Just a few things:
* Running a WordPress blog? Upgrade! Upgrade! Upgrade! Yet another hack attack hitting self-hosted WP installs, and the only way to stop it is to ensure you’re running the most recent version (2.8.4).
* If you need bits for your car, I’d thoroughly recommend Breakeryard.com. You tell it what you need, it emails its network of breaking yards, it emails you when one of its yards finds what you need, and it tells you the price and P&P up front. Brilliant.
* Doves are superb live. The Zutons are pretty good too, although they don’t have enough good songs for a full set IMO. Ocean Colour Scene, amazingly, are even more shite live than they are on record.
* Another sign I’m getting old: I remember when it was possible to buy car things in garages and motorway service stations. Now it’s all pasties, horrible blankets and iPod chargers. Heaven forfend anyone might want something more practical, such as wiper blades.
* The new issue of Wired UK has a great feature about fraud investigators.
* It’s amazing how good the iPhone 3G is in areas where you’ve actually got decent 3G coverage. You can feel the phone becoming less and less useful the further north you go.
* Don’t upgrade to snow leopard if you’ve got an HP printer that you need to use regularly. There are *loads* of HP models for which drivers aren’t yet available, which is exceptionally annoying.
And that’s it. I’m ill so I’m going to go and feel sorry for myself while munching cold & flu tablets.
Comments
0 responses to “Odds and sods”
I’ve just written about the WordPress attacks if anyone has been living under a rock.
http://idea15.wordpress.com/2009/09/08/defeating-the-wordpress-attacks/
I also wrote about what you could have taken to not get that cold in the first place (meh heh heh).
http://idea15.wordpress.com/2009/08/27/get-some-of-this-up-your-nose/
Yes, that would have been useful a week ago :)
Two of my sites (podcast and blog) got hacked to buggery last year by a bunch of Turkish bad boys. It was scary at first but easy to clear up the damage and do a subsequent health-check. It was just a right pain in the arse to find the time and sit down and do the necessary.
This year WordPress seem to be on top of the game which is a massive improvement over last year.
I liked your point about WordPress’s alleged insecurity btw. The other night I was reading a few posts on exactly that and thinking “yeah! Businesses depend on this software, man!” – and then Captain Common Sense whacked me on the head and I thought “you’re building your business on a freebie, there’s been a fix available for ages and you’re moaning because you couldn’t be arsed applying it? You’re an idiot!”
I do think you’re right that many installs are one-shot, we’ll-put-it-up-and-that’s-it jobs. That’s just storing up trouble.
Yeah, things do seem to be faster of late. I had lots of problems with spammers getting into the blog last year but so far this year it’s been a lot less annoying. I think there’s always going to be a risk with free software, though. You’ve got a right to be angry if paid-for stuff breaks, but if you’re not paying for something you can’t exactly demand your money back.
There seems to be a lot of snobbery about WordPress, as if it’s a kiddie cousin to Drupal et al. That said, recently (and I mean, perhaps two months) the tide is finally starting to turn. But there are definitely a few who have been waiting for an opportunity like this to rain on WP’s parade.
A client asked me to add one field to her contact form in Drupal. I had to manually CODE it in the PHP. To do that in WordPress, I’d click a button.
A lot of snobbery about WordPress, agreed. The thing is, you want to get a website up, quickly, that looks good, ranks well on Google, and has an easy-to-use CMS. It’s a bloody website, not Cape Canaveral. Just do it with the simplest and easiest tool.
I used a number of online parts finding services earlier in the year when the aircon compressor on my 2-door Accord went. The car is not exactly thick on the ground (I only see another one every few days or so) but I got lots of offers, ranging quite a lot in price. Can’t remember which site produced the lead I accepted in the end, but all worked out fine!