…grayblog…

Category: grayblog.co.uk

  • On being busy and vodka

    [..insert long post about being very busy here..]

    Anyway, whilst you ponder how busy I am, rush out now and get some Wyborowa Exquisite vodka – if you thought all vodkas were the same, then this will open your eyes to a whole new world of drunkeness. It’s very smooth with a distinct hint of vanilla. And, apparently, it is made in a small bath. Hmm.

    And it comes in a funky Gehry-designed bottle. Yay!

    More content to come soon (yeah, right), possibly including posts on the following topics:

    • tours and trips of the past year, possibly including photographic highlights
    • on Polish motorists
    • a rant on politics
    • Tom update
    • a post about food
    • Ruralville news

    You could even vote-me-up if there is one of these you particularly want to read.

  • Life in bullet points

    Just to keep Matt The Bakiwop happy, here is a genuine update:

    • I’m working like a mad thing at the moment. I haven’t even had time to update my work weblog, which is bad. Work is generally busy in a good way, though, so things are quite good. Just don’t mention the Germans.
    • We’ve been travelling a bit lately and I owe readers some photos from recent trips. So far this year we have been to Angers/Nantes, Utrecht/Maastricht/Aachen/Namur, Hamburg/Rostock and I made a solo trip to Vlaardingen/Aalsmeer. There have also been a few UK-based days out and there are some photos from those too. When time permits, I’ll upload some.
    • On the domestic front, I’ve been working on developing the front garden (although progress has been in fits and starts and has stalled again lately – I need to get the footings out for the retaining wall, but time constraints and the weather both conspire against me) as well as getting the side and back gardens looking good – I’ll try and sort out photos of that too.
    • I bought Hels a bike for her birthday and this has spurred me to sort out getting my bike restored after having left it in a shed for six years following the spectacular failure of the derailleur whilst bombing along the Avenue de Chartres in Chichester in 2000. Following a suggestion from Kate, I’ve taken it to Baker Street Bikes in Brighton for restoration and should get it back on Wednesday. All I’ll need then is to add a child seat for Tom and we’ll then be able to go out on family cycle trips (although bike mounts for the roof bars on the car would be good and I think I’d like to have the chance to dump the child seat so that I can get a few miles in on my own terms too).
    • We’ve started doing a bit more work to the house – currently, we’re remodelling the bathroom. Not a major change, just new paint, new taps and a new shower screen. We’re also eyeing the conservatory combine harvester (shhh, don’t tell Dave), which needs some major work – we’ve spied a couple of rotten timbers, which isn’t good. Repainting of the kitchen is also scheduled in for “somewhen”.
    • Tom has taken to refusing to go to sleep in the evening. We’ve just had him up for a 9.30pm snack, which he took whilst lounging in front of the telly in the living room – he has the makings of a good couch potato.
    • Finally, it’s the Garden and Art Event at West Dean, near Chichester, this coming weekend. I organise it. I’m seriously hoping that the weather improves considerably between now and then.

    More updates. Soon. I promise.

  • Not dead

    …just very, very, very busy.

  • Corrupt

    If, when using WordPress, you get error messages that look like this:

    WordPress database error: [Can’t open file: ‘wp_comments.MYI’ (errno: 145)]

    …then your database has become corrupted. Don’t panic. Either contact your hosting provider or go to PHPMyAdmin and repair it yourself.

    I learnt this today.

  • WordPress problems – or 34SP problems?

    I’ve got some strange issues with this site, but I can’t fathom if they are WP or 34SP problems, or even a problem with the database.

    Whenever I try to edit the recent posts, I get a 404 after hitting “save”. Sometimes I get a 404 when trying to view the site or the wp-admin pages (which sounds like a 34SP problem, although they promise me that there is no known issue with the server – I’m on Holly, for those who are also on 34SP). The RSS feed works only intermittently. And del.icio.us (I hate those dots!) is having problems with the automatic daily posting of links, sometimes getting a 500 error and sometimes not posting to the correct category (27). I’ve disabled and uninstalled Bad Behavior. I’m running WP 2.02. I’m confused.

    Any ideas?

    UPDATE: see the comment thread for more.

  • Things and stuff

    • Tom was one yesterday – it’s been both the longest and fastest year of my life (and Hels’s too, I think it is fair to say – and, by definition, Tom’s). We celebrated with cake, balloons and a trip to a farm. There shall be further celebrations at the weekend.
    • We had snow last night. Up to six inches of the stuff is forecast to fall tonight. That should make for an interesting commute for Hels in the morning. Tom was non-plussed when I introduced him to the stuff this morning. His face simply said: "cold. wet. yuk."
    • I’m in Germany at the moment for an enormous trade event. I’ve just had dinner in the hotel restaurant, which was eye-wateringly expensive. At the next table was Michael Heseltine. He was not wearing a loin cloth.
    • I really need to update this site more often. Sorry.
    • This site and my email (including work email) have been down for most of the day due to problems at 34SP. Apparently, the aircon failed causing the servers to overheat. I couldn’t help thinking that, on the coldest day of the winter so far, opening the window would soon solve the problem.

  • Friday stuff

    Hooray me! This week, I’ve completed and sent off not only my tax return, but also Hels’s.

    In addition, I’ve done a shedload of work. Rah!

    For some reason, my email is taking ages to come through – the arrival is about two hours behind the actual timestamp. Craaazy 34SP, I suspect.

  • Just so that you know…

    • I will finish that unfinished post that has been lurking in my Drafts folder since, oh, August. It has pictures too.
    • I will finish that redesign that I started. I know you can’t see any evidence of it yet, but I promise that it will be good. Very good indeed.
    • I ordered some CDs a while ago for some friends to bring over from the US. I ordered them on 28 December. My card was charged on 29 December. It is 16 January today and they have still not arrived and my friends fly today. The company concerned is not responding to calls or email. UPDATE: the CDs arrived the day after they left. So they are now being FedExed to catch up with them as they work their way eastwards (visiting clients across the US), which largely defeats the object of having them delivered to their office. Ho hum.
    • I ordered a replacement remote control for my mum. The company concerned sent a non-original replacement (they didn’t make that clear on the website) which was not compatible (mum’s telly is a video-TV combi and this remote had no video controls). They didn’t respond to emails. I’ve just called them and they didn’t once apologise for sending the wrong item, could not explain why my email was not answered (didn’t even attempt to find out) and did not offer to pay for the return of the incorrect item. The operator managed to convey a sincere feeling of not giving a stuff. That company is AV UK Limited and I heartily recommend that you avoid them.
    • This site is being a bit flaky lately. 34SP insist it isn’t them, but I can’t imagine where else there might be a problem.
    • I’m up to my eyes in work.
    • Tom will be one next week – send money.
    • If I get another one of those Harris Exploration Hits Gold spam mails, I will scream. AAAAARGHH!

  • Annual Review Of The Year

    It’s that time of year again. Last year, I made five resolutions. I have made a good start on the first one, although it is a massive project and has taken much longer than anticipated, not least due to distractions of the Tom kind. The second I failed on miserably. The third hasn’t gone too badly, although it has improved of late. The fourth, well let’s not go there, shall we? – only 186 posts this year, including this one – not good enough. And the fifth one I’ve done reasonably well on – I’m certainly a lot happier on that score than I was this time last year.

    So, for 2007, I’ll continue the good work where the good work has started. Beyond that, I haven’t really got that much that I feel I particularly want to resolve to do – there is plenty to keep me occupied.

    2006 has been a year like none before it, entirely due to the arrival of Tom. He has, as I expected, changed life totally and for the better. In addition, we’ve had a lot of travel (I’ve been to Ireland, Netherlands, Belgium, France, Italy, Spain and Hungary this year) and there is more planned for 2007, with trips to Germany, France, Netherlands (naturally), Portugal, Poland, Ireland and Italy on the cards. 2006 has also seen us starting to make new long term plans. We’re not yet sure if they will come to fruition, but the notion of emigrating doesn’t look beyond the realms of plausibility. We’re also much closer to finally sorting out our finances, which has to be a good thing and has implications for all areas of life.

    New Year’s Eve this year will be spent with friends, eating and drinking too much whilst (hopefully) Tom sleeps. Then I’ve got to wind myself back up in to work mode after an extended Christmas break – which, when I wasn’t being ill, I’ve enjoyed and was much needed, particularly as I’ve spent nearly the whole break at home with Hels and Tom, undoubtedly a good thing.

    Happy New Year to all grayblog readers. Keep coming back if you like this sort of thing.

  • Bad Behavio[u]r

    A few weeks ago, I installed Bad Behavior on this site. This prevents malicious access to the server, thereby preventing comment spam and other nasties. It works in a different way to Akismet in that it doesn’t allow the access in the first place, thereby preventing a long queue of spams from forming that need to be moderated (either manually or automatically).

    I’ve noticed two things. Firstly, whilst Akismet is still active, it is now picking out less than half a dozen spams per week. This will disappoint Rodney who was looking forward to the next pie spam chart, I’m sure. At this rate, it will be a very long time before another 50,000 spams make it to grayblog.

    Secondly, the number of access attempts blocked by Bad Behavior (hate that spelling) has declined dramatically and rapidly since I first installed it. During the first week, over 7000 malicious access attempts were made on this site – which shows where the gazillions of spams were coming from and must have been putting a bit of a strain on the server (and adding to my bandwidth bill). By the second week, that figure had halved. I’ve just checked the figure again and, in the last seven days, there have been just 416 malicious access attempts. This implies that by preventing access and returning an error code to the malicious server, I’m actually deterring them from even trying to access grayblog – clearly the spam servers learn where they get 404s and 200s so that they don’t waste resources (clever chaps, these spammers).

    Conclusion: I recommend Bad Behavior whole heartedly. I think I may install it on my other (work) blog.