I know I don’t get many comments here but a few days ago I got his with a metric fuckton of spam that was that bad our host actually shut down my site until I could make a few changes to shore up the defences.

One of the things I disabled was comments but they should hopefully be back to normal now. We’ll se how things go on the spam front though

Testing testing 1…2…3…

I want to do something more with my links. Theres alot more that i want to add to it but im limied with regards to space if I continue using the sidebar. Not entirely sure i can get a full page of links like that without rewriting half the code though

Thanks to my delays in updating the photoblog I’m getting rid of the rss feed on the side panel. I’ll just make a post on here when I upload anything as its usually 3-4 days worth at a time.

I’ll stick my twitter feed in its place for a few days and see how that works though.

After seeing Dave’s changes to his blog I’ve got to thinking.

I’ve been adding wee tweaks and changes to my current template for ages and to be honest I dont think it’s really arranged all that well. I really dont want to get rid of my header but I dont think I have the psd file kicking about anymore

With the photoblog coming in and my links page looking to be rejigged I’m wondering what actually needs done and what I’d like to do. If it can be done on the existing template then great but I’m not feeling hopefull.

Just spent the best part of an hour messing about with the CSS for the template and wondering why nothing was changing on the site. I had a major problem with the placing of the graphics and with the b2e folk changing some code in the template files but I managed to fix most things until I came to the CSS.

Turns out I was editing the local copy of the stylesheet rather than the one on the server like I intended.
D’uh!

Five minutes later and its all fixed again

Finally got fed up enough of all the spam comments I get to try the most recent upgrade of b2evolution.

Its taken me an hour just to upload the damn files and get the database working so I’ll work on the template some other time

It was just one of those days yesterday where very little would go right and if it did it wasn’t without its hurdles.

Turned up at work for some OT and the network in my office was down. Moved to another office and we couldnt print for ages because the spooler wouldnt recognise us. Then i got home…

For those not following my forum I bought a chip for my Xbox from someone in work but they kept forgetting to bring it in. Mark offered to bring over his star/torque? screwdrivers on teh night before he went to London but I said ‘Nah the guys not going to bring it in on friday” so told him not to bother. The thing duely turned up on my desk on friday lunchtime with the 12 noon mail delivery. I tried to get a loan of Stoo’s screwdriver set but we just kept missing each other so after work yesterday I went to Maplins to see if they sold the ones I needed. Their website didnt seem to have any but I thought I’d try the store anyway. And lo and behold I found a set for 5 quid that had the bits I needed.

Got home and stripped the case from the xbox and went about installing the chip. It’s supposed to take 10 mins but it took slightly longer than that…

For a start my screwdriver was slightly too wide to reach the screws holding the DVD drive in place so after 15 minutes of hunting yet again for my old set of screwdrivers that wouldnt have fitted I went with bending the case and shielding slightly to get the screwdriver into place. It all went back into shape so nothing seems to have broken thankfully.

Then I managed to put the solderless adaptor into place and stick the chip on top and nothing. It took me several reattempts and 30 mins on the manufacturers forum to find out that you had to have the switch attached or it wouldnt work at all.

So I attached the switch and still nothing. I took it apart and reinstalled it another 2 times before realising the click I needed to hear on the D0 wire wasn’t what I had been hearing/feeling. I then managed to bend the wire completelythe wrong way when I put to much force into it but it was still in one piece. Managed to get it in though and still it wouldnt bloody work!

I then spent a good hour on the forum trying to find out why the LED’s werent lighting up and it all came down to the adaptor not sitting correctly so I took it all apart yet again. This time I installed the ‘rivets’ for a better connection but still nothing so I went back and rechecked the instructions…
It was only then that I realised that I hadnt been placing the chip on the adaptor correctly after my first try. Finding this out gave me new hope but after reseating the chip the LED only came on briefly and FRAG’d on me.

It seems that not only had I not pushed the adaptor fully down which was making the connection wobbly at teh best of times but small slivers of metal from the new screw that held the adaptor in had got onto the tracks and were shorting the chip out. Thankfully it didnt fry anything on the actual xbox though. Five minutes of careful cleaning with cotton buds and nail polish remover and the motherboard and connections were as clean as I was probably going to get them.

And it worked! Two minutes later I had teh chips bios flashed and ready to go. Unfortunately I have no blank CD’s or CDRW’s to get a dashboard onto the xbox so that will need to wait a few days.

Over all…that took me three long bloody hours. If it wasn’t for the cup of tea half way through though I think the xbox would have been launched out of the living room window.

Now onto getting it set up as a media centre

Just thought I’d finally get my wishlists linked up to my blog. Cant get decent access from work to change the template so I’m dumping them in teh category list on the right hand side for now

Made a start on the new Bobz Squad website yesterday. Joomla is nice but for some reason alot of its functions I cant access from work despite being able to do it from Mambo. Now considering Joomla V1 is virtually a rebranding of Mambo with a cuople of tweaks to make it look slightly diferent you’d think think there wouldnt be a problem.

As far as I can work out it works fine everywhere apart from my PC at work. Which suggests its something to do with Java…somethign I cant getinstalled on my work PC no matter what. What exactly have they changed though? I can upload new components/modules/templates as well as add new things to menus etc…I just cant add anything that requires me to input text. Seems it doesnt want me to save anything to the site that isnt zipped and you cant add pages like that

Anyway…got a basic template sorted out. I’ve managed to get my 2 column template that ive been trying to do for ages as well as getting me a full width header. The colours will change and the graphics tweeked but the general look and feel probabley wont change much.

Now if I could only find some decent ideas and pics to use for the header and for the pic on the front page so it doesnt look like we’re a bunch or terrorist wannabe’s.