Category: Brian Layman

A quick hello

Just a quick hello! I can see that a bunch of you are still checking in daily and I haven’t posted much this week. So here’s a post to let you know I am still alive. I’ve got a mega-post I’ve been working on. I’ve finally broken down and used the WordPress Page feature and this post is now about 6 pages long. I’ve got about 5 other posts in draft form and I’ve finished another book, but the mega-post takes priority. I hope to have it out tonight. It’s all about WordPress security. And it contains references to various attacks on older versions of WordPress and I want to perform each attack on at least one of the three test blogs I’ve configured so that none comes back and says “THAT IS NOT POSSIBLE!”. So, I’m basically done and just need to do some fact checking.

In the mean time, I just stumbled across this picture and I have to say it creeps me out and I simply don’t get creeped out by stuff. Still I’ve found that there are some fears that go beyond logic… I stayed once at a house where a guy had a pet boa he teased regularly so that it would strike at the glass when people stood near by. It would sit there and inhale loudly inflating itself to three times its original size. He made money by betting people they could not keep their face up near the glass. That is the first time I felt what I’d have to describe as an instinctual fear of any animal. It was EXTREMELY difficult to go up to that cage.

This picture doesn’t scare me but I sure get the heebee-jeebees:

OK, it's not so bad at this size, but what is on its back? Click to enlarge.

Original source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/57756784@N00/207151357/

A Princess of Mars

By Edgar Rice Burroughs

A Princess of Mars (Mars (del Rey Books Numbered))

You can view this book’s Amazon detail page here.

Tags:

Started reading:
31st Jul 2006
Finished reading:
2nd Aug 2006

Review

Rating: 6

I started reading A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs to my kids a year ago. I downloaded the text to my PDA from which I can read to them with the lights out. I picked it up again in audio format when I finished Dragons Dawn.

This is a very important peice as the John Carter’s story was the tale ever sold by Burroughs. At age 35, Burroughs had previously had a largely unsuccesful life. He quickly followed this success by publishing the first Tarzan novel. From that point on, his success was secured. This novel grew into a series of 18 novels covering the adventures of John Carter, Apache hunter from the late 1800’s and his heroic wife Dejah Thoris, Princess of Mars.

Reading books from around the turn of the last century is always interesting. In the year 1900, everyone assumed all was known and science was at an end, yet novels such as this one would strive to stretch the boundaries.

I do think this novel was initially intended as a commentary on such social topics as Native American relations, communism, slavery and the affects of war on culture. Many of these themes were eventually lost as the adventure of the story grew on Burroughs. Throughout these advendures is characters portrayed the strict honor and morals of Burroughs’ time.

BTW DO NOT or even borrow the audio version of this book. It will ruin the story. The directorial decisions made in the production of the audio book, insult and ruin the story. The free audio version available from librivox, though read by almost a dozen narrators, from what I’ve heard, its quality far out strips the quality of the one that is for sale.

Dragonsdawn (Dragonriders of Pern Series)

By Anne McCaffrey

Dragonsdawn (Dragonriders of Pern Series)

You can view this book’s Amazon detail page here.

Tags:

Started reading:
24th Jul 2006
Finished reading:
31st Jul 2006

Review

Rating: 8

You won’t find me giving any of the books from the Dragon Riders of Pern series anything other than an 8, 9 or a 10. This is my favorite series.

This book jumps back several thousand years in the history of the planet PERN and describes the first 10 years of its colonization. This is a period of time when there is no such thing as a “dragon” on PERN or any other planet. The colonists of this planet look forward to setting up a peaceful agronomical society. An escape from the years of war against the Nathy and from the poluted and corrupted mother earth and subsequent colonies on Mars, First Centauri and elsewhere.

It describes the first obstacles that faced a society that would soon splinter and begin a millenium of decline into an economy similar to those found during Earth’s middle ages.

This is a good pre-history to the main thrust of the PERN series. I highly recommend it to you – AFTER you have read the other PERN books.

Now Reading – Recently Completed – The Worthing Saga by Orson Scott Card

Originaly posted here.

The Worthing Saga

By Orson Scott Card

The Worthing Saga

You can view this book’s Amazon detail page here.

Tags:

Started reading:
17th Jul 2006
Finished reading:
24th Jul 2006

Review

Rating: 7

The Worthing Saga is a series of short stories and novels that tells the story of an empire’s death and rebirth. It is the story that began Orson Scott Card’s career. This book includes stories as published in 1978 and continuing through its release in 1990. The audio version includes readings by both Emily Card and Orson himself.

This book, the Worthing Saga, includes both The Worthing Chronicle and a grouping of short stories. The Worthing Chronicle is a grand unifying story that combines both the novel HotSleep and many of the short stories that were worked into the Worthing Chronicle.

Those stories were not rewritten for this book, but appear in close to their original format. So, the do not all quite align with the saga, but that’s OK. They are entertaining none the elase. They were written as independent works and published in magazines and in part in one or two novels (Hot Sleep and Capital). OSC decided to publish them as-is without removing inconsistencies for the Worthing universe is after all a story about memory, its truths and its lies.

This was my second reading of The Worthing Chronicle. I don’t normally do short stories, so it was a difficult book to read the first time through. I don’t think I ever finished it. Too often short stories ends before the author can fully explain the characters and I read almost exclusively to hear people’s stories – even if they are fictional people.

In the end – though I will say that the Worthing Chronicle was a more craftily interwoven story, I enjoyed the HotSleep version of the story much more. HotSleep rings true to me where as Chroncicle is perhaps told in a more technical correct manner.

I do recommend you read both Hot Sleep and The Worthing Saga, but you should read HotSleep first. It delves more deeply into every character in the story and helps you understand the Worthing Saga in a deeper way.

Unless you have a really good used book store around you (my favorite was flooded two years ago and never recovered a REAL shame), the only place you will find Hot Sleep is attached to the second issue of OSC’s magazine The Intergalactic Medicine show. You can buy each issue for under $3 and you get MORE than your money’s worth.

Visit it at: http://www.InterGalacticMedicineShow.com

Powered by Rob‘s Now Reading plugin.

IMPORTANT: Attention Doctor Who & Douglas Adams Fans

I’ve just noticed that BBC7 – the British radio station that simulcasts on an Internet stream – recently re-aired the Doctor Who episode series “Shada”.

Shada was originally a never made six episode series from 1980 when Tom Baker was starring as the fourth Doctor. And who wrote many of the episodes starring Tom Baker (including this Shada)? Why none other than the late great Douglas Adams of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy fame. Shada was actually Douglas’s last contribution to the Doctor Who TV universe. And finally on New Years Day 2006, it saw (heard) the light (sounds) of day in the shape of made for radio drama aired world wide on BBC7. And this week it was rebroadcast – DON’T MISS IT!!! One word of warning, the plot has been transposed to take place during the eighth incarnation of the Doctor – Paul McGann. Oh – and K9 is there too! 🙂 It’s funny, Shada Episode One starts with The Doctor (McGann) giving with a brief description of the scenes from The Five Doctors when he was in a different incarnation (Baker). It’s just strange. (I guess you had to be there….)

Paul McGann as The Eighth Doctor

Parts of this episode were filmed with Tom Baker but it was never completed. In fact, if you’ve seen the movie “The Five Doctors” all of the Tom Baker scenes in that movie were original footage made for the Shada episode. “Shada” was first aired over the Christmas holidays last year.

I know it is late notice but today and tomorrow, you can go to BBC7’s “Listen Again” page and scroll down to the 7th Dimension section at 18:00 to see the listing for Shada. It requires Real Player, but you can just click the “Listen Again” link or icon.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbc7/listenagain/sunday/

On Sunday, you can still cheat and listen to the show by connecting directly to the RAM file any time right up till 11:59:59pm London time. Shortly after that, the second episode in the Shada series will be found at that link.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbc7/listenagain/sunday/rams/0000.ram

If you’ve stumbled on this post after this date and have missed the first episode, send me an email. I’ll commiserate with you. Or you can check out the online comic version of Shada that was written for the now defunct Cult BBC pages. You need to have Flash to enjoy the visual and audio extravaganza: http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/classic/webcasts/shada/one/index.shtml

You can also read more about the episode plot here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/classic/episodeguide/shada/plot.shtml

Favorite Quote: “Tea?” “Yes please.” “Milk?” “Yes” “One lump or two?” “Two please.” “Sugar?” “What???”

BBC7’sEpisode Summary:

DOCTOR WHO: SHADAWritten by Douglas Adams. Directed by Nicholas Pegg. Produced by Big Finish Productions.
Saturday December 10 at 8pm

The good Doctor made a comeback to TV in 2005. But this Douglas Adams adventure has made a comeback on radio instead! Starring Paul McGann, Susannah Harker and Edward Fox.
The Doctor has a spot of unfinished business. Reunited with his old friends Romana and K9, he answers a summons from Professor Chronotis, a retired Time Lord now living the academic life in a Cambridge college.

But the Doctor isn’t the only visitor to Cambridge. Somewhere in the city is the sinister alien Skagra, who is intent on stealing an ancient and mysterious book brought to Earth by the Professor many years before.

What is Skagra’s diabolical masterplan? And who or what is the mysterious Shada? To discover the truth, the Doctor and his friends must embark on a perilous journey that will take them from the cloisters of Cambridge to the farthest reaches of deep space, risking deadly encounters with a sentient spaceship, the monstrous Krargs, and an ancient Time Lord criminal called Salyavin. As the Doctor soon discovers, the fate of the universe hangs in the balance…

YouTube Sued For Copyright Infringement

A Los Angeles video news service sued YouTube Inc. on Friday in federal court for allowing its users to upload copyrighted video footage onto the popular Web site.

It turns out that the videographer that filmed the OJ chase and the of the beating of trucker Reginald Denny during the LA riots in 1992, is suing YouTube because his video is popular.

This follows YouTube being sued by the RIAA because it included videos WITH SOUND of kids dancing to music. And gosh – none of the 14 year olds paid royalties to dance with the music… go figure!

(BTW this is done with the automated DIGG posting system. I figured I’d give it a try…)

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New Blog Feature – Now Reading….

I’d decided to install Rob Miller’s “Now Reading…” version 4.0 plugin ages ago to replace my Read in 2005 and 2006 categories. But I knew there was a new version of my current theme out. So, it didn’t make sense for me to manually add the required template changes especially when the new version of Binary Blue supported Widgets and writing a Now Reading Widget woud be simpler than updating the template all the time. Skip a few months and now Rob himself has investigated widgets and made his own available for Now Reading. So I rushed over to his site, grabbed it and installed it right away! S0000 SWEEET!

Unfortunately, my excitement got the better of me. I failed to notice that the download page for Now Reading had, not only the widget available, but also an updated version of the plug in. The current version of Now Reading was 4.2 and installing the plug in with 4.0 caused the side bar to blow up with a missing function error. I realized my probably mistake right away, uninstalled it all and reinstalled in the correct order with the latest.

Unfortunately, my woes did not end there. I found three problems with 4.2 that could be fixed with relative ease. The first problem was a ” *Fatal error*: Cannot redeclare now_reading_add()” Error. That was very easy to find. I had one link that didn’t work and one link for the same page that did work. A quick change to make now-reading-admin.php always use the “post.php?page=now-reading-add.php” syntax instead of “post.php?page=now-reading/now-reading-add.php” and the problem was solved.

The next problem was a “1 book *Warning*: Cannot modify header information -” error message that came up each time I edited a book. That looked just like a debug comment, and indeed Rob confirmed that this one was fixed in his own code already but didn’t say how. I didn’t have access to check out the latest code yesterday, so I fixed it myself. The total_books routine takes a parameter to termine whether or not to print to the screen. In one place, the parameter was needed but not specified. So I changed
if ( $count > total_books(0) )
to:
if ( $count > total_books(0, false) )

and that problem was solved.

I sent those two changes and a recommendation that the widget check for the correct version of the plugin to him and he replied with a thanks, he’d put in the changed the code as I’d suggested (b4 or after I don’t know) and notice that 4.21 was released! Cool, that means no one else should get these errors.

Unfortunately, I noticed two minor things after that point. First, one book I entered had an apostrophe in the title. Unfortunately, the plugin now put a slash in front of the appostrophe. I SUSPECT that this is a WP 2.03 issue and I have not reported it to Rob. I’ll install 2.04alpha/beta/whatever soon and see if the problem goes away.

The next minor issue was reported to Rob with the fix. After I put in the 12 books I read this year, the plugin was reporting that I had an average of 144 books a month. I admit that my 2 books* a month average this year is pathetic compared to last year’s 3.6 (I read nothing in March this year oddly enough – I guess that’s when I started the blog and nothing struck me as interesting enough to take my time away from that. And I’ve also been reading a lot from Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show), but I’m not going to bolster it to 144 books a month…

So, I dug into the average query and found the problem…

I shot another email to Rob just before two this morning:

>I’ll add a version check to the widget now, good idea.
Thanks!

Oh and I have one more update if you haven’t fixed this one already too..

Your average books calculation was off. You’re missing a MIN statement around the b_added.

So it should look like this:
SELECT
( COUNT(*) / ( TO_DAYS(CURDATE()) – TO_DAYS( MIN(b_added) ) ) ) AS books_per_day
FROM
{$wpdb->prefix}now_reading
WHERE
b_status = ‘read’

Nice plugin… Now I’m just trying to remember all of the books I’ve read so far this year… I just remembered another… So that’s 12…

That change is in template-functions.php around line 145. I think I’ll keep my current version installed till the fix is out.

So, now you can look at my sidebar now and see all of the books I am reading and have read this year. And if you like the idea of any of the books I’ve read, you can purchase it through the links and I’ll get a peice of the action. (Actually for now Rob will. I’ve not put in my own Amazon ID yet.) I don’t think I’ll put in last year’s 44+ books for a while yet. Each book deserves a comment but that’s 44 more blog entries I need to write. So, I’ll piece meal them in. If you like what you see, please visit Rob’s site and download the latest and greatest versions of now reading. Just click this link: http://robm.me.uk/projects/plugins/wordpress/now-reading/

BTW, I put together the promised context menu post I mentioned the other day, but was debugging something and decided to backup the file and wipe out most of the file so that I could Isolate what I was debugging. Unfortuately, I forgot I’d also already changed the name of the working file. *smacks head* So, I lost some of my change and all of my extended commenting. I just need to re-review the comments ( the second time you put in comments they are never as good as the first time you put them in ) and I’ll publish the post. Probably tomorrow. I’ve got a lawn to mow and a carpet or two to shampoo… Cheers!

* One of the people in our shipping department had a discussion with the UPS guy saying both stated that they’d each only ever read 1 book cover to cover. How sad (not not meaning pitiful but saddening) is that…

I am back! I have Internet access at home again!!!

Sorry for the long absense… I’m back online – This post describes all the bloody details of dealing with Time Warner Cable’s customer service. It’s a rant. You can skip it if you like. But, this is the second time the process was this rocky and I suspect it won’t be the last time… The only good thing we can say is that they are VERY good at appologizing, they offer credit for down time readily and when you get their support reps to your house with the needed equipment, the service is good and the people are polite and compent.

It took Time Warner Cable let’s see….

1 appointment? Nope! That appointment was canceled by them when my wife was checking the mail with out her cell phone and calling TWC back within 5 minutes of the original call counted for nothing. – They are supposed to call 3 times.

2. appointments? Nope! A very angry call from me to a support rep had gotten them to schedule another visit the same day as the first – or at least that’s what I was told.  This person never showed up and the person I spoke to did not record that I’d even called because she thought it was all taken care of. 

3. appointments? Nope! A nice competent worker showed up at the end of the day when he didn’t have enough supplies to correct the problem.  The problem?   The last time they had been to my place to bury the cable line (they didn’t want to have it running through the air because ladders were difficult on my side hill) they most likely knicked the line.  That experience involved many appointments and no records that I’d called and left complaints.

4. appointments? Nope!  Though scheduled for the next day, it seems my job was never given to the contractor.  I got a full months credit out of that call to their support department.

5. appointments? Nope!   The late in the day scheduling – and we SHOULD have been first thing in the morning after all this – meant that thuderstorms had rolled in…  I can’t blame the guy for not wanting to go up the pole with lightning around…

6. appointments?  Almost…  A local contractor came out and re-ran the line.  I like that they are using local small business contractors.

7. appointments?  Maybe…. They have to schedule at least one more visit because the person that ran the line could not bury it.  At least I have the Internet back…  until a squirrel chews through the line tomorrow… 😉

As annoying as it was for me – not having reliable cable internet since July 1, it has been triply so for Denise as for EVERY day except for the 1th and 6th  appointment, she was obligated to constantly be on guard from 8am-8pm for a call from Time Warner knowing that any the 5th ring, could mean another blown appointment.  Additionally, the contractors are not obligated to call… So, she was expected to remain home all day long.  A nice half a month there…

Anyway, I’ll clean up the stuff I’ve been building up for posts and hopefully get something tech related out tomorrow (God willing and the Squirrels don’t arise…).  I’m pretty sure the first thing will be another context menu tool for use in IE.  Then a Xampp tip, another IE tool and by that time I should have some neat Delphi stuff ready for anyone who uses 1and1.com and wants to use their URL for dynamic DNS serving…  Hmmm I should probably make a post of the manual way to do DynDNS through road runner first…. 

Anyway, all that is coming…

Grrr… Dead cable modem – mostly…

It looks like I’m gonna be mostly offline, at home, until Thursday that’s the soonest RR will be able to come out to diagnose why the internet connection is soooo bad…

In the meantime, sticking the cable modem in the freezer for a time works to get me on line for a bit. I’ve also McGyvered* a cooling fan, from an old dead Pentium 1 computer, onto the side of the cable modem… That seems to help too.

The important thing is that I had enough online time to download last night’s Doctor Who. Anyone else watch it yet? I had to pry my wife’s hands off of the chair… And the kids were yelling, “I’m scared of …” well, you’ll find out what…

(*McGyver was a TV hero in the US that could fix anything with some gum, a toothpick, and a 3 inch piece of string.)