Gordon's WebLog

Right from page one of the book (and it is 600 pages in length in paperback form), I found that I could hardly put it down. Dan Brown's method of stringing together unrelated ‘facts’ into a so-called solution to the centuries old mystery of the Holy Grail makes a jolly good read, fascinating, absorbing, intriguing. BUT it really needs to be taken with the proverbial "pinch of salt". To me it seems very much like adding two plus two and making five !

To some Christians it is deeply offensive, one Roman Catholic Cardinal even stating that the makers of the Hollywood film should face legal action because it offends Christ. Cardinal Arinze said: "Those who blaspheme Christ and get away with it are exploiting the Christian readiness to forgive and to love even those who insult us. There are some religions which if you insult their founder - they will make it painfully clear to you. Christians must not just sit back and say it is enough for us to forgive and forget."

In addition to this book there have, of course, been several others in recent years which attempted to persuade the reader that 1) Jesus did not die on the cross, he was merely drugged and then the (stupid?) Roman's were duped into releasing his body, Jesus later recovering. 2) Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, and even had a family. 3) Jesus lived until he was over 70 and died in the Roman's massacre of the Jews at Masada. 4) Nicodemus took Mary the Mother of Jesus into his care, and eventually came to Britain. and so on.... and so on .... and so on.....

I personally cannot give credence to any of these theories, nor to those propounded in Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code, but then I am a committed life-long Christian. However, as I stated above, the book does make a jolly good read, and I can thoroughly recommend it, provided it is taken as an adventure novel – no more, no less.

THIS POST, RELATING TO THE ENGLISH FOOTBALL

SEASON 2005/6 HAS NOW BEEN RETIRED

During March 2006 I started using the Panda Internet Security Suite 2006.

All went well, until mid-May 2006 when an updated version of the software became available.

Immediately my web browsers started acting up. Pages - which were ALWAYS on line - could not be displayed, or displayed with multiple headers or headers with what appeared to be HTML code above them.

I contacted Panda by email, fully explaining my problems, and suggesting that they had only appeared after upgrading the software. They requested all sorts of system file information which I did not feel able to provide them with.

It was only after quite some time , and much head scratching, that I tried to go back to the original installation. A quick uninstall of the updated version and a reinstall of the original and - lo and behold the problem went away.

So far Panda have not been able to reproduce the error.

Hmmmmm. Very strange !

UPDATE. Panda have, after 8 days, now acknowldged that they are already aware of this problem and are contacting the developers. Why on earth did they not withdraw the upgrade and advise all their users ?

One of the big frustrations of working on themes purely on a Windows or Linux machine is that you can't see how your site will look under Safari for the Mac.

Well, here's a way of doing it. Check snugtech's sarfaritest which will generate you a screenshot of your chosen site as seen by Safari. You can even choose the screen resolution to be used - great idea !

The Bex01 template now being used on this blog site was originally a collaborative effort by Rebecca Hemstad & Carl Galloway and amended and ported to Thingamablog by myself.

Carl has very kindly reviewed my efforts at porting the template to Thingamablog and has posted his comments on his blog. You may read his post here.

Have now generated an additional css file to control printing. The idea behind this is to limit the printed output to just the post title and body. All headers, footers, sidebars and navigation elements are suppressed. If you try print preview in your browser you will see what I mean.

Also I have now commenced adding content from my previous TAMB blog and also my WordPress site. This will obviously take quite some time, and I am going backwards in time, so you will see the later posts in all their glory, but may have to wait for some of the older posts.

"Thingamablog is a cross-platform, blogging application and RSS feed reader. It allows you to easily publish your own weblog without the need for any HTML knowledge. Unlike most other blog tools, it does not require the use of any third party services, but publishes the blog directly to the FTP server or network location that you specify. The interface provides a neatly organized overview of your blogs and a word processor like interface to create new entries. You can chose from several professional template designs, and all you have to do is click a button and your blog will go online. In addition, the program also allows you to keep track of your favorites XML/RSS feeds with the integrated feed reader interface. It can also generate a RSS compatible version of your own blog and import entries from RSS/Atom feeds." (Quote from SitePro). Read more about Thingamablog at the end of this post

But of course there are other blogging software suites available.

Site Pro News recently distributed en email newsletter about blogging software which makes very interesting reading. Here is the main text, to which I have added some of the "blurb" found on their web sites.

Remotely hosted blogging software

Blogger

Blogger is completely free and currently owns the majority of the remotely hosted user base, but not by a landslide. Bought out by Google in 1999, Blogger essentially fired up the blogging trend we see today. It is by far the easiest overall solution to use and, if you are a novice user looking to throw up some recipes or poetry, this is for you. Blogger is completely free and includes some great features like comments, photo blogging, and a basic community feel with user profiles. Because it is so dumbed down there are some features you may not find with Blogger that are only available through 3rd party add-ons. As a side note Blogger weblogs do quite well in the search engines and this was recently exploited with it being the first choice for spam blogs or splogs. A splog is a we blog used for the sole purpose of gaining inbound links or generating thousands of keyword stuffed pages with Adsense and the like. The recent Google Jagger update cleared a large portion of this up. Frëe.

Typepad

Released in 2003, Typepad is a product of Sixapart, the makers of Movable Type. It is largely based on MT but there are some major enhancements and differences. Your blog can accomodate one or more photo albums with auto thumbnail generation. You can easily add music, books, and other media to Typelists, which grab a thumbnail from Amazon and other retailers for easy displaying in your sidebar. Typepad is also a great deal more technical than Blogger so a bit of HTML know-how is recommended. On that note, editing your blog to look the way you want is also quite easy and Typepad blogs are known for being very eye-pleasing, intuitive and easy to navigate. In Sixapart's business model, Typepad is aimed at regular home and small business users while Movable Type is targeted at largër businesses or for internal intranets. Price: Basic, $4.95 a month; Premium, $8.95 to $14.95 a month.

Xanga

These guys originated back in 1999 as a site for sharing book, music and movie reviews. Although it quickly morphed into a full blown blogging tool, Xanga still maintains the ability to run a powerful review site. Xanga pulls data from several retailers like Amazon.com including thumbnails, pricing and a cover. The software also is very usable by novices with a powerful WYSIWYG editor allowing for easy HTML editing, adding smilies, links, and other symbols. By using Blog rings it is also easy to interface with Xanga's other 3 million users to share interests, ideas, and of course traffïc. Xanga comes in a frëe and $25 flavor.

The article also mentions Blogsome (e a part of a process that is changing global communication. Blogging is a way for individuals to publish material on the internet for everybody to read. You can do it right here, right now. BlogSome is the fastest growing blog host in the world (in percentage terms!), Blogster (We'd like to teach the world to blog - better. At Blogster.com that's our entire mission. Building a world of better blogsters. Why? Because good blog can take you to the big screen.) Mindsay (MindSay's mission is to make it easier for people to keep in touch and share information. To accomplish that mission, MindSay has built a service that enables users to create blogs - quickly, easily, and for free - and share them via a unique assortment of socially engaging features.) and Multiply (Store. U nlimited storage for your blog, photos, videos, music, and more. Share. Post for your friends, your family, or your entire social network.. Discuss. Multiply's exclusive live replies turn your content into fun, lively discussions.)

Self Hosted Blogging Software

Wordpress

WordPress originally began as a mod of an older open source package known as B2. WP is MT's biggest competition and is often the bain of endless Wordpress vs Movabletype style threads around the internet. Although launched just over a year or so ago WP has really taken the blogosphere by storm. And with good reason - Wordpress is completely frëe under GNU licensing and is packed with many features you will not find anywhere else. It is also much easier to install and get blogging for novice users and has a very large and helpful community. WP runs on PHP/mySQL and is quite scalable judging from some of the very large and trafficked sites I see using it. It also sports utilities to import files from Movable Type, Textpattern, Greymatter, Blogger, and B2. Wordpress recently upped the ante when Yahoo recently included them on their hostíng packages, in addition to MT. I have to admit I am finding myself more and more digging WP and will likely convert Profitpapers to WP as I get time (it can be a biznitch). Wordpress is frëe.

Movable Type

Aside from maybe Greymatter (the original open source blogging tool), Movabletype dominated the blogging market share in 2002-2004. Released in late 2001, Perl based Movable Type by Sixapart has maintained a large portion of the blogging market share, due mainly to the fact that there is a frëe version (supporting up to 3 weblogs) and that it is incredibly powerful, intuitive and easy to customize. Template driven Movable Type also sports one of the largest communities of developers and blogging enthusiasts around, meaning lots of support, idea sharing, and of course plugins. Movable Type can be configured to dynamically generate HTML, PHP or any other kind of pages you like, meaning it is incredibly scalable, fast, and loved by spiders. It is perhaps the most well known blogging software for SEO purposes and it is what currently powers Profitpapers and several of my other projects. Moveabletype is either Frëe with 3 authors, 1 weblog, and no support or $69.95 with unlimited weblogs, authors and full support.

Textpattern

Textpattern is the brainchild of Dean Allen and was written to ease publishing of content for those not inclined to learn HTML. Like WP and MT, Textpattern runs on PHP and mySQL for easy administration, backups, and power. What really sets textpattern apart from the others is the integration of Textile. Textile is a tool for easily formatting content for those who do not know HTML. WP & MT have modules for textile as well but it is native to the Textpattern system. Another bonus of the app is its superior handling of comment spam due to its smaller market share. On the blogs I maintain running WP and MT, I often find myself clearing out spam every day, whereas on some very busy textpattern sites I receive only manual comment spam (not bot driven). TP is open source.

The article also mentions Bloxom ( Blosxom (pronounced "blossom") is a lightweight yet feature-packed weblog application designed from the ground up with simplicity, usability, and interoperability in mind. Simplicity. Blogging--and, indeed, any online publishing-- should be as simple as typing away in your favourite text editor and hitting Save. Fundamental is Blosxom's reliance upon the file system, folders and files as its content database. Entries are plain text files like any other.) LifeType (LifeType is an open-source blogging platform with support for multiple blogs and users in a single installation. Writing articles is comfortable with the included state of the art WYSIWYG editor. Adding pictures and sound files (for Podcasting) is just a matter of browse and click. The Dashboard provides you with all the information you need every time you log in. Recent articles, comments and trackback as well as brief statistics get you updated about your blog immediately.) and Serendipity (actually a very good piece of work which I have used myself ... Gordon)

AND SO TO MY FAVOURITE AGAIN. THINGAMABLOG WHICH I USE FOR POSTING TO THIS BLOG !

Thingamablog is a cross-platform, standalone blogging application that makes authoring and publishing your weblogs almost effortless. Unlike most blogging solutions, Thingamablog does NOT require a third-party blogging host, a cgi/php enabled web host, or a MySQL database. In fact, all you need to setup, and manage, a blog with Thingamablog is FTP, SFTP, or network access to a web server.

Thingamablog allows you to:

Set up a blog in minutes via an intuitive wizard
Maintain multiple blogs
Effortlessly manage thousands of entries
Dynamically update blog content
Write entries offline (Dialup users)
Publish your blog with a single click
Read news with an integrated feed reader
Make posts from your favorite feeds
Create a unique layout with customizable templates
Import entries from RSS/Atom feeds
Set up flexible archiving options
Organize your entries by category or date
Save entries as drafts
Define your own custom template tags
Syndicate your blog via an RSS or Atom feed
Ping services like weblogs.com, BlogRolling, and Blo.gs
And much more...

Yes, it's happened. And at first I thought I had lost about 8 hours work.

I am running TAMB on a USB drive in the office, and the main TAMB program crashed and corrupted the user.xml file.

Luckily It did not affect the template, css or images, and I was able to re-create the user.xml file from another one (amending all necessary details) - with a bit of foot stamping and head scratching. Of course I also had to re-create all of my custom tags as well.

Just goes to show. BACK UP ALL FILES REGULARLY.

To call the coding in my custom tags I have used the following in my templates. You will note that each custom tag name starts with either main, which displays main page information, or side, which displays information in the sidebar.

<$Main_Header$> Main HTML header details with meta tags

<$Main_Banner$> Displays the banner and header text

<$Main_Menu$> Displays the top horizontal menu bar

<$Side_Calendar$> Displays calendar in the sidebar

<$Side_Recent_Posts$> Displays recent posts titles in the sidebar

<$Side_Categories$> Displays category names in the sidebar

<$Side_Archives$> Displays the monthly archives in the sidebar

<$Side_TAMB$> Displays links to TAMB sites in the sidebar

<$Main_Footer$> Displays the footer

<$Main_Top_Of_Page$> Displays a "Jump to top of page" link in a separate footer

Welcome.

I have decided to port Rebecca Hemstad's Serendipity Bex01 template for use in Thingamablog (TAMB).

I first downloaded the Bex01 template and deleted all the content, putting in code from the original TAMB template and using the Bex01 css file. It worked fine after a couple of minor hiccups.

Then, to make the template much easier to read and amend, I copied many of the standard routines into custom tags, calling them by name in each template, and they seem to be working fine. The reason for this is that, should I wish to change any coding on a global basis I only have to change 1 custom tag, re-publish, and all templates will be updated automatically.

So far it's looking great.

Note. This posting is

Came across a very strange problem the other day.

I installed a program which relied on a windows system service being run. Every time I re-booted my PC or tried to run the program I receives a message that the service could not run on the local machine. On trying to mstart the service manually I was again informed of the error.

Despite diligently searching Microsoft's web site for over 2 hours, I was unable to find a resolution of my problem.

Now I am a member of several forums on the Internet, and I quickly posted a plea on them. I received several suggestions, all of which I tried without success.

Finally I received a suggestion from Dean on the Etomite forum. He remembered a similar problem and eventually found that there was a file in his root (C:/) folder called "Program". After deleting that file his system services resumed normal operation.

A quick check revealed no such file. However, some days later I had occasion to check another folder for a hidden system file, and it struck me that the rogue file might also have these attributes set. On checking the root folder and showing hidden and system files, lo and behold, there it was. The file was of zero bytes length but it certainly affected my system as, once deleted, all services resumed as normal and my new program functioned correctly.

Now just where this file came from I cannot imagine. Despite my system being behind a firewall, with full anti virus checking, with adware, spyware and anti Trojan programs running it appears that I must have picked up "something" from the Internet

Just goes to show. You can't be too careful.

Ever heard of it ? No ? Well, it's quite a nice blogging tool available here.

Recently I tried out an installation of Serendipity. Installation was a breeze, very quick, and no errors.

However, next day I couldn't log onto the blog despite being able to log onto the admin area.

On checking the .htaccess file in the root folder all entries were set to "deny all". Renaming .htacess to .htaccess1 cured the problem, and the blog could be viewed as normal.

However (again), only for a short time, as then it went back to not being displayed. Even when I have managed to display the blog there are lines of coding at the top which get worse each time the page is refreshed. Ah ! When I posted a second entry all seems (!?!?!?!) OK and the display is fairly static.

Next I tried to add a graphic. First of all I had to upload the image using Add media, then inserted it. And lo and behold it was there. The only thing I then had to do was to change float left to float right. The image formatting allows text to flow around it, but actually placing it within a paragraph seems a bit tricky. Still, I suppose I can't expect everything to be just as I want it.

I have also tried importing the posts from my church web log (which uses WordPress and it worked quite automatically !

Then I tried downloading the Bex01 template zip file, available here , unzipped it and uploaded it to the server under into the templates folder. Changed some of the styles to use this template, and it's GREAT ! Now I have decided to use the template on my own TAMB blog site, as you can see,

There is just one thing I really would appreciate, and that is a spell checker in Serendipity.

In this recent post I showed how email addresses can be scrambled so that it makes it very difficult for "harvesters" to gain access, and thus eliminate (?) Spam mail.

Well. I have come across yet another version of this scramble which you can either download and use locally, or use on line. It is available from this web site, and I am now using it on this WebLog and on my main web site.

It uses a very similar process, but is richer in options, as it can be set to send copies, blind copies, a subject line, some standard body text, and it can also generate a text link (email me, contact me etc) or an image link - the image you can choose yourself - perhaps an 80 x 15 graphic ? See this website to generate your own graphic, save it to your web and then in the email scrambler generator select that graphic.

Once all the information has been entered a simple button click generates the code, a test area displays the link that will appear on your web page (you can even test it out from within the generator), and another button click copies it to your clipboard from inserting into you page or template.

So, what does it output ? If you have a link, say an email address, here is just some of the actual code seen by the harvesters :-

mailt

Looks complete rubbish, doesn't it ? And that is just what the harvesters would think - no more Spam ! ! ! !

OK. You want to back up your important documents, but don't fancy Back2Zip as the resulting files are very large ?

Then how about SyncBack ? SyncBack is used to back-up, restore, and synchronize files and directories. It is designed to be very simple to use, but powerful and flexible. With it's integration with the Windows Task Scheduler, you can automate your backups, e.g. backup your important documents every night.

SyncBack is 100% freeware and there is no need to register. It is not limited in any way. It is not adware, malware, or shareware.

It uses "profiles" detailing what to back, where to, how, what to include, what to exclude, put it on a schedule, and much more.

The main screen lists all the profiles. To actually make the backup, click on a profile to select it, then click the Run button. SyncBack will now decide which files actually need to be copied from the source to the destination, and what needs to be deleted in the destination: Only the files that need to be copied or deleted are listed (if there is nothing to do then this screen in not displayed). Click the Copy button to actually copy the files from the source to the destination (when SyncBack is automated, the backup is done without any prompts). After that you are returned to the main screen.

While it doesn’t come close to the amount of features Second Copy has, it gets the job done, which is the most important part. Unless you need features such as AES encryption and email notifications, SyncBack will work just fine.

Here is a useful tutorial and here is a site where SyncBack can be downloaded 

UPDATE 1st AUGUST 2006. See this post for updated information on SyncBackSE.

Over 28 million downloads, one of them being me, and I use it almost to the exclusion of any other browser.

Maxthon Internet Browser software is a powerful tabbed browser with a highly customizable interface. It is based on the Internet Explorer browser engine (your most likely current web browser) which means that what works in the IE browser will work the same in Maxthon tabbed browser but with many additional efficient features like...

Tabbed Browsing Interface

Mouse Gestures

Super Drag&Drop

Privacy Protection

AD Hunter

RSS Reader

IE Extensions Support

External Utility Bar

Skinning

And Much More to Explore...

Here are links to the download site - the full feature list and the support page 

TRY IT OUT. IT'S GREAT !

We all do it, don't we ? Backup our data I mean. No ? Too time consuming ? My system is stable and I don't need it ?

Well, I recently experienced a complete disk failure, and I am thankful that I had a backup of my critical data, including many hundreds of digital photos.

So, how can we back up our data in a quick and easy manner ?

Try Back2Zip available at Free Backup Info  It's FREE !

No more excuses, it's free, fast and efficient. As an example my copy zipped "My Documents" of over 250 Mbytes in just 3 minutes into a ZIP file of just 111 Mbytes on an external USB2 hard drive, and updates now take place every hour, with a 14 day retention period.

It can be set to backup any number of main folders (and will include all sub-folders) and creates a separate ZIP file each day. It can also be set to check for file changes/additions at regular intervals during the day (useful if constantly updating or creating files) when the ZIP file is updated. The resulting backup files can be kept for any number of days - very useful if you accidentally delete a file. The program can compress the files to varying degrees - I use the medium compression setting which seems a good trade-off between size and speed. There is also a log file that shows the program activity, and you can open and inspect the backups files from within the program.

Has your computer's stability become an absolute nightmare? Is your system moving at a snail's pace? Do you keep receiving mysterious error messages that seem to appear out of nowhere? Does your computer keep crashing without warning?

Almost all computer problems can be resolved with one click! We have isolated the most common registry issues and our free scan will search your computer for these errors and let you know where they are and what problems they may be causing.

ErrorKiller available at ErrorKiller.com will help.

You can download and use the program for free. It will analyze and report all errors (you will be HORRIFIED at what it finds. You can then fix the errors - first backing up your registry in case of catastrophe. But be warned. Unless you purchase the program (about $20.00 plus tax) you will only be able to fix a limited number of errors.

I use ErrorKiller in conjunction with Ccleaner (see this posting) and my PC now works like a dream, runs much more smoothly, appears to be quite a lot faster, and I don't experience any error messages or crashes - touch wood !

Microsoft have released the latest Beta test version which is available here

Try it out. Many changes from version 6, some I like, others I'm not too keen on.

CCleaner is a freeware system optimization and privacy tool. That removes unused and temporary files from your system - allowing Windows to run faster, more efficiently and giving you more hard disk space. The best part is that it's fast! (normally taking less that a second to run) and Free.

Here is the web site link where you can download the software.

Cleans the following:

Internet Explorer Cache, History, Cookies, Index.dat.

Recycle Bin, Temporary files and Log files.

Recently opened URLs and files.

Third-party application temp files and recent file lists (MRUs). Including: Firefox, Opera, Media Player, eMule, Kazaa, Google Toolbar, Netscape, Office XP, Nero, Adobe Acrobat, WinRAR, WinAce, WinZip and more...

Advanced Registry scanner and cleaner to remove unused and old entries. Including File Extensions, ActiveX Controls, ClassIDs, ProgIDs, Uninstallers, Shared DLLs, Fonts, Help Files, Application Paths, Icons, Invalid Shortcuts and more...

Backup for registry clean.

indows Startup tool.

Believe me, it's great !

I've just come accross a wonderful new template by Dave Reeder called Fluidity, available here.

I am now using it on my own web site

Do have a look. I think it's great.

Careful testing of any webpage should be top priority, so it's been validated and tested the template in the following browsers:

Internet Explorer 5.5, Internet Explorer 6.0, Mozilla Firefox 0.8, Opera 7.54u2, Netscape 7.2

Controlling the columns

One, two, three or even four columns, in any mix on a page, all done with css.

Of course, the columns do not have to be of equal proportions. You could specify one column that was a quarter of the screens width and another which was three quarters. Simply specify a column in the xhtml with a class name that corresponds to the relevent column in the CSS.

A new version of the brilliant CSS editor Style Master has been released! The new version (v4.5) adds more fresh features that makes it very useful for anyone who work with stylesheets.

Style Master costs just US$59.99 and is available here or existing users can upgrade for US$29.99.

However a fully working beta version is also available here in blog entry dated 3rd May 2006 - click the "grab a copy" link.

When run and a style sheet loaded there are various panels of tools, including a preview of a web page using the style sheet. This preview is updated in real time as you change the css coding.

There is a great tutorial here and a series of screen shots here.

Try it and see just how easy it is to generate a new style sheet, amend an existing style sheet, or just load one up and see how everything works.

It's great !

Google have done it again - and it's FREE ! A bit like ACDSee 8.1 (which is a really excellent product, but it's not free) Picasa 2 will search your entire disk for images and create a thumbnail database. The resulting thumbnails are categorized into folders and you can do lots of things with them.

Here is a link to a readme file which give more details and here is the download link.

All sorts of editing can be done, even a one-button fix-it. Slide show ? No problem. Screen saver ? No problem. Print multiple images on a page ? No problem. Burn a CD ? No problem. Import from scanner or camera ? No problem.

Only criticism I have is that it's a bit slow at the initial disk search - have a cup of coffee whilst you are waiting - but new images are dealt with very quickly.

In fact a good all round organizer and help-mate - and it's FREE !

Here is a list of links to software and reference documents that I regularly use.

80 x 15 button maker 

80 x 15 button maker (2) 

AListApart 

Anti virus software comparisons

Colour charts 

Colour charts (2) 

CSS - lots of demos 

CSS tutorials 

CSS Zen GArdens designs 

Experiments in web programming 

HTML reference manual 

MySql manual 

PHP function reference 

PHPMyAdmin documentations 

Search engine tools 

Statistics by BBClone 

Statistics by PHP-STATS 

Statistics by StatCounter 

Tizag - great tutorials 

Web graphic art tools 

Web developres handbook 

Web safe colours 

WebMaster's toolkit 

Yes, the merry month of May is here again, and with it the bluebells. Today I visited a bluebell wood near Newtown Linford, Leicestershire. It was a fantastic sight and I thought I would share with you.

We are pleased to present a bible text of the day. The text is provided by the International Bible Society, and is changed every day.

Note. You may view this page directly at any time by clicking the "Bible. Today's text" category.