Monthly Archives: November 2004

Gravatar support added (update)

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Update: To quote Homer Jay Simpson “D’oh” (or “Nein” like he says in the german version)! This whole error message thing was just caused by some blanks after the closing statement. Everything fixed now :-)
(1:30am) – time to catch some sleep now

Now I’m getting some nasty errors everytime I post a comment or submit a post. This isn’t looking all that good.

Example:

nasty php error due to the fact that I added gravatar support?!

So, if you encounter that error or similiar please just ignore it and go back to ingoal.info your comment was submitted and will appear (right away if it doesn’t need to be moderated). I’ll try to fix this asap!

Note to self: not always a good idea to start upgrades in the middle of the night :-(

Gravatar support added

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After reading about it all around the web, especially on Chu Yeow’s blog I thought maybe I should support this, too. So I downloaded the WordPress plugin and followed the instructions. It was up and running in no time. Nontheless I still had some problems due to the fact that as soon as you enter one no-default parameter it starts to mess up the validation of your document (or at least of my document).

So I went on and hacked a little:

Original version:

[php]
…
if($rating && $rating != ”)
$out .= “&rating=”.$rating;
if($size && $size != ”)
$out .=”&size=”.$size;
if($default && $default != ”)
$out .= “&default=”.urlencode($default);
if($border && $border != ”)
$out .= “&border=”.$border;
…
[/php]

Version with correction:

[php] …
if($rating && $rating != ”)
$out .= “&rating=”.$rating;
if($size && $size != ”)
$out .=”&size=”.$size;
if($default && $default != ”)
$out .= “&default=”.urlencode($default);
if($border && $border != ”)
$out .= “&border=”.$border;
…
[/php]

As those arguments weren’t escaped properly I had 20 errors – now 0

So, check out the comment of any post now and you will find the gravatar of the comment author if (s)he has got one or the standard gravatar I created (will maybe be replaced later on with something “cooler”).
standard gravatar I created

If you don’t know what a Gravatar is yet check out gravatar.com and get yours ;-)

Dersim Ludwigsburg reclaims the top

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With us being free from play back to back, Dersim took it’s chances today and took over first place again with a 4-0 win over KSV Besigheim. Now the standings read:

  • 1. Dersim Ludwigsburg 23:3 goals 9 games played 25 points
  • 2. FC Marbach II 35:8 goals 9 games played 23 points
  • 3. KSV Besigheim 26:16 goals 9 games played 19 points

With three games remaining till the winter break we should try everything to get our 9 points which would be a sure 2nd place.

Plextor S-ATA DVD-Burner

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Plextor is about to released it’s newest DVD burner PX-716SA which has got the same features as the PX-716A but is a serial-ata (s-ata) device – so no free ide-port needed. Groovy…now if I only had a S-ATA port ;-)

Anyway, I’m more than set with 2 dvd-burners in place, so I guess this one (or a even newer generation one) will certainly be an option for my next computer.

dmoz.org

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Now this is slowly starting to get on my nerves. I submitted my site to be added to the open directory dmoz.org (category Top: Computers: Internet: On the Web: Weblogs: Personal: I) some weeks ago and I didn’t hear a thing back. I guess it’s at the discretion of the editor if a site is:

  • added right away
  • added later
  • added at all

This is fine with me, but what I really dislike is being uninformed. If the site was to be added or not or later or not or right away or not, I would like to be informed. A little mail like: “Yo, your site is in the queue, we’ll get to it as soon as we got some time to have a look…” or whatever would really be appreciated. Ah well, I guess I will just have to wait and see…

MSN Search solving your algebra?

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As I browse through the “blogosphere” (weird, the first time that I used this term) I came across something really interesting. MSN search (beta) can solve your algebra problems, at least some of them:

Goto MSN search (beta) and enter something like x^2+x^3=36 and see the result:

result set

Groovy! It seems though that more complex problems are not solved via this search engine – I guess no problem as you wouldn’t expect that your search engine can solve any mathematical problems in the first place.

Found via Neil’s World and Chu Yeow’s blog

Tuning

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Well, it was about time that I bought something bargain style again. So I won an auction on ebay for an additional paper-feeder for my color laser printer (Apple Laser Writer Color 12/600PS – old school but still running very good and cheap with page prices of under 6 cents). What did I pay? 2.50 Euro :-)
It was sort of backbreaking to get the printer on that thing, but now it’s up and running and my “beast” is now fully equipped (maximum stage of expansion: 40MB Ram, 2×250 paper-feeder, etc).

As I was on a roll, so to speak, I decided to put my spare dvd-burner Sony DRU700a to good use by inserting it into my second pc (AMD Athlon XP 1800+ machine). Now I can burn “stereo style” – not that I really need it or something, but this way I can be sure to get almost everything burned regardless of the medium used (my LG had written everything I had thrown at it so far, but today it rejected some grade B media branded “Gate 24” – now I’m happy that I’ve got the second burner, because the Sony likes them).

Qute theme (Firefox)

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Update: Just received a fixed version of it (cheers to John Conde). Awesome! Now it’s Firefox 1.0 with Qute 2.1.3 for me :-)

You can say that if you find something good you usually stick with it and that’s just what I would have love to do after I updated all my clients to Firefox 1.0, but the bad thing is: I can’t!

I have been using the Qute theme ever since I started to use firefox (firebird) and now I’m waiting and waiting, as I thought the theme would be ported to 1.0 right away – but obviously I was wrong: Arvid Axelsson says it won’t be ready until the end of november. Ok, ok that isn’t a long time anymore as it’s already November 15th today, but you know how it is when you’re wanting something – it’d better be here now ;-)

Blog advertising?

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After reading about it here I really started thinking:

  • 1. Do I need advertising?
  • 2. What are the benefits of it?
  • 3. Would anyone be even interested in advertising on my blog?
  • 4. How much is in it for me?
  • 5. What sort of factors are appealing to a possible advertiser?

1.: Well, not really. But if the ad isn’t that huge it could easily be placed in the right hand menu (see the two examples “your ad here” I placed at the top and at the bottom of the right hand menu) – and who would complain about some extra cash to at least cover hosting and maybe something extra?

2.: Obviously money…anything else?!

3. + 4. : Well, I guess I’m going to find out as soon as I contacted Jeremy

5.: That is one thing I don’t know either (yet). I guess it’s the standard stuff, number of visitors, number of impressions, PR, etc

Now I’ll go ahead and contact Jeremy…I’ll keep you updated :-)

Third pc up and running…

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…not as I expected though. As mentioned here I wanted to do a nice new and clean install of Gentoo linux. So I got myself the livecd (2004.2) and started to install away. I gotta say the installation “manual” is really good and if you take the time to follow it through it will make it easy for you, even if you don’t have much (or any) experience with linux installation [nontheless it might not be the ideal distribution for complete newbies, but that’s another story].

So I got the system installed and all (basic system without X etc), but when I tried to install X and a desktop manager (KDE) the system kept freezing during the build process. I tried it over and over with all sorts of settings. It would build and build and build (as it’s an Athlon 1100MHz it’s quite clear that extreme compilation like this will take some time) and just freeze somewhere in the middle or near the end of completion. So now I was reall fed up and thought: There are two possibilities now, either try and try and try again or give up altogether. I chose to go with the later as I had already spend some good two days in total and had nothing on my hands [I was slowly starting to think that the pc might have a hardware problem, but memory tests and all came up with nothing].

So I downloaded Suse 9.1 personal yesterday (go ahead and call me cheap ;-) ) and ran the installation – one things for sure: the setup process is at least as good as the windows setup, it let’s you configure everything using their “YAST” install-tool. And after a little under one hour the system was up and running. Now I’m just downloading system updates and new nvidia drivers and I’m set – finally.

Winter time?

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I can’t believe it. Just left a building in Marbach after a marathon meeting concerning WikiFUN.de and to my surprise my car was covered in snow!
Hello?! It’s early November! Hopefully it will take a while until the next snow is falling – nontheless I need to get my winter tires for my car ready :-(