Generally speaking I don’t use facebook. I have an account because some people insist on trying to contact me on it so at least I get the messages and can tell them to send me a bloody email. I have three blogs (all with contact details on), an email address, mobile number, Twitter feed, Skype address and regularly use MSN Messenger.
As such I don’t feel I need facebook. The only thing it does is open me up to more arseholes I went to school with trying to get back in touch with me. As a very general rule, if I’m not in touch with them now it’s very likely I don’t want to be.
Anyway, for those who didn’t know facebook today/yesterday (not too sure, don’t really care) allowed all of their users to nab a personalised URL for their facebook page. There was huge demand for this – in fairness it’s better to tell someone your page is at “…facebook.com/SteveJones” rather than “…facebook.com/SteveJones1234”.
After a few hours they’d registered over three million of the things. The load on the servers must have been enormous, and credit to them there was no slowdown or system failure. Needless to say, the team were all in place to monitor the temperatures, wires and servers to ensure it went well. Mashable! has a good story on this from which I’ve pinched the photo below.
As I said, I don’t give a toss about facebook, but I can at least say that someone there has taste. Can you spot why?
Courtesy of a huge pile of Amazon vouchers and a dodgy-looking hinge on my trusty old Acer TravelMate, I decided to splash out on one of those new-fangled “netbook” things. As well as a chance to reduce the size and weigh tof my luggage, it was also an excuse to see what the amount of cash I paid for the laptop 3½ years ago would get me now.
After some checking and hunting online, I decided on the Asus Eee PC 1000HE. In shiny black. Well if I got it in white, people might think it’s an Apple. Ick.
I went for this one – a little more expensive than I’d originally planned for a few reasons. First up, almost £100-worth of the aforementioned vouchers. They offset the increase in price. Also, the unit has had great reviews online and came with Windows XP rather than Vista *spit*. 1Gb of RAM should be enough for my needs and 160Gb of hard drive space gives me the same as my current laptop.
A huge selling point is the staggering 9½ hours of battery life using the “Super Hybrid Engine”. This means you can only expect this under Windows as it uses proprietary software to manage the CPU usage. Various reviews have confirmed this figure as perfectly achievable, with one managing over 10 hours of light use. Hammering it with videos still gives over 5 hours.
The only thing missing is an optical drive. I used my laptop CD burner to back up all my photos when I was travelling (and charged a beer to do it for other people, too) but this isn’t an option with a netbook. None of them have an internal CD-R which is understandable. Given the prevelance of cybercafes charging a couple of dollars to burn CDs, this isn’t as much of an issue as it was when I was travelling long term so it’s something I can manage without.
One thing to note for people who like to upgrade is that the memory is a single stick, and there is only one slot for it. Hence upgrading RAM will involve ditching the existing DIMM.
I’ve not had a huge play with it so far, mainly downloading Firefox, the new Skype and so on. Oh, and using it to watch the live feed from the Download Festival web site while I do other things on my laptop.
However, so far it seems fine. The keyboard’s good to type on and the screen’s nice and bright. It’s only 10″ but it’s perfectly usable. It’s easy to change the resolution on the fly so if you have any windows that don’t fit on the screen in the default 1024×600 you can flip to a scrolling 1024×768.
I tested Skype which showed that the condenser microphones are pretty good and the webcam picture is crisp and updates quickly. The speakers – very well tested by the likes of Down, DevilDriver and Hatebreed, aren’t bad either. A little rattly if the volume’s too high, but acceptable on a small box like this.
Connectivity is good with three USB2.0 ports. There’s also a VGA output socket, and separate holes for external microphone and speakers/headphones. As an added bonus there is also a slot for an SD card – ideal if your digital camera used these.
The wi-fi is 802.11b/g/n which is as good as it gets these days. I’ve not been able to test the “n” as my router is only “g” but I’m sure I’ll reap the benefits in Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok.
Once I’ve got all the XP setup complete, I’ll be repartitioning the hard drive and installing Ubuntu alongside it. By all accounts this will work well, though I don’t expect the battery life to be as good for the reasons mentioned above.
Well, dinner now calls me so I’m off for something from the chippie. More updates on the Eee as I do more with it. But so far I’m impressed.
Other veg, spices, sauces to taste – your preference
The recipe is pretty simple. Heat everything up. If you’re using “real” stewing steak you’ll need to get it going quite some time beforehand – one reason I tend to use the tinned stuff. So have this to hand, whichever version you’ve chosen.
Get a huge pot. Something about 6″-8″ deep. Fill it about half or so with hot water, and drop in a palmful of salt. This adds flavour and gets the water boiling faster. Chop the potatoes into thick slices or chips (don’t peel them, but do wash the dirt off if necessary) and drop them in. Do the same with the carrots.
Those vegetables go in first as they take some time to boil to the point where they soften. Keep checking them until they’ve gone past “crunchy” and start entering “firm”. Drop the meat in at this point.
After a minute or so, you’ll be able to skim any excess fat off the top of the boiling water. Remove it and ditch it – told you this was healthy.
Finally, add the peas. These cook quite quickly. If you’ve got them in a tin, just throw the juice in as well. It lowers the temperature of the water, but adds flavour.
We’re getting to the fun bit. I hope you have a potato masher handy (the one you use for cooking, not the old German stick grenade), because once everything’s nice and soft, you’re going to pour off a little of the water (or filter it out using a sieve) Â then pummel the hell out of the contents of the pan. Squish everything. All of it. Mashy-mashy.
Make sure you’ve got all the water out by pouring what’s left through a sieve if you’ve not already done this. Get a large plate and plop the resulting mush onto it.
Cover it in HP Sauce. I usually use about a third to a half of a bottle. Mush it all up.
So far I’ve not read or heard a bad review of this film, and having seen it I’m not surprised. One thing I would recommend is to avoid the trailer if you can. There are loads of laughs in here, and it takes the edge off if you’ve seen them before.
Plot-in-a-nutshell: Four guys go for a stag night in Las Vegas. And then wake up the next morning without the husband-to-be…
The Hangover has a great script, starting at the beginning, jumping a few hours and leaving you guessing as much as the main characters as to what’s happened. Each bizarre thing they did the night before is revealed perfectly and nothing is so outlandish that you can’t believe it could happen. In fact I’m sure most of them have happened to someone at some point and probably reported in the little funny stories in the newspapers.
We don’t see too much of the groom in the film (well, the fact he goes missing is central to the plot), but the three main protagonists are a very good mixed bunch. Different from each other without going off the deep end of believability.
We have a somewhat mad but somehow gifted child in a man’s body. A suave ladies’ man. A geek with an overbearing girlfriend. They play off each other so well and the scenes see them go through every emotion you can conceive without once seeming unrealistic.
And there’s a key word: believability. That’s what’s key about this film. As much as insane things happen (or happened), as bonkers as it all may seem, it doesn’t quite let go of the fact that this could maybe, perhaps, just happen.
Is this “the comedy of the year”? I don’t know – it’s only June and I’m not some tosser who writes for The Sun and proclaims anything that makes him chortle the funniest thing in the world. However, it is very funny and also a great story. Don’t miss it.
Full credit for this solution goes to “vtroia” on the WordPresssupport forum. However, just to ensure the information’s available in more places I’m popping it here.
Symptoms: When trying to use the inbuilt auto-upgrade of WordPress, you simply get a message stating:
Downloading update from http://wordpress.org/wordpress- …
The ending will vary depending on the version you’re trying to update to. Nothing else happens, or it’s just damn slow. There’s no way to tell.
My host is 1and1. I noticed others on the original problem thread had the same one, though I suspect the problem could relate to others as well.
Solution: You need to edit the relevant .htaccess file on your server. This is one of those “for crying out loud, make sure you know what you’re doing” situations, like hacking the registry. Do ensure you have a backup and do ensure you only make the following changes. Make sure you change the correct one, as well.
The problem is that WordPress is either using the wrong version of PHP on the server, or is confused as there is more than one available and it doesn’t know which to pick. Regardless, the solution is to tell it to use PHP5.
To do this, locate and edit the .htaccess file (you may have to download it, edit it and re-upload) and add the following lines:
# Ensure PHP5 being used
# For WordPress auto upgrade
AddType x-mapp-php5 .php
AddHandler x-mapp-php5 .php
The first two are only comments, but it’s useful to know what code is doing.
Once saved, retry your upgrade. I found that I now get a pause of around 15-20 seconds when I click on the “Upgrade Now” button, the screen refreshes and the upgrade is done.
Afterwards: Change it back again, or at least add “#” to the bottom two lines. I found that by not doing this, some functionality in WordPress was jiggered. Specifically, the display and edit of the Permalink underneath the post title as you’re entering/editing it. I’m also still missing the “Recommended Link” section from Zemanta but only on Firefox – it’s reappeared when I use Chrome since I restored the .htaccess file. This could be a caching thing, so I’m going to do some more checking and will update this post as and when I find a fix.
Update: The links issue was a Zemanta problem which they’ve swiftly repaired. However, I am now left with a half-functional dashboard page. This isn’t Zemanta – I’ve disabled it to check. I get only the left column of my opening admin screen and none of the pop-up menus work. As soon as I click on one of the non-popped-up buttons, I go to the relevant default screen and everything works again. It’s only the main admin screen. Gah.
Update 2: Seems there are a lot of issues with plug-ins and WordPress 2.8. If you can, check your plug-ins for compatibility before upgrading. However, note that some of the ones I’m having issues with claim to be compatible with this new release.
Update 3: I re-enabled the lines in the .htaccess and it’s resolved most of the issues. And created one tiny one that seems to be ironing itself out. By which I mean sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn’t. Bizarre.
Just as a disclaimer, it ain’t my fault if you screw your .htaccess by doing this. Be sure you know what you’re doing before to edit it. As long as you only enter the lines shown, as far as I’m aware it will not cause any problems that you can’t sort out by removing the lines again but every installation and setup is different!
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