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04 Jan

Bearded Dragon on the road

Published by Simon Lindsay

Driving on the road near our house last night, and came across this little guy in the middle of the road.

He was about 50cm long, including tail.

He showed off a bit once it was clear I wasn't just going to leave him alone, but really I was just trying to get him off the road, so he was safe. In the end, I had to get a stick and put under his front legs to drag him off the road!

Images: 

Topics 

Nature, Animals
23 Aug

How to get CallerID via http and CDR records working with asterisknow 1.7

Published by Simon Lindsay

We've been using Trixbox for many years as our PABX at iseek computing, but I wasn't happy that it was moving forward nicely as a project, so last time we rebuilt the PABX using AsteriskNOW instead.

It all worked fine, slightly easier that Trixbox perhaps, and no weird forum registration required, and its pretty clean with FreePABX being the main interface.

Topics 

Linux, Asterisk
09 Jul

Busy today, rearranged Study, finished off hearth for fireplace.

Published by Simon Lindsay

Also went out and got another trailerload of firewood, but didn't take a photo of that ;-)

Images: 

Topics 

House
07 Jul

Google advertising - what will they offer you?

Published by Simon Lindsay

Did you know you can see what advertisement categories Google will offer you?

You can even customise them to show things that you want to see!

Checkout yours.

http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/

Topics 

Google
07 Jul

Slow logins with SBS 2003 or 2008

Published by Simon Lindsay

If you are using a Windows SBS 2003 or 2008 with a domain, and client computers are taking a while to login, make sure that you've got the DNS server set to the SBS box as the default.

We use a linux box as the dhcp server and gateway, and this small change to the dhcpd.conf reduced login times from 2 or more minutes down to seconds.

Wish i'd discovered that earlier!

Topics 

Windows
29 Jun

Speed up loading Drupal database into mysql

Published by Simon Lindsay

I've developed a little script over the years that dumps production databases, and loads them locally on demand, and its been very handy.

However, it was taking ages to load a database on a Virtualbox ubuntu environment I use for debugging with Zend.

A quick look into it, and I found that i'd put --skip-extended-insert on the mysqldump command sometime in the past.

I changed that to --add-locks --extended-insert and the loading has gone from over 12 hours (I was asleep, not waiting for it ;-) down to 30 minutes.

Topics 

Drupal
28 Jun

How to kill the Firefox "Switch to tab" feature

Published by Simon Lindsay

If you've updated to the latest firefox, you might have noticed the "Switch to tab" feature, which checks if you have a website alreay open, and switches to that existing one if you have.

What a stupid thing!

If I open a new tab, its because I want a new tab! It even does it across seperate windows.

To remove this "feature", just install this excellent add-on - Switch to Tab no more.

Phew, back to reasonable web browsing again.

 

Topics 

Firefox, Web Browser
14 Jun

Argghh Flash - Its so annoying.

Published by Simon Lindsay

Booted into Windows yesterday to play the awesome new Dirt3, and Adobe flash wants to update itself.

It seems that between the 4 or 5 PC's I regularly visit, that I'm always updating the cruddy flash player.

And all I need it for is youtube video.

Bring on HTML5 and lets stop this Flash upgrade madness!

Topics 

Websites, Computer
08 Apr

Whats wrong with the standard window decorations.

Published by Simon Lindsay

Why do they have to mess with window decorations? You know, the title bars, close, minimise buttons etc.

Microsoft must spend millions making things look pretty, then people making software for Windows go and screw it up.

Why bother overriding the Window decorations from the standard windows default.

Don't pretend it makes your software "sexier". It doesn't.

Topics 

Windows
01 Apr

10+ years of Drupal

Published by Simon Lindsay

Drats, I missed my drupal.org 10th birthday!

http://drupal.org/user/143

I was actually using Drupal before drupal.org existed, and my http://dirtbike.ws website - currently re-branding as http://mydirtbike.com - would be amongst the longest running Drupal based sites there is.

Topics 

Drupal

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