Just wanted to make a quick post to congratulate Laura Bolton on getting engaged. I hope you and Anthony will be very happy together and wish you all the best for the future. Be sure to let me know when the wedding is!

More news from the facebook development camp, this time with respect to photo uploading on Facebook. So what is it all about I hear you cry, well essentially they have added libraries to the API that will allow software developers to upload photos to facebook from outside of facebook its self.

When I saw this I was quite excited. I’ve long know that a number of my friends read my blog through facebook because it is syndicated there, but conversely do not check out my photo gallery because you have to visit my site directly for it. What these new API libraries would allow me to do is to syndicate every photo uploaded to my gallery into facebook. I would even be able to create galleries with the same name as the ones on my own site.

I’m not sure when I will find the time to write such a plugin for my gallery but if and when I do I’ll be sure to shout it from the rooftops.

In case people hadn’t noticed on the news there was a lunar eclipse last night. This is where the Earth blocks the path of the Sun’s rays from falling on the moon apart from the light that filters through the Earth’s atmosphere meaning the moon glows a beautiful copper colour. Clear skies meant we were able to take in the sight easily from outside our house and it certainly was a beautiful sight. I wasn’t able to get any photographs due to the light polution from the streetlamps but the reddish glow makes the moon seem so much more spherical than the serene pale white disc we are used to seeing in our night skies. We are told it was the best eclipse we’ve had in years and having seen it myself I’m very much inclined to agree.

Just wanted to put up a quick thank you note for Matt Revell who kindly made a donation to RouterTech last night. He’s a big supporter of open source software and wanted to help out a project close to home. The money will be put to good use in the further development of the project and I’ll be sure to get a credit for Matt arranged on the site.

A note for all users running WordPress 2.1.1 who have upgraded or installed it in the last week - you need to upgrade to 2.1.2 NOW. A cracker managed to gain access to the WordPress file repositories and swap out some of the files in the release package with some that contained malicious code which could be used to take over the site and the server on which the site was sitting. This is of course very serious and the WordPress team are looking into exactly how this could have happened. In the meantime they have assured users that the new release, the 2.0 branch and the SVN versions of the software are perfectly safe. If you’re a WordPress user, update your blog and spread the word.

I’d like to apologise to anyone born on a leapyear! Sounds like an odd thing to do, but the reason is quite simple. While my contacts database flags up the correct forthcoming day that someones birthday will fall on, this happens a day late for contacts who were born on a leapyear. This means that they don’t get wished a happy birthday by my site until a day after their actual birthday.

The same code issue will also cause people who were not born on a leapyear but for which the current year IS a leapyear to be wished a happy birthday a day early. People with birthdays at the end of February or beginning of March may see slightly more odd behaviour, but its all down to the same problem.

I hope to fix this issue in the next few days so that birthday wishes will be correct no matter when your were born or what year it is now. Oh and happy belated birthday to Drew who’s birthday was on Friday (not Saturday as my site would have lead you to believe)!

I never thought I’d actually see the day, but its happened. Flash actually works on my Linux desktop! For a long time the flash player 7 was unstable and problematic with a lareg number of interactive website elements to the extent I had to block all flash images and view them in a different browser if I really wanted to see them to avoid firefox crashing and me losing all my open tabs.

Now that flash player 9 has finally been released things work properly. My browser is no longer trying to use flash 7 to open flash 8 files and committing suicide. 100% CPU utilisation for anything which plays sound or has remotely interesting animations is also a thing of the past. I can honestly say that I may well be unblocking flash if this good behaviour continues.

As for if I’ll start using YouTube the answer is no - browsing it can potentially be a huge waste of time and as such I only believe in its use for the purposes of embedding video on blogs and such, although even then a download of an .mpeg or .avi file would be preferable. Being able to use flash properly does of course mean I’ll be able to view embeded YouTube videos on blogs which is a superb development. I have to say I’m quite excited by it all.

I heard the other day that the next scheduled install fest (where school of computing students can bring their PCs along to the school of computing of an evening and have Linux installed on their systems and find out more about the operating system from those who use it every day) was going to be cancelled due to health and safety reasons.

This made me furious and I’m going to tell you why. Our whole lives are seemingly decided by authority, not for the purposes of law enforcement, national security or public health but because we “might cause ourselves harm”. My point is a very simple one, shouldn’t that kind of decision be up to us? If I put my fingers in a university plug socket and get a shock is it the university’s fault for having plug sockets? Of course not, its mine, for being a prat and sticking my fingers in there in the first place. This means that I should be allowed to use plug sockets because its my fault if anything bad happens.

Why then do we have rules that prevent us from doing something as simple as plugging in an electrical device with the reason cited that the organisation responsible for the existance of the plug socket is held reposnsible for anything that happens to me while using it?

I feel like we have been living in a nanny state for too long. Stupid health and safety rules need to be abolised as do the laws about organisational and individual responsibility to others that cause those rules to have a reason for exising. Whats wrong with us? Can’t we use our own brains anymore? The answer is yes, we can, its just someone is telling us we can’t. Its time for them to be given a kick out the door - permanently.

We’re still making progress! Today the RouterTech team announced the release of the next major version of its firmware, v2.2. There are many great changes and improvements in this version and yet the stability and reliability users have come to expect from our firmware will remain as solid as ever. Existing and interested potential users of our firmware are encoraged to download it from the RouterTech website. While you’re at it, why not help support us and spread the word about quality open source firmware by buying some of our merchandise? Go on, you know you want to.

As ever huge thanks to the devlopment team and others who have and continue to work so hard for the project. I continue to be impressed by your efforts and feel really rather proud to be a part of it all - as my friends will testify, I’m guilty of plugging the project at every opportunity! Hopefully as my schedule frees up in the next week or so I will also be able to spend some more time on the forums and the project in general which can only be a good thing.

My contacts database has been running for a month or so now and I wanted to post an update on how I think its going. I decided to add a small(ish) number of people to it and see what the uptake would be like and so whether to invest my time and effort in adding the rest or my contacts.

Sadly, its not as good as I’d hoped. Of the 47 contacts I have currently added, a staggering 20 of those people have never even checked their details by accessing the system and many of these people will thus have incomplete details in the database. Others have checked their details but not bothered to update them, despite the fact the checking interface makes very clear what needs to be added to/updated and makes easy provision for the updates to occur.

I have to say I’m slightly disappointed with it all. I coded the system because I’m not very good at keeping in contact with people and I’m forever forgetting peoples birthdays so I wanted something that would remind me in a location I visit every day - my blog admin control panel. It must be said that if people don’t start using it then I’m going to pull the plug on my usage of it and release the code for others to have a go in case they have more luck.

It really doesn’t take long to check your e-mail, click the link and fill in your missing details (a minute maybe?). No one else will see them apart from me and I’ll actually remember your birthday. Your details will be perfectly safe. Obviously I can’t force you, and I won’t even try to force you - if you don’t want your details in its fine and I will delete your entry, but I don’t have a brilliant memory so if you don’t hear from me and/or I forget your birthday and you have ignored my e-mail about the database, its not my fault. It would certainly help me a lot if people used it and for my friends I’d hope that fact alone would be enough of an incentive to use the database.

I’m sure people will start to suggest that I should use facebook to check peoples birthdays, but because it is more open people don’t place their addresses in there, nor does facebook e-mail me when a birthday is coming up and let me know what day its going to fall on so I can time the post correctly for sending a timely birthday card. My system does all of these things for me, so you can see its a great help.

Sorry if this sounds like a moan, I guess it is in a small way, its just that without something like this I’m significantly more lost as to whats going on with my friends and aquaintances. In the next 3 days or so I’ll be sending out a reminder for those who have missing details so if you’ve lost your original e-mail for the system and want to help keep me up to date, you’ll get your chance soon. If you never got placed in the database and you’re reding this thinking “I’d like to help” then please e-mail me and I’ll add you