Convergency

I had to get my head around this for WP standard work recently, and thought I would combine it with some WP-MU experimentation.

Current release (at time of writing) WP-MU 2.6.5

Page on WP Codex on setting up WP with Subversion (not MU specific, but you can usually add ‘-mu’ on the end of WP

So if your host, like mine, supports SVN , navigate to your chosen directory and create a subdirectory if you want one:

mkdir blog
cd blog
svn co http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress-mu/tags/2.6.5/ .

The space AND dot is VERY important (I did forget it a few times while trying this out)

Create new database on Dreamhost (or whatever host you use):

Make a note of the details and proceed with a standard install procedure or edit your wp-config.php if you would rather.

Updating WP-MU to run off a later tag

cd blog/

svn sw http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress-mu/tags/2.7/ .

or off ‘trunk’ (not recommended for production environments)

svn sw http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress-mu/trunk/ .

This will replace all files that were associated with the tagged files from the repository (in our example, from 2.6.5) to the newer version, in this case 2.7 (at the time of writing WP 2.7 is out but not WP-MU 2.7).

Easy peasy!

Just saw this story about an energy generating revolving door tweeted by inhabitat - what a great idea!

When are we going to see energy generating childrens playgrounds and gyms that generate power rather than use it?

I just saw this video which was referred to on Keith’s ‘Unsuitablog‘

I love this video - and it pretty much sums up why I feel so uncomfortable with the level of greenwash that we are subjected to on a daily basis. The whole ‘civilisation’ game is a very finite game and is defined by how long we can get away with unbridled over consumption, relentless extraction of resources and exploitation of labour. Industrial civilisation is pretty much doomed to be no more than a blink of an eye in terms of how long it will be around in the history of Homo sapiens but it could well be the very last chance we get. In our haste to convert everything to liquid assets and to extract every last drop of energy we can dig out of the ground - we are probably going to royally fisk it (it being earth) up for our unfortunate successive generations who will be forced to deal with our incredible short sightedness.

Today, some of our main arguments are whether or not it is worth our while to turn off domestic appliances when not in use, or whether we should eat food flown in from the other side of the planet, or whether wind-turbines have a place in our countryside…

If we carry on asking stupid questions like those, in the future the big question will be whether we reproduce to preserve the human race or whether not to bother in order to preserve the rest of life on earth and quite possibly the solar system and universe at large!

Time to start honing those self-sufficiency skills?

Here’s a Ferengi quote for Trekkies:

Quark: I think I figured out why humans don’t like Ferengi—
Sisko: Not now, Quark.
Quark: The way I see it, humans used to be a lot like Ferengi: greedy, acquisitive, interested only in profit. We’re a constant reminder of a part of your past you’d like to forget.
Sisko: Quark, we don’t have time for this.
Quark: You’re overlooking something, Commander. Humans used to be a lot worse than Ferengi. Slavery, concentration camps, interstellar war… we have nothing in our past that approaches that kind of barbarism. You see? We’re nothing like you… we’re better.

I have been using a great little Wordpress plug-in called ‘Quotes Collection‘ on this blog - it’s great for grabbing those quotes you see popping up over the web and adding them to your blog. It is my favourite aspect of my own blog actually - I like being inspired, challenged or reminded of important concepts and values by great thinkers.

You can get a sample of them by clicking on ‘Next Quote’ over there on the left- it doesn’t need to reload the page due to some javascript trickery (and you should see a non-javascript degraded version if you you don’t have js turned on).

Anyway - I want your quotes! What is your favourite quote? What makes a good quote?

If you have a favourite quote that covers anything in the category/tag cloud - please post them here and I will add them to my quotes collection… and others can grab them too.

I just saw this and was moved, no introduction needed really… even if it is ‘rooted’ in the work of the Nike Foundation… (time to put some sweat shop profits to good use?).

By Girleffect.org

• now when i tweet - it changes my facebook status too #

• has just installed twitter tools for wordpress.. look out twitterland! #
• getting confused by SVN CLI while playing with wordpress-mu and buddypress #

I am not the only one fretting about over-specialisation it seems. I was pointed to Sharon Astyk’s ‘Casaubon’s Book’ blog by this Eating the Seasons post, which mentioned the book Depletion and Abundance: Life on the New Home Front.

The post that I thought might be of interest is this one about the ‘gaps’ in our self-sufficiency skill set. It is an interesting challenge, and one I am already engaged in constantly! Not necessarily because of peak-oil, but perhaps more to do with John Seymour and maybe Felicity Kendal.

For the past couple of years I have been trying to grow stuff (I have an allotment now even, but need to get a bike and somewhere to store tools & shelter me from the rain.. look out shed alert!).

I recently fixed my daughter’s bike which had suffered a horrendous chain tangling accident (involved the use of a chain link removal tool!).

I have wrestled with basic plumbing (I can plumb in a dish washer or washing machine, replace washers in taps, unblock drains etc), I sweep my own chimney, split logs, make kindling and light a fire without a firelighter (i do want a firesteel though and must have a go at friction fire lighting).

We make our own compost, I collected seed from some of the veg and herbs I grew this year, and we have eaten stuff I grew (just not as much as I know we can).

My wife has always been a great cook, but she has been whipping up some delicious veg box meals, and has recently become a bit of a compulsive masterbaker! She can now pretty much cook any recipe, but her cakes and cookies and sweet treats are better than anything you buy in the shops. I am a competent cook too, just not as dedicated, or perhaps committed…

That was quite cathartic, we/I have made progress. But here is my list (to be expanded upon and hopefully crossed off):

• I many have gaps in my DIY skills - we need to decorate (we know how to do that - we just enjoy sitting down after work ;)) and erect many, many shelves and stuff
• Lots of room for improvement in the horticultural field. I just need to get out there more. Weeds, slugs, spider mite, blight and cabbage white butterflys are on my hit list - I generally want to grow gluts, cancel the veg box and learn to preserve
• I want to learn how to use a chainsaw and more tree related stuff (I have been planting tree seeds recently - want to go collect some acorns, but also want to learn how to fell and coppice etc)
• I want to learn to play an instrument - one that doesn’t need plugging in
• I always loved chiseling and whittling wood as a kid - I want to rekindle that and turn it into something useful (like a breadboard or a wooden spoon)
• I want to learn more bushcraft and foraging skills

I have an abundance of diverse technical skills and I blame that for my lack of diversification and competence in more practical skills, but at least it is doing something tangible to help - it is paying the rent and putting food on the table, and giving me a lot of job satisfaction, as I have managed to combine my geeklust with an environmental job. So I am sorted there really - I could go on for ever learning this scripting language or that OS but I am slightly less obsessed now I have a fairly good grounding I can plug most gaps one way or another.

That’ll do me for tonight!

Anyone else feeling gap aversion?

A friend come client of mine had a problem today - he was getting errors with his website, but had done nothing to the site. Errors a bit like this:

Warning: include() [function.include]: URL file-access is disabled in the server configuration in /home/user/public_html/page.php on line xx

Warning: include() [function.include]: Failed opening ‘http://www.somedomain.com/file.php’ for inclusion (include_path=’.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php’) in /home/user/public_html/page.php on line xx

I figured it must have been something the hosting company did… it turned out to be right - they had upgraded from PHP4 to PHP5 - which doesn’t allow remote file includes (in order to prevent cross site scripting). On further investigation (involving me having to remember the username/password combination!) I discovered that the site (which I didn’t build) wasn’t actually pulling in remote headers, but was using a full url string like:

< ?php include("http://www.somedomain.com/includes/head.php"); ?>

So after a quick hunt around (my PHP isn’t great), I found this blog post which reminded me of the answer I already knew but lacked the confidence to believe. I changed line to say:

< ?php include("includes/head.php"); ?>

And that worked. All I needed to do was download the rest of the PHP files and ran a multiple file search and replace on all the php files - backup the old site and reupload the amended code.

All working again. I just thought I would share that.

Let Leo tell you a story…

Wake Up, Freak Out - then Get a Grip from Leo Murray on Vimeo.