Ok, While I personally havn’t used the Yum-Gui on Bluequartz/CentOS, I do find it odd that even though someone would close their business they would then go and put an update on the BQ update server to remove a package that I’m sure a lot of people would use.

I can understand Nuonce removing their repository for yum, but why go and do something that seems to be just stupid.

I see Solarspeed.net still has the .pkg available for download for the yum-gui but I suspect if it were to be installed a yum update would promptly remove it again.

Ok well, I have just tested it on my server. and if you install the .pkg from SolarSpeed.net it seems to stay there. I guess time will tell for how long.

Ok, So I’m excited about my latest purchase. I bought a Genius G-Pen Tablet. I’m a bit artistic when I can get a chance. I’ve been sketching for a while though at this stage I wouldn’t say I’m a pro. But I found this cheap on Trademe and thought, That would be cool to play around with. I primarily paint acrylic on stretched canvas.

I’m impressed so far. I spent last night just mucking around with it in MSN (playing dot to dot and doodling on the whiteboard)

Ok, Don’t laugh but here a three second attempt in Gimp.  I’m new to Gimp. I can’t afford PhotoShop but found some others who used Gimp and got some really awesome drawings out of it. Check it out at www.gimp.org Hey, it’s free and looks pretty good

I’m still getting use to the pen control and the interaction of it on the tablet. It’s a bit strange compared to using pencils/brushes on canvas. But I don’t think it’ll take me long to get use to the control of the pen. I think the biggest learning curve will be Gimp.  But in any case, I guess the whole point is just to be able to have some fun sketching onto the computer.

I hope to bring my readers some sketches in the not too distant future. Some of which I will no doubt put on canvas at some point.

If you already sketch/draw in gimp using a tablet I’d love to hear from you. Like I said, I’m new to the software and any hints and tips would be greatly appreciated.

I happened to be playing around with Word 2007 with WordPress again on another website I have setup. While I was playing, I stumbled across the insert category and it had 1 lists (there are at least 5 categories on the site) but the only one listed in Word 2007 was the "Description" of the only one that has a description. J

So, All in all. Word 2007 can deal with Categories from WordPress sites. But for it to do so, you need to have descriptions in each category on the site.

I’m still trying to figure out how or if, I can add tags to posts. Surely there must be a way of doing it. Anyone know? J

Earlier on I posted about my Logitech V450 nano mouse dying suddenly.

Well, The saga continues. My mouse was purchased at DSE in Glenfield, Auckland (Where my parents live) It was a Christmas present.

When it died while we where at DSE Powerhouse in Palmerston North, on Friday 30th January 2009. I specifically asked if they needed the original receipt in order to get a replacement.

We were told, "No, you only need a receipt number" So I double checked, So if I get my dad to scan in the receipt that would be fine. "Yes" was the response.

So, I thought cool. I can print off the scanned receipt and take it in and get a replacement v450. Well. No that’s not actually the case.

Went in this morning (Monday, 2nd February 2009) with mouse and scanned receipt in hand. The sales assistant tested the mouse on one of their PC’s and it is indeed not recognised. So she starts the replacement process, Get’s another mouse of the shelf and takes my details for "Replacement purposes" which is all good, I have no problem with that.

Then this women walks in from out side carrying what looks to be personal shopping from another shop in the area and walks behind the counter. I thought she was just another sales assistant.

When all of a sudden. She says, I’m the Assistant Manager we can’t process this. Ok, Am I missing something. Friday we get told "you only need a receipt number" and no word from the girl processing the replacement who has the Scanned receipt in her hand said anything about it when we handed the scanned copy to her.

We tell the assistant manager that on Friday, we got told only need a receipt number. To have her say "Head office requires us to see the original, our staff know this" (How does one make that sound rude on a computer ) Then she starts grilling us about who told us that. Fortunately while we couldn’t remember his name we had bought something so we figure, we’ll ring her with that info.

The sales assistant was extremely rude and lacked any form of professionalism.

We get home and found the receipt for the item we bought on Friday and rang DSE Powerhouse Palmerston North to pass this information on. Well, The "Assistant Manager" is busy, so we say we will ring back in 5 minutes. To which we get told, that’s fine. So ringing back, and now it’s like the Assistant Manager is avoiding us. Anyway, we say we would like to be rung back by 11:30am.

To which we are, The Manager rings us and explains, they have had some issues with people making false returns on copied receipts so we need the original, This was discussed with staff on Thursday, 29th January 2009. Ok, Fine, Why the hell didn’t the "Assistant Manager" explain this instead of just being rude and obnoxious, or even the sales staff say anything to begin with. In the meantime the Manager was apologising all the way for his staff.

So, after wasting time I now need to get dad to snail mail the receipt to me so I can get a mouse that works.

DSE Powerhouse Palmerston North, you really know how to waste peoples time. Personally, I think if you want customer service, Go elsewhere. I’ve never had any problem with Manakau in Auckland, but DSE Powerhouse Palmerston North is a very big disappointment.

Ok, so I finally upgraded my old Office XP to Office 2007 J Have to admit, I am impressed so far.

It is taking a little bit to get use to the new look of Office compared to my old XP. Anyway I thought I’d try the Blog ability from Word 2007 to see how well it works with WordPress.

All going well this should look ok.

Ok, Just editing with Windows Live Writer. Not sure how / if I can add to specific categories or add tags yet.. But it does seem to work ok for basics.

Ok, I’m a bit peeved off. My Logitech v450 nano mouse receiver seems to have given up the ghost. I got it for Christmas 2007, so it isn’t that old.

I was using my lappy with mouse working great, then shut it down, came back and turned it about 20 minutes later and my mouse cursor didn’t move when I moved the mouse.

Initially I thought, oh great. My USB is dead. So I unplugged the nano receiver and plugged in my USB pen drive which worked, so It can’t be a dead usb port. Still on the maybe the port is dodgy, I tried the receiver in another usb port, but still no luck.

My lappy makes no sound at all when the receiver is plugged in or unplugged. So I can only assume the receiver is as dead as the dodo bird.

The slogon I’ve seen that "It keeps going where other mice have stopped" doesn’t really ring true in my case. My trusty corded mice are still going

It was a brilliant mouse too. The programmable buttons / scroll wheel was great. It’s just a shame it didn’t out last my other mouse.

Well, I have just upgraded my Bluequartz CentOS server to PHP5 while retaining PHP4 for the BQ Admin Server.

You don’t need to spend money on a Package that does what you can do for free. I followed the HowTo at http://www.osoffice.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=368 and it appears to be working very well.

As a bonus It upgraded Apache, MySQL and PostgreSQL and Perl along with PHP5 but retaining PHP4 for the admin section.

Well, I’ve just upgraded to WordPress 2.7, and I have to say. I am extremely impressed with the new design of the dashboard.

It’s ease of use makes it so much quicker and easier to administer my blog.

While I still use Windows Live Writer to publish blog entries. The QuickPress appears to be lacking an option to select a category for the entry but I’ll have a play with it at some stage to see how it goes for adding entries on the fly.

I found this cool video on WordPress.org which does a quick show case of the dashboard.

The 2008 Domain Harvest

During October 2008 the Library will perform a large-scale harvest of the New Zealand internet. We will do this using a ‘web crawler’ to find and download web pages.

 

The domain harvest will attempt to acquire every publicly accessible website that falls under the nz country code, as well as certain other websites that are owned by New Zealanders or legally considered New Zealand publications.

 

The internet is always changing, and uses a myriad of technologies, so it is impossible to make a perfect copy. Despite this, we are hoping to harvest 100 million URLs during October 2008, giving us a snapshot of the internet at that time.

 

The harvested web pages will be stored at the Library, and will eventually be made publicly accessible

 

View the page @ http://www.natlib.govt.nz/about-us/current-initiatives/web-harvest-2008

Ok, Normally having a site indexed is not an issue. It’s how we find things. But when you blatantly ignore the robots.txt I have an issue. I don’t know about others, but I purposely add files / directories into the robots file so they are _not_ indexed/archived.

Needless to say, Did we get any warning at all that our Web servers were going to be put under huge load from their bloody robot. I don’t recall seeing anything anywhere.. I found the page about from a log entry on my server. (While trying to figure out why the load was so high)

Be warned NZ.. even if you have disclaimers stating the content may not be archived or have files/directories in robots.txt you don’t have indexed/archived on Google etc.. This will blatantly ignore those entries and both index and archive your site.

Just saw this on the late news on Tv1

Online buyers who think they have bagged themselves electronics at prices too good to be true, could be right. The team at TradeMe have led police to a Hamilton man they claim used fake identities to sell electronics at a bargain. The 29-year-old is also accused of hijacking people’s wireless internet connections to sell the goods. He is facing 46 charges.

Read the full story at tvnz.co.nz

You have to be brainless not to secure your wireless network or at least have a bloody good reason to have one that’s open.

I can’t believe in today’s day and age people are so uninformed about the issues surrounding an open wireless network connection.  Maybe I should believe it. There is an unsecured wireless network 2 doors down from us.

Come on people, It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to secure a wireless network. It’s not like you wouldn’t have got a manual for your router.