Just stuff!!

It’s November now! The time of year that I start changing stuff around on my website and blog, but I’m not going to this year! I think I’ve found a design I like. But I still need to tweak the homepage though!

I’m not updating my website this year, but that’s not stopped me from changing one of my websites! I’m currently working on an update to Linux-Links.co.uk.
I’m working on adding screen shots of the websites. I think I’ve got it working, I just need to do more testing on it.

To keep page loads and image display fast I’ve split up the retrieving and display of the screen shots

First off all the screen shots on the page do is a couple of checks. If there is no screen shot, or the screen shot is older than seven days, then the url is added to the queue, it then either displays a place holder image or the screen shot.

The second part does most of the heavy work, and it is a little icon at the bottom of every page. All it does is grab a url from the queue and fetches the screen shot. If everything is good the icon displays Tux’s head, otherwise it’s the Windows logo!!

Halloween has been and gone, but not the pumpkin pie yet! I’ve made the last pie out of the goo from this years jack-o-lantern, but it’s still to be eaten!

Fireworks night has also passed us by! Even though we’ve not had the weather for fireworks we did manage to get to a firework display before the rain fell!
It was a very nice night, the field was packed, and the setting off of the fireworks was delayed because there was still people queueing up to get in! But the fireworks themselves were good. And it was mine and my girlfriends first firework display together!

And that neatly brings me on to the next subject! It is our three year anniversary tomorrow, or today by the time this is posted! So yes, me and my girlfriend have been together for three years!

Here’s to the next three!

A Day of Updating

Ok, this post is going back to Saturday, but I didn’t have anytime left to post anything!

All day I made two updates to Linux-Links.co.uk, the first update is the Linux-Links.co.uk feed!

It took me most of the day to set up and get working properly, I then set up a FeedBurner account for people to subscribe to the feed from.

The second update is a proper external links format. Instead of linking directly to the website, there is a (hopefully) unique code that corresponds to the site, and when clicked leads straight to the website requested!

If you’re unsure about what I’m trying to explain, head over to Linux-Links.co.uk, and have a browse around!

The code creation is interesting, it is three separate functions.

The first function accepts a string, creates an hd5 hash of that string and then passes that string to the second function which splits that string into four pieces and passes it back to the first function.

The first function then does some wizardry, and passes four numbers to the third function which then does some more wizardry and returns four alphanumeric characters back to the first function.

The first function then returns those four alphanumeric characters back as a single string

Maybe I should setup a URL shortening site!? Lol!

If you are interested in seeing the code that is used, then you can either leave a comment or email me, the email address is at the bottom of the page.

That all for this post
Till next time,
Happy browsing!

Linux Links 2.0.1 Released!

It’s April the first (just!) and no, this is not an April Fools joke, Linux-Links.co.uk has been updated, on time!

This version is a complete rewrite of the server side of the website.
I have rewritten it all from scratch and have collected all the functions into one place, this means that all the settings for displaying and collecting the data is set in one place, and means that everything is displayed uniformly across the whole site.

I have updated the search function, and hopefully it will return more relevant results, its still not perfect, but it is working better now!

I have added a “help” section, but the only area it gives help on is the HTTP Status Codes that are displayed on the URL pages.
The basic structure is there and can easily be added to when more areas need to be added!

There are a couple more things I would have liked to have included, but I ran out of time!
I will add these updates when they are ready!

Ok, its now past midnight and it’s no longer April Fools Day!
Hope you believe me now! Lol 🙂

It’s Easter!

Well, it’s Easter today! I’ve got two Easter eggs, one bar of chocolate, and a bag of mini eggs, and I’ve still got one egg left to receive!
Really, I’m nearly 23, and I’m still getting excited over receiving Easter eggs, but I think its chocolate that does it, when else are we given this much chocolate, it just takes you back to childhood!

In other news, I have finally restarted work on Linux Links, now I just have the search page to complete before I finally release this long awaited version of Linux Links.
I am aiming to release the updated Linux Links on Tuesday 1st April, no joke! Honest!

I have done a few tweaks to my website and blog, a couple of them you might not notice!

The first is that I’ve separated trackbacks and pings from comments in single post view.

Secondly I have added a print CSS style sheet to both the blog and website, so if you need to print anything out you only get the main content, and not the navigation bars.
I think there is still a few more bits to change with the print style to make it more complete, but its working!

The third is that I’ve signed up for a FeedBurner account, I have already burnt my feed, and you can find it here. I have set up the redirects, so you can continue using the old address, and you will still receive the feed as normal!

There’s a few more that I have fixed or changed as I have been going around, but they don’t really effect anything!

My dad’s off to Brands Hatch this afternoon to watch the Truck racing on Monday, he’s camping over tonight and Monday night and coming back on Tuesday morning.
The Truck racing was awesome last time, and it’s something I would like to go and watch again, the thing that put me off the most is the weather, it going to be cold and wet!

That’s all for this post now, I’ll post more details when I know more!
Till then
See you

Slowdown!

For some strange reason the past month has been a bit of a slowdown time for me, I don’t know what it is, but I just cant seem to be able to get into anything, or do anything!

Take this blog as an example, the last time I posted was the 4th of February, two weeks since the post before.

In those three weeks I have done practically nothing, even though I have added a couple to plugins to my blog, but that’s just about it.

Linux Links is at a stand still.

The only things I do do regularly is feel tired, and work!

And its valentines this week, and I haven’t got my girlfriend anything

I’ve got this week off work, so its a good time to recharge my batteries, and build my computer!

Hopefully I’ll be back to my ways next week

Till next time, if I don’t fall asleep!

Aimlessly Wandering the Information Superhighway!

The title just about sums up what I have been doing for the last three weeks since my last post, but more precisely describes what I did on Sunday!
I have a history list as long as your arm, and I have no clue about what I was doing!

But I have signed up for Gravatar, and have finally reported that bug with WordPress.

During the past month I have managed to do more work on the next version of Linux Links, I have most of the update working, and I’m just working on the Tag page. The next section I’ll be working on will be Search.

I am also working on the problem of how to make short unique URL’s similar to tinyurl.com
I’m thinking maybe put the md5 hash in a matrix table and add up every row and column, and then use that to make up some letters.
Yes, as you’ve probably guessed, I have no idea on how to go about it, and I don’t want to just use the id of the URL in the database

Other than that, nothing much has been happening, work is still the same, we’re starting to get in a lot of Easter eggs, which seem to magically disappear, must be due to the price! And there was me thinking that people would be boycotting Cadbury chocolate and not buying it!

Untill the next time
Enjoy your Easter Egg!

Edit: I have just been told that the price of Easter eggs in ASDA have gone back up to their original price.
I have also just installed the WordPress pluginWP_MonsterID, and have edited the blog theme, so if you are signed up to Gravator your avatar will show up, otherwise you get a random monster!

The Year Ahead

Ok I know that this is now a little late, I was originally going to post this on the 8th but never got around to it!


Right, I think its resolution time!

But first lets have a look at last years resolutions:

1. Again, finish any projects I start, and complete any that I have started

Well, I’ve started two or three this past year, and I have completed one, and one is ‘out’ but its still being worked on!

2. Update my website and blog more often

I’ve started to do that, the past three or four months I have been trying to post once a week.

Ok, now on to this years resolutions:

  1. Carry on updating website and blog more often
  2. Finish any projects I start, and complete any that I have started (third time lucky lol!)
  3. Update and improve Linux Links
  4. Try and get Linux Links on the first page of a Google search

Now lets see which of these ones I can break this year!

Thats its for this post
Till next time
Happy New Year

Its December Already!

Its been two weeks since my last post, so whats been happening?

For a start I managed to get search working on Linux Links, so thats all well and good

I have also added a couple of other features to the site.

The first feature is being able to browse by hostname, unless two or more pages in the database come from the same host then there is no way to access it, and that’s deliberate!

The second feature is a status checker, which basically checks if the page can be accessed every day, and the results of that are displayed on the url page.

Its Sunday now, I started this post on Saturday but had to go out before finishing this post!

Now that it is December I’m working more hours at work. I am now working six days a week and have Mondays off.
That means that I’ve got Christmas eve and New Years eve off, so that’s a good thing!

It’s December which means that obviously I haven’t even started Christmas shopping yet!
And like usual I don’t have the foggiest what to get anyone!

Staying with the Christmas theme, one good point to working out in the warehouse is that I don’t get to listen to the endless Christmas songs repeated countless number of times throughout the day!
Also, I’ve got 2 Christmas meals to go to this year, the first on the eighth is the Grocery Christmas meal, and then on the ninth is the Warehouse and GM meal, at the same place!

Thats it for this week!
See you next time!

The past week

Friday was Children in Need, and the big waxing took place in ASDA.
Unfortunately I missed Scott getting his legs waxed, but I have been told he chickened out and only had one leg waxed!

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I had an email from Schmap saying that one of my photos had been nominated to be included in the forth edition of their Bristol guide.
I got an email from them Saturday saying that my photo was included.
You can view it here.

Now for more news about Linux Links, I was working all day Saturday to try and get search working, but it just wasn’t going right!

I was copying code from phpBB, and from a couple of tutorials from the Internet, I was even using the MySQL search functions, but none of them produced the results I was after.

I now feel sorry for the pigeons working at google!

Search is still not working, but I have a new plan to try, it involves splitting the search string, searching for each word separately!
I’ll keep you posted on how it goes!

Till next time
See you!

linux-links.co.uk

I may of mentioned one of my other websites one or two times before, but today I have got Linux Links up and running!

Its over at linux-links.co.uk
It is dedicated to links to all things Linux related, and is in its infancy!

It is a website full of links to Linx related articles and websites, which are all browseable by tags for ease of use

What you see is basically the fully working website, it still needs a few tweaks to get it running smoothly, but its all there and functioning. Well, apart from the admin section! Lol!

I need to add a couple more sections, like a news section, and add some extra functionality to it, such as search, rating, and popularity!
I am also thinking of adding a user section, so that visitors can add their own Linux links to the database.
And I’ve still got about another 70 links to add from the old site.

So why not head on over and tell me what you think of it!