Geek – Page 31 – Mostly Harmless

August 11, 2007

When SCO has to shoot, shoot don’t talk

SCO should have done more shooting and less talking.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUslGSoEH8I

I can’t wait to read SCO’s official response to them not being the owner of the UNIX copyrights.

If SCO had gone after IBM in a reasonable fashion and with actual proof (as opposed to just whining about what their selective experts claimed) then they may have come out ahead. Instead they tried to extort a really huge user base and alienated what could have been their customers.

Their claims were just silly. I am sure that SCO can now buy up some electric typewriter company and try to sell licenses for the QWERTY keyboard. Assuming they have any money left after this.

August 9, 2007

Installed Vista 64 bit

After failing to get my copy of Vista to recognized my nvidia SATA striped drives, I configured them into two separate drives which was recognized. Instead of one 300 GB drive I have two 150 GB drives. The Vista DVD recognized the drives now.

Sigh. Since I had to do a fresh install I put on the 64 bit version. The most fun came when I tried to activate Vista online. After activating it twice the online system will refuse to activate the software. You have to use the toll free number and recite the codes into the phone. I’m not sure how pissing off a legitimate customer works for Microsoft but hey, if they do anything else the the pirates will win. Or something like that.

The 64 bit version of Vista runs well. I’m going to bump up the RAM from 2 GB to 4 GB to see if there is a real performance increase.

August 5, 2007

Stupid Vista Tricks

I attempted to update the drivers for my XPS 700 using the Nvidia nforce web site drivers. After a few reboots, the BAD thing happened. I lost all the data on my workstation and I am not able to re-install Vista.

Ubuntu works well off the Live CD but that’s about it. I’m using vLite 1.0 to build a new Vista install DVD but so far what I have created is not working.

Sigh.

August 2, 2007

Adding numbers to post titles in WordPress

In the WordPress support forum (very serious neener neener neener ;-P ) I had seen a request to add numbers to each post title. Giving it some thought and testing here is one way it can be done.

In the index.php file for your theme, before the loop (I put it right after get_header line) add the following code:

<?php if ( $paged < 2 ) {
$my_paged = 0;
} else {
$my_paged = ($paged - 1) * get_option('posts_per_page');
}
$count = 1;
?>

Now inside the loop in the same file put this php code where ever you want the number to appear.

<?php echo $my_paged + $count . ". "; ?>

A good place is right after the <h2> in the default theme, so this line

<h2><a href="<?php the_pemalink() ?>...

becomes

<h2><?php echo $my_paged + $count . ". "; ?><a href="<?php the_pemalink() ?> ...

The count variable needs to be incremented for each post. Before the end of the loop put this line in

<?php $count = $count + 1; ?>

On the default theme this should go right above the <?php endwhile; ?>. This will produce a number with a period and a space before the title.

Since it is before the <a> tag it will not be part of the link to the post.

July 21, 2007

Importing self-signed SSL certs into Vista

I use SSL on my web servers for privacy and not authentication. Since it is my own use I don’t care if it’s from Verisign or Thawte. Also why shell out cash for the certificate when a self signed certificate will do just fine?

Internet Explorer used to permit you to install web server certificates by examining the SSL certificate and importing it into your key store. Version 7 of the browser took that away and made it more difficult to import them into the key store.

Here is how I imported the web server certificate into Vista. Read more

July 6, 2007

XHTML and image rotate for the header

I’ve had some free time so I’ve added so I went through all my posts (153!) and made sure they validate as XHTML strict. I’ve also played with this theme and added the image rotator for the header.

Using Matt’s rotate.php script, I created a directory called and dumped some images in there. The images were lifted from Stefan’s Flickr page. His pictures are great and I was using one of his images as a banner already.

In my CSS file I replaced the

#header {
background: url(img/bus.jpg) no-repeat bottom;

with

#header {
background: url(img/rotate.php) no-repeat bottom;

Per the CSS for my header the files should be 700×175; which I forgot and created 700×200 images. No big deal the CSS fixes the images to fit.

The fun part was getting the caching to work so I could see the files and how they look. Internet Explorer and Firefox cache the page to make the whole experience is faster. But that also means that when I reloaded the page the banner would not necessarily change.

Using Google I found that adding the following right below the <head> statement in my header.php would get Internet Explorer and Firefox to reload the whole page with a new banner (most of the time).

I turned it off after my curiosity was satisfied. Caching is your friend and should be respected.

June 18, 2007

Blu-ray gets a boost

This will leave a mark. Blockbuster is going primarily with Blu-ray.

June 13, 2007

Safari 3 beta, safer and faster?

Security. Sweet.

Safari Security

Security on Safari 3 Beta. Not so sweet.

BetaNews | ‘Day One’ for Safari for Windows Becomes Zero-Day Nightmare

Speed! Sweet.

Safari Speed

Speed. Can’t see the increase myself. Not so sweet.

Joel on Software: Apple Safari for Windows: The world’s slowest web browser

Joel updates the post a few times regarding the speed thing. I get a kick out of his “Safari even managed to bring the inferior font rendering of the OS X platform to Windows, no easy trick.”

I’ve already removed it from my system. When I need to check a web page for how it displays, I use Firefox, Internet Explorer 7, and Opera 9. If I could easily swing it I would also check with Internet Explorer 6. I guess having a working Safari on Windows would be useful, but I’ll wait for it to come out of beta.

The claims of better, faster, more secure just irks me. It would not have been that difficult to have someone reputable ethically hack Safari 3 beta before releasing it. Given the large number of security folks who are “Give me Mac or give me death!” I’m sure they could have found some good volunteers.

Images lifted from Apple’s Safari web page.

June 11, 2007

Safari 3 beta for Windows

Safari icon You can download Safari 3 for Windows beta here.

I’m not sure why this would matter for Apple. It’s a prettier browser (the font rendering is very anti-aliased) but this beta did bad things when I tried to write this blog entry using the built in WordPress editor. What’s the point for Apple? Will Safari make a Vista user buy a Mac?

It’s like Firefox without the extensions. It’s supposed to be faster but I’m just not seeing it on my PC.

June 9, 2007

Akismet caught 999 spam

Akismet caught 999 spam

Like waiting for the odometer to roll over.

Category: Geek (page 31 of 36)