Mark’s Blog

Well hello there, it’s been about 4 months since I last posted anything here, and even longer than that since I last posted something semi-useful.

If you are still subscribed, I thank you and hopefully I’ll find the time in the future to post a little more. It’s been a busy few months, some of which I can tell you here and some of which I can’t ;).

The Grand Annual Tour took us to Egypt this year, the resulting photos of which you can see on Flickr. I’ve finally got them uploaded, some 2 months after we re-entered Blighty.

March saw me take my first steps to terrorising the British roads by taking my CBT (Compulsory Bike Training).  I’m happy to say that I passed and so am now scooting around town, it certainly beats walking ;).

There is also much to look forward to in the future. As summer approaches and the dreaded Exam season starts for us students here in the UK it’ll be revising for those and not a lot else that takes up my time. There is also, of course, Londonvasion that is happening in June. If you are unsure what Londonvasion is, where have you been?!? Yuriy explains it better in the topic here however suffice to say it is going to be great meeting both team and community members of the phpBB supporters base.

Thanks for subscribing and I hope to be posting something a little sooner than 4 months time ;).

We’ve relaunched a new site on the daemonwebservices.net domain. The site basically explains what we do, how we do it and why you should choose us. It also explains a little bit about each of our sub-brands. It’s based on Drupal, which I’ve found to be a rather good content management system since I’ve been using it.

After many many years of development and the community asking “When will it be released”, the phpBB team are happy to announce a final release date for phpBB 3.0.0 “Olympus” Gold. Keep the 13th December 2007 at 17:00 GMT free in your diaries because that’s when the release will be hitting the site!

Also, a very happy 7th birthday to phpBB, as 1.0.0 was released on the 9th December 2000. Oh how time flies .

I’ve finally upgraded this site to WordPress 2.3 and everything appears to be working fine for the moment. If you do find a bug you are more than welcome to contact me about it.

Test post from Microsoft Word 2007.

Just to let all know I’ve added the best selection of photos from my trip to Florida in January 2006. Photos include the Kennedy Space Centre, Disney World and a balloon trip that I took on a pretty cold Florida morning.

The team have got back together again and recorded episode 2 of the phpBB Podcast. There are various items for discussion including Spam Vs. Security, AJAX & Javascript and talk about Micheal handing over the reigns to NeoThermic who is the new Support Team Leader over at phpBB.com. Certainly worth taking the time out to listen, whether you are just starting out in phpBB or are an experienced user.

Looks like O2 have won the war and got the exclusivity of the iPhone on their network. Even when it launches it’ll be a small fortune to get one (£269) as well as signing up to an 18 month contract. Thanks Apple, but I think I’ll stick with my current provider and contract.

I’d really like to get a bit “open sourcey” with my phone as well, hopefully by getting an OpenMoko phone when they hit consumer production. I know it may not be as flashy as the iPhone but the idea of running a Linux OS on a phone seems pretty cool to me.

A pretty quick turnaround but I’m now an official WestWind pilot. Currently flying in Cat 1 but hopefully with a little time I’ll progress up the training ladder and should be flying the bigger stuff soon.

Okay, time to admit that I’m a bit of a flight simulator geek. It’s always been a soft spot for me since I played Microsoft Flight Simulator 98 quite a few years ago now. However, I’ve taken the step forward and applied to join a Virtual Airline.

Should be a pretty interesting experience so hopefully I’ll get accepted.

We have opened up some jobs in the modifications team over at phpBB.com. The full details are located on the main website but if you have experience with phpBB and think you can contribute we want to hear from you!

It’s really easy to apply and you may just be showing off the stylish MOD Team rank under your username soon.

I’m sure everyone will join me wherever they are in the world in mourning the 6 year anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks. While I don’t particularly agree on some of the politics that followed I’m sure we’re all united in wishing those families that lost loved ones the very best of luck in these circumstances.

It’s been basically 6 months since I took the plunge and ordered Windows Vista Ultimate, and during that time my opinion on Microsofts latest “Wow” OS has varied greatly.

Initially I was very excited to have the system up and running and was glad to see that 99% of the software that I use ran natively on it. While I did need Compatibility Mode a couple of times for some pretty dated software that I didn’t use much it was all well and good.

Drivers didn’t appear to be an issue either, until I tried to install my PCI TV Tuner Card. Now granted, it isn’t the highest quality card on the market but it was available when I needed it and it also works pretty well. However, every time I tried to get Media Center to tune in TV stations it would get about as far as the BBC channels (basically at the start of the tune) and then BSoD on me.

Eventually out of pure frustration I decided to remove the tuner card and go back to the old favourite, a standard TV.

Apart from that little issue (more a slow releasing driver issue than anything else) my experience with Vista has been good. I like it, it works and is suitable for what I need.

However, I do hope that Vista is my last Microsoft OS. Hopefully by the time Vienna hits the shelves I’ll be fully converted to Ubuntu or some other Linux varient. I feel that is the way that we should be heading; towards open standards and openness rather than further away from it, which I fear is what Vienna will do.

Had a bit of spare cash this month so I’ve decided to finally get around to ordering that Flickr Pro account. It certainly is a lot easier (and cheaper) than hosting photos on some sort of PHP gallery system on the site and for the money it seems worth it.

If you haven’t already, check out the Flickr Gallery. It contains various images including those from my trip to Cuba earlier this year which I still am getting around to uploading.

A couple of days ago the WordPress team released version 2.2.3, which contains a couple of security updates and a few fixes. If you are running a WordPress blog it is recommended that you upgrade as soon as possible.