A Pipe and a Keyboard

For my birthday a couple of weeks ago, my daughter gave me a Nintendo DSi.

I was delighted.  Maybe she thought I was entering second childhood, or maybe she was being very pointed in including a program to increase my brainpower, but nevertheless, I am having great fun with it.

I tend to be a messer at heart.  When I get a new toy, I try just about everything, just to see what I can do with it.

I soon found I could connect to the Internet, but that seemed to be rather limited, in that I could upload photographs to Facebook, but that was about it.

Then, on another messing trip, I hooked into the Nintendo software download area, and lo and behold – there was an Opera browser.

It is remarkably simple to operate.  I have visited quite a few sites, with no problems.  However, I then tried to write a post using the DS.  That’s where my problems began.

As the DS doesn’t have a keyboard, an on screen keyboard appears if ever a text field in encountered.  It’s slightly slower than typing, but not much.  The main problem though is that it doesn’t seem to recognise Textareas on a web page, which means that I can log into my sites, enter my username and password, enter the title of my post, but then I come up against a blank wall.

Pity.

It would be a lot lighter to lug around than a laptop!

Filed under: Blogging, Tech stuff on March 17th, 2010 | 8 Comments »

So the Irish Blog Awards are nearly upon us again.

Head Rambles has been eliminated from three categories and remains in just one in this round – Best Humour Blog -  which let to some significant tantrums from Grandad.  Quite honestly, I was delighted as it removes the agony of having to decide which category to go for (as a blog can only enter under one).

Both Grandad and I will be attending.  Seeing as we are two aspects of the one person, it would be somewhat difficult for one to go and the other to stay at home, and it only remains to be seen which rules on the night.

I am a quiet person by nature.  I am the type who will sidle into a room and find a quiet corner where I can sup a pint and watch others having the fun.  Grandad’s inclination is to dive straight for the best looking woman on the place and try for a grope.  These are mutually exclusive actions so it should be interesting.

After the last awards ceremony, a couple of Grandad’s readers said they saw him/me there but were too shy to introduce themselves.  If only they knew that I would probably been the shyest of the group.  What’s worse, I love meeting not only my readers, but writers of other blogs, and I feel I missed out now.

I’m looking forward to the night, I must say.  I think the chances of Grandad winning are slim to none, but for me that’s not the point.  I’m looking forward to the craic, and meeting old friends.  Hopefully, I’ll make a few new ones too.

I’ll have to keep Grandad in check though…….

Filed under: Blogging on March 11th, 2010 | 2 Comments »

I look after a few blogs, and one of them started giving some trouble that had me baffled.

Every time I logged into the Admin section, all I got was a white screen.

Seeing as I had no access to Admin, it was very difficult to diagnose what was wrong.

The first thing I did was to check my .htaccess files, and also did a check to see if there were any files there that had been inserted.  All was fine, so I was fairly sure my site hadn’t been hacked.

The second thing I did was to upload a new version of WordPress.  This hopefully would overwrite any files that had been modified.  Still no joy.

Just in case there were any additional files that had been inserted, I then deleted my WordPress files [with the exception of wp-config file and wp-content directory] and reinstalled.  I was reluctant to do this, as it’s a live site that gets quite a bit of traffic.  It didn’t clear the problem anyway.

I trawled the Internet, and the main suggestion seemed to be that a plugin may be at fault.  I renamed the plugin directory, and tried again.  Still no joy.

I eventually found the solution to my little problem, and I must say I was surprised, and more than a little annoyed, as it’s a WordPress bug that should be addressed.

The following are a Before and After snapshot of my wp-config file.

Before

After

Notice the difference?

Note the line numbers.

Apparently the addition of white-space at the end of the file was sufficient to muck up the system.  Why, I don’t know but deleting the three blank lines was enough, and the site is now working perfectly.

Very strange.

Filed under: Blogging, Tech stuff on March 10th, 2010 | 6 Comments »