Fixing wordpress-mobile-pack

Posted on September 6, 2010 by Brian

So, I want to post to my blog from my phone. I installed the mobile-pack but when I tried to get to the new post page the link was not correct. As I’m posting this from the phone I can’t post the code but this proves I fixed it!

woohoo, I love it when that happens. The file mobile_admin.php needs all instances of this line of code….

$base = get_option('home');

Changed to this.

$base = get_option('siteurl');

OK, this is not the whole story as the use of the URL is inconsistent. I will need to do a bit more digging before I get it fixed completely.

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HOWMANY for Grub 2

Posted on August 26, 2010 by Brian

One of the things lost in moving to Grub2 is the lack of the #HOWMANY option to limit the number of Kernels presented in the Grub Menu.  This was a great option especially if you dual boot otherwise every time a new Kernel is installed the Grub menu gets longer, and your default system does not load (as the default number is not updated).

Ages ago I found this item which fixes the problem.  It is a bit complex for a new user and that is a shame.  It also breaks when GRUB is updated (although I leave Grub alone when it asks).

To simplify things, you need to replace this line;

while [ "x$list" != "x" ] ; do

with these lines…..

found="0";
 
if [ "x${GRUB_HOWMANY}" = "x" ] || ! [ "x`echo ${GRUB_HOWMANY} | sed 's/^[0-9]\+\(\.[0-9]\+\)\?$//'`" = "x" ] ;then
	GRUB_HOWMANY=0
fi
 
while ( [ "x$list" != "x" ] && ( [ "${GRUB_HOWMANY}" -eq "0" ] || [ "$found" -lt "${GRUB_HOWMANY}" ] )); do
  found=$((found + 1));

Grub really need to reimplement the #HOWMANY option and provide a simple GUI to set it. Still this solution works for me and if you have the same issues it may work for you too.

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Wembley Trip

Posted on August 9, 2010 by Brian

Well it didn’t quite go to plan. Tickets to see Chelsea play Moan U at Wembley in the Community Shield were just too good an opportunity to miss. Train down on Saturday and stay at my sisters, David an I like a pair of kids on a school trip. The stadium is quite fantastic though why it cost so much is beyond me and £3 for a soft drink outrageous. Security poor, simply said I was carrying insulin and didn’t even get searched – could have been anything in my pockets. Seats were great and a £35 for both of us a bargain.  The game was good but Chelsea do not have that cutting edge and often played too narrow. As for Ashly Cole – 2 goals were because he was out of position – he can go anytime he likes as far as I am concerned! We were better once Drogba was on but we cannot rely on him.  Taking Anelka off instead of Kalou made no sense, still it was just a pre season friendly.

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New Hosting provider and WordPress Maintenance

Posted on July 29, 2010 by Brian

An invoice to renew my Web Hosting and the need to update WordPress resulted in a bit of work.

I had been with Hostingbegins for a number of years as my hosting provider, but they have recently been bought out by Othello, the price rocketed and what I was getting went down. The final straw was discovering that the advertised prices were plus VAT. After a quick scan I settled on Webhosting Uk. I get more space, more bandwidth, MySQL (I only had it with Othello as I had it before they took it over), unlimited email etc. Basically more for no increase. The online support chat was excellent and it is a UK based company.

Migrating was easy, I gave them my old cPanel login and password (having taken a full backup of course) and they transferred the lot. As I manage my own DNS record I simply updated the A record and a few hours later the DNS records seem to be updated. I changed the WordPress theme after the transfer occurred, but before I changed the DNS so I knew when the new site was in use (cunning eh?).

At the same time I needed to upgrade my WordPress installation. I have used Fantastico before, but was never entirely happy and it didn’t like installations it hadn’t done. Softaculous on the other hand is simply a pleasure to use. Upgrading takes seconds and it seems to update its repository very quickly with newer versions.

Another thing I wanted to do was introduce a mobile theme / plugin. I settled on WordPress Mobile Pack. The themes seem quite good but there is currently a bug in the admin pages. I’m sure it will get fixed though.

I also plumped for the Twenty10 theme. I’m not a big fan of fiddling with themes but this one looks nice and clean. It did use a serif font for the main text and it took ages to find the right CSS entry to get rid of that!

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Mount a network folder automatically in Ubuntu

Posted on June 5, 2010 by Brian

One of the frustrations with Ubuntu, has been that there is no easy way to replicate the Windows function ‘map network drive’.

The best I have found is this thread. I still find it very slow to find the network location on my NasDuo but it gets there eventually.

Posted in Computer, Ubuntu | 1 Comment