Ian Winter

Once again it's blog refresh time. Currently working on a new version of the site. Got a design sorted and going to move on up to the latest version of Ray Camden's excellent BlogCFC. When will this wondrous event occur, well, sometime soon...

A little while back I had an email, via Flickr from and editor at Schmap saying that one of my photos had been short listed for the next version of their London travel guide.

For those who don't know, like me, this is what's Schmap is about.

Schmap is a leading publisher of digital travel guides for 200 destinations throughout the United States, Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The innovative technology behind Schmap Guides also lets end users publish their own 'schmaps' (to share trip itineraries, local reviews and more), and powers a popular range of Schmap Widgets, displaying maps with content and event schedules for travel, sports, concert tours and more on a fast-growing network of websites and blogs. Founded in 2004, Schmap is privately owned and based in Carrboro, North Carolina

The photo in question was a quick snap I'd taken with a Sony Ericsson K750i when I was up in London on Oxford Street outside of John Lewis back in December 2006. The original photo on Flickr.

Today I received another message congratulating me that my photo had been published! Kinda cool for a camera phone shot!

It's featured in the Computers & Shopping section of the latest Schmap guide.

There's a petition going on the UK government site to have the Monday after remembrance Sunday made into a national holiday. I think it's an excellent idea as we should always remember those who have served for us, I don't always agree with why we're fighting around the world but non the less the people have done their duty.

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/remembermonday/

Not really much to say on this but Happy New Year and welcome to 2008. I've set myself some resolutions which I'm planning to stick to but as every year we'll have to see how that goes!

I'd like to wish you all a Merry Christmas and prosperous New Year.

I'll leave you with this.

http://www.isitchristmas.com/

So last geek post on a Saturday night before I go out.

Trying to get a site running which uses a lot of rewrite rules. Enable the module in the /etc/apache2/httpd.conf file, configtest and restart. That should be it, erm, no. All I saw when browsing the site was a nice 404 page. Checking in the /var/log/apache2/error_log I see the following line:

[Sat Nov 10 19:13:24 2007] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] Negotiation: discovered file(s) matching request: /Users/ianwinter/Sites/domainname/public_html/content (None could be negotiated)., referer: http://www.domainname.co.uk.local/

Now I already knew that apache2 handles the Order directive for allow & deny differently so I'd already changed the main directory block to the following to allow everything:

<Directory />
    Options FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride All
    Order deny,allow
    Allow from all
</Directory>

Turns out after unsuccessful Google searches and me going back to trying all sorts (good old chmod -R 777 included) that unless you specifically setup a directory block for the /Users/ianwinter/Sites path it doesn't listen.

<Directory /Users/ianwinter/Sites/*>
    Options All
    AllowOverride All
    Order deny,allow
    Allow from all
</Directory>

It doesn't do this on Windows but I seem to recall having to do something on a RedHat system before. Maybe it's a *NIX thing.

www.freestressball.co.uk/

Essential reading though some controversial rules in there, I don't think half time breaks should be allowed.

http://www.benolding.co.uk/isl/default.asp?categoryid=0&pageid=67

Don't really need to say more. Why the hell not!

Sign the Petition now.

It's quite sad really, but I think it's very cool...

I need to get a letter couriered to Thunder Bay in Canada asap. That's around 4,500 miles give or take a hundred. Having looked at a few included FedEx, ParcelForce and UPS decided to go with DHL.

Called the drop centre in Reading and if the package was dropped off before 5PM today, it'll be on a plane tonight, overnight to Thunder Bay sorted and delivered door to door tomorrow morning Canadian time by midday. Now that's pretty impressive! The tracking site is also geek-tastically good, at time or writing this the last update showed it sitting in the sorting depot at Heathrow.

Nice.