Monthly Archives: May 2004

Changing the Konqueror Image Preview File Size Limit

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A long while back, I decided that if I ever had a problem, and the answer to the problem wasn’t obvious from Google, then I’d write it on my weblog and hope that the next person with the same problem finds my solution instead. So here goes. If the wording sounds a bit funny, it’s because I’m trying to cast the search-word net wide enough to catch anyone who’s looking for similar things.

In Konqueror (the KDE file manager), there is a limit to the file size for the file previews to work, to try to stop your computer getting bogged down if you’ve got lots of large images. I ran into this today when I was trying to look at some of my new photos, since my shiny new toy takes rather large pictures, and only a couple of them were small enough that the preview worked. Searching for ‘kde preview image size limit’ picked up some stuff about the limit being hardcoded into KDE, but that’s waaay out of date, and you can change the limit from the menu nowadays. For KDE 3.0.3 at least (yes, I know how old it is), try Settings->Configure Konqueror->File Manager->Previews->Maximum File Size, and increase the slider.

Fairly obvious, I know, and I fixed the problem a lot quicker than it took to write all that out. But the internet is supposed to be the Source Of All Answers, so I’m just doing my bit.

Chasing Rainbows

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I’ve now added all the posts from my old Chasing Rainbows weblog to this one. Although I’m not exactly proud of some of the posts (to put it mildly), there’s just about enough interesting things in there to make it worth while keeping them. So with a trusty SSH session and some PHP (and a fair bit of luck) I managed to convert my old weblog database into the new WordPress format, and managed not to screw anything up.

I’m not going to turn on comments for them though, and I’m not going to go through them all and try classifying them, since that would be a bit boring.

Today’s exercise in coding reminded me again why I’ve made the switch from a home-grown weblog to using a properly developed one (not quite off-the-shelf or shrink-wrapped, but you know what I mean). Next time I want to change backend, I know that someone else will have written an import script, and I won’t have to bodge one together myself. And now that I’ve spent about two working-days on the switch, I’ve gone from entering data into the database by hand, to having a proper admin interface, categories, sub-categories, comments, pingback and trackback, drafting, private entries, searching, linkrolls, plugin interfaces… which would have taken quite some time if I’d done it myself. And every time I’m in the pub, or sleeping, or whatever else, I know someone else is improving the software that runs my weblog. Which is nice. And I was getting fed up of the whole wheel-reimplementation thing anyway.

Sunday Fun

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Yesterday was fun. I went climbing with Ed, Mike, Steve King and Andy Bennet at the Westway, for the first time in almost a year. I need to work on my finger strength, and rather than buying a finger-strengthener (or stealing Jude’s again), I might just try going climbing as often as possible. I’ll aim to go climbing more than once a month, and see if I can stick to that.

After climbing, we went to the annual Ball Games in the Park, where we all had fun making up new rules in order to get people ‘out’, since our collective rule-making-ability was far superior to our actually-playing-softball skills. Although Ed was pretty impressive with his one-man-team effort. And the rain didn’t stop play, it just happened to coincide with afternoon tea.

The BBQ at the Putney flat was as good as ever, but I’m slightly concerned as to just how many of the word to South Park the movie I know. Especially considering I haven’t watched it for quite a long time.

It’s a Grim World

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Last night I was having a conversation about the media, and more specifically what appears to me to be the UK media’s somewhat downbeat attitude to events. It wasn’t something I really thought about when I was abroad, but now I’m back it seems that all the news is a lot more depressing over here than it really needs to be. So in a completely unscientific study, I’m going to take the main headlines from this mornings BBC News website, and give each one either a Grim or Upbeat label. Continue reading →

Peace and Planning

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I have a plan. Well, I have lots of plans, and most of them never seem to work out. Well, some of them do work out, but I’m pretty sure that’s because those ones are carefully chosen, so that I know they’re going to happen anyway. That way I can congratulate myself that they were Planned, and they Happened because I Planned them. Continue reading →

You Have to Leave to Come Back

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As Gary notes, I’m back. Which implies that I went away. So in case anyone hadn’t figured it out, I’ve been travelling (or procrastinating about travelling) for the last 11 months or so, and I’ve returned to London to get on with life. My travels included a trip to Peru, a couple of trips to Devon, numerous visits to London, and a four-month epic voyage through Thailand, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. And I’ve got lots of stories to tell.

I’m proud to say that I bucked the trend amongst the travellertariat, and didn’t keep a diary along the way. Well, I tried in Peru, gave up quickly, and I have to say that it was more turgid than my usual rantings. So I’m hoping that time will act as a kind of filter, and only the most interesting stuff will remain. But don’t expect me to remember anyone’s name. I can’t do that at the best of times, never mind when I was meeting new people pretty much every day for months on end. So over the next few months (and years), the Travel section will hopefully fill with all the interesting little anecdotes about life abroad. I guess I’ll need to work fairly quickly though, since I’m already stroking my chin, and eyeing up which places are next on my hitlist…

Open Doors

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Well, an afternoon of faffing with this and it becomes presentable, so I think I’ll switch over the links at the top of the page. The links to older posts should still work, and it’s on my todo list to move the old posts into the new system. But there’s a lot of other stuff on my todo list that are either more important or more interesting, so don’t hold your breath.

As an experiment, I’m going to leave the comments activated. I don’t know what will happen with spam and stuff, but we’ll see.

SET Lighting and Sound – Avoid!

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Last weekend I helped out DramSoc in their summer ball (more of which will come later). DramSoc were trying out a new equipment supplier, and they made a pretty good job of trying to ruin the ball. You can read Gary’s little rant about SET Lighting and Sound, or you can visit the ‘unprofessional cowboys’ themselves. Our recommendation is to avoid them, and take your business elsewhere.

And don’t mess with DramSoc.

A Brave New World

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What’s going on here then? Two things should be fairly obvious – firstly, due to popular demand (well, two or three requests over the last few days counts as popular in my book), I’m restarting my weblog. I am, after all, back from my international wanderings, and I had promised a few people I would start again at somepoint. Never really sure why people want to hang onto my every word though…

Secondly, I’m making a bit of a break from the past. Amongst other things, I’m trying out WordPress, which even in typing this post has spelled the death-knell for my old home-grown weblog software. Never did get round to replacing phpMyAdmin as the backend. And since I can’t be arsed (yet) importing all my old entries, I’m running this as a separate weblog for now.

I’ve got some heavy-duty faffing to do to make it fit into the rest of the site, so it could be a few days before everything works properly. So keep your hands inside the vehicle, and hold on tight.

Wave goodbye to ‘Chasing Rainbows’, and bid hello to ‘Shine’.