The LambCutlet Disorganisation

Oh memories from Brisbane and travelling half way round the world to visit Nykky for her 30th birthday! Admittedly 10 months ago, I was actually unsure whether to travel eastwards or westwards to Australia till the realisation is was about £1000 cheaper to fly all the way round the world via economy class, than fly on boring old business (though comfy) class from London to Brisbane and back!

Whilst I wasn’t actually going to fly by business class, the chance to be able to do all that travelling in one go (hey, I was footloose at the time!) was just too good to miss. Looking back, I’m glad I’ve done it though the route from Brisbane onwards compared to my original plan of “World Domination” worked out a little differently… All in a good way though! :D

Anyhow… without any further ado, the Photogasm™ of 6 days in Brisbane and journey onwards to Melbourne!

… with the three albums individually:

1. Brisbane, Queensland, Australia - Catching up with Nykky for her 30th birthday in Brisbane and where the planned fortnight-to-month long stop was cut to just 6 days! :P
2. Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane - A few random photos taken inside the Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane on South Bank Parklands
3. Brisbane, Queensland, Australia to Melbourne, Victoria, Australia - Heading down to Melbourne to catch up with 貝貝 for the first time since seeing her in Bangor, Cymru

Stay tuned and hold on to your knickers for more Photogasms™ from “Down under”! ;)

Yours truly announced just a few moments ago:

The last year or so, phpBB have continued in our long slog in conquering “Olympus”, so to celebrate the recent opening of the bug-tracker and the forthcoming Beta1 of “phpBB Olympus”, we’ve decided to release a special edition of Bertie Bear!

There shall only be 100 and you can pre-order them now, though if for some strange reason they are all pre-ordered before the end or March 2006 or before phpBB “Olympus” Beta1 is released (whichever is sooner), we’ll make available a further 100 phpBB “Conquering Olympus” Bertie Bears.

Hopefully, everyone that wanted to get their furry paws on a Bertie after bearing with us in taking such a long time in developing the next phpBB, shall not be disappointed! ;)

Want one to keep you warm whilst debugging that developmental phpBB3 MOD you’ve been slaving over? Perhaps a gift to the girlfriend whom just doesn’t quite understand how you can spend 14 hours each day on a computer administrating/moderating some “phpBB” forum? Maybe you don’t even care who we phpBB are, yet know Bertie Bear kicks some serious arse and now in urgent need to adopt one?

Well… you better go get before they are gone forever! :D

Meik “Acyd Burn” Sievertsen, phpBB’s Development Team Leader has just announced that the bug tracker for phpBB3 née Olympus is now open:

phpBB “Olympus”, otherwise known as phpBB 3.0.0 is nearing its initial beta release and we decided to open our bug tracker for reporting issues with CVS now. The aim of the opening of the bug tracker is so that advanced users already having a current CVS copy working or those able to cope with installing and maintianing a CVS copy, may now report problems they encountered.

We want to identify problems with “Olympus” now, before we release a public beta. This has the advantage of us being able to change the code without providing an update path and in turn then hopefully being able to provide an update path during the betas.

For Alphageeks and Übergeeks the above shouldn’t been an issue, though for those not quite at that level, yet salivating over the shiny new and forthcoming phpBB Olympus, the technical side of things are:

PHP version

Olympus supports versions ≥ 4.3.3, which includes 5.0.x & 5.1.x. Currently, 6.0-dev is just “compatible” for now and supportedness depends on PHP’s roadmap.

Supported DBMS

Though developed using MySQL, the wonders of a DBAL means phpBB Olympus already supports a wide number of databases:

• Firebird (firebird) - Firebird 1.5+/Interbase 7.1+
• MSSQL (mssql) - MSSQL 2000+
• MSSQL through ODBC (mssql_odbc) - MSSQL 2000+
• MySQL (mysql) - MySQL 3.23+/4.0+/4.1+
• MySQL4 (mysql4) - MySQL 4.0+/4.1+/5.0+
• MySQLi (mysqli) - MySQL 4.1+/5.0+
• Oracle (oracle)
• PostgreSQL (postgres) - PostgreSQL 7.3+
• SQLite (sqlite)

Of course, after beavering away at the development of phpBB Olympus for such a long time, there are brand new features as well as enhancements with respect to the current 2.0.x for users, moderators and administrators!

Shiny, brand-spanking new stuff are:

Attachments

• Attachments in posts and PMs
• Automatic image thumbnails
• Attach images, documents, video streams, archives
• Multiple attachments allowed
• Display attachments inline

Unlimited Subforums

• Create unlimited subforums
• Display active topics of all subforums

Custom BBCodes

• Create your own BBCodes
• Add buttons to posting screen

Custom Profile Fields

• Add new fields on user profiles
• Display them at registration
• Display them on the profile view
• Hide new profile fields
• Support different data types

User Control Panel

• Manage subscribed topics & forums
• Manage bookmarked topics
• Manage saved drafts
• Manage private messages
• Manage usergroups
• Manage friends and foes
• Manage attachments

New Moderating Tools

• Moderation queue
• Topic merging
• Topic copying
• Locking of single posts
• Topic history

Caching and performance

• Templates are cached
• Permissions are cached
• Forum config is cached
• Database queries are cached

Friends and Foes

• Add other members as friends or foes
• Posts by foes are hidden
• Friends are shown in friends list

Warnings and Reports

• Users can report topics and posts
• Moderators can warn users

More Improvements For Users

• Bookmark topics
• Subscribe to forums
• Jabber/xmpp support for notifications
• Mail or print topics
• “You got beaten at posting notification”

More Improvements For Admins

• Global announcements
• Display forum rules on forum page
• Prune inactive users
• User, moderator, admin and error logs
• Language pack editing
• User notes
• Detect search spiders

Improvements come in the way of:

Private Messages

• Send to multiple recipients
• Send to groups
• Send Blind Carbon Copies (BCC)
• Forward messages
• Friends list works as address book
• Attach files to PMs
• PM Drafts
• Conversation view
• PM folders
• PM filters
• Export Messages

Registration

• Enable/disable COPPA
• Limit registration attempts
• Set min/max username length
• Set min/max password length
• Limit username chars
• Set password complexity requirements
• Force password change
• Allow/disallow e-mail address re-usage

Search

• Search inside topics
• Select multiple forums and categories to search
• Search within topic titles only
• Search within first post of a topic only
• Set search flood interval to limit server load
• Select search backend (mysql/phpbb)

Admin Control Panel

• More flexible and accessible tab layout
• Modular system allows for easy extensions
• Allow/disallow access to different functions
• New founder status for the board creator
• Completely re-structured for better handling

Moderator Control Panel

• Manage the moderation queue
• List of warnings and reports
• Forum, topic, and post detail views

Polls

• Multiple options per user
• Allow/disallow vote change

Usergroups

• Multiple group leaders
• Set display colour for group members
• Set group rank
• Set group avatar

Profile View

• More user statistics on profile view
• Signature on profile view
• Usergroups on profile view

Permissions

• More powerful and flexible permission system
• Simple permissions through roles
• Fine-tune admin and moderator access
• Super moderators

User Management

• Advanced user editing interface
• Edit user preferences
• Edit group memberships
• Show and edit all attachments of a user
• View permissions directly

More Improvements

• Moderator and admin control panels
• Set temporary bans
• Comments for bans
• Manage group memberships in the ACP
• Search members by all attributes

The most impressive thing is even though these lists are long, the listed changes are non-exhaustive! Furthermore, phpBB Olympus is able to add these new features yet be faster and easier on the server compared to the 2.0.x line.

Anyway, Beta1 is not that far off now and there shall be a few more suprises of different sorts between now, Beta1 and the final release of phpBB “Olympus” 3.0.0! Happy pre-Beta testing and see you at the phpBB Development Board that is Area51! ;)

The short 5 days in Hawai‘i during the middle of July 2005 were memorable for a whole multitude of reasons. Having been accustomed to chilly Europe, the 30°C to 37°C day time temperatures coupled with humidity of 80% to 90% gave rise to heat indexes (how hot it feels) of a high 37°C to an utterly insane 75°C. The only respite was that like Ísland, there were frequent downpours of rain which cooled everything down!

Whilst I was in Vancouver and planning where I should stay in Hawai‘i, my plan to be “off the beaten track” could not have been better realised. I managed to find Hedonisia Hawaii whom offered budget lodgings in the middle of jungle, where the nearest town Pāhoa is some 8 kilometers away. As I don’t drive, the only way I could get around was by bicycle, which at that point was something I had not done for the best part of 6 years.

So it goes without saying I am still pretty impressed with myself in having covered over 200 kilometers as I cycled about to Pāhoa, Hilo, Kapoha and Kaimū! The most heroic effort would have been the 37 kilometer slog up to Hilo on a 36+kg excuse of a “bicycle” probably purchased from Walkmart. I figured there would be a shop where I could hire a decent steed and found just the thing by the way of Da Kine Bikes located on Furneaux Lane.

Now that I had two bikes, the plan was to catch the evening bus back to Pāhoa and cycle the remaining few kilometers. Sod’s Law would dictate I managed to miss the last bus despite arriving at the bus stop 5 minutes before its timetabled departure time! Curse you Walmart for taking far longer than you should have when I was trying to purchase some proper bicycle lights!

Repeated attempts to get a lift back in the direction of Pāhoa proved fruitless… so what I finally did (now that it was close to midnight) was to cycle the lighter hired steed using just the one hand whilst towing the 36+kg piece of shit with my other one. All 37 kilometers back to Hedonisia Hawaii! I arrived utterly shagged out sometime around 3 in the morning… Looking back, it’s a miracle I’m here to tell the tale! :D

Oh and here are the photos I vaguely remembered to take whilst I wasn’t dying from heat exhaustion! ;)

I sneaked in the journey from Hawai‘i to Brisbane, Australia too as it marked the point I had travelled further than half way round the world plus it was the day where the 18th of July lasted just a few ten minutes by virtue of having passed the International Date Line heading westwards! :D

Three flights in 30-ish hours took their toll on me though, but at least I managed to arrive in time for Nykky’s birthday on the 22nd of July after flight cancellation shenanigans… All albums once again:

1. Vancouver BC, Canada to Hilo, Hawai‘i, USA - The journey from Vancouver, BC to Hilo, Hawai‘i… the only state of America aside from Alaska I’d willingly go to of my own free will! :P
2. Hawai‘i, USA - A rather barmy 5 days at Hedonisia in Hawai‘i mostly bicycling around Pāhoa, Hilo, Kapoha and Kaimū
3. Hawai‘i, USA to Brisbane, Queensland, Australia - The joys of crossing the International Date Line and hopping from the 17th of July to 19th of July as I travel from Hawai‘i, USA to Brisbane, Australia via Nadi, Fiji and Auckland, New Zealand!

Look out for further Photogasms™ of my antics down under in Australia! ;)

I think we can dub today as “Sysadmin Black Friday”! First thing for me today was an outage at OSUOSL (that is still being investigated) circa 11:34 UTC which took offline phpBB as well as all other hosted projects such as Freenode, Mozillazine, Drupal, Gentoo, et cetera. I’ve got phpBB back online now and Sysadmins at OSUOSL and other projects are busily beavering away getting their sites back up. :D

Ubuntu made a slight boo-boo in version 5.10 née “Breezy Badger” as the installation log file stored the root password in plain text, that was world readable since the file’s permission bits were set 0644. Patches for said distro are already available to fix the moderately critical brain-fart.

Windows users whom have McAfee as their anti-virus of choice faired little better as the virus definition update DAT 4715 caused a large number of false positives of the W95/CTX virus in executables ranging from Microsoft Office, Dell OpenManage, Cygwin, perl, Sysinternals pstools suite, and so on. McAfee today have release a further definition update by the way of DAT 4716 which should solve the false positive issue, plus release of a tool (buried somewhere on their homepage) to automagically restore mis-quarantined files.

Roll-on System Administrator Appreciation Day! ;)

For you regular readers (I count all… ooh, 3 of you?) and know the fact I didn’t get to get to 香港 (Hong Kong) till the 17th of August, 2005, are probably wondering why the Photogasms™ from Hawai‘i, Australia and Singapore ones are not the next sets in line as the last ones were of a Canadian flavour!

Well, it’s quite simple really… a number of photos had already been published from the time I was in 香港 (Hong Kong) and of all remaining sets, they were also the most ready. Further more, I am the god-king of my own blog and can do as I damn please! :D Nothing to do with the fact Susi has been prodding me to hurry up… no Guv’nor, most certainly not! ;)

I’m pretty sure the 600-ish photos shall keep even the laziest of you at work with plenty to waste company time with (not that I suggest you do such things of course! ;)) and I hope if’ll give a small flavour of why I think 香港 (Hong Kong) is one of the most arse-kickingly-cool places in the world. :D

Right… deep breath, and hold on to your knickers! :P

The albums individually are:

1. 香港 (Hong Kong) - The mammoth stop in 香港 (Hong Kong) from the 17th of August till the 5th of November
2. My 27th birthday back in 香港 (Hong Kong) - Birthday celebrations for me with family and friends in Hong Kong… the last would have been my 12th way back in 6th September, 1990!
3. Mid-Autumn Festival celebrations in Moorse Park - Some photos of myself with my cousins, nephew and a few other of their friends down at Moorse Park with laterns and candles, enjoying a Mid-Autumn Festival evening out!
4. 二零零五年中秋節大坑舞火龍 (The 2005 Mid-Autumn Tai Hang Fire Dragon Dance) - A unique event of Hong Kong, the Fire Dragon Dance was originated in Tai Hang of Causeway Bay circa 1880 in an effort to ward off evil spirits that were harming the Tai Hang village!
5. Mid-Autumn Festival lantern display at Victoria Park - Some photos of the lanterns in Victoria Park after seeing the Tai Hang Fire Dragon Dance
6. Flagstaff House Museum of Tea Ware, Hong Kong Park, Central - A visit to the permanent exhibition and the temporary exhibition of “Tea Ware by Hong Long Potters 2005″
7. 沙田 (Sha Tin) - A day trip up to 沙田 (Sha Tin) in 新界 (the New Territories) of 香港 (Hong Kong) to visit 萬佛寺 (The 10 Thousand Buddha Monastery) with an unexpected detour to 寶福山 (Po Fook Hill)
8. 香港 (Hong Kong) to 中國大陸雲南省麗江 (Lijiang, Yunnan Province, Mainland China) - Off to “South of the Clouds” as I leave behind 香港 (Hong Kong) and head to my first stop at 雲南省麗江 (Lijiang, Yunnan Province)!

There’s still another 300-ish just from the Hong Kong Museum of Art, though I’ll leave that to after the ones from Hawai‘i, Australia and Singapore! My reasoning is that it’ll actually follow on quite nicely from them and lead into the next sets in 雲南 (Yunnan)! :D

Till the next Photogasm™… ;)

Updated: 2006-06-07 00:25 UTC by Jonathan Stanley

The ones from the Hong Kong Museum of Art shall have to wait for another day, as the next schedualed Photogasms™ shall be from “South of the Clouds”, right from 中國大陸雲南省 (Yunnan Province, Mainland China)!