I have taken what some might consider a retrograde step: I added code to insert my blogroll directly below the widgets section of my left-hand sidebar. The reason for this is reuse of the same ID; it causes my Firefox HTML Validation add-on to issue warnings and so can hardly be standards compliant. Ironically, in its native state, the blogroll functions take panes to ensure that each category has its own ID, only for the widgets functions to go and disregard all of this and assign the same ID for each category. To change this in the widgets code involves ploughing through loads of arrays (and functions) and is not something for which I have time when an easier solution is very much possible.
Archive for June, 2007
An unexpected side effect
I recently posted about using mod_rewrite to block access to your images from all but the websites to which you want access to be available. Following so doing, I discovered that my FAVICON had disappeared from Firefox’s address. As it turned out, it was easy to fix and that is covered in another recent post.
Ditching PC Plus?
When I start to lose interest in the features in a magazine that I regularly buy, then it’s a matter of time before I stop buying the magazine altogether. Such a predicament is facing PC Plus, a magazine that I been buying every month over the last ten years. The fate has already befallen titles like Web Designer, Amateur Photographer and Trail, all of which I now buy sporadically. Returning to PC Plus, I get the impression that it feels more of a lightweight these days. What Future Publishing has been doing over the last decade is add titles to its portfolio that take actually from its long established stalwart; Linux Format and .Net are two that come to mind and there are titles covering Windows Vista and computer music as well. Being a sucker for punishment, I did pick up this month’s PC Plus and the issue is as good an example of the malaise as any. Reviews, once a mainstay of the title, are now less prominent than they were. In place of comparison tests, we now find discussions of topics like hardware acceleration with some reviews mixed in. Topics such as robotics and artificial intelligence do rear their heads in feature articles and I cannot say that I have a great deal of time for such futurology. The tutorials section is still there but has been hived off into a separate mini-magazine and I am not so sure that it has escaped the lightweight revolution. All this is leading me to dump PC Plus in favour of PC Pro from Dennis Publishing. This feels reassuringly more heavyweight and, while the basic format has remained unchanged over the years, it still managed to remain fresh. Reviews, of both software and hardware, are very much in evidence and it manages to have those value-adding feature articles; this month, digital photography and rip-off Britain come under the spotlight. Add the Real Word Computing section and it all makes a good read in these times of behemoths like Microsoft, Apple and Adobe delivering new things on the technology front. I don’t know if I have changed but PC Pro does seem better than PC Plus these days.
Another Olympus E-system review
I don’t buy Amateur Photographer much these days but sight of a review of Olympus’ E-410 and E-510 SLR’s got a copy into my possession. Amateur Photographer review features are usually comprehensive and this was no exception; there was none of the vitriol directed towards the Live View feature by Practical Photography, a defining feature of what i consider a lop-sided and none too useful review. The verdict was a positive one in the main with the E-510 getting the nod over the E-410 because it fared better on the usability side of things. Image quality, my major concern, was said to be impressive with only dynamic range counting against the results. The Live View feature didn’t attract the harsh commentary devoted to it by Practical Photography. Following this review, I have to say that the E-510 does tempt me with its combination of good image quality, dust removal and image stabilisation.
Trouble with my Canon CanoScan 5000F
I have had my Canon CanoScan 5000F scanner for nearly four years now and it has until yesterday performed faultlessly. However, it has now developed a fault that may hasten its replacement and I have to say that my eye is on Epson’s Perfection V350 Photo. Looking on the web, I did find scanners hidden away and that the selection available wasn’t what I might have expected it to be. Maybe, the digital photography revolution has made the humble scanner a less essential item. And the fault? Scan results are featuring an unacceptably strong magenta cast. In fact, the first scans result in nothing but pitch black but allowing things to stay on for a while does improve things. That suggests a hardware fault to me. I have raised the issue with Canon and will await their reply even though it is stopping me from adding any new photos to my online photo gallery. If Canon comes back to me with the "uneconomical to repair" response, I will be ready to go out and buy the Epson. Time will tell with this one…
Update 1: A spot of further exploration has left me wondering if it is the lamp that’s on the way out. If that’s replaceable at a reasonable price, then the CanoScan might live on after a spot of repair.
Update 2: Canon’s advice included reinstalling the scanner driver and, surprisingly given the symptoms, that seems to have helped. I’ll continue to keep an eye on things but it looks like I’ll be hanging onto my money for now.
More on mod_rewrite
Today, I caught sight of an article on anti-plagiarism tools at The Blog Herald and among the tricks was to use mod-rewrite to stop people "borrowing" both your images and your bandwidth. The gist is that you set up one or more conditions that exclude websites from the application of a rule forbidding access to images; the logic is that if the website referencing an image is not one of the websites listed in the conditions, then it doesn’t get to display any of your images.
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?awebsite.com(/)?.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule .*\.(gif|jpe?g|png|bmp)$ [F,NC]