The Journal of the Browncoat Cat

No, the title of this article is not a spelling mistake.  It is that time of year again.  The end of January, and I decided to have a spring clean of the Web Log. You cannot failed to have notice that I am now using version2.0 of Ed Merritt’s Ocean Mist theme, with a customisable colour scheme, giving my web log a pleasant green all over look. The most important change is the fact that the URL of this web log is now http://www.gardd-lelog.org.uk/browncoatcat.   So, if you have The Journal of the Browncoat Cat bookmarked in your Favourites, you need to up date the link. Two years ago, I moved the of Vorcampbel’s View web log from 20six.co.uk’s  increasingly erratic services to a Wordpress Web Log hosted by http://wordpress.com, renaming it The Journal of the Browncoat Cat in the process.  With a change in web hosting for my domain, I decided to be adventurous, and host my own Wordpress installation on the domain.  This is how I did it.

The move was an interesting process.  First of all, I tried installing the Wordpress MU installation that is an option with my new hosting service Netfirms.  I decided that this was too much like staying on wordpress.com, as it was very safe and secure.  So I decided to install a completely independant version of the software.  Now in order to do this, I needed to establish a MySQL database somewhere.  This was one Netfirms service I decide to avail myself of, as the whole MySQL  thingy appeared to be complicated one step too many, best to walk before you run.  Also, Netfirms will make a regular back-up of this database, which in addition to the regular back-up that I will be storing on my desktop PC should give my data some extra security.

So with database established I downloaded the Filezilla FTP Client and the Wordpress Software from http://wordpress.org and followed the Five Minutes Installation Guide and sure enough, after five minutes my brand new web log was up and running.  However, I now had to start the process of transfering nearly half a decade’s worth of contents to its new home.  This took considerably longer.  Under the Tools Menu on the Dashboard of my wordpress.com web log, there is an “Export” option available.   I downloaded and saved the Wordpress Extended RSS file this generated, a rather ungainly .WXR format file that was over 4.5Mb in size.  This should not have been a problem, as the “Import” option found under the Tools Menu of the new Web Log said that I could import a .WXR files upto a maximum of 8Mb. I selected the downloaded file and clicked on the “Import and Upload” button.  My browser chugged away for a few minutes before the screen changed and it asked me who I wanted to assign as the author of the entries to be uploaded and did I want to copy over the attached files?  I assigned the articles to “admin” and confirmed that I wanted to upload the attachments, then clicked on the “Import” button.  Once again the browser chugged away and eventually a list of imported files appeared and stopped somewhere in November 2003, nowhere near a complete import.  So I hit F5 on the keyboard and the web browser chugged away again, more files were uploaded, but this time it stopped at somewhere in February 2004.  Again I hit F5 and a page informed me that I needed to re-install the wordpress software.  On checking, I discovered that the MySQL database had thrown a hissy fit and in my panic I deleted the damned thing and started again.  After the third or fourth attempt, I reasoned that maybe if I cut the file down into a number of smaller, more manageable .WXR format files then I the database not be so highly strung.

Looking at the structure of the .WXR file in the Bluefish HTML editor, I worked out how and where to edit the file.  The first thousand lines of code were related to various catagories and tags that are used by search engines to make the web log visible to the outside world.  This was followed by the actual contents. Each Item whether it be an article, or a comment or a multimedia file was nested within a pair of <ITEM></ITEM> HTML tags, so if I created a file with a header consisting of all the “tag” code and ended the file with the HTML tag </Channel> as a footer, I  could create fifteen or so bitesized .WXR files containing about 300Mb of nested <ITEM> tagged items.  This took the good part of the day, and I was ready to start uploading to the new home.

Unfortunately once I got as far as May 2006, the MySQL database threw another hissy-fit.  I decided to call it a night and go to bed.  The following day, when I switched on my PC and fired up Firefox, to my delight I discovered that the database had calmed down and I was now told that Wordpress was already installed.  I discovered that if I left the importation process and did something like surf The Doctor Who Forum for half an hour, then I could go back to the web log once the database had been calmed down, as that did not have to be re-installed every time.

So that was it, the web log was more or less imported.  There are still a few problems, most noticably that the files were imported “as is” so the <IMG> tags still point towards the Media Library of the old web log at  Wordpress.com.  This is not a bad thing, as the majority of multi-media files have not transfered over to the Media Library of the new web log.  The error message “remote server not responding” would appear after the file name during the importation process, and the process would move along to the next file.  In total, only 210 of the 417 JPEG files have moved, none of the video or audio files are sitting on the server of my new web log. It looks as if I will have to do this manually.

So with the contents migrated to the new location, time to get some plugins to make the instalation work more smoothly, and a theme to make it look attractive.  So Mr. Mullenweg or anyone else from Wordpress’ parent company Automattic happen to be reading this, can you please add an automated way of adding themes to wordpress.org blogs, in a similar fashion to the “Add New” function under the “Plugins” Menu will load and activate new plugins from the .zip file that is downloaded from the Internet.

So away we go, a new chapter in my web logging begins.

So, the end of one era and the beginning of the new.  Barrack Hussein Obama has now been inaugerated as the Forty Fourth President of the United States of America.

Latest experiment into the World of home made soups made with the water used for cooking Sunday’s cabbage and potatoes as a basic vegetable stock. This way, any of the goodness from the vegetables that was lost in the cooking of Sunday Lunch is not wasted:

4oz back bacon*
5 large stalks of Celery
8oz of Onions
8oz of Mushrooms
2 large cloves of garlic
2 tablespoons of olive oil
2 Pints of Vegetable stock
Black Pepper to taste.

• Chop the bacon into small cubes
• Chop the celery stalks into small cubes
• Finely chop the celery leaves.
• Finely chop the onion and crush the garlic.
• Peel and quarter the mushrooms.
• Heat the oil in a saucepan
• Fry the onions, garlic, bacon, two mushrooms and celery for five minutes on a medium to high heat.
• Add the stock and celery leaves, bring to the boil and then simmer for five minutes.
• Add the mushrooms and simmer for an additional two minutes.
• Liquidize the celery and onions, and half the mushrooms.  Return this to the pan and heat through.
• Serves two to four, depending on appetite.

*Vegetarians can omit the bacon.

I used a peice of bacon from a back of off-cuts that was bought in Aberdare Market, which was cut into cubes.  Although I have seen pre-cut cubes of bacon in handy sized packets on sale in  LiDL that would work just as well.

You will notice that I have added no additional salt to this recipe.  With all the salt in the bacon and the stock any more would be overkill.

I like a little bit of interest in my soup, which is why I kept half the mushrooms whole.  You might prefer a completely smooth soup and liquidize everything.  Doesn’t really matter, still tastes the same.

It is fair to say that after seven years the old DECT phones that I had in my house had come to the end of their working lives.  The rechargeable batteries were no longer holding a charge, which as would not have been a problem, simply replace the batteries.  Unfortunately the handsets were no longer connecting to their base stations, so the new batteries would have been a waste of money.  They still looked good, in fact I have yet to see a DECT that look sexier than the old Venturer DECT phones,  but they had had their day, time to be ruthless. I wanted to replace them with a new set of three DECT phones, because I have become used to the convenience of being able to move around freely whilst talking on the telephone.

Flicking through the Daily Mirror yesterday morning, I noticed an advert for a set of three Wharfedale Orb DECT phones being sold by Argos at half their usual retail price.  As soon as I got home, I hit the Argos web site, and sure enough the Aberdare shop had one pack left in stock. Quick as a flash I reserved them, and after lunch headed off to pick them up.

As I have said, the old DECT phones looked nice, but the sound quality was never that stellar, and as the batteries began losing it, they became  inaudable.  So the big selling point for the new DECT phones was the name Wharfedale.  This is a company that produce excellent quality loud speakers for Hi-Fi and Home Cinema systems, so there should not be any difficulty in hearing whatever was being said on them at my end.

These DECT phones score over their predecessors in that they have a much better range.  For some reason, with the old Venturer phones, my back kitchen was a blindspot for them, and they would not work in the garden either.  These two areas are no problem for the Wharfedales.

So all in all, I am very happy with my purchase.

If the United Kingdom entry in the 53rd Eurovision Song Contest in Moscow on 14th May, 2009 gets nil point and comes last, it will show once and for all what a farce the competition has become.  The entry this year is being written by arguably the best song writers in the World ever, music by Sir Andrew Lloyd-Webber and lyrics by Diane Warren.  Any notion that the UK does not take the competition seriously enough has been blown out of the water by the BBC’s Eurovision : Your Country Needs You, which will select the best performer to sing the song written by the Lloyd-Webber/Warren dream team.  The UK will be unstopable.

I saw a small clip of the Right Honourable David Cameron MP, leader of the Conservative Party and leader of the Official Opposition last week.  All I can say is people might moan about Gordon Brown as Prime Minister, but they can thank their lucky stars that they have not got David Cameron running the country during the current economic downturn.

The first thing that annoyed me was David Cameron saying that if the Conservatives were returned to power, they would use cuts in public spending as a weapon against the current rescession.  I have to ask what possible cuts are there left to be made in public services.  This May sees the thirtieth anniversary of Margaret Thatcher coming to power (and dear God that makes me feel ancient as I was a child on that fateful day).   Callaghan’s spineless Labour administration did some minor pruning to public spending in the 1970’s, but Thatcher’s Conservatives chopped away whole branches, and spending levels have not risen since.  There cannot possibly be any left in public finances to make savings.

The second thing that  really annoyed me, and showed just how clueless Cameron really is, was when he said that governement needed to be saving for a rainy day.  Honestly David, stick your head out the window and you will see that it is bucketing down, if the economy were like the weather, this would be the wettest period since the 1930’s.  We are in the middle of a rainy day, the rainiest it has been in living memory.  Now is the time to be spending our way out of trouble, as it is the only way to get ourselves out of trouble. Yes there will be higher taxes in the future, but that is cheap compaired to the price that has to be paid for the idleness of rescession.

Something is bemusing me, and it is all to do with Linux.  On my Wordpress Dashboard I have the Tag Surfer set to list recent web log posts about Ubuntu Linux.  There are lots of posts  have titles like “MindbogglinglyGoodPackage in Ubuntu 8.10″ and then list reams and reams of command line instructions to be entered into a terminal emulator window to get “MindbogglinglyGoodPackage” to work.  These articles are not in my opinion even remotely helpful in getting people to use the particular software package, even if it is mindbogglingly good.  This sort of thing only helps to perputate the erronous myth that Linux is GeekOS.  Surely it would not take that long to write a short introductory paragraph explaining what the particular package does, how it does it and why it is the best bit of software available.

For nearly 30 years the Fans have been used to giving the man in charge of their favourite programme a concise and punchy nickname.  Back in the 1980’s Doctor Who was produced by Jon Nathan-Turner, who was more commonly known as JN-T.  When the series returned from limbo, the man in charge was Russell. T. Davies, almost universally known as RTD.  Then along comes Mr. Steven Moffat, whose lack of a double-barrelled or middle initial has spoilled all the fun. It is now common on the Doctor Who Forum to refer to Mr. Moffat as “The Moff”, but this does not work for me.  Then it struck me:

• The production team an Upper Boat love keeping secrets and they are very good at it:
  • The casting of Catherine Tate for The Runaway Bride
  • Catherine Tate’s return in Series Four [30]
  • Filming Kylie in central Cardiff with nobody outside of the film crew knowing about it.
  • Billie Piper’s brief return in Partners in Crime.
  • The casting of Matt Smith as Doctor#11
• Steven Moffat is now the boss of this very secretive organisation.
• His Surname starts with the letter “M”

The fans should  refer to Steven Moffat as “M” (complete with the Inverted Commas), the head of Her Majesty’s Secret Service in the James Bond novel and movies.

 

Matt Smith is Doctor#11

Last night, in a special edition of Doctor Who Confidential, BBC Wales announced that 26 year old actor Matt Smith would be taking over the role of The Doctor when David Tennant hung up his Converse All-Stars and TARDIS key for the last time.  This choice came from so far out of the left field.  Many Fans, especially those on the  Doctor Who Forum assumed that Paterson Joseph, who plays Greg in the remake of Terry Nation’s Survivors was going to be cast.

So another youthful incarnation of The Doctor.  However, there is something about Matt Smith’s face.  It has a the look of authority, even though its owner is only 26 years old. It is not a young man’s face. Peter Davison at 29, was three years older than Smith when he took on the role back in 1981, but he still looked a bit wet behind the years.  Matt Smith looks worldweary already and after a few months of the punishing schedule involved the production of modern Doctor Who, any trace of the callowness of youth will be wiped from Smith.

It was pointed out to me that when I shaved off my experimental face fungus I looked ten years younger. So if the production team get worried about his youth, giving Smith’s Doctor a bit of a beard to make him look  older.  In fact I really hope that when it comes to the time that they announce the costume for Doctor#11, he will have  long ponytail and a beard.

The winner of the 2008 Bill Nighy Memorial Award, sponsored by The Daily Mail goes to Stephen Hunt’s SFCrowsnest web site for this announcement.