Archive for the ‘World of Badger’ Category

Right, I’ve finally pulled my finger out and applied a new veneer to this blog. I’ve been playing around with designs on my local server for weeks, but it’s still very much a work in progress; the to-do list still includes:

• Set up a pro Flickr account and upload some photos (the nine thumbnails on the right are just a temporary placeholder until I get my photo stream in place).
• Hack my Last.fm XML feeds to display what I’ve been listening to on the right (where the nine orange squares are). Er, and start listening to some cool contemporary stuff, rather than the cheesetastic 80s stuff I’ve had on all day - the Goombay Dance Band and Ryan Paris impresses no one. Done - details of my listening habits now available here, albeit a little slow at times.
• Update my links to sites I read regularly.
• Check that the archives are displayed to my liking.
• Check that the search and 404 pages display properly.
• Make a few SEO and accessibility tweaks.
• Possibly apply abit of sIFR to get the headings to display in Gill Sans.
• Test the site in Safari, Opera, IE8, IE7 and IE6 (OK, I’m joking about IE6).
• Definitely do something more with the footer, as I’m not entirely happy with it. I was going to call it dull, but that’s probably the last thing it could be called…
• Add a contact form.
• Oops, having just seen this post, adding some styles for lists might be a good idea too.

Seems like plenty to be going on with, so do bear with me.

I had an unexpected email yesterday, from someone at the Evening Standard who’d read my take on the best british sitcoms (written in 2004) and wondered if I’d be interested in writing a few words on Gavin and Stacey winning a BAFTA and the state of sitcoms in general. Despite not exactly being an avid Standard reader, I am a fan of Gavin and Stacey, so I quickly tapped out a few paragraphs and emailed it over. I didn’t think what I wrote was particularly good (certainly less potentially libellous than my original) - writing hundreds of words is so much harder than writing thousands - but it was kind of fun seeing it in the paper today.

I know it’s best to best to cater to your audience, but sadly the short nature of the piece meant I wasn’t able to include any references to Ken Livingstone funding illegal immigrants bent on evil terrorism. Still, probably goes without saying to the average Standard reader. Anyway, thanks to Josh at the paper for including this URL in it.

On to more interesting things…. In between meetings today I managed to pop in to the British Museum to see The American Scene: Prints from Hopper to Pollock exhibition, and very good it was too. With about 150 prints covering a wide range of styles and subject matter, I thought the exhibition did an excellent job of examining American artists’ responses to the changing culture and politics in the first half of the 20th century.

Many of the images in the intervening period explore the changing urban landscape of New York, the onset of the Depression, the romanticised visions of the American heartlands by the Regionalists, the response to the rise of Fascism in Europe and America’s entry into the Second World War.

It’s on until September and admission’s free, so highly recommended if you’re in central London with a bit of time to kill.

Thought I’d better post something here in case Microsoft has any laptops left to give away as bribes review machines.

I had such good intentions for the Christmas holiday, including finishing the new design for this site. In the end I had a thoroughly lazy, unproductive time, and only managed to catch up on a few of the things on my to-do list. Definitely felt like a ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ week - to be honest I think I really needed a break from worky stuff. Still, now I see that Celebrity Big Brother has started on Channel 4, I’d say there’s a good chance I’ll get that new design in place shortly.

I suppose I should write a belated-but-still obligatory World of Badger review of 2006. <scratches head /> I guess the highlight of my year would have to be the Sultan’s Elephant in London back in May. What else? Album of the year? Um, I have to admit that, as a result of converting a lot of my CD collection to MP3s, I spent a large part of 2006 getting back into a lot of albums from the late 80s to mid-90s. That said, there were some really good albums released in the last 12 months, and my favourites would include:

• Yo La Tengo - ‘I am not afraid of you and I will beat your ass’ (surely album title of the year if nothing else)
• Peeping Tom - ‘Peeping Tom’
• Thome Yorke - ‘The Eraser’
• Joanna Newsom - ‘Ys’
• Sonic Youth - ‘Rather Ripped’

(I would have linked to Spillers Records in Cardiff, the oldest record shop in the world, which is threated with closure by developer scumbags, but I can’t link directly to the albums on their site, so I’ve used Boomkat - another independent music shop - rather than Amazon. Spillers is a great little shop, and I used to get all my albums and gig tickets there when I lived in Wales; please sign the petition to save it.)

OK, admittedly not the most comprehensive review of 2006, but it’s the best I could come up with at this late hour.

Work’s been pretty hectic these last few months (actually the whole year’s been really busy), so it’s a relief to say “That’s it, no more work until 2007!”. As of 5.30pm today we’re officially on holiday, and will only be responding to client emergencies (our definition of emergencies, not theirs - crashed servers or compromised security qualify, but cosmetic changes to e-commerce sites or the inability to use a simple CMS do not).

I’m having a fairly low-key Christmas in London this year, so despite my good intentions, I’ll be surprised if boredom hasn’t driven me back to the computer by Boxing Day. Top of my list is getting the new design for World of Badger finished and live. I’ll probably try to catch up on a few other bits and pieces of work without the pressure of deadlines and client reviews too.

But for now my Chrimbo R&R kicks off properly tomorrow, when I’m meeting friends for an afternoon and evening of eating, drinking and being merry in central London.

In case you’re wondering why things have gone quiet again, it’s because I’ve been working on the new look for the site on my local server. The layout and typography is pretty much done, but I’ve not quite decided on the colour scheme yet. A similar green to the previous look is a strong contender, as is dark blue/grey. Any preferences?

The next step, moving World of Badger to the new server, went without a hitch (well, apart from the 20 minute period this morning between changing the nameservers and remembering to actually run the SQL to populate the new database with the old content!). As for the problem of Wordpress incorrectly showing zero posts under some categories, that was easily fixed by re-saving a single post from each miscalculated category.

The only other major issue I’ve yet to deal with is Bad Behavior; don’t get me wrong, it seems to be doing a sterling job of blocking spam (over 2000 attempts blocked in the last 48 hours), but unfortunately it doesn’t like my ISP NTL. Or more accurately, Distributed Sender Blackhole List (one of the spam IP address lists it uses) doesn’t like NTL’s transparent proxies, some of which are blacklisted.

NTL infamously routes all its customers’ web traffic through transparent proxies which cache content in order to reduce network congestion (in a similar way viewed pages being cached by your browser). There are a couple of dozen NTL proxy servers around the country, with their own IP addresses (as far as I know, the only other UK ISP to do this is AOL, and I believe they even use proxies in the US). Unfortunately, rather than checking my actual IP address against the blacklist, Bad Behavior is checking the IP address of the particular NTL proxy I happen to be being routed through. Even though the proxy can be shared with thousands of other users, all it takes is one person doing something bad (sending spam, or just having a PC infected with malware) for that proxy’s IP address to get blacklisted. That’s the situation with the NTL proxy at Bromley (my default) - because it’s blacklisted, all the NTL customers using it are effectively blacklisted too.

As a result of Bad Behavior thinking my IP address is blacklisted, I can’t actually log in to my own Wordpress admin area when connected through this proxy! (I’m blocked from other sites too, such as the ever-helpful DNS Stuff). Luckily there is a short-term solution - it’s easy to change to a different proxy (see here for more help and information on NTL’s crap proxies). Connecting through a non-blacklisted proxy in Cardiff means Bad Behavior allows me through.

Long-term this isn’t a solution though - obviously any visitors using blocked NTL proxies won’t want to switch just to post a comment. Bad Behavior dos have a ‘whitelist’ facility for listing IP addresses to let through, so I suppose I could enter NTL’s proxy IP address ranges. Perhaps a better option would be to tweak the plugin so it grabs the visitor’s real IP address and not that of the proxy server (I may have a go if I have time). Better still would be for NTL to stop using transparent proxies, but I guess if they’ve over-sold their services that won’t be happening any time soon.

Please excuse the plain Jane look. I’ve switched from b2evolution to Wordpress, and won’t be jazzing up the default look until I move the site to a new server (same URL though - see below). There will inevitably be a few broken links (I suspect the RSS link is different) but hopefully not too many. I’ll turn commenting back on once I’ve got sufficient anti-spam precautions in place I’ve now got the akismet and Bad Behavior plugins running, so commenting is back on - please let me know if anything seems horribly broken.

Well, don’t want to speak to soon, but the migration from b2evolution 0.92 to Wordpress 2.0.4 seems to have gone smoothly (apart from the categories not showing the correct number of posts - there are actually 532 posts in 8 cats, not 240 posts in 3 cats as it’s reporting - but they are still there). In case it proves helpful to anyone else considering switching, I’ll outline the procedure:

1. Download this conversion script and rename it to .php rather than .php.txt
2. Take a backup of your b2evolution database, just in case (if you’re on Windows, SQLyog is a good, free program for working with MySQL databases).
3. Download the latest version of Wordpress and upload it to your site using your FTP program. You don’t have to delete the b2evolution files yet. You will have to overwrite the existing index.php file with the one from Wordpress though.
4. Make sure you know the connection details for you b2evolution database - if you’re not sure, you can find the information in the _config.php file of your b2evolution install (in the conf folder).
5. Fire up your browser and go to [www.yousite.com]/wp-admin/install.php. Run through the normal Wordpress install procedure, but make sure you enter the same database details you use for b2evolution (including the database name). This will create the required Wordpress tables alongside your exisiting b2evolution tables in the one database.
6. Upload import-b2evolution-wp2.php to your site, in the wp-admin folder, and fire it up in your browser: [www.yoursite.com]/wp-admin/import-b2evolution-wp2.php. Follow the instructions, making sure to enter the same database details from the last step. You should hopefully see a success message, in which case your b2evolution posts, comments, links, users etc. will have been copied into the Wordpress tables.
7. Remember to delete the install.php and import-b2evolution-wp2.php files in the wp-admin folder. Now go to your blog’s home page, and you should see the default Wordpress install, populated with your posts from b2evolution.
8. If this has worked, you can safely delete your b2evolution files (be careful not to delete any files you might want to keep, such as those in your media or skins folders) and delete any database tables prefixed with evo_ (but don’t delete any prefixed with wp_).
9. Permalinks. Obviously you don’t want to break the links to your old posts, which were probably in the format /year/month/day/post_title in b2evolution. If you turn on date and name based permalinks in Wordpress, you’ll find spaces replaced with dashes rather than underscores in links for new posts. However, your old posts will still work even though they use underscores. Sweet.

Hope that helps.

For once I actually have a decent excuse for not having posted lately — work has been completely hectic, and to be honest I’ve felt totally drained.

A couple of weeks ago, in the early hours of the morning, there was a big power outage at the data centre that’s home to our main server (and this site). Unfortunately, rather than the UPS taking over until the backup generator kicked in, something fried/died, and it took the hosting company — DSVR — nine hours to get everything up and running again.

Even once DSVR had got all the servers back online, web and FTP were crawling, and mail was totally dead (something on the internal system was utterly screwed, quite possibly related to DNS).

The problem meant that not only were we without our main email accounts for the best part of two days, but so were over a dozen of our clients. As you can imagine, this didn’t go down too well, and when we weren’t sat watching the queue of emails growing in Exim, we were trying to placate clients.

Luckily we have our .com domain mail server hosted on a completely different server, for contingencies such as this, so at least we had some way of getting emails out. Nevertheless, it took until after the weekend for the backlog of emails to clear from our main server.

It wasn’t always like this with DSVR; when we signed up with them some years ago, we chose them because they had what turned out to be a well-deserved reputation for excellent service. Yes, they were more expensive than some, but the good up-time, versatility and great support was well worth the money. Support tickets were answered quickly, and the staff took an active role in discussions on the customer forums.

On the rare occasions when there was a problem with the service, DSVR’s status page would contain detailed explanations of the problem, and the steps being taken to rectify it and ensure it didn’t re-occur. The support staff would also happily discuss the problem in the forums, often with a refreshing honesty.

Sadly DSVR were bought by Legend Communications (formerly Business Serve, subsequently bought by Thus) in 2004, and the service has been going downhill ever since. Earlier this year there were big problems when they moved data centres, and despite lots of promised improvements, things just seem to be going from bad to worse. There aren’t any of the original DSVR staff left either.

Leaving aside the point that a power outage shouldn’t be able to screw up the servers for a couple of days, to add insult to injury the communication from DSVR/Legend/Thus has been almost non-existent. Little more than “Blah, blah, power outage, some customers experiencing problems with email, engineers working to restore service as soon as possible” on the status page for a couple of days. Certainly nothing like a decent explanation.

Rumour has it, because Legend/Thus are a PLC, any communication (including the status page) has to ‘go upstairs’ for approval by management in case if impacts on share price. Hoorah for capitalism!

Legend weren’t any more forthcoming when the Register reported on the problems:

They gave us a standard “we apologise for the inconvenience”-type response which, after days of their customers losing business, is unlikely to smooth relations.

They added that the email issues were caused by high volumes of traffic. Now, we’re not systems engineers lads, but we thought your business was all about dealing with high volumes of traffic.

Indeed. Except that the email issues weren’t caused by high volumes of traffic, they were a symptom of it. The problems seem to be related to their DNS system getting hosed, which is pretty worrying.

Sadly this is the large bundle of straw that’s broken the camel’s back, and we’ve decided not to renew our contract with DSVR at the end of October. It’s a real shame, but with the unreliability of DSVR’s service reflecting badly on us to our clients, our loyalty has been stretched to its limit.

So we’ve now started migrating our clients to our new server, which means lots of extra work — moving databases and domains, changing secure certificates, getting new IP addresses, updating payment gateways etc.. We’ve been pretty snowed-under with work lately anyway, so the extra hassle of moving servers is something we need like a hole in the head (we haven’t had a weekend off for a few weeks now). Anyway, enough self-pity….

I was planning on switching from b2evolution to Wordpress soon anyway, so the move to the new server seems like as good a time as any to convert. I haven’t yet finished the new look for World of Badger, which does mean I might have to go with the default Wordpress look until I’m less exhausted. Do not be alarmed though, the drabness won’t be permanent.

Bit of a spanner in the works as far as the redesign of World of Badger is concerned; I had the bright new colour scheme and layout done, but made the mistake of using the same colours in a mock-up when showing a client some ideas for their new site. I didn’t think for a minute they’d actually go for such daring colours — just a case of showing them something conservative and something a bit funky, and expecting them to pick a look in between the two — but fair play to them, they liked the super-colourful version. So now I’ve got to come up with a new design for this site…

It has been brought to my attention that I have been a lazy git for not posting here in a long while. What some people don’t realise is that this blog is like a beautiful swan - calm and serene on the surface, yet paddling away frantically under the water.

I have actually spent quite a few hours over the last couple of weeks preparing to change from b2evolution to Wordpress, and coming up with a completely new design along with some new features. I was hoping to have finished by now, but, y’know, hot evenings with a computer pumping out hot air, versus cold beers outside…

Anyway, expect a brand new look and regular waffle from next week.

Easter seems like a rather fitting time to resurrect World of Badger, don’t ya think?

There are a few reasons why I haven’t posted any sooner, with the main one being that work is busier than ever, and I’ve probably allowed it to encroach into my free time too much this year. As a result, blogging was starting to feel more like a chore than a pleasure, and a few half-hearted attempts at posting reflected that. When I did find myself with some recreational time on the computer, I didn’t want to do anything remotely mentally taxing; killing sprees on Grand Theft Auto felt much more therapeutic.

Of course, there’s nothing sadder than an untouched blog (well, obviously there are lots of things sadder than an untouched blog - a sack full of drowned puppies for instance), and at one point I was considering laying World of Badger to rest. However, over the last couple of weeks I’ve found myself itching to get back to posting here.

So, what to write about after a three and a half month hiatus? Well, depressing as it is, I can’t ignore this terrible fucking govenment, even though there aren’t enough hours in the day to cover all its appalling actions (I don’t know where bloggers such as Perfect, Bloggerheads, Backing Blair, Chicken Yoghurt, Obsolete and Spy Blog find the time to cover so much, so eloquently). I’ll try to temper the spleen venting with some fun bits and bobs though, and perhaps a bit more web design & development stuff than before too.

Thanks for your patience. Or should I say faith?

I’ve got time to write a little something before getting into my New Years Eve glad rags. Firstly, I want to thank everyone who’s continued visiting despite the updates being few and far between, especially those who’ve taken the time to post comments. Normally I consider it only polite to respond to comments, but due to the amount of work I’ve had on these last six months, I’ve not always managed to do so (I see a new year’s resolution forming here…). So a belated apology for any unitentional rudeness.

In particular I want to thank Rachel from North London for taking the trouble to check her referrers and post a thank you for linking to her site back in November. If you’re not familiar with Rachel’s blog, I highly recommend checking it out; in it Rachel writes, among other things, about her experiences as a survivor of the July 7th bombings, and shares her thoughts on the government’s anti-terror legislation. Articulate, intelligent, funny and moving — definitely my blog of the year.

I also want to thank ‘Duff’ Gallagher, keyboard player with the Flaming Doo Dits for his comment on my Glastonbury post. Glastonbury was definitely the highlight of my year, and watching Lucifire and the Flaming Doo Dits’s zombie pirate swing in the Chapel of Love & Loathing was the high point of Glastonbury. (You can listen to some sample Flaming Doo Dits tracks here).

Right, time to get ready to party like it’s 1999. Chin chin!