I’ve updated The Wight One to be Widget capable, - surprisingly easy thing to do. The main reason for doing it was so that I could make use of the ReadySetFlickr plugin in order to display images from my Flickr account. Once I’m happy that the theme’s working (and when I’ve finally added the CSS for comments) I’ll package it up nicely and make it available for download.
After having tweaked the layout and CSS a little more, Porgy (on the right) no longer breaks things.
Typical, just when I’ve gone round various sites, checking that they’re all up-to-date with WordPress, they go and officially release version 2.5! I’ll hang back a while before upgrading though, since I’m intending to change my theme anyway, and also that used on the DataSwift website. (0)
Xara (now owned by German developer Magix) have just released a preview of the new version of their flagship Xtreme Pro. Version 4 (available in both Pro and non-Pro variants) has a bunch of new stuff, but the best things I’ve found so far are:
The upgrade from the previous version of Xtreme Pro (3.2) is currently a very reasonable $49, which, after delivery and other bits, comes to around $69 in total. In my opinion it’s the best update to Xara in since Pro was released.
I’ve been following the Roundcube Webmail Project for a while now, and yesterday evening it reached 0.1-stable - the first officially stable release. It’s an AJAX-based webmail system, running on PHP, with preferably MySQL for a backend database (although others are available). It’s pretty cool, looking much nicer than Squirrelmail (although it’s not as feature-rich - yet), and it runs quite speedily too. I’m wondering if it might be a good option for an internal-only email system for a school.
It looks like the schools on the Island are going to be without Internet for a third day - unless BT fix things overnight. Apparently there’s an power-related issue at County Hall - schools are able to reach as far as there, but no further.
I imagine that there’s a lot of email building up - 69 schools, and although staff were on-site on Monday I doubt everyone checked their email before the connections went down mid-morning. Let’s hope RM’s servers hold it for a sensible amount of time! (Actually, anyone using RM’s Easymail service is unaffected, since they can carry on accessing it via either their schools specific address, or the more general http://www.learningalive.co.uk/EasymailForm.html )
Why is it that technology usually works fine when you’re ahead of schedule and could actually afford to wait for something to be fixed, but if you’re up against a deadline, anything that can fail, will? Due to my being ill last week, our latest school network project was in danger of over-running. We’ve brought it back under control, but halfway through the day, the Internet connection for all the schools on the Island went down. This mean that most of the tweaks and adjustments we had left (such as printer drivers, SMARTBoard software updates, a few software activations etc.) can’t be completed until at least tomorrow - which is when the students are back.
Still, the fact that it has affected all schools, and possibly the council as well should mean that BT fix it fairly promptly. Hmm… perhaps I’m not quite as recovered as I thought…
In an effort to post more -I’m not going to call it a New Year’s resolution, since that would be the quickest way to make it fail- I’ve added WordBook to both steve-c.co.uk and my Facebook page. It’s a surprisingly painless experience, and although it’s rather lacking in configuration options does appear to do the job.
As reported first on The IconBar and then in more depth on Drobe, RISC OS Open Ltd have announced that, along with Castle, they will be releasing various parts of the operating system under a “Shared Source” licence. Apparently this will allow people to contribute changes to the source code and distribute their resulting programs for free; if the code is used commercially though, the writers much pay a small royalty for the privilege (although in this case, they are no longer obliged to contribute back the code they have added).
I think this is potentially a very good thing for RISC OS, I just hope it hasn’t arrived too late in the day.
After setting up another school network recently, I’m puzzled by the fact that the method for creating a standard, mandatory user profile in Windows hasn’t changed since the days of NT4. It wouldn’t matter if Microsoft had cracked it at the first attempt, but the procedure is convoluted and clunky. There is a command-line utility for copying profiles, however that isn’t included with any current version of Windows, and is hardly widely publiscised.
It’s not even as though many major changes would be needed, - just the ability to set the type of profile to ‘mandatory’ when using the GUI would be a major help.
Maybe Longhorn Server (or whatever name it ends up with) will improve matters…
According to the counter at Spread Firefox, the browser has now been downloaded over 100 million times! Although that total probably includes multiple downloads by the same people, it won’t take into account the fact that many installations may have been carried out from a single download. So, maybe Firefox is on track for a 10% share by the end of this year?
We’ve just got our G5 iMac at work, and I’ve just received my Beta edition of the new A9 Home RISC OS computer. The iMac is a very classy bit of kit, but I still prefer RISC OS to use, - it’s just more intuitive.
It’s a pity that RISC OS Ltd (who develop the OS for all machine except the Iyonix) and Castle (who actually own the OS, but use their own custom version of it on the Iyonix) can’t seem to get along.
