Category: Internet

Time for a new look

Image representing WordPress as depicted in Cr...
WordPress

After running the default WordPress theme since transferring this blog over from Blogger, I’ve finally found a nice 3-column theme that I can tinker with. It’s called Atahualpa and you can get the latest release from BytesForAll‘s web page.

I’m having a little fun with it – I’d like to have the categories across the top, but it won’t sort them into alphabetical order (although it’s meant to) and I have too many of the things anyway.

Please do let me know if you like it or if there are any niggles. Next (tedious) job is to categorise 650+ posts that I wrote in the days before categories and tags. Argh.

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Yahoo! Answers – error 999

Yahoo! Inc.
Yahoo! Answers

I was messing about on Yahoo! Answers earlier and received an error 999 when I tried to post a response. The advice given infers that my IP address was being used for spam or that I had a virus. Yahoo! told me to run a virus scan or contact my ISP for help (yeah, right).

Kicking the router to give me a new IP address didn’t work, and as I’m running Ubuntu the chance of having a virus or anything is somewhat remote. After some digging, I found that Yahoo! also use error 999 as a cover for spam-protection of a sort. As well as checking IP address, they also prevent multiple posting of web addresses. I’ve seen this on Answers before, where some ****** posts the same URL to multiple non-related questions.

Thing is, my reply didn’t have any URLs in it. One page advised me to split my response into sections. Post one paragraph, then edit my answer to add the next and so on.

What do you know, it worked. And since doing it, I’ve not had the same issue on any further questions. It sounds like a fault in their spam parsing software, but at least there seems to be a simple way around it.

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6789

SIERRA MADRE, CA - MAY 29: Spam, the often-ma...
No spam here

As of just now, Akismet here on my blog has blocked the nice-looking number of 6789 spam posts. I still get the occasional one that creeps through, but they never end up actually posted. I’ve got a captcha program running so someone must be manually entering these things to get them as far as Akismet.

Why on earth do people bother? Really? Ah well. It’s their wasted time, not mine.

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Search question

Search TV Title
Maybe I should search for this

Just random, no reason for asking… what was the last search query you did on Google or wherever? Mine was:

ubuntu vpn server ports

Which pretty much sums me up. Good job I hadn’t just been on Google Image Search or I’d have had to confess about looking for cumshots.

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Desktop web apps

Mozilla Prism
Mozilla Prism

One of Google Chrome‘s unique (until now) features was an ability to take any web page and turn it into a desktop application. Mozilla have responded with a new Firefox plug-in called Prism which does pretty much the same thing.

The advantages are more screen real-estate (no bars across the top as in a browser) and that the “application” is separate from other web processes. So if one page locks up or crashes, it only brings itself down and not all the other pages you might have open at the same time.

Thing is, isn’t this just the same as opening a new (Firefox, Chrome, IE, Safari…) window via a URL shortcut then opting to display it with no toolbars? Or full-screen? I honestly don’t see anything actually new. Especially given that Firefox 3.5 promises and Chrome already delivers discrete memory use in each tab, so that if one fails it doesn’t down the whole browser.

As for differences between the two, Mozilla have the edge – Chrome is still not available for Linux whereas Prism is, although they don’t make it clear on the standalone application download link.

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