Was looking through my pictures and found two of my very old machines that I built a few years back.
Found Some Old Computer Photos
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Author Archives: Paul Farrow
Changed My Blogs Theme
The standard themes that come with wordpress are OK !! but if you want something really good / different you have to go elsewhere. I found quite a lot of themes on WordPress Themes and particularly liked the Modern Sofa 10 theme.
This is particularly relevant these days as I am always falling asleep on the sofa and wake up in the early hours of the morning.
It was a good starting point but something were lacking which I modified by hand ie. put the title on the search box, modified the footer to take out the advertising etc etc. There are still somethings that arent quite right for instance the tag cloud isnt formated properly but that is not the themes problem that is a problem with the tag cloud that comes standard with wordpress as it really needs a tag cloud div html tag created around it. When I have more time I will try to sort that out.
Any way think it looks quite alright for the mo….
WordPress Search & Permalinks
Using the carrington theme and after switching to permalinks I noticed that the wordpress search doesnt seem to work. Not sure if this is by design or what. After a little bit of scrabbling around I decided to hack the scripts so I changed the search.php script which sits in themes/carrington-blog/forms. I commented out the permalinks section of the if like so
/*
if (get_option('permalink_structure') != '') {
$onsubmit = "location.href=this.action+
'search/'+encodeURIComponent(this.s.value).replace(/%20/g, '+'); return false;";
}
else {
*/
$onsubmit = '';
//}
so that it always does the non permalink bit whether or not it is selected. Seems to work still, all comments welcomed on this.
Adding Google Adsense To WordPress
Well tried several and dont think any of them are that good. For one thing that is a problem is that google only seems to work in internet explorer which I guess is by design. I cant get any of the google adsense stuff to appear on my wordpress blog using firefox to surf the pages – unless my adblocker is stopping them but I dont think its configured for it. Any ideas any one am I being a really silly person as normal ???
Moved from SubText to WordPress
Well subtext has fallen out of favour and no one is really updating the software side of it any more. WordPress seems to be the latest fashionable blog software out there at the moment.
So I exported my subtext blog to blogml then used this very nice blog article to import it into wordpress. I did what the chap says but didnt really have any problems at all. The only thing I had a problem with was that the categories didnt keep their names, so just had to rename the categories once it was in wordpress format.
Antec Fusion Remote HTPC Case – Audio Control Doesnt Work
Just upgraded my media center case to an Antec Fusion Remote. Now its a very well made case and has 120mm fans in them with variable speed control which is why it took my fancy. It has full size slots as well as my older case could only take half height cards which is always a problem finding them. I bought the silver one, disappointment here is that only the front is silver the rest of the case is black which is fine if you stack your machine with a silver av receiver that is silver as you wont see the rest of the case but if your like me that has them side by side its a little annoying that they didnt choose to do the whole case in silver but I guess its all because of cost and to be honest its way cheaper than say a zalman htpc case so I guess thats why.
I run an asus p5e-hdmi micro-atx board in it. It isnt one of the latest micro atx media boards because i have had it hanging around at the house for nearly a year now. I then push the audio out via coaxial to a sony av receiver running a 5.1 tanoy speakers.
The only problem I had with it was that the remote and variable control on the front of the case didnt adjust the sound / audio. Having researched the Antec support area, they suggested upgrading the latest driver software for the vfd (lcd panel) and your motherboard. Both of which still didnt make it work.
Then I saw that on the Asus support site that there was a realtek driver for the audio. I then replaced the microsoft standard driver for the audio with the Realtek one and bazaaam it all works.
The only outstanding problem I have is that Microsoft Media Center doesnt control the audio when playing a dvd, but I have had this problem on my older media center so think Media Center cant control it as the ouput just seems to off load it out the coaxial audio cable to my av receiver.
The results are outstanding just need to upgrade my lcd tv to a full HD (1080p) one now rather than a HD-Ready (720p) but that will have to wait.
Front USB Ports not working on my Shuttle running Vista x64 Ultimate
After taking the Cypress update my front usb ports stopped working. How did I fix it well if you go to the device manager (right click the computer icon in file explorer, click properties then click device manager [left hand side]) under Universal Serial Bus Controllers (right at the bottom) there is a device shown now called HX2LP kit (3.03.0000.2) I believe this is what causes the problem so I just uninstalled mine and rebooted.
After the reboot I get a generic USB hub appear and the front ports on my shuttle SD37P2 are now working.
Also when I run windows update again I dont see that update any more.
Dollar Accounts and Barclays Bank
Just had a webchat with Barclays Bank, and it must be them embracing different ways to chat to customers that browse their website. So thought I would ask about dollar accounts and why not after all it popped up and they asked me.
So here goes the conversation
Customer: ok can you give me current exchange rates on dollar accounts that you offer please
Customer: ??
Sarah A: I am sorry, Paul, we don’t have that information.
Customer: what ??? you dont have the information and your the bank !!!! never mind I will look around thanks for your help good afternoon
Sarah A: You’re welcome, Paul. Thank you for using Barclays Webchat Service. 
Well again a corker from Barclays Bank – they are the bank and they cant even tell me what dollar rates they have !!!
Reminded me of the time I went into a branch and asked how much it would be to pay off an existing loan with them. The girl behind the desk said well i’m not really sure its approximately …. cant write a cheque for approximately …. eventually a supervisor came over and told me the exact amount.
Gosh they do make me laugh.
Got my Suzuki GSXR750 K7
Last weekend took delivery of my Suzuki GSXR750 K7 it is very nice. Bit frightened have to be honest of it at first but after 2 bends I was smiling very big wide smiles its excellent. Unfortunately it broke down 2 days after getting it, the regulator went on it but Portman Motorcycles are fixing it. But until that time I didn’t get above 3rd gear and was doing about just under a ton.
Suzuki GSX-R 750
Race with Eric Clapton in his Porsche Turbo
Followed Eric Clapton last week on the roads around Ripley. He was in his Porsche turbo and I was in my little white Mini Cooper S, his Porsche was going well. Although I did have him on the roundabout under the A3 at Ripley, but lost it again on the slip road. At that point I thought I was going backwards lol.
🙂