Monthly Archives: February 2013

WordPress Content Disappeared

While editing a WordPress post the other day I clicked on Add Media before I had saved or published the draft.

When I tried to upload the image I received the error WP couldn’t write to the disc. Odd. I then returned to editing and went to save a draft before I investigated what was going. Then I got the error that I was unable to save the past as the post did not exist. I returned to the the Dashboard and there were no posts or pages, only a few categories and comments.

I tried to look at the site’s home page but it returned the error the no content could be found in that category. All my posts were gone and no media was listed in the media library when I logged in again. The admin section worked fine, the page template displayed but there was no content for the pages.

The problem was a corrupt database. To solve the problem of WordPress content that has disappeared just run Repair on your tables using PHPMyAdmin and your site will come back to life.

Thunderbird does error message wrong

Thunderbird discovered that yahoo have changed their mail server’s POP3 behaviour, meaning you can’t leave mail on their server and download it locally. So it pops up the following message box:
POP3 has failed
This message box is app-modal. You can’t just fix the problem, you’ve got to take notes (a screenshot suffices) and then fix the problem. A bunch of faffing around, when it could have just said “Do you want your Server Settings automatically changed so that your mail can be fetched? Yes/No”. Or you could have this pile of technical information in a non-modal dialog box, and bring up the settings dialog for the user to solve the problem. Or just have this pile of technical information in a non-modal dialog box, so a screenshot isn’t necessary.

Or you could just make people angry, that works too.

Error code L6

If you have an ACS-15 digital scale beeping and flashing error code L6 on the LED display, I think it means “battery undercharged, and I refuse to work until it’s better charged. I don’t care if you plug me into the mains.”

And now Google knows. I wonder where I put the instructions?

Microsoft security bulletins using software “not licensed for commercial use”

I can’t help noticing that in the last couple of weeks, Microsoft’s security bulletin emails have been sent as PGP signed messages using a copy of PGP Desktop that is “not licensed for commercial use”.

...
This newsletter was sent by:
Microsoft Corporation
1 Microsoft Way
Redmond, Washington, USA
98052


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGP Desktop 10.2.0 (Build 1950) - not licensed for commercial use: www.pgp.com
Charset: utf-8

wsFVAwUBURwisxWqSyu+jsPhAQjyGQ//fj/k7Fb2zIr2gcINPs66n3SAEdNp41eO
mvTuT/knbPdZNhECQaFcQulaTgOgUDMCIVPT+NWTWBBuoqaXUuMhPKMaro6Bv0Be
...

I suppose a small struggling startup company like Microsoft can be excused for not paying to update keep their commercial licence up to date.

Netbook won’t run video-editing software: film at eleven

So apparently some of the computers bought with Digital Education Revolution money are underpowered for the software suite loaded on by state education departments.

The Lenovo netbooks handed out to NSW students in 2009 and 2010 sport a 1.66MHz Intel Atom N450 processor, 2GB of RAM, 160GB hard drive and 10-inch screen

A rig with these spacs this is my primary Windows machine, and for a while was the most powerful machine in my house.  It’s fine for not playing HD video or anything that challenging, although operating without the (maximum) 2 gig of RAM is a weedy beast (the raw boot memory consumption is 640 meg, leaving plenty of space to run Notepad or perhaps Windows Performance Monitor).  With 2 gig it runs browsers, spreadsheets and word processors without complaint, but:

A NSW education department spokesperson, in response to complaints from students that their free netbooks don’t have the performance to run Photoshop, said

“Slow performance has not been highlighted as a major issue with the laptops … As with all computers, after time they can slow down. The department regularly upgrades the versions of software and performs a tidy up to ensure smooth running of the devices. This helps avoid slow boot and operating times.”

A. Why are these kids whining about free computers?
B. What the hell do school kids need Photoshop for?
C. Why would the passing of time cause a computer to slow down?
D. How does upgrading software versions improve boot times or even operating times?

Maybe the “tidy up” is the important bit.