New Host

Posted on April 2, 2009 by richardbenson

After the balls up the other day, I’ve been rushing to get the site transferred over to a new host and sort out the templates, something I’d been putting off for a long time.

There’s still lots to come but I’ve noticed some peaks in traffic and I also have a couple of articles/tips that I want to get out there.  So if you notice anything odd, please let me know, I’ll be adding features back in over time.
As I love YUI so much, I’ve stuck it all over the place!  Layout is done with YUI Grids CSS, menu is YUI Menu and registered users can use the YUI Rich Text Editor for replies!
I’m hoping to stick all the facebook features in as well, without using jQuery.  I don’t like libraries that break other libraries (another reason why YUI is great!) and the fact that neither jQuery nor MooTools can make their libraries play nice, turns me off the completely.
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I’ve been a fool!

Posted on March 18, 2009 by richardbenson

Made a classic, school-boy error last night…

Was moving a movabletype installation from 2 recently decommissioned dedicated servers to a cloud hosting environment and noticed that the wonderful people at the new place allow you IP access to the MySQL servers.  ”Great” I though, I can use the MySQL migration toolkit, this will be a breeze.  So I restored the backup from the dedicated servers to an intermediary server (can you see where this is going yet?) and then proceeded with the transfer.

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BBC Publish F1 Calendar as iCal

Posted on March 13, 2009 by richardbenson

Congrats BBC, this is a brilliant idea, everyone go there and tell them how wonderful an idea it is and that they should carry on doing it.  Go on, do it now, I’ll wait…..

For those without iCal, here’s the schedule displayed nicely on the web for you.  This should keep itself up to date, and if the BBC add the rest of the season, I’ll update this page as well so bookmark it to keep up to date with the schedule.
UPDATE: After publishing the first two races as ICS files, it seems the BBC have not done the same for China, so I will keep this as up to date as I can manually.
UPDATE 2: They’ve published the full season now at last! Head over here to get your own ics file, or keep referring to the below calendar, which should now have the whole season in!

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Removing a Drive from a Spanned Volume

Posted on October 22, 2008 by richardbenson

When I needed more space in my main PC, I went for the (then) cheaper option of 4x 250GB drives over one large one, and as I wanted to avoid problems with moving the disks I didn’t use the motherboard’s RAID features and instead went with Windows dynamic discs and a spanned volume.

Time moved on and I wanted some of the contents of that drive on my main PC and the rest on the media PC, but I had nowhere to store roughly 1TB of data whilst I re-arranged the disks.  After much research on the net everyone told me that it wasn’t possible to remove a single drive from a Windows spanned volume.  That’s never stopped me trying before and I am glad to say that I managed it!  Instructions after the jump.

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2008 Christmas list #0000001

Posted on October 1, 2008 by richardbenson

Anyone out there trying to find the perfect Christmas present for me (surely you all are?) need look no further, as always, eBay has the answer.

Built for a TV special, this working Ballista weighs 12 tons and is about 7.5m high.  I’m sure for the extra £17.5k their asking to put it up, they can find a way to squeeze it into my garden.
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Cuil – Google beater?

Posted on July 28, 2008 by richardbenson

The BBC News website had a report about a new search engine, Cuil (pronounced “cool”), created by ex-Googlers that claims to be better and more relvant than the big G.

So I did some searches on it.  First I tried some of the keywords that I list highly on for Google and “no results found”.  After trying a few and also variations on them I was getting nowhere and so just stuck my domain in.

Have a look for yourself at the results.  That little logo next to my website has made me quite angry, I don’t think I’ve ever even mentioned Scientology, let alone use a logo that alludes to any kind of “success” within it that I may have achieved.

The natural thing in this case is to pop over to the FAQs and see if there is anything I can do about it.  Brilliant, a link to some webmaster tools…. that doesn’t work and no other notice about contact.

First impressions count for damn near everything, and I’m certainly not going to be using Cuil or recommending it to anyone.  In fact, so that Google can give it a good description, I’m going to link to it by saying, Cuil is misleading and useless.

UPDATE: Looks like a lot of their links only work some of the times you go to them!  Maybe if I keep trying the webmaster one will work.

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New Stuff

Posted on July 24, 2008 by richardbenson

I’ve been making a lot of small and large changes around here, which hopefully someone will notice and appreciate other than me!  But then I only really have this site for me anyway so it doesn’t matter…

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Greatest Games of all time my arse

Posted on June 23, 2008 by richardbenson

Pop over to Game’s website and have a look at their top 100 “greatest games of all time” list… go on… I’ll wait here…

http://www.game.co.uk/greatestgames/

How many times did you say “what’s that doing in there?”.. I bet it was an awful lot!

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From There To Here – A Guide To Self-Loathing In Three Easy Steps

Posted on June 13, 2008 by richardbenson

Once again, FlyingRodent calls it like it is…


“It’s clear now that the Labour government’s approach to almost all issues has been precisely the same, whether it’s benefit fraud or antisocial behaviour, terrorism or smoking in public places… Matters trifling, middling or massive, the response was identical. Just point out some bastards who everyone can agree are getting up to no good and taking the piss, frame it in the nastiest way possible to get us on board, then pass some wildly disproportionate legislation granting themselves executive power to do whatever they like.”
http://flyingrodent.blogspot.com/2008/06/from-there-to-here-guide-to-self.html

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Skype

Posted on June 9, 2008 by richardbenson

I was recently asked if Skype was allowed in our corporate network…again.  Seemingly there is something in the handbook that states; “All employees must ask at least once a month if Skype is allowed”.

Obviously my answer was “no”, but when asked why, I thought a picture would explain better than any words could.

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