Occasionally readers of my Wiki or Code want to comment on what I’ve published but I don’t have a suitable way for them to contact me. So I have opened a small forum to capture any feedback or comments from readers, this way anyone can to benefit from what gets discussed.

• Forum

I rarely update my blog which is stupid because I add and amend stuff on my Wiki on a daily basis and I should really post updates on the stuff I put in there. So I am going to start posting to my blog more often, I’ll be starting later with details about how to install Adobe AIR on 32-bit and 64-bit Ubuntu Hardy and Intrepid.

First of all, I have disabled comments on my blog. Jaws has spam protection and captachs but both implementations suck. This site doesn’t generate much feedback so disabling comments altogether is not really a problem.

I haven’t updated the site recently and here is why. The 0.6.x release of Jaws is very bug riden and I still haven’t found anything else which fully meets my needs for managing my own web content. Therefore for the last couple of months I have been working on an open source CMS of my own called R3-born. More details to follow about that soon, but you can find the project over at Sourceforge, don’t expect anything to work (although it does for the most part) it is pre-alpha and unreleased. SVN is the only way to snag the source.

So the content on this site is pretty much frozen now until I get R3-born stable enough to migrate to, at which time I will update my content.

I managed to accidentally purge my database of all the blog entries and comments today. I didn’t have a backup handy so I had to restore the blogs entries from an RSS exported I had on the server. Sadly I have lost the comments which various people had posted on the site, sorry about that. Anyway, at least the blogs are restored.

Tip – Never decide to clean up and optimize your databases after you have been out for a liquid lunch!

Finally my site is back. Don’t know why it was broken in the first place, but thanks to Chris for finding a nice workaround. I can now go about getting some of my articles updated…

7 years on the web, Happy Birthday to my website

Phew! I have finally got all my scraps of Linux related documentation I had scattered around various text files and web pages consolidated to the articles section of this website.

Some articles are not public yet and of those that are public a good deal are a bit thin on the ground. The articles are really for my own reference, I only publish them in case someone else finds something useful amongst them. I am off for a drink…

I have completed a new website for my in-laws to help promote the sale of their house. Bell Bridge is a 18th century canal side property with barn conversion, cottage, park home caravan site and one acre land located near Lichfield in Staffordshire England.

Update Sept 2007 – Links removed, as the house is now sold and the site shutdown.

Yesterday was a sad day. I finally notified the core Minerva developers that I am leaving the project. Given that I started the project a few years back it was not a decision I made lightly. I have a couple of reasons for leaving the project, the main one being that I just do not have the time available to effectively lead or contribute to the project. All open source projects require good leadership and I haven’t been able to provide that for most of 2005. It is with the best interests of Minerva in mind that I decided to leave.

However, Minerva is in very good hands and is under active development, with Dave and Chris leading the effort. I wish all the Minerva developers and users every success with the upcoming release of R4, it is a marvelous achievement and I am sure will prove to be very successful.

Errm, about me running Jaws Don’t take it as a snub guys. I just don’t need something as powerful as Minerva for this site anymore. I just need a blog and I don’t have time to write a blog module for Minerva at the moment. I will be keeping an eye on R4 development, and if time permits, I may contribute some blocks and modules in the future. Until then, good luck and make me proud!