This is my first ever “year in review” post. Not that other years haven’t had their notable moments, but 2011 has seen a number of incredible changes for me. After a couple of fraught years where things have been up in the air, I feel like I’ve got a renewed focus and energy. And despite 2011 being marked by massive changes, it feels like those changes are just the beginning.

Oh, hello! If you're reading this, it's the first entry I've posted to my blog since upgrading the site to Drupal 7!

It's hard to believe that exactly one week ago I was preparing to climb Ben Nevis. In the spring, a friend approached me to see if I'd be interested in doing a charity hike up the mountain. And, since I was beginning to take my fitness more seriously, I agreed.

This past weekend, my hiking partner John and I went for our final practise walk in the Mournes. It’s all in preparation for a trek up Ben Nevis on Saturday 17th September to raise funds for the Ulster Cancer Foundation.

Something I'm going to share with you today is how to delete a batch of files in Linux (a CentOS distribution in this instance) using the built-in find utility and some regular expressions.

Use case: It turns out that the backup utility for WordPress doesn't delete old backups that it stores on your server. As these files build up, they typically consume a lot of space, and eventually fill up your hard disk.

As a blogger, the URL field in the WordPress comments form is a constant pain - either spammers are using it to drop shady links, or readers feel compelled to fill it with garbage just to fill in the field. Either way, it's a nuisance. But how do you get rid of it?

We recently decided to clear out old comments on blog entries on one of our WordPress sites. We have almost six years worth of comments and data on this particular blog, most of it pertaining to old news items. While the discussions were interesting and engaging in their day, they now represent tens - maybe hundreds - of thousands of lines of database entries.

In case you missed it, the latest edition of Ubuntu was released this week, Natty Narwhal (or 11.04 if you prefer).

It seems to have been one of the most popular releases ever, because I can't connect to the Ubuntu website to upgrade!!! What's happening is that because Canonical's servers are so busy, the upgrade assistant can't download the release notes for the new version. And so the upgrade fails.

It doesn't happen often, but once in a while you'll need to open a RAR file in Ubuntu.

What's a RAR file, you ask? Well, essentially it's a slightly more obscure zip file format. Windows handles ZIP file formats nicely, Linux is comfortable with TAR.GZ archives. Neither operating system loves RAR files.

Tonight sees me writing a very frustrated Drupal post, but I've googled until my eyes went googly and I can't see a solution.

So I turn to you, lovely people of Drupal Planet. I need your expertise and advice. And possibly a sample .tpl.php file...