martinmurphy.com - Martin Murphy

Well, after my earlier problems with the automated Fantastico upgrade, I did the “manual” upgrade to my Wordpress installation. I was moving from 2.0.6 to 2.2.1 following the instructions from Wordpress.

It all went perfectly. Well done on the instructions (and the software).

At the end of the upgrade instructions, there’s a section called
Special note for Fantastico Upgrades, which mentions removing the DB_CHARSET and DB_COLLATE parameters if upgrading with Fantistico. Presumably the DB_CHARSET parameter is what affected the accented characters in my earlier upgrade attempt. So, if upgrading Wordpress using Fantistico, read the manual instructions! (pity I didn’t see this earlier.) I expect this will soon find itself into the Fantastico procedures, or at least the documentation, however I think I’ll stick with the manual upgrade in future.

I link this Lisp comic strip

After months of pondering, I eventually ordered a Macbook Pro. I went for the “low-end” model, 2.16GHz processor and 1GB of RAM. €450 didn’t really make sense for the next model up, and a 17inch screen is just too big for a laptop (in my opinion). Now I just have to wait until it arrives trying to supress the urge to check the UPS tracking website every 5 minutes.
When it does arrive I’ll have a bit of learning to do to get use to the Mac way of doing things. Talking of such things, if you’re a Mac user, what software do you use for email, spreadsheet, wordprocessor? I just noticed that Openoffice only runs in X11 for Mac at the moment - which would probably be fine for me anyway.

Just noticed this on Engadget. It’s a discussion about the security of doorlocks, it will need further investigation on my part.
The Lockdown: Locked, but maybe secure (part 1)

refers to the previous articles:

The Lockdown: Locked, but not secure (Part I) - Engadget

The Lockdown: Locked, but not secure (Part II) - Engadget

Decisions, decisions! Should I buy a smaller, cheaper MacBook or a 15″ MacBook Pro with its larger screen? (I don’t like 17″ laptops, they’re just too big)
Since I’ve written down the question, the answer is obvious — it depends on what I want to use it for! (unsurprisingly this is echoed by others). Space is probably only an issue on an airplane, and I don’t spend that much time travelling, so I’d be better off with the larger screen and faster processor.

I also noticed today that Apple have an educational discount that might come in handy.

I’ve just had a dreadful thought — Maybe I should be asking myself if I need a new laptop at all.