Mostly about my amusement

Author: Jan Dembowski (page 89 of 96)

What children say

The kids were rude to my Dad in the evening. When he came down to get something later they asked him

Kids: “Grampa are you feeling happy? Are you happy now?”

Grampa: “Why do you ask?”

Kids: “You were unhappy before.”

Grampa: “I’m happy.”

Kids: “Can you read us a story?”

On the way up my son asked me to carry him

Jan: “I’ve had a long day and I’m tired.”

Son: “Why did you have a bad day?”

Jan: “No one knows why.”

WordPress visual editor

Looks like I’m not the only one with the problem loading the visual editor. The fix (I’m using the built in editor right now) works and per the article is located here.

Click on the “Original Format” link go to the wordpress/wp-includes/js/tinymce directory and just

patch -p0 <3144-gzipoptoins-tinymce.patch

and poof the visual editor just works.

Upgraded to WordPress 2.1

So far so good. On the upgrade from 2.0.7 the TinyMCE visual editor does not work while on my test blog it does work. I don’t use the visual editor so no big deal for me.

After installing and trying out many plugins and themes the options table in my wordpress database is a mess. I may just export everything and re-import into a clean database just to clean out the cruft.

Very Bad Upgrade

Sunday I went to Stefan’s to upgrade my main server. It was running Fedora Core 1 and was well past an upgrade.

I wanted to get away from Fedora because it was not supported in a way that I liked. But I did not want to waste too much time so I took with me the latest Fedora and tried to upgrade.

The new Fedora did not like my hard disk setup and refused to see the existing system. So I figured I’d put on Opensuse 10.1, move files on the file system and do an install over the old Fedora Core 1.

Everything that could go wrong did. Massively. Non-stop. The DVD drives did not work. The boot sector was not installing. It installed but refused to boot.

I finally moved the mail and web pages over to another server (more that 3 GB of data) and did a clean install of Opensuse. I’m still recovering. Last night I finally got postfix with TLS and SMTP AUTH working. The web pages are working (sorta).

PS3 and no Wii yet

256px-RaymanravingrabbidswiiboxAround New Years day, me and the family went out to hunt down the mythical Wii. Our expedition had seen first hand that the Wii was real and with the right game be hysterical.

Alek bought a Wii in December and among other games got Rayman: Raving Rabbids. The graphic is from the Wikipedia entry. If you are unfamiliar with the game, then you wont understand when I say “The cow tossing mini game is great!”

You really needs to play the Rayman on the Wii to understand. It’s a low budget, lower graphics, unconventional controllers game system with no hard drive. Nintendo is brilliant.

The mythical Wii eluded us. But Target did have a large number of PS3’s so we picked up the 60 GB Playstation 3. It’s a slick package and Call of Duty 3 is good fun (not for when the kids are around). The built in Blue Ray DVD is attractive and I picked up a PS3 Bluetooth remote control in Chinatown.

I don’t recommend that people buy the PS3 right now. I told a friend of mine that I got one and he said “But you have a 360. Why buy the PS3?” He was right: the two consoles are not different right now. Buying one really makes no sense until really good PS3 only games become available.

WordPress SSL Admin plugin (patched)

A while back WordPress.com released a plugin which protected your login with SSL. Normally when you administer a WordPress blog, it’s done via http. The plugin was originally released for the WordPress 2.1-alpha release. After a few updates it stopped working.

Over at Haris.tv this gentleman fixed the plugin and released a patch version of it which works with 2.0.6 as well as 2.1 (I have not tried 2.1 yet). It works like a charm (been playing with it all day). If you use a wordpress blog, have SSL set up on your web server, then it’s a must have and you should install it ASAP.

WordPress Backup

I run this blog on a VPS from Tektonics. It’s usually more available to the Internet than the server in the basement.

The only concern is that it’s not my server and backups are important. I had been using Tamba2’s script for backing up on a cron job but forgot that the script only got tables that you told it to. Donncha’s script gets all the tables, but I like getting one file for the data. Also I want to be able to retrieve the file backup without using a password onto the system but make sure that the file can’t be used by other people. For me that means putting it on the web server but encrypting the backup so that only my private key can decrypt the data.

The idea is to

  • Backup all the tables in the WordPress database
  • E-mail the database backup to an e-mail address of my choosing
  • Create a file backup
  • Encrypt the file backup and put it somewhere it can be downloaded
  • Retrieve the backup and store it somewhere else

The GPG file encryption is over the top; I’m practicing for solving a problem at work where scripts and passwords are a huge no-no.

Read more

MG F91 and wasted paint

Here is the fully assembled MG F91.

MG_F91_assembled

The model breaks up into pieces very nicely and should be straight forward to paint.

I definitely want to paint it but lately I am having problems with that. I had the HG Bawoo all primed up for a long time. I dusted it off and started with a light coat of Tamiya bright orange spray paint. The paint went on and pooled.

Lucky I have another Bawoo. The primer always goes on smoothly but I either am not shaking the can enough or it gets too humid and I get bubbles. I need to try using an airbrush and see if mixing the paint my self makes a difference.

Christmas decorations are up

It’s that time of year again!

2006_xmas_tree

The kids love the Christmas decorations. Just like last year, my parents put up the lights in the windows and on the outside. The decorations are up right now and the house looks really nice.

Tomorrow we are having my son’s birthday party. This is turning into a really good weekend.

Progress on the F91

Here is the latest picture of the MG Gundam F91:

Bawoo_MKII_F91

The F91 is on the right. I put it next to a 1/100 MG RX-178 Mk-II Gundam v2.0 and a 1/144 HG Bawoo for size purposes. The F91 is a little taller than the Bawoo.

The lack of polycaps makes it difficult to pose the model including the ankles and feet. It makes it a little difficult to place the feet flat on the table. Including a display stand for posing makes sense since once I add the back mounted weapons, this model will be a good candidate for an easy shelf dive.

Here is another shot of the F91 next to the Bawoo.

F91_Bawoo