As previously mentioned, I have used my sacrificial lamb test blog to check how things would go if I upgrade all my other blogs to Wordpress 2.5 . From previous experience I know that updating WP can cause problems, and if core parts of your site rely on certain plugins, if the plugins no longer work, you can end up with a real head ache.
So, having compiled a list of all the plugins I use across the various blogs, I installed each to test.chrismerriman.com, and then checked that their functions (both in-post, background and sidebar-based) still, well, functioned.

I am happy to report that the following plug ins continued to work as expected with Wordpress 2.5 : 404 Notifier, Bad Behavior, Blog Voyeur, Comment Referrers, Different Posts Per Page, Easy IP2Country, Executable PHP widget, FeedBurner FeedSmith, Fuzzy Recent Comments, Google XML Sitemaps, randomimage, runPHP, ShareThis, Subscribe To Comments, Wordpress Automatic Upgrade, wp-GotLucky, wp-headlineanimator, WP-UserOnline, WP-UserOnline Widget and Zap_NewWindow

However, Fuzzy Widgets, Sticky Post, WP Random Tagline all have issues of varying importance.
Fuzzy widgets - The widget title is not displayed correctly
Sticky post - Must be disabled for the blog to display
WP Random Tagline - The tagline is displayed in extra white space inserted above the blog, and minor admin issues when enabled/disabling

I’ll be updating you with further info if/when the authors update their code, and I notice

I recently got around to creating the required SQL tables for this plugin to function. I had a problem though, where I was not being e-mailed the results when somebody found my site from searching for a specific term. I tried a few different approaches, but couldn’t get the code to work.
oooops.
I actually got around to checking the script code properly today.
Of course the plugin wasn’t e-mailing me results, I hadn’t uncommented the specific line
For anyone else running up against this problem, remove the // symbols from the line that starts mail(get_settings('

I’m now being e-mailed, and the RSS feed still works. Whilst the feed is a lot quicker to access (its set in FireFox as one of my RSS locations to check), it is useful to have an archive of previous search terms that this site appeared in - apart from anything else, it is one way of letting me know the reason people arrived here (at least from Google, that is).

Scratch the original plans, here are the links I mentioned, not enough time left after having got everything ready for our trip to actually create proper posts. Now the DVD burner is fubared, and I wanted to burn another 3 discs of MP3s for driving to. Hey ho.

Kyrgyzstan elections not fair either - see this article and this one for more details. For those not familiar with the country, no that isn’t where we live (we’re in KAZAKHstan), however international monitors similarly do not think that the elections were free, fair and transparent there either…

Discounting apparently rife in stores - BBC article - Actually I’d call it pretty piss poor ‘professional’ journalism. They trot out the same rubbish each year, closely followed by an article in January saying how shoppers actually spent a lot more than expected. I especially loved the headline - attention grabbing, discounts sound significant, then followed in the main body of the text that this year’s reductions average at 36% off, not 35% ! Yep, 1% difference…

Wives Tales or Valid Medical Info? - Article here. If you don’t drink 8 glasses of water per day, you will use less than 10% of your brain, meaning you won’t be able to read in the dark, turkey will make you drowsy and your hair will continue to grow after death, no matter whether you shaved it or not. Or something like that I have heard before that the ban on mobile phone usage within hospitals is rubbish, espcially when you consider the power of the transmitters they need to use for their own internal walkie-talkies etc.

Eco-friendly consoles requested - BBC article - I know that some PC component manufacturers are already trying, but apparently the big three gaming giants (Sony, Nintendo & Microsoft) are being pressured to lower the amount of toxic chemicals used to produce their consoles, amongst other things.

Take care when you google - info here - My thanks to Irina for noticing this report, and also on the shoddy workmanship of the journalist once again. The article reads in parts as though they did no investigation, and simply read from Google’s press release, with contradictions in places. Anyway, bad people had been setting up sites to try and hack unprotected PCs, and were trying to drive traffic by optimizing for popular keywords.

Dynamic advert placement within PDF files - article - the title says it all here…

Info on Amazon’s ‘Kindle” - here and here - Amazon’s e-book reader, an attempt by another company to crack the market. Once again, the aims have been praised, the actual product is not so popular in some circles.

Terry Pratchett has Alzheimers - check here - A long time favourite author of mine, Mr Pratchett has revealed he has the condition, though is doing OK so far. Whilst I selfishly hope he will be able to continue to write such well crafter novels, I do hope that if/when the time comes that the balance between personal well being and writing output tips the wrong way, his fans will let him retire with grace.

One for Alex - here - Poorly kangaroo goes for a swim, and gets snapped up by a shark! (As you may have guessed, based in Australia)

W00t - BBC article - Like ‘all your base are belong to us ‘ from a few years back, but certainly a lot snappier, w00t appears to have started its life in the gaming world, and is used as an exclamation, normally positive.

Not an article, but Wikileaks may interest you. Has a small section for Kazakhstan. Not going to discuss that sort of thing right now, no time.

Excuse me whilst I don’t cry - boo-hoo - with any luck the BNP will eventually go the same way as the old National Front did. I just hope any splinter groups don’t survive, and aren’t too radical whilst they are around. Don’t have much time for racist, lying, Lowest Common Denominator politics and politicians, as you may have guessed.

Misbehaving pupils shocked into towing the line - article here - I can never imagine Mr Owen having given this sort of punishment in his lessons…

Right thats it, I’m off to bed, and won’t be posting for a couple of days probably. Hope all who read this do so in good health…

No, not a badly quoted newsgroup name, based on discussing the pros and cons of Wikipedia, but rather a question people have been asking, especially since Google publicly announced the ‘knol’ project (see here at the official Google blog).
I am guessing that the vast majority of this blog’s readers are well aware what function Wikipedia serves, and how it has quickly become the de facto source for people needing to find out ‘facts’ in a hurry. For the most part, it exceeds expectations, though you do need to bear in mind that anyone can edit most articles, whether they are violently pro- or anti- the subject matter being discussed.
For a slightly lighter-hearted slant on the news, head on back to The Daily Mash, where they have an article on the project.

Not having come across the term “assisted living software” before, I ran a quick Google search, and discovered that it is in fact for the business end of retirement homes, rather than the end users. I did wonder just how many pensioners had laptops with them in their nursing homes - at least I now know who the applications are actually written for. Which reminds me§, I need to catch up with some more Soprano episodes, if I am to complete them all before we leave for Britain.

§ I’ve just seen the episode where someone is ‘encouraged’ to tell their mother to treat someone a little nicer within a retirement community.

This morning I was attempting to check how the site was doing, when I was presented with the following error

HTTP Error 403
Error 403

We’re sorry, but we could not fulfill your request for (ACTUAL URL REMOVED) on this server.

Your Internet Protocol address is listed on a blacklist of addresses involved in malicious or illegal activity. See the listing below for more details on specific blacklists and removal procedures.

Your technical support key is: 59da-43a1-1366-73cd

You can use this key to fix this problem yourself.

If you are unable to fix the problem yourself, please contact email at chrismerriman.com and be sure to provide the technical support key shown above.

I was just about ready to read the riot act to Megaline, explaining how they needed to ensure their customers did not partake in activities that would get IP addresses blacklisted, when I thought to Google the error…

It turns out there is a bug with Bad Behavior (one of my anti-spam plugins used on this site), and that this PC’s current IP address is not actually blacklisted (again confirmed after a little more googling).

Anyway, if you have been presented with the same error, head on over to the Bad Behavior update page, download the revised code, upload it to your server, and you should no longer find yourself blocked from your own blog

Just noticed that since changing ISPs, FireFox’s search bar now defaults to the Kazakh Google domain (google.kz) for searches. Any other Kazakh readers out there find this behaviour with FF?
Hmmm, nope, can’t find an online option to prevent this redirection from .com to .kz . Will see if I can hard wire it for .co.uk, and hope no re-directions come into effect that way.
Makes me wonder if Google.kz happens to return any different results from any political search terms, a la China etc. ?

[edit]
OK, removing (temporarily at least), the tin foil hat. It appears that once you click on the link that forces .com to stay as .com (not certain, but I believe the URL ended in /ncr ???), searches are back to normal. Assuming .com searches are not in anyway filtered.
Anyway, how this redirection was re-activated following an ISP change, I’m not certain, perhaps a cookie expiring and/or tied in with an IP address change on our part?

The last couple of days our PC has had problems whenever anything involving video or non-basic graphics were involved. I tried all the obvious things, rebooting first, re-installing the nVidia drivers, then upgrading them to a more recent version when that did nothing to help.
I finally tried cleaning the registry with a couple of different programs I usually use for such purposes. A few minor issues were discovered, though nothing appeared to be related to video. Anyway, the same problems occurred - changing resolutions, switching from DualView to single monitor use (or back again), playing videos or anything using DirectX would often as not cause the nVidia applet to unload itself from memory, and sometimes cause the explorer process to hang.
Finally, I decided to do a proper job, and downloaded a couple of utilities that clean the drivers completely off your computer. Basically you remove the video drivers via Add/Remove Programs applet in your Control Panel, cancel the add hardware requests that will pop up, reboot into safe mode, then run the cleaning utils. Reboot once more into Windows as you would normally, then install the nVidia drivers. Another reboot, and hey presto, my PC was running as it should once more. Anyway, the two (free) utils are called Driver Cleaner and NFR (Nasty File Remover). Ideally one should do the job, however I decided to play it safe, and NFR did find 4 files left behind by the DC. DC is now actually a product that is sold, however the previous free versions can easily be found by a quick Google search.

PS Not a sponsored post, just providing the links in case other readers have similar problems in the future.

Our friend Alex (see the many posts here and her actual blog) has finally got around to writing a few posts on her new exciting life in Australia. She has moved over there to be with Mat, and it looks as though they will now not be sharing a flat with two other blokes, as the couple’s employers have rented them a vehicle, so they can commute instead of moving. Given the amount of time the two spent apart prior to their joyful reunion, this is probably for the best Anyway, if you have not done so yet, visit her blog, consider subscribing to her RSS feed, or at least give the site a quick Ctrl+D Oh, and I can’t remember if I mentioned it already, but congrats to Alex on achieving a Google Page Rank of 2!