Hmmm - the problem with trying to blend blogs and docs.....

The problem with blogs is that they are great for web stuff, e.g. pictures and text, but sometimes embedding things that were designed for other environments gets complicated.

Apart from any error messages about documents not being found (in previous post) the major problem is that the right hand side of the embedded document gets overlayed by the bar at the side. This is not quite what we were aiming for and means that a big chunk of the embedded iframe is not visible.

I may have to revert to something more complicated.....

Testing embedding from google docs

I have been trying to help my mother-in-law with getting a googledocs presentation viewed properly by everyone on the distibution list. In desperation she has resorted to trying to embed the thing in a blog http://gsbdigest.blogspot.com/ . This has developed further complications, some of which are similar but not quite identical to the ones we experience earlier.
In an attempt to find a workable solution that requires minimum interaction from the viewers I am trying to duplicate some of the embedding here.

The blog finally reverts to the original purpose :)

I tested a selection of parameters....
large document, medium document in large iframe
medium document, large document in medium iframe.

As an example I have left them below but I found the following

1. large in medium cut big chunks off.
2. medium in anything sometime lost bits at the bottom of the page.
3. large seems to look okay (at least in preview)
   

I shall see what it looks like once I publish the photos.

large


Medium with large iframe


Medium


Large with medium iframe

Fwd: Royal festival hall

Original
Just a quickie. Just visited the chocstar van. Www.chocstar.co.uk and
now killing time before the Kodo drummers start this evening.

Update
This should have been posted at around 6:30pm today. However due to a wetware malfuntion (I put in the email address from memory and got it wrong) it went nowhere.

The trip was part of the birthday celebrations for my wife ( tiggyhedge.blogspot.com ).
The Kodo drummers were amazing. Their website is www.kodo.or.jp.

The chocstar van is definitely worth tracking down and visiting. When we first arrived at Southbank we knew that the van (aka Jimmy) would be at the slow food market and made a bee-line for it. Mrs_tiggy (aka bio-hazar) had the original (brownie, vanilla ice cream and hot chocolate sauce) sundae and I had the challenger (blondie, chocolate ice cream and butterscotch) . If you want pictures then you will have to wait for my wife to update her blog, she is waiting for the pictures to upload first.

After wandering through the market, trying some samples, having a lamb burger (cooked in front of our eyes) for an evening meal and wandering along the riverbank we headed back via Chocstar again and Bio had a "Make it a Jamaican" to drink.

There are more details but that is enough for now. Check out my wife's blog or wait and see if I get around to adding further updates if you want to know more.

Fixing problems with outlook message stores

I was recently asked to look at a problem with someone's outlook.
Whenever they started it up it was trying to send 2 messages that did not show up in the outbox. It failed due to the security settings between the machine concerned and the email server. All other email seemed to work fine.
Using my usual research tool I found a few possible causes but the favourite seemed to be some read receipts that had got stuck.
I found some very helpful instructions at http://www.howto-outlook.com/howto/deletereadreceipt.htm which required a download from microsoft MDBVU32.exe.
This program looks as dangerous as regedit. I was very glad of the instructions on the referring web page which included screen shots. I think the program has been updated since the screenshots were taken though as I had to hunt for the option to open the data store. I was able to work out where I needed to be quite nicely though.
A useful tool to know about.

XAMPP for windows

This entry may be a bit premature. I have only found the web site and not actually used it yet.

Like many people I have web space.
My hosting provider blackfoot.co.uk provide me with mysql databases, php et cetera.
This is good. However my skill and knowledge with PHP and mysql is not so good.
At worst I use other people's code blindly. I know enough to be able to read the documentation and change the variables (most of the time).
One of my thoughts has been to experiment a bit with php et cetera in an environment where it does not matter, i.e. a server that is not actually on the net. My "problem" has been getting round to jumping through the assorted hoops of installing things, especially when most of the machines I can play with are either windows or solaris and not linux. I have briefly looked at SAMP and not got round to doing much with it. I do have apache and perl running fine on assorted solaris boxes from 2.6 upwards (with solaris 10 it is a case of install the OS and they just need configuring but with 2.6 you need to build and/or install the packages).

I have heard about LAMP and WAMP distros and nearly got round to doing the LAMP install of Ubuntu but never quite made it.

Now I have found a website that has been around for years.
I may have mentioned in another post about how quick i am at finding things :).

XAMPP appears to be (not yet installed it myself yet) exactly what I am looking for. A really lazy way of setting things up on a windows (or linux or solaris) machine to play with.

LLOYDIAN OPINIONS: Grating English

Seemingly random web surfing definitely provides moments of enjoyment.

I cannot recall why I was looking for it but I decided to google the pronounciation of lieutenant. I found several contradictory reasons for the varied ways of saying it but I had the bonus of discovering a very entertaining and informative page. The information on it is also accurate.

LLOYDIAN OPINIONS: Grating English

I especially liked the explanation of the subjunctive, which I have been using correctly by instinct rather than as a result of technical knowledge.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

N.T. Wright Page

Back in March I attended a worship central event at Methodist central hall (warning - sound starts as soon as web page loads) as part of the worship team at Hither Green Baptist Church. I am not one of the musicians but one of the "techies", although married to one of the singers who is also an occasional worship leader.
I enjoyed the day and, more importantly, it provided material to help me grow in my faith and the application of my faith.
One of the teaching sessions I attended by accident, the one I had originally intended to go to was full up before I got to it. This was a very good thing.
The session I attended was a talk given by N.T. "Tom" Wright, Bishop of Durham. The talk/lecture is available in mp3 format on the worship central web site (see earlier link) but more of his material is available at N.T. Wright Page

picasa2flickr - flickr upload plugin for picasa - Installation v2

I have been using picasa for a long time now. I really like the way I can organise and manipulate the pictures I take with it (has google trademarked the phrase "I'm feeling lucky"?). However the only storage that is available is somewhat limited.

I have had a yahoo photo account with unlimited storage since before they bought flickr, so I now have a pro flickr account. The inconvenience has always been moving images from one to the other.

I tried the first version of picasa2flickr and it worked very well, provided you were willing to accept an older version of picasa. I was okay with that.

However I have just noticed (yeah - fast brain I have!) that there is a new version out that uses the latest flickr uploader tool. It seems to be working very well, and can even handle multiple upload sets at the same time.

the sourceforge page for the install process is
picasa2flickr - flickr upload plugin for picasa - Installation v2