Posts

  • Jul 20, 2007

    Friday Fun: The Internet Crash of 2007

    Saw this on LifeHacker, it’s a fun video from the onion about the Internet crashing:

    Friday Fun: The Internet Crash of 2007 - Lifehacker

  • Jul 13, 2007

    Today's word from Dictionary.com: triskaidekaphobia

    Today’s word in the dictionary.com word a day feed is “triskaidekaphobia” Nice one guys. :-)

  • Jun 24, 2007

    Upgrading Wordpress

    Well, after my earlier problems with the automated Fantastico upgrade, I did the “manual” upgrade to my Wordpress installation. I was moving from 2.0.6 to 2.2.1 following the instructions from Wordpress.

    It all went perfectly. Well done on the instructions (and the software).

    At the end of the upgrade instructions, there’s a section called Special note for Fantastico Upgrades, which mentions removing the DB_CHARSET and DB_COLLATE parameters if upgrading with Fantistico. Presumably the DB_CHARSET parameter is what affected the accented characters in my earlier upgrade attempt. So, if upgrading Wordpress using Fantistico, read the manual instructions! (pity I didn’t see this earlier.) I expect this will soon find itself into the Fantastico procedures, or at least the documentation, however I think I’ll stick with the manual upgrade in future.

  • Jun 24, 2007

    Back to basics (or some rules for software upgrades)

    • Don't upgrade just because there is a newer version available.
    • Check the release notes and other documentation for any problems with the new software.
    • Verify the upgrade in a test environment first. This is not always a realistic option, but if you don't do it then backups become even more important.
    • Backup your current live system (and verify the backup).
    • Allow enough time for the upgrade of the live system.
    • Verify everything is working correctly after the upgrade. This is the point where the problems appeared for me. However, I was able to revert to the earlier version - which had luckily been backed up by the software doing the installation and not me (I should learn to follow my own advice.)

    In case you’re wondering, the problem was “just” a visual, where accented characters were not being displayed correctly in Wordpress 2.2, hopefully 2.2.1 fixes it. I’ll have to wait until I get some more time to do a test and a hand install, rather than the automated Fantastico install.

  • Jun 22, 2007

    Flash Lite: Graphics for Mobile Devices

    This is an interesting introduction to Flash Lite - including getting data from the network - in the current issue of Dr. Dobbs Journal. Well it’s probably only interesting if, like me, the only thing you already know about Flash Lite, is that some people can make nice looking demos with it ;-) Dr. Dobbs | Flash Lite: Graphics for Mobile Devices | June 8, 2007

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