Modifications to Kubrick Theme

The default them for WP 1.5 is excellent, but I wanted a few things that were not standard. First thing I changed was making the sidebar available on all pages, I know there is now a default_allsidebar theme, but I made the alterations before this was out. I won’t go into detail but in many cases it was just the addition of < ?php get_sidebar(); ?> that did the trick.

I then added a navbar to the header.php file using David Appleyard’s tabs style sheet. This is a chieved by adding the relevent code to the header.php file and the additional styles to the style.css file.

The final mod was the header image, at first I simply pointed to my own image using *#headerimg { background: url('< ?php bloginfo('stylesheet_directory'); ?>/images/seorasheader.jpg') no-repeat top;}*/. Then I decide it would be nice to rotate the images. I was working on this when I came across Mike Cohen’s Random Image theme which was much better.

First add
< ?php
function header_graphic() {
echo "/images/";
$num=rand(0,9);
echo "seorasheader".$num.".jpg";
};
?>

to the header.php file which will randomly select an image from a bunch named seorasheader0.jpg –> seorasheader9.jpg.

Next, change the line in header.php

from:-
#header { background: url("< ?php bloginfo('stylesheet_directory'); ?>/images/kubrickheader.jpg") no-repeat bottom center; }

to:-
#header { background: url("< ?php bloginfo('stylesheet_directory'); header_graphic(); ?>") no-repeat bottom center; }

Live8 : G8 : Particip8

Just finished watching the Live8 concert here in the UK. Whilst events of this kind in themselves don’t change anything they can however help to raise awareness. As far as we know humans evolved in Africa so it’s about time we recognised the the importance of the birthplace of humanity and did everything in our power to halt the grotesque suffering that goes on their daily. We’ve all read the statistics and seen the reports 30, 40, 50% of some countries populations with HIV-AIDS whilst we in the west have the drugs and the technology to help, the 21st century, and people still dying of starvation. We all know this should not be, but what can we do? we may be on the brink of something quite momentus, that is politicians actually doing what we elect them for…..listening to the people and acting on our behalf. It remains to be seen if Tony Blair and Gordon Brown can deliver and persuade the others to do the right thing, but I think, if people keep up the pressure on our politicians we may actually start to see a difference in our world.

march past Gleneagles hotel
makepovertyhistory
Live8Live
Live8 from BBC news
march in Edinburgh
g8alternatives
G8blog

Firefox security hole + workaround

Secunia reports a frame-injection vulnerability in Firefox 1.0.3 and
1.0.4. Mozillazine has details, including a comment that you can close the hole (until 1.0.5 is released) by clicking Tools, Options, Advanced, Tabbed Browsing and changing “open links in a new window” to “open links in a new tab in the most recent window”:

A Secunia bulletin also notes that a similar hole has existed in Internet Explorer 5.x and 6.x since June 2004 and has not yet been patched by Microsoft (but there is a workaroud).

Is Firefox still safer than Internet Explorer?

In a recent article Brian Livingston, the editor at WindowsSecrets.com in my opinion concluded a very convincing …Yes. In the article he details the number of security holes in each browser and the time they were left unpatched. There are some pretty convincing statistics from Scanit NV, an international security company.

IE suffered from unpatched security holes for 359 days in 2004

Attacks on IE weaknesses circulated “in the wild” for 200 of those days

Mozilla and Firefox patched all vulnerabilities before hacker code circulated

Whilst no one would suggest that Firefox is bug and security hole free it’s clear that whilst Firefox security holes are generally fixed within days in Internet Expolorer these fixes can take weeks and leave users vulnerable for much longer.

panorama

Like many people I have been taking multiple photographs for years. In the old days it was a case of trying to line up the prints and sticking them together to get a panorama. Sometimes this worked OK but mostly it was clumsy. Today with digital cameras the whole thing is very simple now and there are a buch of ways to stitch images together. One of the best image ‘stichers’ I’ve come across is autoStich. This is a very simple, easy to use free program and more importantly, it works. In fact I had a set of images from the Isle of Skye I’d been unable to stitch, but autostitch managed it in seconds. But how do you display a panoramic image in a blog? There are a number of ways you could do this. You could for instance use zoomify and I’ve uploaded a small test image. Or, you could use a java applet to pan the image in a small window such as PTViewer3.1.2 by Helmut Dersch. Below is an example of a great WP plugin from skriker which uses the PTViewer applet. This is extremely easy to implement in a few seconds, and is easy to customise. on the Ochils above Tillicoultry