Holy Shmoly!

How to create Postfix database files

Donncha — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:19:57 +0000

Every time I come to recreate the Postfix database file when I edit the file /etc/postfix/virtual.cf I forget what command I need to recreate virtual.cf.db

Hopefully I’ll check my blog next time. The command is postmap. Hope this is useful for someone else too!

postmap /etc/postfix/virtual.cf
/etc/init.d/postfix restart

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Happy Modern Warfare 2 Day

Donncha — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:33:13 +0000

November 10th is here and Modern Warfare 2 is finally out! Shops here in Ireland opened at midnight last night and I briefly thought about hopping down to the Gamestop in Blackpool. I didn’t, and I won’t buy it until I have my BarCamp Cork talk is done. That should ensure I have it written by tonight!

Anyway, the level of anticipation for this game reached astronomical levels. Ask anyone with a game console or PC games player and they’ll know about this game. I’m writing this to remind myself of the fact when the next big thing comes along! In five year’s time we’ll be laughing at how we were all swept up in the hype of the game.

So, did you queue last night at midnight to buy the game? Have you already finished it? I’m pretty sure it’ll take me a lot longer to finish than ShadowHearth reported in that thread above.

So its 6:24 and i beated game on veteran setting.

Loved it, in some places i whanted to cry… becouse of just being pwned like a little girl, and on athers places becouse of story…

Just loved it, going to try multiplayer now, untill mine misses wakes up and sees me still on pc… I will get killed.

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Hours of fun with Syndicate

Donncha — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 09:01:06 +0000

Have Macbook. Check.
Have DOSBox. Check.
Have external mouse. Check.
Have Syndicate. Check.

Syndicate is a game I played a lot in the early nineties. I was never any good at games (some things never change!), but this is one of the few games I stuck with and managed to finish. The original game came out in 1993 for DOS and the Amiga. It was on the Amiga that I first came across it but the DOS version is easier to run these days. Luckily both versions are exactly the same.

What do you need? First of all, download the latest version of DOSBox. It’s available for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and many other operating systems.

Now look for the game itself. You can download Syndicate in many places so search for it using Google. Some would describe it as abandonware as the game can’t be bought any more but it’s a legal grey area. Bullfrog still own the copyright to the game so if you don’t own a copy downloading it is, strictly speaking, an act of piracy.

Unzip Syndicate in a convenient location and launch DOSBox. The familiar DOS prompt will open, on the Z: drive so mount the Syndicate directory using the command of the same name. If you’ve installed it in /games/Syndicate/ use the following:

mount c /games/Syndicate

Now change to drive C using

c:

You may need to edit synd.bat if it’s there (to set up your sound card) or just run main.exe as I did. The game will launch and probably run a little too quickly. Slow it down with CTRL-F11, and use ALT-Enter to enter fullscreen mode. CTRL-F12 will speed it up again, handy for researching new weapons and mods.

In fullscreen mode, you’ll swear you’re using an Amiga again! Enjoy what must be one of the best shoot ‘em ups, ever!

There’s also an opensource version of Syndicate. It hasn’t been updated since 2007 though. Anyone with game coding experience want to lend a hand?

As a special bonus, here’s the Atlantic Accelerator. It’s the very last level in the original Syndicate. This guy makes it appear really easy but it’s not. This level takes quite a bit of time to master! Just read his video description for all that he went through.

Or better yet, check out this video of American Revolt. Wow, all those enemy syndicate guys descend on you like flies to a …

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WP Super Cache Developer Documentation

Donncha — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:32:28 +0000

I’ve finally found the time to write up some documentation for developers who want to work with WP Super Cache.

It’s a work in progress but should help other plugin developers who want to interact with the cache.

Suggestions and comments welcome.

PS. If you’re in Cork on November 14th, head along to BarCamp Cork III. I’ll be giving a talk, “How WP Super Cache Works”. It’ll be less technical than this but I’ll answer questions too. Check out the other sessions too.

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Easy fix to unfreeze Thunderbird

Donncha — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:17:16 +0000

If you use Thunderbird like I do you may have noticed that HTML emails cause it to freeze momentarily. For a long time I thought this was a side effect of a large mailbox file and large email size but nope, it has an official bug.

The problem is fixed in Thunderbird 3 which hasn’t been released yet but there’s a simple way to avoid the problem. Open your address book.

It appears that having your address book in memory helps Thunderbird to render HTML emails quickly. I don’t know why, and the bug has some interesting comments on why. It’s possibly related to the anti-phishing code in the email client.

If you don’t want to keep your address book open all the time install the Contacts Sidebar plugin. HTML emails now render instantly.

I’ve lived with this bug for years. It’s a huge relief to have it “fixed” now!

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WordPress MU 2.8.5.1

Donncha — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 23:58:00 +0000

Update! WordPress MU 2.8.5.2 has a tiny fix for a post publish bug. You can download it from the usual place.

WordPress MU 2.8.5.1 has just been released and may be downloaded immediately.

This is a security and bugfix release and a recommended upgrade for every WordPress MU site. What happened to 2.8.5? I had it tagged and ready for release when Luke reported a little problem. It wasn’t possible to edit blogs! It was an easy bug to fix but code had been tagged and zip/tarball archives created so I had to create new ones. Thanks Luke! Saved the day.

Thanks to everyone else who contributed and helped in any way during the making of this release. Your help is invaluable.

This release also fixes a problem with slashes in blog and site options. You’ll be prompted to run the site upgrader. Please run it on all your blogs. For a more comprehensive look at what has changed recently, take a look at the Trac Timeline.

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Reasons to upgrade your Ubuntu

Donncha — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:03:26 +0000

ubuntu.com is down unfortunately. The release of Ubuntu 9.10, Karmic Koala the latest version of Ubuntu Linux, is obviously driving a heck of a lot of traffic to the site. (I wonder if they use the equivalent of wp-super-cache?)

Anyway, I’ll be upgrading tomorrow probably and once I do I’ll be checking out some of the applications mentioned on this page. Everything from an alternative media player, the (as yet unreleased) Gnome 3.0, audio/video editing, a photo manager to the pretty sweet Electric Sheep screensaver are listed here.

Many of the apps are available for Ubuntu 9.04 but others require building manually. I’ll be busy over the weekend

Here’s a few of the eye catching screenshots from that page, just to whet your appetite!

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Slowly learning Dvorak

Donncha — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 20:53:33 +0000

At the recent Automattic meetup in Quebec Matt gave a passionate talk about how great the Dvorak keyboard layout was and handed out paper copies of The Dvorak Zine.

The meetup was hectic and the first chance I had to try it out was on the plane home. Just over 5 hours from Montreal to Heathrow, London. Here’s what I typed in about 2 hours:

Mad! Typing this on the flight back to London using the dvorak keyboard layout. It’s slow going but I have plenty of time to practice, it’s a long flight! My finger memory says QWERTY but they’re very slowly mapping to the new layout. Vowels come first followed by s, m, l, n and d.

It’s definitely a better layout but right now I am so slow! I’m glad that I have power on this flight. No need for the extra battery! I love how th are next to each other.

Gotta get me a layout I can stick to the keys of the macbook.
Watched the Hurt Locker while typing this.

I always type i instead of d.

Gonna watch Night at the museum 2 again, just so I can watch the ending, finally.

I’ve got three seats to myself. Maybe I should sleep? Seems that would be the most sensible thing to do, now wouldn’t it? Looks like we’re about half way across the Atlantic! The film is fast forwarding nice and fast!

Time for a break from Dvorak!

Wow! Layer Cake is a great film! A bit violent but good ending! Only 156 miles to go! Then at least an hour in Heathrow! Can’t believe I didn’t Sleep!

Yes, I didn’t sleep. That was a long day, and Layer Cake was on my laptop (freshly ripped from the DVD I bought before leaving). I can heartily recommend Air Canada. Best experience I’ve had in economy on a trans-Atlantic flight.

Anyway, changing the Mac OS X keyboard to the Dvorak layout is easy, as it is in Linux too. Trying to login using the Dvorak layout is a right pain though.

I didn’t try to rip out the keys of my Macbook but I did rearrange the keys on a wireless keyboard. It actually didn’t help, mainly because the keyboard itself isn’t that comfortable.

The next step was to run through a few Dvorak keyboard training tutorials. They went well and I repeated the first tutorial several times, improving the times and accuracy each time. I’m not doing quite as well as Nick is doing though. I’m impressed.

I’ll persevere. My hands are retraining themselves. The Dvorak Zine is a great help, but if I tried using Dvorak for work I’d be 90% less productive right now. Matt, that ok then?

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Exploit Scanner 0.5

Donncha — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 09:16:53 +0000

The WordPress Exploit Scanner has been updated, with lots of help from Jon and Ryan.

In recent weeks blogs running older versions of WordPress were exploited. If you’re concerned that your blog might have been broken into, download the plugin and run it. It will find false positive results but it will do a reasonably good job of finding the code that’s inserted into a hacked site.

The plugin works by scanning every directory on your site. This is done recursively which unfortunately takes up quite a bi of memory. If you get an out of memory error please read the readme.txt as it has a suggestion for fixing the problem.

PS. WordPress 2.8.5 was released last night. Make sure you upgrade! A WordPress MU release will follow shortly.

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Harry Copter

Donncha — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 14:41:44 +0000

And for our next product, we’re bringing out a toy that makes pottery called “Harry The Potter”.

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