The Blog of Hubbers

There is a known issue with the latest version of Wordpress 2.6 that means that if you are using SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) friendly permalink urls that include the post name in the url (e.g. http://www.hubbers.com/blog/index.php/a-weekend-in-the-south-of-france/) then viewing individual posts will result in a page not found (also called a 404 page).

The easiest way to fix this is to change your permalink structure back to the default setting so that your urls look something like http://www.hubbers.com/blog/?p=376. But this means that your urls will no longer contain loads of useful keywords that Google and other search engines love.

If you want to keep your SEO friendly urls then I suggest you take one of the following courses of action:

1. Don’t upgrade until they release version 2.6.1 which will contain a fix for this issue.

2. This one is for advance users only. Upgrade to version 2.6 and then go to the following link (http://trac.wordpress.org/changeset/8365) and make the simple edits to the three files shown there. Then upload those files over the top of the ones in the official release.

Personally if I knew what I know now before I upgraded to version 2.6 then I would definitely have waited for version 2.6.1

Another part of my birthday was dressing up for the day and going to the sell-out Royal Ascot. Lots of horses, hats and Pimms were the order of the day :)

As part of my birthday weekend celebration Rachel organised a meal at a French restaurant where the room you eat in is completely dark and the waiting staff are all blind. The food was great but the novelty value was excellent.

When you arrive at the restaurant you are asked to put your valuables and anything that might emit light like mobiles and cameras into lockers. Then you are organised into a line with your right arm on the shoulder of the person in front of you and the waiter leads you into the pitch black dining room and navigates you to your table. At the table you have to orientate yourself and those around you to the space around you. We shared a table with a group of random Aussies and before Rachel realised this she called out to the waitress that she thought she was on the wrong table. Once orientated we realised that we were all yelling at each other. Something about losing one sense made us amplify the others to compensate I guess. Eating and drinking was also a challenge as we couldn’t see what we were doing. Of critical importance was organising the distribution of the red and white wine and not mixing them up. The end result was a fair bit of spilled wine and people who wore white shirts feeling silly. At some stage we were delivered additional wine that we didn’t order (and thus didn’t have to pay for) so it all worked out in the end :)

All in all a fun night with good food. The French staff were poorly organised and often rude which just added to the hilarity of the evening.

This is my best photo of the evening.

Recently I went to Nimes in France for a couple of days work. Nimes is a beautiful little city with beautiful old French and Roman buildings in the middle of town.

I have been to Nimes before so after I finished up on Friday night I went to see some of the other cities in the south of France.

First stop was Avignon which is a town that the Popes once lived in when the murdering and the warring in Italy got a little too much for them. When things calmed down to the normal level or warring and murdering they went back to Rome. Avignon has dined out on the legacy of once being Pope HQ ever since and as such is a bit of a tourist trap.

My second stop, Montpelier was a young student town that has a really party feel to it. The party atmosphere was considerably helped along by the gay and lesbian mardi gra that happened to be in town the night I was there. The G&L’s certainly know how to party, maybe that is why organised religion hate them so much, pure jealousy.

Lastly on Sunday I went to Perpignan which smells like pee.

There are other examples of this out there on the web but I cna never find one when I need it so have added it to my blog for easy access.

Usage

Targeting elements by getElementById seems pretty universal.

document.getElementById('x').style.backgroundPosition = '0 -200px';

Bundy, Laura and I went to Norway for the bank holiday weekend.

We flew into Oslo and had a look around the capital city. The next morning we took a very scenic train over the mountains to beautiful Bergen. From there we took a ferry up the beautiful fjords to Flam and back over the mountains to Bergen.

Crazy things about Norway include the sun was setting at 22.40 when we were in Bergen and it rose again at 04.30! Also a refreshing cold beer at a bar can cost SEVEN POUNDS!!

Another of the products I worked on called Analytics won a French i-expo award.

Some senior manager who I have never met said:

“We are extremely proud to be acknowledged by professionals for the innovating aspect of our LexisNexis Dashboard solution. Our technical team along with our consultants has managed to put technology … “

Anyway more recognition for more hard work.

One of the projects I worked on called Total Patent won a Codie award for Best Online Science or Technology Service. The exact blurb follows:

“The 2008 CODiE Awards recognize those companies providing the best new technology products and services across a broad array of industries,” noted SIIA President Ken Wasch. “The awards and their winners are a testament to the power of technology to deliver innovative solutions to American businesses and consumers. SIIA congratulates all of the CODiE Award winners and nominees, whose innovation is essential for continuing America’s leadership in the global knowledge economy.”

The winners are viewable on this site http://siia.net/codies/2008/winners.asp.

Its good to know that someone recgnises my genus.

Recently I bought a new Canon Ixus 970 compact camera from Amazon when my old Ixus 900 went missing.

It is a great camera and has helped me take some photos that I am really proud of like this one from last weekends 40 mile charity cycle ride in the Cotswolds.

I looked at the camera again on Amazon today and the price had dropped by £22.13 so I emailed them and they replied within the hour that they would refund the difference. How cool is that?

This is what they said:

The discounts we offer for items on our website do vary from time to time. I’ve checked your order #026-3229170-8980331 and found that we now offer a greater discount on “Canon Digital IXUS 970 IS Compact Camera (10.0 MP, 5x Optical Zoom) 2.5″ High Resolution PureColor LCD II” than at the time you placed your order.

We are happy to refund the price difference in cases where less than thirty days have passed between the date on which an order was dispatched and the time that an item is reduced in price on our site. Therefore I have requested a refund of 22.13 GBP to your payment card. This amount reflects the difference between the price you were charged and the current discounted price. The refund should appear as a credit on your next bank statement.

Here are the steps you need to take to get a refund from Amazon in future

1. Any time you buy anything from Amazon (but not the sellers that trade on their site) make a note in your diary for 29 days later to check the price hasn’t changed.
2. If the price has changed contact them on this form telling them that the price has changed.
3. Wait for refund and spend on more stuff from Amazon
4. Go to step 1.

Happy shopping!

The participants were myself, Bundy, Laura and Grant on team Kiwi. Rachel was team Wallaby, Masha team Anti-Democracy and Karim and Alexia were team Baguette.

Respect to the people who did it with little or no preparation. Masha didn’t get her bike until the day before the ride and Karim and Alexia were “not told” that the ride would be 40 miles long and very hilly. As Alexia put it “Amongst our French friends we are considered the fit ones. But when we go out with you Kiwis …”