Jan 18 2010

WordPress Gallery MIA – Sometimes

Category: WordPressChrisM @ 11:45 pm

Am I really the only person having problems with WordPress’ gallery function? Since around v2.5, when I upload a batch of photos, add the captions etc, and save changes, around one in three times, no gallery link appears at the top, between From URL and Media Library. The last post had this happen, and after waiting 19 minutes, it suddenly appeared when I rechecked again. This gap in time makes me think that maybe there is some sort of processing problem, and that my host was throttling me, however a quick check in CPanel reports that

No CPU limiting factors (throttling) have been placed on your account in the past 24 hours

So, where to go from here? Carry on ignoring it, swearing occasionally at the randomness of this? I could try checking out the plugins currently active, slimming down the code in use to achieve a slimmer site. However, this testing will be made a little more difficult, or at least long winded, as the gallery link appearing (meaning the photos uploaded have been successfully assigned to the particular post concerned) often does work. So if I simply disable on plugin at a time, I could easily arrive at a false positive and assume one plugin the culprit, whereas the site was just behaving as expected somewhat randomly for a while.
I think this will end up being added to the long term To Do list for ChrisMerriman.com , along with sorting out the character encoding used in the SQL tables – the issue that prevents Cyrillic characters from being displayed.

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Jan 02 2010

YouTube Issues

Category: PersonalChrisM @ 5:44 pm

I uploaded a video that has Anna dancing in it. In the background, you can hear the music she was dancing to at the time.
I’m hoping it was just an automated system that decided to send me a warning from YouTube.
The following is my reply to YouTube through their Dispute Claim. If someone really wants to ban my video, or try and make me pay, to show Anna dancing to Jingle Bells, BITFO.

User Name: AstanaClydach

2. This video uses copyrighted material in a manner that does not require approval of the copyright holder. It is a fair use under copyright law.
Our baby daughter is dancing to a Christmas tune. On Christmas Eve. I have not tagged nor titled this video with anything that would lead people to find it who were searching for the song. I believe the use of the song in the background comes under fair use. The video is still apparently available, dispite what I’m forced to type in the statement of good faith box below.

Signature
Christopher Merriman

Statement of Good Faith
I have a good faith belief that the material was disabled as a result of a mistake or mis-identification and that I am not intentionally abusing this dispute process.

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Dec 28 2009

Anyone else on Megaline unable…

Category: TweetsChrisM @ 4:18 pm

Anyone else on Megaline unable to access non- .kz sites? Has been intermittent since at least Saturday. Our VISP is clueless. Suprise! ugggh

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Dec 28 2009

Anyone else on Megaline unable…

Category: TweetsChrisM @ 4:18 pm

Anyone else on Megaline unable to access non- .kz sites? Has been intermittent since at least Saturday. Our VISP is clueless. Suprise! ugggh

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Dec 14 2009

Why Are We Waiting?

Category: KazakhstanChrisM @ 6:07 am

So, Astikzhan’s shopping home delivery service still isn’t available. Irina has most of an order ready to go on their system, which was originally supposed to go live mid-November, but eventually found an entry on their site explaining that they were still working on a few problems. With Gros now (finally) restocking their stores (the rumour I attempted to start re. shutting down was indeed premature – a new boss decided that new lines of stock should be tried, so they were just using up old stock), and Metro (a cash’n’carry/hypermarket type shop recently opened in Astana that have a lot of bulk packets of items. Like Milky Ways and other goodies in boxes with built-in cardboard displays ready for smaller shops to sell from), I’m hoping Astikzhan get going soon for their own sake. If anyone in Astana reading this tries out Astikzhan’s service before we notice it is online, could they leave a comment please?

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Dec 10 2009

Beard Blog

Category: PersonalChrisM @ 3:23 am

Have I thought of a new site I could launch into a slightly niche market? No, I’ve been going through my old draft posts and found this site – The Beard Page. My first beard was born of a disliking for pointless rules. At secondary school the rules stated that boys weren’t allowed to have facial hair except for religious or medical reasons. Apart from the fact that some of the teachers had very wispy attempts at goatees, I couldn’t see a reason why we shouldn’t have one. So I grew one. Eventually the head that covered GCSE and A-Levels students called me into his office, asked me to remove the extra ear-ring (only one stud per ear allowed), and also to shave the beard off. This then became a repeating cycle (ear-ring re-insertions took minutes, beard growing somewhat longer 🙂 ), until he eventually seemed to give up and move onto other pupils who were flouting more serious rules, and seemed less stubborn over all.
Anyway, back to the site, this man grows a beard each year to stop winter from making his face too cold, and experiments with shapes when he shaves it off. The process is documented, and now other men can check out the styles, tips and discussions, without having to commit to a new shape they might not think suits them.

The internet. Think of something, there’ll be a blog of it. (A bit of a cleaned up version of Rule 34)

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Oct 31 2009

Arrrrrrrrrrrgh. Oh, you’re not dressed for Halloween?

Category: Eating Out,FriendsChrisM @ 10:22 pm

So we have just returned from a tasty meal at Sligo, with Walton and Assel. We realised that the last time we had visited the Irish-pub themed location here in Astana, Kazakhstan was just over a year ago, which was another Halloween themed event. Today the fire steak (yes, that was indeed a steak that arrived at the table on fire), chocolate dessert (currently only displayed on their Russian language menu) and vodka were all lovely. Anyway, when we arrived the male waiters had already changed into their themed costumes – scars/pirate paraphernalia were abound. For some reason the female waitress’s costume changes didn’t occur until later on, and were comparatively weak – a ‘bloodied’ bandage around one neck, and a witch’s hat on top of the other lady’s head. I then spotted a woman who caught my eye. I spent a few seconds trying to discern the inspiration for her costume, before realising there was none – she was just a (slightly older than) middle aged woman in tight jeans and a top. Given that I gave the ‘pub’ a plug in my recent guide to Astana, I don’t feel too guilty in calling out her dubious choice of fashion (she is thought to have been the owner), I just wish she’d dressed either more conservatively, or gone the whole hog and added some accessories to her otherwise scary outfit! Anyway, this time there were no signs in the bathroom warning people not to fish in the toilet bowl, which is good, as I’d forgotten our proper camera, and despite the band being worthy of a few shots, as I’d forgotten our real camera (the camera phone couldn’t handle the low lighting), I wasn’t overly upset at the lack of humorous text in the washroom.

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Oct 23 2009

Step Away From The CD

Category: FriendsChrisM @ 2:09 am

One of the computers I previously mentioned had a few problems, which is why a friend bought it over to the flat for me to take a look at. It was slow to start up, even slower at starting Internet Explorer for the first time, and kept displaying dubious warnings about infections. Basically, she had some malware that tried to convince her to buy some software to remove some non-existent problems.
An IT guy had taken a look at it, and advised her to reinstall Windows. The better solution was to remove all the un-necessary start up items, disable the plethora of unwanted IE addons loaded, suggest increasing the RAM from 512Mb to one or two Gb, and to remove the silly program. It was designed pretty well, to the point that even specialist removal tools were automatically shut down at the point of cleaning it, though not at the detection stage. Anyway, all sorted now, and whilst it doesn’t fly along, it should keep her going until she gets some more RAM. Reinstalling Windows is sometimes necessary, but to be honest I was surprised that the IT guy hadn’t fixed any of the obvious problems or suggested more useful solutions.

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Oct 15 2009

Mega Crash

Category: PicturesChrisM @ 1:33 pm

Four more general pictures, then Aunty Sveta will be happy again, as I’ll be posting more photos of Anna 🙂
This large screen plays adverts 24/7 facing the road, in the Mega shopping centre’s car park. It is something to stare at whilst waiting for the traffic lights to change colour, but I occasionally wonder how many accidents it has caused so far. Anyway, other than wondering whether it received its video files through the internet (hmmm, what could that lead to?), I also wondered what sort of system was used to run the display. As the photo shows, we can be pretty sure it is a Russian language edition of Windows (XP?) 😉

Application Error In Astana

Application Error In Astana

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Oct 14 2009

RT @DaveGorman:”Hooray! RT: @j…

Category: TweetsChrisM @ 5:29 pm

RT @DaveGorman:”Hooray! RT: @jackofkent #SinghBCA best possible result.Court o/Appeal critical o/disproportionate Mr Justice Eady judgment”

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