees to pay.

To add – There is an issue with the Kontera WordPress plugin: This was discovered by Antonie from Tribulant Software today when helping me install the mailing list plugin. I quote:

 ”Unfortunately there seems to be a problem.”

I’ve informed Kontera about this: Their autoresponder says they’ll be in touch in the next 3 working days.

Also the (free) plugin called “Simple Tags” caused a fatal error in the server when the plugin was installed the first time. (By me.) It may well be the case that “Simple Tags” causes a fatal error to occur even when installing a few of the free plugins too.

-So I’ll be looking at starting a free mailing list within the next few days, and then a subscription-only list thereafter.

Other news:

You’ll notice I’ve at last tidied up the top of the index page; which appears to be by far the most popular page to date – Hopefully those who turned up to have a laugh at it will now beam in admiration at it: OK I know that’s going a little too far… That logo; it changes colour and brightness slowly: The “kkomp.com” part changes between almost black and pink & black. The “Taking you beyond the comfort zone.” part starts off purple, goes black and almost illegible, goes bright and pink; then it cycles slowly through again and stays pink – Just in case you were wondering what actually was going on but didn’t have the time nor patience to sit watching it in zomboid style.

Moron Newsletters More on Newsletters:

Of course; all this type of thing will appear in the free newsletter in future, rather than a post in the blog itself.

And; since the free newsletter is, as its name suggests, free; it’ll have advertising included. The subscription-only newsletter, on the other hand, will have a lot more content and be totally ad-free. The first one; when it appears, will cost you exactly $1.00 USD or thereabouts. I’ll be announcing more on that in due course, as and when.

Only those signed up for the free newsletter will receive it in their email, and those who have subscribed to this site will automatically receive it unless they choose to opt out: So if you want to receive the free newsletter then do sign up for it when you see the link appear in the Main Pages table near the top of every page and post in the sidebar.

Postings:

Thus-far I’ve done my best, with a couple of exceptions, to post something, hopefully of interest, on some topic(s) or another, every day. I intend to continue doing this and maybe more, up to a point; but if there should be nothing posted/written on the occasional day every now and again, please don’t immediately assume that the blog’s been discontinued – Some days I just don’t get a chance to get anything typed up.

 ”It’s time I started using my head.”

Conclusion: Is that a promise? Please make it so!

Enough of my verbatim for the time being: It may interest you to know that the number of incoming spam comments has overtaken the number of incoming decent comments. (The spam went up BTW…OK, and the real comments have gone down a bit lately.) – So let’s put the spamming halfwits to shame and see if we can out-comment them.

Right then; that’s it for now: Enjoy the coming week. Blessed be.

Sharron. (admin)

(P.S. Certain domains will not be accepted for email/newsletters: The “sogetthis” domain and others associated with mailinator are examples. – Such domains are frequently utilised by spammers, hackers, and kooks, for dubious or malevolent purposes.)

(There is a person – And I do know who it is incidentally – who is signed up to this blog on the main list under the domain “sogetthis”. Will this person kindly please sign up again with a proper email address as your current registration will be removed in due course. Thank you.)

No suspicion necessary; only discrimination required.

The US news-sources – In fact the whole world – is a-buzz with the story of America’s new so-called “Terrorism-prevention” measures; which open the floodgates for racism, sexism, all sorts of other-isms; and which seem totally ridiculous anyway.

The good old FBI are now allowed to seize a traveller’s laptop, PDA, alarm clock, mobile/cellphone, wristwatch; in fact any electronic device – Especially if they like the look of it. Who knows; they might just allow that beautiful middle-eastern woman to keep the devices strapped to her body following a strip-search and a sexual bribe?

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If you see the men-in-black waiting at the point you’re just about to cross America’s borders at then kiss your brand new notebook farewell; an FBI agent has already decided that he/she prefers it to his/her current model. They are allowed to take the device(s) to an offsite location, e.g their home, for an unspecified period of time, e.g. until the device breaks down through natural wear and tear/usage, without any suspicion whatsoever.

The policies cover “any device capable of storing information in digital or analog form,” including hard drives, flash drives, cell phones, iPods, pagers, beepers, and video and audio tapes. They also cover “all papers and other written documentation,” including books, pamphlets and “written materials commonly referred to as ‘pocket trash’ or ‘pocket litter.’ ” I suppose that’s at least a way of passing on an iPhone: They’re the only people who’d want something with cracked casing. http://kkomp.com/archives/664

They can also steal any data contained in or on said devices, and there’s nothing to prevent them selling anything to interested parties, rival companies, Al Quaida, North Tibetan Militia, Russian Mafia … From your porn to your personal details; it could easily end up in the hands of the highest bidder.

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These ridiculous policies were issued jointly by the US Customs and Border Protection and the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement: Both of which are to do with the DHS. (Department of Homeland Security.)

DHS officials said that the newly disclosed policies — which apply to anyone entering the country, including U.S. citizens — are reasonable and necessary to prevent terrorism. That is the biggest load of crap I’ve heard in years! They think that nicking people’s laptops etc is going to stop anyone bringing illegal data into the USA? Err, just a dad-blamed cotton-pickin’ minute there Mr Redneck, but ain’t y’all gone and forgotten the internet?

Officials said such procedures have long been in place but were disclosed last month because of public interest in the matter. Ah right: The FBI have been stealing people’s devices for years but nobody noticed: That explains it and makes it all perfectly acceptable then – NOT! Maybe they diverted people’s “lost” luggage at Heathrow Airport, UK?

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“You want all electronic devices?”

It’s already started for real: The Washington Post reports that “…an increasing number of international travellers have reported that their laptops, cellphones, and other digital devices have been taken — for months, in at least one case — and their contents examined.” No reports of any disappearance of equipment yet then? Maybe the data on then made more money at sale and wasn’t as traceable?

The policies state that officers may “detain” laptops “for a reasonable period of time” to “review and analyse information.” It is claimed. however that ” Searches have uncovered “violent jihadist materials as well as images of child pornography” – So it’s not all bad news then.

‘Want to view the policy in detail? Click here. 

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You may or may not be aware that I run this blog on WordPress; a ready-made php blogging suite available free from WordPress.org. http://wordpress.org/

Yesterday I opened the admin account to discover that a new version of WordPress had been released. It was emblazoned across every page (Not on the public blog but on the pages I use.): “A new version has been released – Upgrade now” or some similar linked wording. I ignored it for the time being, and went to Windows Live Writer to write up yesterday’s scoop. Having uploaded that to my blog I returned to WordPress the edit screen within WordPress to give it a final edit and proof-read prior to publication pending addition to the RSS feed. Still nagging me in my vision were the linked words “Upgrade now”.

After I’d published the scoop I decided to click the link in question: The manual upgrade instructions looked fairly straightforward and none too baffling but it was a case of getting it right first and only time: ‘Not one of my specialities. I decided to leave it for now and clicked the back button in my browser. “…Upgrade now” was the first thing I saw. Nag , nag, nag. OK it needed doing. but can I please turn the notification off until I reboot or something?

No. Upgrade NOW…NOW…It was starting to make me feel guilty for not doing so. I read a few other blogs – Words like “I upgraded my WP install today without any problems – ‘Piece of cake…”.

F..k this! I am not going to be made to feel guilty for doing my upgrade in my own time. I will not bow to pressure. I’ll do it tomorrow for definite. Close Page, make more coffee.

Today I log in. ‘First thing I see: “…Upgrade now”: Oh for f..k’s sake! Yes I’ll do it NOW – All right?! (Redhead part of me activated.) I’d heard or read somewhere that there was an auto-upgrade plugin. I know it’s NMA (Negative mental Attitude) but I knew I was going to make just the one mistake with a manual upgrade that would send the whole thing tits-up and lose everything: Murphy’s Law in action.

I Googled and found the plugin:-

http://techie-buzz.com/wordpress-plugins/wordpress-automatic-upgrade-plugin.html

Save to local machine – done – unzip- done -ftp up to the correct directory on kkomp.com – done…”This is too easy: Whatever you do don’t start panicking. Hold it together girl”… log in to account – done – activate plugin – done – run plugin (Hovers mouse over link; closes eyes…and…) – done:

Five self-explanatory steps or so later and – Yes: Target neutralised! (I sooo wish I’d captured the screens – but I was too emotional to care at that point.) Success!

My experience with the auto-update plugin was a happy and positive one. The plugin’s creator, Keith D’sousa, has put a lot of time and effort into making this plugin and fully debugging it to enable it to work flawlessly. If you use it either now or in the future please please do donate: Even $5USD is a minimum amount as a thank-you for all the effort that’s been put into it.

You are reading the third edition (Final Retail) which has replaced all other editions. Each edition is extremely similar to the previous edition but with added content.

Ok here’s my first thoughts about the whole damn thing:-

Today everywhere has been alive with iPhone buzz: FFS it’s only a phone! Networks are overcharging, Apple are overcharging, but the crowds just keep charging up to the counters for the pleasure of getting ripped off so they can say “Ooh look at me; I’ve got the latest gadget -Just like everyone else!” Pfft!

Big deal! Clever you with your new toy – Moving on: In a case of perfect timing WordPress have announced WordPress for the iPhone: Now you can blog with your new toy too if you know how to read and write. Remember that thing called school that you tried to avoid? At school they taught you how to read and write…Oh never mind; go play with your iPhone.

Don’t hold your breath on wpiPhone though. (That’s WordPress for the iPhone for the benefit of iPhone owners.) I have a weird premonition that it might just go to pot as they try to make it bloom. Keep watching for nipples and if you see more than one then wpiPhone has probably gone tits-up.

I just cannot credit the hysteria about a phone – Holy carp!

I set out to be brief on this article; and brief I shall be. When the hype has ceased to have any residual effect and networks send people their bills for using the phone.

(Phone is what it is and it’s not mine and probably never will be, so why call it an iPhone? Information – pah! Try reading classes first. ROFL. I wonder; can Chris Pirillo’s followers read the instructions? PMSL!

Google – Help; I’m in hysterics!

Chris Pirillo <—Yay! AVG 8. 

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=pirillo

I always and without fail crease up every time Pirillo announces an apology in his posts that certain things may involve reading. I bet Apple never thought to include a text-reader in their new phone though did they? – Hey don’t take it personally; you got great advertising out of it.)

The new iPhone – The perfect escapism for the cyber-escapist – Until the first bill arrives: You just wait. <chuckle>

iPhone, iPhone, folla-diddle-i-phone; iPhone, iPhone, folla-diddle-i.

iPhone, rip-off, overcharged by networks; goon-fad, boy’s toy, I will never buy.

I could be wrong; I have been known to be so before; but I reckon it’s all a big hyped up load of trash and people will end up regretting the day they ever set eyes on an – Oh I’ll utter it then. – iPhone. <shiver>

That’s all; that’s my twopennethworth.

No it isn’t: I lied: ‘Still same day and already the problems have started!

“Software problems bug Apple’s launch of new iPhone” Friday July 11, 1:59 pm ET

My thanks to David Risley of  PCMech for providing the following link via Twitter

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080711/apple_iphone.html?.v=27

And so it begins:

“”Steve Jobs knows what people want,” Web developer Lucinda McCullough told the Christchurch Press newspaper, referring to Apple’s chief executive. “And I need a new phone.”"

-Quoted from that linked site.

Then why the hell am I trying to sell unique quality desktop computers? If Steve Jobs really does know what people want I’ll get a few old wrecks that no longer work properly out of the spares cabinet, give them a quick identical case mod, and sell them at an exaggerated price: Who cares whether they work or not provided they all look the same and are the latest fad eh Mr Jobs? While we’re at it Steve Jobs; perhaps you’d inform me why it is that you’re named after a polite english slang term for crap?

Brilliant Headline from Gizmodo.com:-

“Apple and AT&T Stores Having Difficulty Activating iPhones (UPDATE: It’s the iPocalypse)” (Linked)

“Even the iTunes link on Apple is gone. “

Throughout the entire United States and Canada; in fact seemingly worldwide, Apple’s servers have crashed or are over-capacity

“So How Did This Happen:
The source of the iTunes crash/slowdown seems not be those buying iPhone 3Gs from Apple/AT&T stores at all but the millions of people updating to the new firmware at home. Firmware 2.0 isn’t like other firmwares in that it needs to update the phone and reauthenticate the service. And in turn, when the servers are slammed and the phone reaches for reauthentication, the server isn’t always there to reactivate the service. This is how some of those newly bricked iPhones are occurring, and a source tells us that even first gen iPhones are susceptible.”

Unacceptable: There is no other word for it. The internet isn’t to blame: The wiring isn’t stretched to capacity, the isps are taking the load without trouble. The problem is Apple – Nobody else: Sheer incompetence!

“iTunes activation servers go down, iPhone 3G customers being sent home unactivated, first-gen iPhone customers stuck with dead iPhones.”

From http://www.engadget.com/2008/07/11/itunes-activation-servers-go-down-iphone-3g-customers-being-sen/

“Update: Apple has confirmed to us that activation is down, and that customers are being asked to take the phone home and activate via iTunes later. We’re not sure what good that’ll do, since the servers are down no matter where you are, but Apple says it’s “working on a solution.” In the meantime, it looks like the new SIM works in first-gen units, so at least upgraders aren’t totally phone-deprived. Oh, and remember that updating a first-gen iPhone to 2.0 requires hitting the server as well, so if you haven’t taken the plunge we’d say hold off until this all gets sorted.”

“Update 2: In related news, those updating their first-gen iPhone to 2.0 are also getting caught in the activation shuffle, leaving some with bricked iPhones. In our test case, the activation servers came back up after about 45 minutes just long enough to get 2.0 running on our first-gen iPhone, but not all have been so lucky.”

<Fits of laughter>

“This does not look good. Apparently people at home can’t even upgrade to firmware 2.0 and the problem is afflicting iTunes on an international scale.”

This is the end of my coverage for this article: Follow this link for the continuing saga:

http://gizmodo.com/5024187/apple-and-att-stores-having-difficulty-activating-iphones-update-its-the-ipocalypse

The Joke is on Apple.

Why not go buy a Mac?… ROTFLMAO!

 I just have to add this: It had me in stitches:-

From Steve Rubel on Flickr: