Chris Worfolk's Blog


Maze Radio forums gone

January 12th, 2006 | Life

Maze Radio‘s forums have been locked for a good long while anyway as they were replaced by Maze Forums but they were still online so people could read old posts. They’ve now gone as well though.

I think that’s it for my current killing spree though, everything else can stay unless I go totally crazy.

One phpBB install taken care of

January 12th, 2006 | Life

Well, I’m off to a start. Although it wasn’t an upgrade, I’ve just taken the Nerd Base forums offline completely. Nobody really used them (the odd post here and there) so for one of the first times ever I’ve taken something offline without replacing it or anything. phpBB is a rare circumstance though as if I leave it online it becomes a security risk otherwise, I would just leave it up there.

I’ve been toying with the idea of taking a few of them down for a while now (that or merging them into xmeltrut.net’s multi-host dealie) and a few other forums might be for the chopping block also as there is no point me spending time upgrading them if they aren’t going to be used.

MediaWiki upgrades complete

January 12th, 2006 | Life

Yeeha! I’ve finished upgrading all my MediaWiki installations. Now just WordPress, vBulletin, phpBB and Drupal to take care of and I’m all up to date :p. Seriously, I’m not sure what else I have to update but I think I have quite a bit to do. Upgrading is hard though, why can’t it be easy like SMF?

Hey Lois, I did it!

January 12th, 2006 | Life

Ok, well I didn’t do that. Technically I did but I learned to do it many years ago so it’s nothing new. But enough with the Family Guy references, I fixed a problem! Anything that involved fonts on images was screwed on VPS. I tried re-compiling Apache with GD but that didn’t work. In the end I needed to re-compile it with Truetype support as well.

Who knows what other damage I have done re-compiling Apache but for now, it’s a celebration time!

MediaWiki upgrades in progress

January 12th, 2006 | Life

Ok so I’ve got past the moaning stage and started upgrading my MediaWiki installs. I’ve done most of them although there are still two I need to take care of. Haven’t had much in the way of issues, compared to the first one I did anyway although I had to re-do the access control on the Worfolk Internal wiki to block all you lot out :p.

I’ll probably finish off the CassieNet wiki and Bay City High wiki tomorrow. Well, technically today I guess. Later today. Much later. I need sleep.

LUU Review was passed (of course)

January 11th, 2006 | Life

Last term the Union had a vote for the Review in which you could vote for whether you felt the review was accurately portraying what you wanted your union to do. But it’s BS, most people didn’t really know what they were voting for nor did they read the review so everyone voted yes.

Out of 2,575 votes cast I was one of only 181 people to vote against the review. I should have made more noise if I had really got what was going on early enough. I may have to email the executive team and have a moan about it.

The Software-free Computer

January 11th, 2006 | Life

Read an interesting article on CNet’s Release 1.0 today which I thought I would mention:
http://www.release1-0.com/freshproduce/…000

It’s about the growth of web applications on the internet and talks about a product called Online Office which all you need is a browser to use. I think the growth of web applications is going to be pretty significant in the coming years and I don’t think it’s out of the realm of possibility that web apps replacing local apps could be Web 2.0.

Updates to Worfolk Online

January 11th, 2006 | Life

Well my inbox is back up to 10 but anyway. Worfolk Online has had a few changes and updates made to the site. Made Up Stuff was missing from the database so that was added, loads of RSS feeds were added and the news on the homepage was added.

Also a whole new feature, if you select important sites on the all sites pages, the links will not directly link you to the site anymore but instead to a page containing the details of the site contained in the Worfolk Online database. At the moment this is title, URL and a description of the site (usually). Also a screenshot of the site (which have been done for almost every site marked as important which most of them are) and traffic details as the amount of monthly uniques and page views are stored for each site that generates enough traffic to make it worth recording so that the stats can be estimated.

I spent quite a bit of time this afternoon filling in descriptions and screenshots for the sites that didn’t have them. I think all but two of the sites marked as important now have descriptions and a number close behind that for screenshots too. Also the date the site was launched will be added eventually as well.

I have my inbox under 10

January 11th, 2006 | Life

It’s incredible, I have my inbox under 10. My general rule was that if it reached 100 then I needed a clear out but over Chrismukka I decided to really get on top of my emails and stop keeping emails that I should deal with but in actual fact never were so I might as well just delete or archive them and I managed to get it down to a dozen or so. Now I have achieved the holy grail, I have it under 10! Well actually I guess the holy grail would be to have an empty inbox but then that’s never going to happen as there is always going to be some stuff I need in there.

I only have two unread emails too which is good for me. I normally have around 25%-30% unread but you have to realise that when I have an unread email, I have read it. I read all my emails as they come in or just know what most of them are about anyway, I just mark emails as unread as ones that I need to deal with in the near future. Not that I don’t need to deal with my others but a lot of those are their for info whereas anything that needs a response or for me to update a website or something I keep as unread to highlight them.

BTW I just did a count and I made 42 posts in December. That’s back to the Nerd Fed glory days level. August 2004 I hit 45 posts although I don’t know if all of those were mine.

Britney Planet overtakes Branch Planet

January 11th, 2006 | Life

Yes, it’s finally happened. Britney Planet has finally overtaken Branch Planet in the number of news stories posted. It actually overtook the site yesterday.

It was inevitably going to happen I guess, there is just way more Britney Spears news than Michelle Branch news. Not that Branch Planet hasn’t put up a good fight, after all, it started in July 2004 and Britney Planet only started two months later in September 2004 so considering it’s now 2006 it’s taken its time in catching up.