Author: Steve

Playing around with PHP and PHPBB

I’d been looking round for quite a bit for a nice acronym explainer for PHPBB… I found quite a few but none of them did what I wanted.

So I took a couple of existing mods and hacked them round a bit and have produced just what I wanted:

1) Centrally maintained definitions
2) Proper formatting of definitions (i,e, full phpbb code)
3) Nice sized pop up when you move over the word/phrase
4) Word/Phrase is also a link to a post containing the definition.

OK maybe other people will think its rubbish.. but I like it 😉

How not to bill customers

I recently decided to move my Gas and Electricity supplies to one provider rather than 2 – estimated savings of about �200.

I was with NPower for my electricity. I’ve been paying by Direct Debit for years.

Anyway we got the final bill from them… for just over �55. At the bottom was the usual:

If you do not query this bill by 20/12/2006 it will be paid by Direct Debit on 27/12/2006″

So I happily did nothing.

On Friday (22/12/2006) I get a letter from NPower dated 19/12/2006.

Outstanding amount: �55.

If you have recently paid this you may disregard this letter

Errr Excuse Me??? Outstanding amount – on a Direct Debit that isn’t actually going to be taken until 27/12/? Letter send out the day before the last day I’m allowed to query the bill… I DONT think so.

So I phone their customer services… I’m told that you haven’t paid your last bill
I point out that I pay by Direct Debit and read out the details off the bill and that the DD doesn’t go out until AFTER Christmas. I’m told There are no Direct Debit details for your account so you can’t pay by Direct Debit

I read out the bill AGAIN – the BILL says I pay by Direct Debit, I’ve paid by Direct Debit for years so why am I being sent letters telling me that I’ve not paid.. especially when the DD isn’t due yet.

I’m told once again You don’t pay by Direct Debit as you don’t have any Direct Debit details for your account

So I ask – who deleted them then?

I’m then told Oh, you’ve left us – moved to a different supplier.. so that is why the Direct Debit details are gone

I point out that although I’ve left them I haven’t paid the last bill, that last bill was to be paid by DD on 27/12. So obviously they dont actually want my money.

I’m told but you have to pay – its money you owe us.

I said that I wanted to pay, the computer systems wanted me to pay and I was happy to pay but as they had deleted my details the company obviously didn’t want me to pay… person on other end of phone was not happy.. told me I had to pay.

So I’m in two minds – they can’t cut me off and I suspect that deleting my payment details before they’ve taken the money could legally be argued as them not wanting my money…

I might send them a cheque (second class post of course) in a couple of days.

Netscape – what a bunch of Morons

No doubt others have experienced this on their blogs:

You have Trackbacks enabled and the trackbacks fill up with crap posted there by scum advertising drugs, pornography and so on. S

I’ve been having a lot of problems with crap advertising several sites on http://mywebpage.netscape.com. So far various netscape sites have accounted for over 190 trash trackbacks.

How to report it though – there is NOTHING, and I mean NOTHING on the main site covering how to report abuse like this – hell half the links don’t even work. Emails to various accounts at netscape vanish into black holes (or appear to, certainly they dont seem to remove the sites).

So I’ve black holed ANY trackback with http://mywebpage.netscape.com in it – sorry if you have a site there but tough shit… if the people who run your homepages can’t get off their arses and fix things then thats your problem.. take it up with them.

The Same goes for google – I’ve been getting attempts (usually by scum in Korea (using Korea Telecom)) to send email to a specific gmail account. Its the only time I ever see them try to abuse my email server and the destination account when you search on google comes back with 400+ entries all related to attempts to abuse email servers. Its obvious that the email address is being used as a drop box to check for open email relays. Google have been informed about 10 times about this – they do nothing, they don’t give a shit.

Korea Telecom don’t give a shit either.

Of course the trackbacks are not displayed, and the IP address is blacklisted and not allowed to post again.

So if you are on the following list then tough titty- your machine is spamming – either because you know (in which case you are the lowest of the low) or your machine is compromised… so FIX IT

24.125.144.168
24.158.74.41
24.181.61.235
24.211.0.224
24.232.113.3
24.232.244.175
24.47.160.129
24.52.174.4
24.86.22.175
59.171.31.83
59.171.245.200
61.17.209.145
61.23.240.120
61.244.153.120
61.246.216.86
61.57.242.214
61.7.252.251
62.107.97.14
62.118.69.234
62.118.18.179
62.221.42.89
62.43.95.206
64.111.210.126
64.111.210.170
64.111.210.202
64.187.69.178
64.195.93.207
64.34.168.235
65.190.46.18
66.137.120.122
67.128.15.151
67.160.56.240
67.169.123.57
67.18.109.66
68.102.249.127
68.12.56.176
68.37.149.74
68.99.252.169
69.158.188.16
69.231.157.238
69.29.121.125
69.3.56.170
69.41.170.86
69.90.215.254
69.93.71.26
70.162.61.195
70.82.27.245
70.86.237.26
71.206.84.44
71.231.151.210
72.242.46.226
72.66.29.20
75.37.162.209
76.176.100.81
80.166.56.44
80.227.0.156
80.240.118.43
80.240.54.8
80.73.82.193
80.85.224.10
81.172.57.73
81.177.4.43
81.185.192.10
81.22.212.86
81.32.164.55
81.63.140.37
81.95.146.122
82.117.206.198
82.123.27.2
82.137.247.131
82.145.215.19
82.154.252.223
82.225.88.48
82.225.153.23
82.233.57.13
82.91.89.211
82.94.77.202
82.99.238.22
82.99.233.199
83.116.247.148
83.211.38.186
83.221.223.154
83.228.0.150
83.28.36.66
83.46.36.129
84.14.52.34
84.150.55.60
84.174.125.126
84.177.91.81
84.205.33.62
84.244.8.86
84.66.237.170
85.207.164.123
85.46.232.188
85.53.98.153
85.71.100.23
86.204.133.141
87.250.77.203
87.251.100.53
89.34.43.181
125.192.177.33
125.240.113.194
125.3.99.157
131.114.190.90
146.48.84.120
148.233.159.58
152.160.26.123
165.229.47.125
192.51.5.126
193.173.109.253
193.188.77.2
193.233.5.76
193.251.16.231
193.69.180.120
194.165.130.93
195.131.217.42
195.146.112.53
195.175.37.71
195.175.37.70
195.85.199.54
196.12.178.73
200.117.44.76
200.117.139.69
200.117.219.166
200.117.223.199
200.138.103.184
200.155.205.53
200.172.38.52
200.172.107.14
200.207.122.188
200.209.170.87
200.209.170.102
200.35.167.132
200.46.125.149
200.69.244.197
200.77.48.184
200.77.103.191
200.78.241.61
200.82.50.229
200.88.46.58
201.17.215.228
201.17.230.218
201.17.231.5
201.209.84.86
201.243.59.229
201.248.251.58
201.25.73.33
201.25.0.104
201.3.37.149
201.36.161.104
201.53.125.167
201.57.126.130
201.75.66.200
201.75.82.65
201.80.170.22
202.1.192.1
202.123.219.227
202.129.57.114
202.143.152.150
202.179.159.205
202.182.65.204
202.27.236.79
202.59.80.19
202.59.80.160
202.7.176.133
203.100.75.43
203.144.144.163
203.144.144.164
203.144.198.188
203.149.25.124
203.150.145.86
203.187.245.216
203.233.101.144
203.247.156.16
210.114.183.194
210.147.5.198
210.2.204.110
210.55.96.122
211.10.143.146
211.121.51.78
211.189.39.174
211.72.254.51
212.122.74.8
212.219.250.1
212.22.32.192
212.44.82.226
212.9.229.75
213.152.59.88
213.186.116.169
213.191.121.23
213.251.132.100
216.40.89.188
217.172.23.164
217.219.33.135
217.45.141.242
217.8.209.37
218.102.159.247
218.115.214.121
218.121.152.115
218.123.142.130
218.124.122.36
218.127.191.3
218.128.1.10
218.179.104.199
219.1.142.90
219.125.19.117
219.172.233.2
219.181.172.25
219.64.15.147
219.80.51.79
220.146.207.47
220.211.230.216
220.226.131.86
220.228.96.190
220.25.164.229
220.37.170.29
220.38.4.30
220.42.24.125
220.46.64.204
220.55.68.132
220.99.199.37
221.114.175.253
221.190.151.210
221.23.72.30
221.39.48.9
222.126.5.226
222.151.9.250
222.229.197.79
222.5.233.17

More Cheesy thoughts

This is a sort of a follow up to my previous entry about Cheese – specifically Americans and Cheese

I was over in the US for the past couple of weeks and had the rather unfortunate experience of eating some American cheese. Its not something I’m going to repeat in a hurry.

Lets take an example: Coopers Sharp Cheese. The only thing sharp about this was the blade on the cutter used to slice the stuff. Sharp cheeses should be tangy. This smelt, looked and felt like a Kraft Single – and if you know what those are then you’ll know what I’m taking about.

I also had some smoked “cheddar”. OK it was smoked – I’ll give you that. Smoked on the outside to the point of being more like a kipper than a block of cheese. The inside however was another story completely.

Ever eaten Candlewax? No neither have I but I suspect its rather like the smoked cheddar – waxy, bendable but brittle.

Linux

At the weekend I replaced the broken power connector on our old Toshiba SA30. I tidied it up, defragged it all and then applied the latest set of Microsoft patches.

Thats where it all went wrong – system just hung on reboot. Booting in safe mode it showed windows crapping out on mup.sys

Now as the Tosh comes with only a “product recovery” CD there is no access to the recovery console so its blat the disk and start again

So I go and dig out the “product recovery” CD.

Hmm, Toshiba obviously have a different interpretation of “recovery” than me because its a complete pigs breakfast. Stuff doesn’t work properly and its a complete pain.. two steps forward and three steps back.

I could I guess, get an OEM XP disk from work and key in the product code on the bottom of the laptop.

Or I could just wipe the whole damned thing and shove something like Ubuntu ( www.ubuntu.com ) or SLED ( www.novell.com/products/desktop/ )

Thats the problem Microsoft and the manufacturer lackeys – they make things so complicated when things go wrong that you just can’t be arsed trying to conform to their neo-fascistic ideas that you just say “sod it all” and ignore them.

Trackbacks

I’ve been reading up on Trackbacks and how they are supposed to work. I think I now understand it – but I did find an article by Shai Coggins that puts it in a nice easy to understand way.

Shai’s posting on the subject can be found at http://weblogs.about.com/od/weblogs101/f/usetrackback.htm

Kitchen DIY

I have to admit that the kitchen renovations had stalled in a pretty major way. This was mostly down to the fact that house was obviously built by people who knew very little about plastering which led to a major problem with all the plaster falling off round the window (see http://www.tty.org.uk/album/thumbnails.php?album=8 for some pictures).

Anyway today Nick came round and armed with his rather large drill we drilled into the concrete cills and screwed some wood into place. Then we fixed on more of the MDF boarding that is in the rest of the kitchen.

All that remains now is to box in round the boiler and fix up a couple more pieces of MDF.

So I’m off to the pub 😀 via a friends house – he bought a home cinema system but something isn’t working right so guess who’s been asked to help out 8)

Forum Revamp

In the background I’ve been working on a complete overhaul of the Camsigh Forums.

I put the site up in January 2004 and I’ve bolted a few things on since then, but it was all getting very messy and tired so I’ve been building up a new version in my spare time.

Hopefully over the weekend I’ll get round to cutting the data over (not as easy as it sounds as there is some crud lying round in the existing database), and then users will have a nice new looking forum with some new features (like being able to post pictures directly into posts)

Google Ads

Well I’m quite pleased with myself. The mod to support google ads in the phpbb forums only handles text ads. I wanted to put in some of the referrer ads so I wrote a little bit of php code which sets up an array with the different ads in and then picks one at Random.

I also dropped the code to put random Google “Pack” adverts into this blog mod which works quite well 😉

Phew!

Well the e-commerce site is up and running at www.ladykat.co.uk

I’ve been working on a rather large silly project to “recover” some old phpbb forum posts from html file dumps. It was hard work but fun.. the fruits of that effort can be found at www.tty.homelinux.org/board

I’m also working on a two stack parser in PHP – so far I’ve got all the logic worked out and I’ve written the extression parser which breaks the inputted line into chunks. Not sure when its going to go live but when it does pubnight ( www.pubnight.org.uk ) is going to get a lot more dynamic content.