After updating Ubuntu I decided I wanted a photo gallery on this blog. I downloaded NextGEN Gallery from alex.rabe. It has gotten several good reviews so I thought I would give it a try. The install was easy enough but it did require a bit of tweaking of the Apache config file to get things working properly. I had to increase the size of the PHP Memory Limit to 8M and then finally to 48M to be able to run the plugin and then to create thumbnails of each picture as it was downloaded. I also increased the size of PHP Max Upload Size from 2M to 8M and PHP Max Post Size: from 8M to 16M. Most of my pictures are just over 2M in size thus the increase in the limits. I have noticed however that downloading the full size picture can take a while so I may have to resize all my pictures before I download them.
Pictures!!
June 21st, 2008Ubuntu updated
June 6th, 2008So I took the plunge and updated Ubuntu to 8.04 (Hardy Heron). Everything seems to have gone alright except for the fact that it took longer to download and install than I thought and I ended up getting to bed waaay too late. The only real problem I had was with BOINC. The BOINC client and manager were updated as part of the update package and it didn’t work when I restarted. The BOINC client started without any problem but it did not appear to be running any tasks and when I started the manager it was unable to connect to the client. I tried reinstalling the BOINC client and manager but that did not help. I had to completely uninstall them first and reinstall to get things working again. The only problem with this was that when I rejoined the projects I am working on it created a new computer account for each project. When I then merged with the old account with the new it took the computer ID from the new one losing my computer ID number of 480 I had with Cosmology. Now I have a 5 digit computer ID. You have to get in early to get the low numbered computer IDs so I’ve lost some status there, oh well.
Weedman Strikes again
May 15th, 2008I just looked and the last time they called was in February. At that time I asked them to remove my name from their calling list. Today I got Two (2), count them TWO (2) calls within 2 minutes from them again. I told both of them that I wanted to be removed from their calling list in a way that was forceful but polite. The first one seems to have pushed the redial button instead. I asked the second one to put me through to his manager but he said they were all in a meeting and not available. I don’t know what I can do at this time but I will keep this log going and see what happens. There must be a way to stop them from calling.
My first picture
April 12th, 2008I got a new digital camera. It’s a Canon PowerShot A720IS. This is the first picture I took with it. I just have to figure out how to work with it now in WP.
Dance Flurry 2008
February 23rd, 2008Another great Dance Flurry last weekend. I got sick right after getting back so it was probably acquired there. I actually took 3 whole days off work which I almost never do. This weekend I have one of my dances. I am feeling well enough to do the work required for the dance but I don’t think I will be dancing much. 
I still need a few days of rest and some more chicken soup to get to 100%.
The Flurry was as usual a great dance. I basically stayed in the Paul Rosenberg dance hall all weekend. The contra dancing went until 1:00 both Friday and Saturday nights (or is that Sat and Sun morning) and I stayed to the end both nights. Saturday and Sunday morning I was back dancing for the first contra of the day. My feet survived quite nicely on the concrete floor of the dance hall because of the leather clad running shoes I now use on that type of floor. My feet were sore but still usable.
Boulder Pledge
February 13th, 2008A friend of mine (bjb) posted this on her blog. I thought it was good enough to borrow.
From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boulder_Pledge:
The Boulder Pledge is a personal promise, first coined by Roger Ebert, not to purchase anything offered through email spam. The pledge is worded as follows:
“Under no circumstances will I ever purchase anything offered to me as the result of an unsolicited e-mail message. Nor will I forward chain letters, petitions, mass mailings, or virus warnings to large numbers of others. This is my contribution to the survival of the online community.” –Roger Ebert
I would like to modify the pledge after the experience of the last post to the following:
“Under no circumstances will I ever purchase anything offered to me as the result of an unsolicited e-mail message or phone call. Nor will I forward chain letters, petitions, or virus warnings to large numbers of others. This is my contribution to the survival of the online community.”
I had to leave out the part about the mass mailings because I still need to send messages to the Contra Dance mailing list. This is an Opt-In mailing list and I limit it to just dance related messages.
OK, At the urging of bjb I have re-re-modified the pledge back to something closer to the original. I failed to fully grasp the significance of the word “forward” originally so I think I can safely add the mass mailings back in. So here goes; I, John Argus do solemnly swear the following statement:
“Under no circumstances will I ever purchase anything offered to me as the result of an unsolicited e-mail message or phone call. Nor will I forward chain letters, petitions, mass mailing, or virus warnings to large numbers of others. This is my contribution to the survival of the online community.”
Telemarketing Frustrations
February 13th, 2008I just got my second call in two days from The Weedman telemarketer after telling the last guy to have my number removed from their calling list. This time I asked for the manager after the guy on the line started to tell me how his system automatically calls numbers and that he has no control over it. It appears that they don’t train their guys in how to remove a number from the calling list as the manager said that there would be no problem in removing mine. I made it clear to the manager that I never wanted to get another call from them ever so I will see what happens.
I may just keep track of these unsolicited sales calls here so that I have a record of when they call in case I need to make an official complaint. What I would really like to see is a national No-Call-List like in the US. Although apparently that doesn’t work as well as people would like either.
Happy New Year!
February 7th, 2008Chinese New Year that is.
It’s going to be the year of the Rat for those that are interested. I’m not sure what that means but I’m sure there’s lots of woo concerning the Rat.
IP update
February 4th, 2008Well things seem to have settled down. At the suggestion of Mark Jeftovic from EasyDNS I dropped the wildcard records and now just update arguable.ca and argussalix.ca. I have had 3 IP changes, two of which I forced, and I have not had any problems. I will give it another week or so to see if any of the old error messages show up again and then let EasyDNS know things are good again.
Hot Water update
February 1st, 200808:00 Thursday morning my mother came over and waited patiently for the new hot water tank to show up. I am really glad to have a mother that will do things like this for me.
She had to wait longer this time then last as the new tank did not show up until 11:30 ish. This time the new tank worked properly once it was installed. They said that it would take about an hour to heat the 50 gallons of water to the proper temperature which makes sense. When I got home the water coming out of the faucet was nice and hot. I did adjust the temp up to the 130F (55C) range though because I have a stretch of hot water pipeing that is close to an outside wall and gets cooled down on the way to the shower.
Now I just have to decide if it is worth the hassle of getting a discount on the rental for being without hot water for 4 days. Let try some simple math: one month rental is $19.89 plus 5% GST equals $20.88 divided by 31 days in a month is 67.4 cents per day times the 4 days I was without hot water is $2.69. So is it worth me spending probably over an hour arguing with some simple minded CSR for $2.69? Probably not, which means that the gas company wins again by default.
I’m just glad to have hot water again and can get clean in my own home.
