influenced dot net

Today influenced.net’s host has had its PHP module upgraded from version 4.x to 5.1.1.. this broke a couple of things, most notably PHP-Markdown

I proceeded to download the latest version of PHP-Markdown but still, the issue remained..

The fix was to modify the _DoCodeBlocks function as follows:

function _DoCodeBlocks($text) {
#
#   Process Markdown `<pre><code>` blocks.
#
global $md_tab_width;

$text = preg_replace_callback('{
(?:nn|A)
((?:(?:[ ]{'.$md_tab_width.'}|t).*n+)+)
((?=^[ ]{0,'.$md_tab_width.'}S)|Z)
}xm',
'_DoCodeBlocks_callback', $text);

return $text;
}

I don’t exactly know why this change worked, it seems something wasn’t being escaped properly

I have removed the forums for the time being as they weren’t really used anyway and a recent upgrade to MySQL 5 caused some malfunctions..

Soon I will be implementing new forums, probably with phpBB as vBulletin is a little overkill for their job at the moment

Hopefully this will also aid in getting the old crap removed from Google – it remained because the new forums wouldn’t throw a 404 for a missing topic etc, so Google still thought the index topic links were valid

I was pleased to hear that Firefox 1.5 will be released today, however I noticed that furltools wasn’t working with it..

Delving into the code it seems that since recent builds of Firefox 1.5 force xpcnativewrappers=yes by default, so furl ceased to work properly in its current incarnation..

I’ve added a chrome.manifest to disable xpcnativewrappers which lets furl function as per normal with its existing code

The modified furl extension is available here:
furl 0.61

I emailed the furl devs beforehand regarding a new version of furltools but haven’t recieved a response yet (because it was only a few hours ago!)

Hopefully this will fill the void for fellow furl addicts until an official version is released for Firefox 1.5

A problem I encounter many times a day is trying to find some information that I’ve read recently on the net..

• Maybe I bookmarked it via traditional browser bookmarks, but which PC is it on?
• Maybe I bookmarked it via del.icio.us.. but what tags did I give it? The site may be down or moved
• Maybe I starred it in google reader.. but there’s no way to search your starred items (very annoying)
• Maybe I slogger‘d it.. but there’s no decent way to synchronize your slogs amongst multiple machines.. slogger also falls down with frames etc sometimes, not logging the stuff you want
• Maybe I ScrapBook‘d it.. but again – no decent way to synchronize your ScrapBook’s on multiple machines

I know there’s USB sticks etc.. but I want them to be online.. all the time! Instantly accessible wherever I am

Enter furl! I’m angry that I didn’t know about this amazing service early, it truly rocks my socks off..

It’s free to use and you get 5GB of space to store your saved pages.. you can tag them, make them private, share them, visit the original URL, it even has a Firefox extension! magnificent..

I actually started a Win32 tray application today to aid in synchronizing ScrapBook entries via FTP/SFTP/HTTP, but I guess I’ll put that on hold for the moment as furl has currently answered most of my needs..

The only problems I can see currently:

• furl.net might be down when you want the info
• furl.net might stop the service

For me, a furl.net-esque system that could be run on any machine (e.g. private webserver) would be the best thing possible at the moment

A thread just popped up on talkaudio regarding the ‘best search engine’.. I thought I’d mirror my post here as it’s something that’s been increasingly bothering me

Recently, I have been finding googles search results leaving a bit to be desired.. I have been getting more relevant results from MSN/Yahoo..

I am a big google fan but the fact is that you get some really popular blogger who mentions a certain phrase and they’ll shoot up to the #1 spot for that phrase in no time – it’s just not right!

I still use google as my primary search engine but am increasingly turning to MSN/Yahoo when google gives me crap results (becoming more common)

Some people have too much time on their hands…

I’ve not had much time to post recently due to numerous time sinks that I’ve been involved with recently, however I should be back on track very soon..

I recently purchased the domain ColourBase.com for hosting my colour formulation database software and probably a new web based interface for it… I AJAX’d the old interface a long time ago now, before AJAX was AJAX!

I guess you’ll just have to watch this space until it’s done

Update: a small plug for my dads new domain: Len Hutton. There’s nothing there at the moment but I’m sure there will be soon

Where has it gone?

It seems to have disappeared from the php.net downloads page for some reason..

I’ve found it again though @ snaps.php.net

Looks like I’ll be using the mysql php extension for the time being on hmgpaint.co.uk as the mysqli extension only works with php 5.1 and you can’t have both installed apparently on linux (libmysqlclient12 vs libmysqlclient14)