Gerard McGarry

Pendrive Linux to the rescue!

gerard — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 12:44:50 +0000

Since most laptop and desktop computers these days can boot from a USB drive, one of the handiest utilities in my toolbox is an installation of Pendrive Linux.

Pendrive Linux gives you a bootable, fully-working linux system on a USB stick. I use a 2GB ByteStor flash drive personally, with the default install of the Pendrive Linux system. From what I've read, you can go as far as to install larger systems like Ubuntu on a flash drive, but I've stuck to this slightly more compact system (more out of laziness, to be honest).

Portable Operating System

One of the supposed uses of this type of system is portability - you can use it on virtually any hardware, bringing your full linux system and favourite settings with you anywhere.

It's an alluring notion - as someone who jumps between several different systems on a daily basis, having all your settings ready to go is a massive timesaver. However, I've used thumb drive Linux for other purposes...

Drupal: Placement of the search box makes a huge difference

gerard — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 18:28:19 +0000

I am continually making striving to improve the design of our community site, Unreality Shout. I'm quite fond of the grid-based design, but there's usually something that needs refined or improved.

A couple of days ago, I decided to move the search box to a more prominent place on the page. When I designed the site, I hastily threw in a search form as a sidebar block...right down around the bottom. I was never 100% happy about this arrangement, but my Drupal skills were weaker then.

However, I've been using Shout a lot more recently. And it started to bug me that I had to scroll to the bottom of the page to search for content. So I decided to bite the bullet and hard-code a search box into the top right-hand side of the header.

Tip for newbies: I thought I had all the code in place. But the search box failed to appear. Turns out that although I'd enabled the Search Box option in the global settings, it was switched off in my theme-specific settings. Whoops! Hopefully that's a time-saver for somebody else!

Trafalgar Square and Nelson's Column

gerard — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 22:10:00 +0000

This is a photo of Trafalgar Square taken from the entrance to the National Gallery. It's a fantastic vantage point, showing you from Nelson's Column all the way down Whitehall to Big Ben.

I took the photo Easter 2009 during a visit to London with the kids.

Funny, this is the one area of London I gravitate to whenever I'm in the city. I remember drunken stumbles down by Embankment tube station, and afternoons meandering through the National Gallery.

The square was originally to be called King William the Fourth's Square, until George Ledwell Taylor suggested the snappier title of Trafalgar Square. It was built to commemorate the Battle of Trafalgar - work commenced in the 1820's and was completed in 1845.

Not-So-EasyJet

gerard — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 10:41:30 +0000

I've written here in the past about being obsessive about missing flights. And in my long career of taking flights for business purposes, I missed my first flight on Friday morning.

And not to do things by halves, I missed my second flight later that same day.

Missing the first flight was entirely due to the freak weather conditions around London at the end of the week. Snow? In winter? They never saw it coming.

First Flight

Missing the first flight was virtually inevitable. I was in good time, caught the train to Stansted, trying to keep warm against an extremely bitter morning.

The first hint of travel problems came when the train stopped at a station for a while and stayed there a bit too long. It eventually inched out of the station, but stopped in the middle of nowhere about ten minutes later. That's when people started looking concerned and checking their watches every few minutes.

The Grand Canal, Venice

gerard — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 21:45:36 +0000

Looking down from the top of the Rialto Bridge in Venice...one of my favourite photos from our holiday.

Sacred Heart Church, Omagh

gerard — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 20:59:23 +0000

A photo of Sacred Heart Church in Omagh - we spent some time there a couple of years back and I got this picture. I've given it a slight boost in Photoshop.

Here's a bit more information about the church:

This church was designed by William Hague and dedicated by Cardinal Logue in 1899, was built on the highest point in the town, replacing the old chapel of St Peter and St Paul built in Brook Street in 1829. The Rose Window with the High Altar below was provided by parishioners, who had emigrated to New York, as a memorial to the late Archbishop Hughes, first Archbishop of St Patrick’s Cathedral, New York. It has been recently re-furbished.

Antrim Round Tower

gerard — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 20:29:07 +0000

The Round Tower and Bullaun Stone are impressive reminders of Antrim’s ancient monastic settlement. The tower was built around the 10th century as a bell-tower for protection from raiders and is known locally as The Steeple. It is 28 metres tall and is one of the finest of its kind in Ireland. The monastic site was burned in 1147.

I took this one a few years back after spending an afternoon wandering around Antrim looking at it's historical landmarks. I think this round tower (along with the round tower at Devenish Island) is one of only two full-sized round towers remaining in Northern Ireland.

Nofollow List - An alternative to Drupal's spam link deterrent

gerard — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 19:36:32 +0000

Something I've hated about running community sites on Drupal is the cursed Spam Link Deterrent filter.

The idea behind this filter is that it applies rel="nofollow" to any links in user-generated content. And the reason this is necessary is that when you have a membership site and you allow users to create content on it, you inadvertently attract spammers who want to drop links back to their own site.

By applying the nofollow attribute, you are telling search engines not to count that link as 'editorially approved' - therefore, the spammer doesn't derive any value from the link. The problem with the Spam Link Deterrent is that it's an all or nothing solution - even internal links to other content on the site get this added to them. This means that your site loses a lot of value from natural internal links.

London's White Tower (From an angle)

gerard — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 19:02:27 +0000

A shot of the side of the Tower Of London's White Tower. I took this one when we were in London back in Easter 2008 - I never really got a chance to upload some of these at the time.

Since we're going to London again in a couple of weeks, I'm hoping to build up my portfolio of photos of the city. I think I've fallen in love with London again.

Comments closed (due to spam)

gerard — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 10:11:12 +0000

This is just a short note to say that I'm closing comments on this site for a little while. Over the last week or so, I've been deluged with spam, despite having Drupal's highly regarded Mollom module installed.

I'm not going to bother fighting spammers by moderating comments constantly. Even when reporting spam comments to Mollom, the same stuff just keeps coming back: mostly Tiffany jewellry and Ugg boots spam. If I can't see the benefit of reporting spam to Mollom, then why bother?

What to do instead?

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I am available in other places on the web, like Unreality TV, Unreality Shout and Twitter. And of course, if you need to speak to me, use the "Get In Touch" link at the top of the page.