Enjoy and have a good weekend!

There are several solutions I have found, but this one is best as you don’t need to SSH into your web server… and you may not have access anyway if your blog is hosted by a third party. WordPress sometimes has excessive delays for carrying out schedules; by default you only have 0.01 seconds to initiate the cron job for scheduling. Cron is a time scheduler for Unix/Linux based systems, and it is handy for automating tasks. In this case, our automated task is to post blog entries at a specific date and time without manual intervention.

So to fix this issue, use FTP to access your WordPress install and edit cron.php in the wp-includes folder.

• Find this line entry in cron.php: wp_remote_post ($cron_url, Array (‘ timeout’ => 0.01, ‘ blocking’ => false));

• Change the timeout to 20 seconds: wp_remote_post ($cron_url, Array (‘ timeout’ => 20, ‘ blocking’ => false));

Save the file and upload it back onto your webspace.

But after four days of not sleeping I cracked it. I’m not one for giving up, especially when it comes to technical quandaries of this nature. In fact, I love challenges like these and I’m about to share with you so you can avoid the pain. Lets go back in time for a bit…

The Problem

After installing Windows 7, I bought a LG Blu-ray SATA drive from PC World; not the best place to buy hardware but they had a fairly decent deal on them. So you just buy one, install it in the Shuttle, pop in a Blu-ray disc and away you go right? Wrong. So very wrong. The Shuttle comes with an Intel GMA3100 chipset for the onboard graphics card. The picture quality produced via HDMI is quite good for an onboard, but when it comes to playing Blu-ray, it is one of the most hated chipsets known to man. I have tried both Cyberlink PowerDVD and Corel WinDVD 2010 but they failed to play a Blu-ray disc. You will be greeted with something like this:

Infinite patching for both programs produced the same result. Is it a hardware problem? Well lets go through the motions:

• HDCP compliant graphics card – Check.
• HDCP compliant monitor – Check.
• HDMI connection working correctly – Check.
• Up to date graphics card drivers – Check.

So what on earth is going on?

The Solution

It’s a software problem, as in the main producers of DVD/Blu-ray playback software have limited support for the Intel GMA graphics chipset. Maybe there is a way to get the above programs to work on my system, but I gave up. After trawling through the internet, I stumbled upon one random post on a forum. It mentioned using Total Media Theatre with the Japanese version of the files required for the video renderer. What?! Yes, without the renderers for Total Media Theatre pulled from the Japanese version of the software… it will not work. Don’t ask me how or why or what kind of crazy software development cycle is going on here, but that’s how it is.

So you need:

• Total Media Theatre version 3 installed
• VMR renderer files from the Japanese trial version (linked here for your convenience)
• Save the renderer files to: C:\Program Files\ArcSoft\TotalMedia Theatre 3\Codec

And that’s it! As if by magic, you can fully enjoy your Shuttle as it was meant to be.

My Shuttle and Inglourious Basterds. White Totoro approves.

I haven’t played Magic for that long but I wanted to try out the new core set to see how it fairs. The best way to get started is to buy the Fat Pack; you get the following to start your collection:

• 40-card basic land pack
• Eight 15-card booster packs from the M11 core set
• Player’s guide with visual encyclopedia
• Special edition Spindown life counter
• Excerpt from Planeswalker Novel
• Nice box to keep it all in

Now the one thing I am disappointed about in this Fat Pack, is the lack of plastic dividers for your cards. Older Fat Packs used to have them, but it seems they are skimping on what you get these days. However, you do get 8 booster packs which is pretty good. All I need now is several hours to plan and create my deck of destruction!

So what’s been going on in the world of game and tech etc. during this time? What I should have done was do a post for each of these but here is a very condensed version! In no particular order…

Starcraft 2 – Beta
I did a post about this on the Girlygeekdom blog, but to summarise… it is smokingly hot and I’m not talking about the summer heartwave we are getting in the UK. It is due to be released on 23rd July. I’ll try not to disappear when this arrives, and also promise to step outside once in awhile.

Apple iPad
Great for some, mediocre for others. Your lifestyle dictates whether this is a good match for you or not. Personally speaking, there isn’t much room for this slab in my life. I need a full OS, I need power, I need an open platform and I need to run existing applications I currently have. Also regardless of what Steve Jobs said in his keynote speech, this for me is not going to replace a netbook. And it’s too damn heavy.

E3
I personally prefer the Tokyo Game Show than E3, but this year I think the event has been very interesting. Microsoft announces Kinetic, Sony with their 3Dness, and Nintendo with their new 3DS portable console. Out of the three industry heavyweights, Nintendo outshines the rest. I’m buying the 3DS without a doubt; Kingdom Hearts, Zelda, Kirby, Final Fantasy, Kid Icarus the list goes on. And NO 3D GLASSES REQUIRED!

Sci-Fi London
A great event every year, I couldn’t go to the entire event because of fencing commitments. However, I did go to the Anime All-Nighter; 10 hours of anime movies back to back starting at midnight (with the odd RedBull/toilet break inbetween). I absolutely loved it, it’s like a pub lock-in but in a cinema. The best anime was Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Bladeworks. I cannot tell you the sheer awesomeness of seeing this on the big screen; if you love Rin, Lancer et al then you must watch this. Unfortunately for some, it was the last anime shown that morning and the majority of the audience were fast asleep. I made sure I was completely awake for it.

iPhone 4
To grip or not to grip, that is the question. Either way, I am getting the HTC Desire running Android in a few weeks. At least people who are experiencing death grip woes get a free bumper case, offer valid until 30th September.

World Cup 2010
The tech angle for this is that I will never, ever, forgive ITV for their “transmission error”: showing a Hyundai ad JUST AS GERRARD SCORES THE FIRST GOAL FOR ENGLAND. Insert rage sentence here.

IT Crowd – Series 4
Our beloved geek series is back on Channel 4. Join Moss, Roy and Jen as they embark on more ridiculous IT shenanigans with utmost hilarity. Street Countdown!

My birthday
I got insanely drunk and played LAN games; apparently I can headshot quite well while inebriated. Everything else is a blur; I think we spent an hour trying to blow up the airbed at 4am. I highly recommend Danzka vodka with Mountain Dew.

Final Fantasy XIII
I completed it! You either love it or hate it, I personally liked it a lot. The battle system is to die for, yes the game is mostly on rails but the game does get going after awhile. There are some insanely difficuly bosses to beat, namely Proud Clad and Gigantuar if you find him on Gran Pulse. I’m just happy that I saw the ending after clocking in around 70 hours of gameplay. Also, I hate Barthandelus.

And finally…

Inception
I saw this movie when it was released on Friday. I have sat here for awhile thinking of how to review it and in summary, I just can’t. It’s such an amazing experience, that any words uttered on this page would not do it enough justice. Not to mention it’s rather difficult to describe, my mind was blown. If you think Memento was a mind masher, try this on for size… only Nolan can produce something like this on the big screen and succeed. A plot peppered full of twists and turns, stunts galore, and a great protagonist supported by a wonderful cast; these are the makings of a movie that will pull you in. I also love the music score by Hans Zimmer, it fits in with the film sequences perfectly.

I and many others looked on in horror as events unfolded during the live broadcast in the House of Commons. To paraphrase, creativity is more important than freedom, was one of the alarming arguments proposed to promote the bill.

Here is the response in full:

Thank you for your recent correspondence concerning the Digital
Economy Bill. I share your concern about the way this piece of
legislation has been handled by the Government. Since the Dissolution
of Parliament, there are no longer any MPs, but I can continue with
casework/correspondence.

The Bill contained important provisions regarding the regulatory
environment for the digital and creative industries. It is completely
unacceptable that the Government failed to allocate the sufficient
time in the House of Commons for proper legislative scrutiny. It is
wrong to push through these issues and because of this I did not
support the Bill and I abstained from the vote.

The reason that I did not vote against the Bill is that a number of
the measures within it have great merit – particularly tackling online
copyright infringement. This is an extremely serious issue that costs
the creative industries hundreds of millions of pounds each year. I
want to make sure that Britain has the most favourable intellectual
property framework in the world for innovators, digital content
creators and high tech businesses.

Also, the measures in the Bill designed to tackle illegal peer to peer
file sharing set up a proportionate regime that would, only following
public consultation, repeated warnings and due process, lead to people
having their internet connection temporarily suspended. It will not,
as many have suggested, lead to people being disconnected without an
appeal. Even if people are disconnected they will be able to sign up
to another ISP immediately without penalty.

However, the Government should not push through such significant
issues without proper debate – the handling of this Bill means that
the debate on copyright is not over and my Party will seek to revisit
options for a balanced solution as part of a broader update of
copyright following the General Election.

Once again, thank you for taking the time to contact me.

With best wishes,
Maria Miller, Parliamentary Candidate

I don’t like how you can’t change your characters. In fact the freedom of team customisation that is akin to say FF 7 or 8 is almost completely removed. Why Squeenix why? I tell you why, because they replaced this with something called the Paradigm Shift. You will soon realise just how important this function is, and how you cannot progress through the game without it. One time, during a 2 minute battle I must have switched Paradigms about 8 times; each Paradigm in the deck comprises of different tactical stances and roles for each team member. Your team works cohesively and dynamically depending on the situation. I like it, in fact after awhile I started to like it a lot. But walking into the next battle with full health is a bit weird, and I think takes away some of the real mechanics from the game. The left shoulder becomes a bit overused though. My index finger is testament to that.

The graphics are gorgeous, it’s so lush and lovely I just want to jump right in there. But everything seems to be on rails, rather like the old fashioned gun-toting Time Crisis. It does take the fun out of exploring, I am hoping that later on it will open up a bit more. I presume it will be, as you can catch a Chocobo to help you travel around. I encountered my first summon on Monday, or Eidolans. Shiva is a sister pair, which transforms into a rather awesome bike. It’s cooler than Fenrir for God sake. The game really picks up at this point, as the earlier chapters are too easy and slightly boring. Mainly they are used for tutorial purposes, which in a way is good. It would be too overwhelming to introduce so many new features in one go, so that was probably a good idea.

This game is gargantuan no doubt about it, I will write something more substantial once I complete it. Whenever that may be!

Anyway, this year is the year of the Tiger, for people born on the following:

• 1902
• 1914
• 1926
• 1938
• 1950
• 1962
• 1974
• 1986
• 1998

According to the story, the Tiger came 3rd in the race. A small factoid… The number 3 is considered a lucky number in Chinese beliefs; 3 in Chinese also sounds like the word “life or alive”. However, the number 4 is considered unlucky as the same pronounciation for this also means “death”. Maybe 2010 is your lucky year! Don’t forget to give someone you love a Red Envelope of money.

May 2010 bring you good fortune and prosperity!

*RAWR*

Back up your files and database!
Before commencing any work, make a back up of the following as a minimum requirement:

1. Load up your favourite FTP client and make a copy of these files and folders from your existing site.

• /wp-content/plugins
• /wp-content/themes
• /wp-content/uploads
• .htaccess file (this is a hidden file by default, view all hidden files within your client to see it listed)

If you can make an entire copy of all folders within your site, then please feel free.

2. Make a copy of the WordPress SQL database by exporting it into a .sql file. Most hosters have SQL tools available, such as phpMyAdmin within cPanel to do an export.

cPanel - phpMyAdmin tool

phpMyAdmin - Export tool along top toolbar

When doing the database export, make sure all tables are selected. It may also be an idea to backup each table into individual files, I’ll tell you why in a moment…

Install WordPress
Now do a new install of WordPress on your new webspace and create a new SQL database. During the install process, make sure the table prefix matches exactly as your existing database. This is defined in the wp-config.php file:

WordPress table prefix

Just to add, I use EditPlus as my PHP editor which works really well.

Once WordPress is installed, delete all the tables in the newly created database using phpMyAdmin etc.

Import and upload
Now to put all your content back in. Import the .sql database file you backed up earlier and import it into the currently tableless database. You should now see all the populated tables, which contains all your blog settings and posts.

Upload the plugins, themes and uploads folders from your backup via FTP to your new WordPress install. Bear in mind to upload them to the same folder structure, replacing any existing folders. If you are using the same domain name as before and just changed website host, then you are pretty much done. You may need to put your old .htaccess file back in, if you cannot get permalinks to work as intended. If you bought a new domain name then you still got some work to do…

Replacing old domain name references with new. Welcome to SQL!
This is where the fun begins, you will now learn a few SQL commands which will come in very handy in this instance. Making SQL changes directly to the database instead of looking through WordPress settings via the GUI is my preferred method. Also some of these changes can only be made via SQL. Go back to trusty phpMyAdmin again, and load up the SQL tool:

phpMyAdmin - Executing SQL commands

• Changing the HomeURL and SiteURL – The HomeURL and SiteURL is an absolute path to your site. Since your site location has changed, we need to update this too or else your blog won’t load.
  • UPDATE wp_options SET option_value = replace(option_value, 'http://www.youroldsite.com', 'http://www.yournewsite.com') WHERE option_name = 'home' OR option_name = 'siteurl';

• Changing the URL for Content – WordPress loves absolute paths instead of relative, so again another change is required to make sure the URL for content in each post record is updated to the new.
  • UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = REPLACE (post_content, 'http://www.youroldsite.com', 'http://www.yournewsite.com');

• Changing the GUID – This is a very important change. The GUID houses the absolute location of where your posts are. Visitors to your site won’t be able to get to your articles as it will still be pointing to the old address.
  • UPDATE wp_posts SET guid = REPLACE (guid, 'http://www.youroldsite.com', 'http://www.yournewsite.com');
• Changing GUID for attachments/images – You may not need to do this, but if you find images and galleries are broken then you may need to update the GUID for the location of images. The best way is to check the current GUID location for images before making changes:
  

  phpMyAdmin - GUID for attachments

  • UPDATE wp_posts SET guid = REPLACE (guid, 'http://www.youroldsite.com', 'http://www.yournewsite.com') WHERE post_type = 'attachment';

Pitfalls and user awareness

SQL Oops
Not everything went to plan, it was 2am and I think I mistyped one of the SQL commands. Lo and behold the entire GUID column was blank in the wp_posts table. GASP! Remember earlier I mentioned backing up each table into individual .sql files? Well this is where my life was saved. I made several changes to other tables in the database and the last thing I wanted was to restore all the tables and start again. When you do a SQL database backup at the top level, all tables are backed up into a single file. But since I also did seperate table backups, I did a quick restore for wp_posts only and voila! I executed the correct find and replace command again and everything was good to go.

Permalinks and .htaccess
Another issue I came across were permalinks, I like them to look pretty. For some reason, all my permalinks were now coming up with /index.php/2009-01-nameofpost. What was index.php doing there in the URL? It definitely wasn’t there on the old site. I changed the setting within WordPress to try to prevent that from being appended, but it didn’t work. It looked like the .htaccess file was not updating correctly, WordPress normally updates this automatically to set the use of permalinks. If your web host uses Apache, then it will most likely be utilising the mod_rewrite module for this to work. I restored .htaccess from backup which fixed it, but here’s what mine looks like if you need a point of reference:

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress

And that’s it, job done! It’s actually less painless than it looks, as long as you make backups of your old site then you can always restore back if things don’t go to plan. Good luck!

If you have stumbled across this via an old Google link that used to point to Pork and Beans, then I would like to extend my welcome to you and hope you enjoy the content. I apologise to any readers out there that may have visited my blog regularly on the old site; sorry for the disruption I hope you find me again! If not, then I am typing this into the ether.

There are some people out there who have struggled to move their WordPress blog when changing to different hosts, I shall be writing up a how-to in this regard… there were some idiosyncrasies I experienced that some of you may not be aware of.

Anyway, back to the grind!