fouldsy.com

Impressively, the first couple of spam comments appeared in the moderation queue about half an hour ago. Why am I impressed? Because I hardly got any comments for 18 months, and have already had 2 genuine comments today – maybe that’s attracted some attention! I had very few problems with pMachine, probably because it wasn’t powering many blogs so it wasn’t worth the effort on the part of the spammers! There’s probably more scripts aimed at hitting blogs powered by WordPress which isn’t much fun.

So, have set SpamKarma2 to munch any more! I already have links through to Spammers Be Gone and Spam Poison for scripts that harvest e-mail addresses. Which is nice.

If you’re trying to comment (really, you are?!), you might get asked to enter a pretty captcha if it’s not sure what you’re up to, otherwise let me know if there are any problems.

I’ve pretty much got Coppermine image gallery working now, and have shuffled across most of the photos from the old galleries. Annoyingly, I’d looked at Coppermine about a year ago, but didn’t think I’d need something quite as complex and ended up adjusting pMachine to work as an image gallery. Think I’ve just about got enough photos to warrant a proper image gallery now, and reckon there might be a few more to upload this summer!

Anyways, check out my new image gallery here! Sure there’ll be some more tinkering yet, but at least it’s got them back online

Well, after a few problems last week I decided it was about time I made a move away from pMachine. It was the pMachine software that’s ran this site from the beginning, with only minor updates along the way as the code base was de-licensed with their move to ExpressionEngine and a halt on pMachine development. A number of good features made me want to stick with it and I had a number of hacks incorporated, but with the release of WordPress 2.0 I thought I’d give it a go.

Importing all the data from pMachine was actually fairly straightforward, however the multiple categories features of WordPress meant it required manual editing to adjust the old posts into the relevant categories. Also, as pMachine handled tags using bbCode, quite a few SQL queries were required to adjust this back to HTML code. I’ve since realised there’s a plugin for WordPress that allows bbCode, but I’m quite happy with the conversion back to pure HTML.

So, some new features include:

• Multiple categories assigned to each posting if desired (something I really wanted)
• Links to Technorati + del.icio.us tags for each category from posts
• Gravtars within comments section (though hardly used!) to stick a picture next to poster
• Extra customisation for countdown timers
• Proper moblog handling + posting via e-mail rather than my hacks
• A host of extra plugins for me play with!

I must say modifying WordPress is much nicer + cleaner than with pMachine. Although the system is similar when adding plugins, I like the ability to activate + deactivate plugins in WordPress and the inclusion of an editor to adjust the code, which pMachine simply didn’t have. Once the code was included within the scripts directory, that was it, and no editing through the pMachine control panel.

Although I’m not convinced about this default theme, it looks quite clean, I like the layout, and it works nicely. I’m moving all the photos across into Coppermine as I’m thinking there might be quite a few photos being posted during the summer, so figured this was a good time to setup a proper image gallery app, and there’s some neat plugins to allow integration with WordPress to!

So, let me know what you think (if anyone can be bothered!) and if you find any problems with dead links or content not loading properly from the archives, please let me know!

Well, I officially handed in my letter of resignation this morning, so not really any going back now! For the unitiated, I’m moving to the US this summer having had enough of sunny England, and reckon I may as well take the opportunity whilst I can. With the Visa paper’s currently being filed, and the arrangements for the wedding under way for 14th June, it’s all a case of waiting for the papers to be processed and then getting called for an interview at the US embassy in London. Will probably take until the start of May or so before it’s all sorted!

My date of leaving work will be 26th May which falls on the UK half-term holidays, and am looking to fly out the 30th/31st May to spend 10 weeks or so travelling around the US with Kat, including getting hitched in Lake Tahoe, California (not literally in Lake Tahoe, it might be a bit wet…) before moving to Alaska for a year so Kat can continuing teaching up there. Apart from their school being closed last week with the temperatures down to -56F, should be fun!

Well, I had to go deep undercover into the heart of enemy territory this afternoon. An IT company we deal with offered to take me to the Newcastle football match, complete with free food + drink. The lure of free drink was enough to convince me, though being of the red + white persuasion did mean keeping quiet at choice moments during the game.

For those of you unaware, two big north east football teams are Newcastle United and Sunderland. The whole area is very passionate about football, and there is a very bitter rivalry between the two teams, hence the reason I’ve been (jokingly…?) dis-owned by my fellow Sunderland fans at work!

Still, wasn’t all that bad – Newcastle lost 1-0 with me being probably the only person in the ground of 51,323 people that was happy – not just because I’m a Sunderland fan, but also because I’d won a few a quid by betting Blackburn would win the match 1-0!

And, just to prove the sporting God’s do have a sense of humour, Sunderland recorded only their second win of the season away to West Bromich Albion by the same scoreline this afternoon.

Fun + games all round!

Have spent most of the afternoon sorting through all the photos from being away as I was just too tired during the week. Reckon I’m all caught up on sleep now! There were around 200 photos in total, and quite a lot I’ll be sending off to get printed and blown up to large sizes, especially from the Mount McKinley flightseeing tour (of which there were nearly 100 just from that!).

But, a bunch of decent photos have been stuck in the image galleries if anyone gets bored and wants to check them out:

• Tuntutuliak photos
• Mount McKinley Flightseeing tour photos
• Winnipeg New Year’s Eve photos
• Minneapolis photos

Well, I made it back home around 4p.m this afternoon. The flights weren’t too bad, but the plane that should have flown from Amsterdam to Minneapolis for me to jump on for the return leg had broken down, so Northwest switched to an older DC-10. This meant less space, no personal video systems, and NWA having to boot off a load of passengers to make way for business customers that had reserved seating. The offer of $750 worth of NWA flight vouchers was tempting to give up my seat, but I didn’t want to spend all night at the airport and then spend all Sunday travelling, getting home late and going into work first thing in the morning.

But, I managed some sleep during both flights, and Kat managed to steer the rental car back safely, so all seems well except the 4,500 miles between us Has been the most amazing holiday, even taking into account the bizarre Minneapolis Transit System that runs public transport to the Minneapolis Zoo Monday-Friday but not on a weekend. Still can’t figure that one out, but we ended up going to the movies yesterday instead to watch The Ringer which was actually pretty funny, though not quite what either of us were expecting!

So, guess it’s back into the idea of work again, so long as I dig my bed out from all the crap I have lying around after emptying my bags and getting some sleep!

We’ve pretty much spent the last couple of days at the Mall of America, which I thought would be really crap, but turned out quite okay! Although spread out over 3 floors, it’s probably not that much bigger than the Metro Center back in England (for those familiar with it!), however the Mall of America doesn’t have much variety. No guitar shops, only a couple of music + DVD stores, etc.!

One cool thing at the mall is A.C.E.S Flight Simulators which have individual flight simulators networked together to fly against other people. You have to make a booking rather than just walking in, but it’s well worth it! I spent an hour in an F/A-18 and is so much better than a flight simulator on a home PC, as you sit in a proper cockpit with the authentic controls, head up display, etc. and the whole cockpit pitches and rolls as you do. When you first get in, your game controller (one of the employees) guides you through the basics over the radio to get you flying, some basic maneuvers, and use of weapons systems, before loading all the pilots up into a dogfight situation. The game controller then acts as air traffic controller to offer advice as to navigation systems, location of enemy aircraft, etc. It’s well worth $50 for an hour!

Yesterday we also hit the movie cinema and went to see Fun with Dick + Jane. If you’ve got nothing against Jim Carey, it’s very funny, though you might find Carey’s usual shenanigans a little too much. Funny throughout, if a little over the top (not that there was anything wrong with that!), and with a cool twist at the end! Like the flight simulator, it’s worth the money!

And a couple of good restaurants at the mall include Ruby Tuesdays (even if you simply check out the menu to view the size of some of their burgers!), and the Rainforest Cafe which is a rainforest themed restaurant with huge aquariums full of tropical fish throughout, tropical plants and animals, and things kicking off every 10 minutes to simulate thunder storms, etc. The food at both was very good, especially at the Rainforest Cafe.

So, have got one more day before heading home If we can figure out the transport system, we’re going to try to head to the zoo, as we can leave our bags at the hotel and pick them up later as I don’t fly out until 9.05p.m and Kat will head off to pick up a rental car to drive back to Halstad around 8p.m. Not looking forward to coming back, though at least the overnight flight back to Europe should make the travelling easier and reduce jetlag, especially since I’ll be right back into the swing of things at work first thing Monday morning!

After figuring out the light rail system from the Mall of America and realising we actually came into the city from the east and so how to get to the Target Center, we got into the for the basketball fine. The arena was much bigger than I expected, much like the ice hockey on New Year’s eve, and there was a lot more of the entertainment factor with the mascots, music, cheerleaders + dance teams, etc. Sitting right on the center line in the second level gave pretty good seats:

In the end, it was a really good game, very close until half time, then the Timberwolves pulled things out in the 3rd period and continued the excellence defence in the 4th quater, finally winning 91-78.

We decided rather than renting another car tomorrow, we’d hitch a lift with Kat’s mom down to Minneapolis / St Paul’s since she was heading down here to pick Luke up. Anyone that knows the mid-west will know how exciting the drive will have been – 5 hours of nothing much!

But, the hotel is good, and at least we’ll have some rest for the rest of today and can hit downtown Minneapolis tomorrow before the basketball game. Was looking at the sports section this morning and looks like the Minnesota Timberwolves aren’t going to have much chance against Dallas Mavericks, but should be a good game – the Timberwolves are top of the Northwest division, but only due to the start of their season as they are 2-8 from their last 10 games.