About 2 years ago, maybe more, I remember finding a new, free statistics service called Reinvigorate/. It seems that after disappearing and doing nothing since it’s popped back up with a beta program.

I got an invite this morning and flatpackedworld is now running the tracking code so we’ll see how it holds up. Had a quick look around and it seems nice, good UI and seems pretty quick.

If you want an invite go to the site and hit the link. It currently says:

We periodically invite new groups of people into the beta, about every week(ish) or so. This helps us mitigate any unexpected server load while we fine tune and tweak our systems.

Just started looking into Microformats and as such have added an hcard, some rel=”tag” and rel=”bookmark” links into the blog.

I’m using both Operator and Tails to see what’s going on.

Nicely pointless, yet very festive, icons added to December posts. Simple tweak to the output using day() and month() ensures the magic is limited. Cheers to Nick at n.design for the free icons.

This will be the last code update I think before Christmas, might tweak the entry page tomorrow hangover depending!

If you’re running and old version of BlogCFC and you are looking to upgrade one of the issues, well, nice to have things you’ll have to do is create aliases for all the old entries and categories.

I’ve done a quick, very dirty, CF page that’ll do this for you. This was run on 5.5.003, but, think the structure has been like it since 4.x, though, may be wrong. Anyway, might be useful.

<more />

    <cfset dsn = "blogdsn">

    <cfquery datasource="#dsn#" name="e">
    select * from tblblogentries
    </cfquery>

    <cfloop query="e">
       <cfquery datasource="#dsn#">
       update tblblogentries set alias = '#lCase(reReplace(reReplace(title,"[^A-Za-z0-9 ]","","ALL"),"( +)","-","ALL"))#' where id = '#id#'
       </cfquery>
    </cfloop>

    <cfquery datasource="#dsn#" name="c">
    select * from tblblogcategories
    </cfquery>

    <cfloop query="c">
       <cfquery datasource="#dsn#">
       update tblblogcategories set categoryalias = '#lCase(reReplace(reReplace(categoryname,"[^A-Za-z0-9 ]","","ALL"),"( +)","-","ALL"))#' where categoryid = '#categoryid#'
       </cfquery>
    </cfloop>

Having said I’d almost decided on a new design for site which really was blatant lie as I had about 4 designs on the go, I think, I might actually have decided this time.

The site might get a bit funky as not only am I going to have a splash page style homepage the blog is going to be upgraded and the database moved, oh, and it’ll also be changing server. All in all if it comes back I’ll be happy!

Naturally when this’ll actually happen I don’t know, hopefully this weekend, but hey… I’ll settle for this year!

Nothing interesting at all really, but, finally think I’ve decided on a new layout for my site… though… may change my mind tomorrow.

It’s completely different, a bit darker, but all good, even includes ducks! Watch this space.

Ray Camden has released the latest version of his BlogCFC version 5. Changes as follows:

• New default look and feel.
• Administrator (no more design mode)
• CAPTCHA support
• Auto-include images
• RSS improvements
• Related Entries support
• Comment display improvements
• SES improvements
• Cowbell improvements
• Preview support
• Draft mode support
• Send to a Friend
• Lots of bug fixes

If you noticed the site looking a little funky over the next few days (or weeks) that’ll be why!

I’m now eventually getting around to upgrading BlogCFC to version 4. I’ve got the data transfer, which, using the data transfer tool in Navicat was suprisingly painless. Even got it to transfer and recreate the full DB pushing from my local machine up to the live server.

Got it running it “pure” form at the moment on my beta domain and have already included Steven’s tag cloud pod (cheers!).

Next on the list is to re-skin it, might actually take the time and do in proper xhtml/css this time, though, might not! Also might look at a redesign. One thing I was tempted to do is try and create some themes for the blog basing them on some ideas from the OSWD. Also want to get fckeditor in there as well this time, maybe even some emoticons!

Edit: Why is trying to design a new style so damn hard!

Evo magazine tested different fuels in a GTI a few months back, and I’ve listed their results below (brand, max power, max torque):

Shell 95	205bhp	234lb ft
BP 95	204bhp	242lb ft
Shell Optimax	209bhp	242lb ft
Tesco 99	212bhp	242lb ft
BP Ultimate	212bhp	252lb ft
Sunoco Race Fuel (352.5p/litre!)	218bhp	248lb ft

As you may have noticed the site has got some more stuff published now. The “Also” and “About” pods are both now up. The ColdFusion and Diabetes both have content in with a new tutorial (Windows 2000 System Dependencies) published.

The portfolio section, including archives, and the archived posts are 2 remaining things to be done before I can then start on new content.

That might get slightly delayed as a new release of office-humour.co.uk is due with a nice new, slick look and feel, full RSS feeds, MySQL backend (no more crappy MS Access). It’s 80% complete now and should be appearing in a browser near you soon.

Edit 22:04 - Also now on some posts you’ll see an extra link in the footer section called “Alias”. If I’ve created an alias for a post you can link to it via a shorter, less complex link, like: www.flatpackedworld.co.uk/go/alias_name. You can still link to the full entry by using the post title as well.

Council tax, it’s a pain in the arse and to high. The proposed tax/fine whatever if you’re caught speeding! What’s going on, are the motorists supposed to pay for this governments inability to manage our money.

The latest news on council funding reforms is all fine because there does need to be a solution, but with the news also that local authorities are thinking of putting in local income tax, house taxes, green taxes etc. we may as well just give the bloody government what little of our salaries we actually get paid out and claim a weekly allowance! If they take much more tax we’re not going to have any money left… and to top it off I bet most of the tax is used to pay for people claiming benefit who don’t need it and the swamp of sodding asylum seekers (I’m not even going to start on that).

Rah.

All these changes to council tax if they do change, and we get more different local level taxes will make it more like the old Poll tax. You should pay a flat capped rate for the house you’re in then more depending on who’s in it. Simple.Oh and on another note good luck to Mr Estall.