Getting WordPress Autoupgrade to Work
Back when WordPress 2.7 was first released, I was excited about the new autoupgrade feature. Basically it upgrades your site with the click of a button to the latest version of wordpress. However, it always failed when I would try it out, so I’ve been doing it the old fashioned way of either sftp or through terminal. The closest I got was this fix that I found which at least made it so I could upgrade/install plugins with one click.
Today I decided to see if anyone documented how to get this nifty feature working and I finally found it! The fix is way too simple that I should have thought of it on my own. I thought it was most likely a permissions issue. Basically, the wordpress files have to be owned by the user that runs apache. In most cases I believe this would be www-data at least I know it is on Ubuntu. 
So all you need to do is change the owner of the files/directories of your wordpress install. This example would be if you had your wordpress install in the www root in ubuntu.
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/
or if you had it in a sub directory called wordpress you would just do
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/wordpress/
This changes the owner and group to www-data to all the files and sub folders in the specified directory. After making that change, the upgrade process now works and the plugins install/upgrade too.
WordPress 2.9.1 should be out in the next day or two and I’m looking forward to a one click upgrade.
Christmas!
I had a great Christmas this year and thought I would share some of the great presents I received. To the left is a group shot of most everything. I got a few modern Star Wars figures, a Canon Camera bag to hold my new DSLR camera with plenty of room for flashes and lenses, a Lili Ledy (Mexico) Luke Jedi vintage cardback, Transformers Encore 17 Cassettes, and a Canon 50mm F1.8 Lens for the camera.
Here are some pictures taken from the Takara website that show the cassettes for Soundwave and Blaster. They recently released the 3rd set in Japan and I hope to add those sometime soon to complete the set. One nice little touch is the fact that the marking on the sides were stickers on the originals and on these they are actually painted on. Now there is no chance of them falling off and getting lost.
I also had a very nice surprise this year. Some friends that I have met online grouped together and got me a Secret Santa gift this year. I’ve helped a few international collectors this year by having some items come through me and then mailing them on to them. There are quite a few sellers that will not deal outside of the U.S., so it is a way to help collectors still get what they want. Three collectors went in on this with two being from Australia and the 3rd in Romania. It is a Cardback with the bubble still attached for Luke Jedi from Mexico. The company that brought the figures out in Mexico was called Lili Ledy and all of those items are highly sought after by collectors. I hope to add the actual figure to go with the card some time this year.
The same Romanian friend mentioned above also got me a piece of original artwork. The artist is also a collector and has been doing these character pieces under the name “Attack of the Cute” I’m really impressed with all of the pieces I’ve seen him do and think it makes for a great one of a kind collectible. I can’t wait to get mine framed and up on the wall. You can see more of his art on rebelscum at http://threads.rebelscum.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=Fanart&Number=2545921 and his official website is http://www.jpc-art.co.cc/
Finally, here are a few pictures that I have taken with the new lens. I’m still learning a few things with it, but am taking the pictures in full manual mode on my camera. It was an excellent Christmas and thanks to everyone for the great gifts.
Unreal Engine Ported to iPhone 3GS/Touch
Here’s for hoping that Unreal Tournament gets a proper port soon.
Anandtech spent some time with Epic Games’ Mark Rein last week and was shown a demo of the Unreal Engine 3 running on a 3rd Generation iPod Touch. The demo included a flythrough as well as a playable level from Unreal Tournament.
It’s using a modified Unreal Tournament level previously shown off at GDC. A virtual thumbstick on the left side of the screen controls your movement, while tracking your thumb in the lower right corner of the screen controls the camera. Just tap the screen to shoot. Mark said this is a tech test bed and theyre experimenting with several different control schemes including ones with tilt.The Unreal Engine 3 is a modern 3D gaming engine which powers games such as Bioshock, Gears of War and Unreal Tournament 3.
Port 25 Blocked!
My new internet provider decided to block port 25 on me. This is the port used for email which I need for when people sign up for the site and for server admin emails. Luckily, I found a way around this and thought I would share what I did. The basic idea is to send email through a gmail account using port 587 and then changing the incoming port to a custom one which will receive email from another service.
The first thing I did was remove and reinstall postfix just to start with a clean installation. Here are the steps taken from the Ubuntu Server Guide
The Story
Exactly a week ago I tried to contact Broadweave/iProvo that offers fiber optic internet in the area as that was what I had before with MSTAR. I sent them a message through their website and it mentioned being contacted within 24 hours. The next day i did not hear from them, so I tried to call and got a voicemail message. I left a message and didn’t get a call back until the next week.
Next I decided to just try for internet through Comcast. Their connection speed is a little slower, but I figured they would be easier to get setup with. The place we moved to already provides T.V. service with them. I tried to check out on their website and it was supposed to have an option of allowing me to install it myself or having someone else do it. I knew I could set it up myself and already had a cable modem. Needless to say I only got the option for professional installation on checkout and the fee was $100. I started an online chat with their customer service and told them the situation. They finally said, that because the t.v. service is under a bulk contract for the complex, that I needed to speak with the person who takes care of that.
The next day I call the guy who handles the t.v. service and he told me they didn’t know what they were talking about and that all the other people in the complex have set up their own accounts for with Comcast for internet. He gave me the account number for the bulk contract so they could look it up for me. I call and tell them the situation and then they finally say they can hook me up, but the monthly fee will be $53. By going through the website is was going to be $19.99 for the first six months and then go up to $42, so it seemed ridiculous to me that the same service was $10 more because I called in. Continue Reading →
