Archive for the 'Administravia' Category

Irdial on Twitter

Wednesday, June 17th, 2009

You may now follow Irdial on Twitter.

WordPress 2.5 upgrade

Monday, March 31st, 2008

We have finally upgraded WordPress!

Whenever I previously tried to do it, MSQL returned:

WordPress database error: [Duplicate entry '1'
for key 1]
INSERT INTO wp_terms (term_id, name, slug, term_group)
VALUES ('1', 'In', 'in-2', '1')

WordPress database error: [Duplicate entry '1-category'
for key 2]
INSERT INTO wp_term_taxonomy (term_id, taxonomy, description,
parent, count) VALUES ('1', 'category', '', '0', '22')

WordPress database error: [Duplicate entry '2' for key 1]
INSERT INTO wp_terms (term_id, name, slug, term_group)
VALUES ('2', 'Administravia', 'administravia-2', '1')

WordPress database error: [Duplicate entry '2-category'
for key 2]
INSERT INTO wp_term_taxonomy (term_id, taxonomy, description,
parent, count) VALUES ('2', 'category', '', '0', '6')

WordPress database error: [Duplicate entry '3' for key 1]
INSERT INTO wp_terms (term_id, name, slug, term_group)
VALUES ('3', 'The Law', 'the-law-2', '1')

Which resulted in an upgraded WordPress, with 1000 posts that were all Uncategorized.

Eventually, after reading up and doing some dry runs, I discovered the solution:

  • Back everything up, deactivate plugins.
  • Upload the new WordPress files.
  • Truncate the wp-terms table.
  • Truncate the wp-taxonomy table.
  • run the wp-admin/upgrade.php script.

It works!

fourteen clucks

Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008

2007 was a year of movement – finally made the move from one big city to another, a relief to ‘start from scratch’ again, shed off a lot of mental detritus and antipathy. Trying to find new paths still barely scratching the surface.
So then resigned and reemployed, the focus shifts and the outcome of working becomes a delight again.
In boxing things up realised there are some records I no longer like and may have reached the point where others I probably won’t listen to again, but which ones? The eternal question… perhaps. As a result bought hardly any new music, on the plus side a whole year without earphones.
The sad feeling that hearing is getting worse, still able to hear better than some but finding that sounds don’t ‘resonate’ as they used to.
More domesticity as a result of going out less, putting effort into better cooking and baking.
Reappraising the meaning of ‘disturbance’, rattled by not getting things done or learning new things, not finding the right word, losing the memory.

Online presence in various places peters out to a blip on the outer circle, the thought of whether it ‘matters’ flickers. This shall be remedied.

Shrink down

Thursday, November 15th, 2007

If you have an iPod Touch or an iPhone and you surf over to BLOGDIAL, you will see that we have a special theme installed that switches the blog to shrink down mode. Thanks to these incomprehensibly cool people for releasing the theme and plugin.

I’ve used many types of mobile phones over the years (including SAT phones), starting with a Mitsubishi MT3 followed by a few Nokis’s in the middle after a break, then a Sony Ericsson P-800, and finally a Sony Ericsson P-990i.

I say ‘finally’ because that is the last of that type of phone I am going to buy. Uless they really clean up their act, ie, adopt the Linux based open platform and give me a compelling reason to switch. That means total out of the box transparent integration with whatever boxen I am using, no hassle no excuses no bullshit. The Sony Ericsson P-990i is a buggy slow piece of garbage, with an OS that is a step BACKWARDS from the P-800. It doesn’t play nice with anything, the battery life is short and frankly I am astonished that they released it at all.

The iPhone is a different matter entirely. Not only is it very fast, beautifully designed and rock solid, but when it is jailbroken you can run just about anything on it.

The camera is shitty, you cannot transfer files by bluetooth out of the box from another device to it, it doesn’t record video, and lots of other things are either primitive or missing but then, this is the first version of it, and even in this state it is the best mobile phone ever. Oh yes, and there is Apple trying to lock it down every time they release an update for the firmware…but that’s part of the fun!

The most important missing element is the ability to select files and then transfer them by bluetooth or wireless. Once someone comes up with that, then it will be really exiting; people will be able to transfer music and videos between devices…and all sorts of cool things can happen.

Imagine setting the iPhone free to create ad-hoc mesh networks like the OLPC does then you could do all sorts of cool social networking things as well as file sharing. I’m sure it will all come to pass shortly. This platform is going to be so widely deployed that these apps are absolutely inevitable.

Josh improves BLOGDIAL™

Wednesday, March 1st, 2006

Thanks to Josh Carr, longtime BLOGDIAL poster, you now have your name underneath the title of your post, and a list of ten ecent comments in the sidebar.

Josh took time off from his work to Skype and walk me throught putting in the pieces of PHP where they needed to go. Thanks again Josh!

RSS feed is fixed: I broke WordPress

Wednesday, February 22nd, 2006

As you know, our motto is “We are the best”. If you append ‘®’ and ‘™’ at the end of this in the ‘options’ the RSS generator chokes and throws up an error.

Now that I have removed the offending entities, RSS is flowing again.

The New Face of BLOGDIAL WTF?! (do we get to wear uniforms?)

Sunday, February 19th, 2006

Can we get an RSS feed? I can’t find one! Will our posts be named too? CD!

Moving accounts to WordPress

Sunday, February 19th, 2006

If you have a BLOGDIAL account, and you need to get access to your new WordPress account, email irdial.