How to locate your SVN repo to [re-]start SVN commits.

SVN repo address

I always lose everything, so as it’s been a while since I updated my WP plugins I’d managed to lose the SVN repository addresses.

If you can’t rememeber what your plugins are called (!) you’ll have to login (make a note of your username and password) to WordPress.org and click on your profile link, your plugins are listed there. From there you can go to the plugin page, eg http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/frame-breaker-removes-digg-bar-owly-bar-facebook-bar-etc/. At this point follow the “admin” link and you can look at the TRAC page for your plugin.

Subversion checkout

The SVN repo can then be checked out by doing:

svn co http://svn.wp-plugins.org/frame-breaker-removes-digg-bar-owly-bar-facebook-bar-etc

Your username and password for wordpress.org are your credentials for the SVN repo too. Read the rest of this entry »

Wherein I opine about the recent horsemeat scandal in the UK.

Horsemeat in our burgers!

So what?

A scandal has broken recently about various companies, many companies, being found to have horsemeat in their beef products [primarily]. There has also been some concern about contamination of other meats with pork or beef which some don’t eat on religious grounds.

What is happening?

It seems so far there have been test carried out and companies have been shamed in the media for passing off horse as beef. TBH this doesn’t concern me in the slightest, I’m not averse to considering horse a food animal. Horsemeat is a bit of a diversion from the wider issue IMO. What is genuinely worrying is the origin of all meat going in to these products and that the complex bureaucratic procedures that are supposed to allow meat to be traced from product back to the originating farms have entirely failed.

This means there is no proper assessment of all meat used for the meat’s origin, fitness for human consumption, contamination – nothing it seems can be trusted.

But how could they have caught it? Read the rest of this entry »

On a parenting forum I started writing about baby sign and realised I’d got a fair bit to say. Enough to make a blog-post or two. Indeed as I set to it I thought it might even be worth sharing our signs. Here goes for a first instalment.

Signing with baby

(no not singing, but that’s good too)

When to start using signs

We started sign at about 6 months (and maybe 5 months 2nd time around) when baby started taking solids, started potty training a week after that too(!). After a about 1½ to 2 months there was recognition and some understanding, 3-4 months some signs being used. Immeasurable benefit IMO as they could ask/tell for/about stuff – milk, toilet, food and express tiredness, hotness – before they’d master vocalisation.

So, why use baby signing? This comment from reddit.com by dstam goes to the heart of it I feel:

I think the toddler years can be very frustrating for kids. They are learning at a ridiculous rate, both mentally and physically, but are not yet verbal enough or skilled enough to say and do what they really want. I think a lot of their acting out comes from this place of frustration, so I try to really understand my son when he is babbling at me incoherently. If I figure out what he is wanting I try to work on a few key words with him for that situation, like if he wanted a drink I try to teach him to say “thirsty.”

Our experience

Something I posted before [minor edits]:

J started with “light” and “bird” at about 9 months. Interestingly he doesn’t do those signs any more (at 12.5 months) but he appears to recognise +light, +bird, +food, +potty, +poo, +mummy, +daddy, drink, +bed, +music, +speaker, +smell(verb) … at least (+ shows signs he can give). There are a few signs like finish, cat, nice and perhaps others that we’ve been doing a long time but that he hasn’t attempted. There are also some like “smile” where we can’t be sure if he’s responding to the sign or just doing the action.

Read the rest of this entry »

Quick install tip for Steam’s beta linux client on Ubuntu/Kubuntu AMD64 system.

Installing Steam client

Download linux installer

Linux installer is available at http://repo.steampowered.com/steam/; which gives me the steam_latest.deb (on 21 December 2012).

Install package and dependencies

So I run (bold commands are those entered, you shouldn’t need the first bit if you’re on a 32 bit system):

user+localhost:~$ sudo apt-get install libjpeg-turbo8:i386 libcurl3gnutls:i386 libogg0:i386 libpixman-1-0:i386 libsdl1.2debian:i386 libtheora0:i386 libvorbis0a:i386 libvorbisenc2:i386 libvorbisfile3:i386 libasound2:i386 libc6:i386 libgcc1:i386 libstdc++6:i386 libx11-6:i386 libxau6:i386 libxcb1:i386 libxdmcp6:i386
Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information… Done
E: Unable to locate package libcurl3gnutls
user+localhost:~$ sudo dpkg -i /home/pandfi/downloads/steam_latest.deb
Selecting previously unselected package steam. Read the rest of this entry »

Another quick post: how to install ia32-libs when it fails with bluez install.

ia32-libs install failure fix

Problem with bluez dependency

So, attempting to install ia32-libs (as a dependency of teamviewer) and I keep getting failures with bluez and bluez-alsa. Why are they dependencies? Search me, it seems that ia32-libs is just a grab bag of libraries/services that might be needed by 32-bit apps running in my 64-bit Kubuntu/Ubuntu environment. From the failure messages:

user@localhost:~/downloads$ sudo dpkg -i bluez_4.101-0ubuntu6_amd64.deb
Selecting previously unselected package bluez. Read the rest of this entry »

Thunderbird interaction log

Record HTTP, IMAP and SMTP connection details

Simple one-liner (well 3 in 1) to enable logging for Mozilla Thunderbird on Linux (I’m using Kubuntu 12.10 Quantal at the moment):

export NSPR_LOG_MODULES=timestamp,imap:5,smtp:5,nsHttp:5,nsHostResolver:5; export NSPR_LOG_FILE=~/tmp/imap$(date +%s).log; thunderbird Read the rest of this entry »