Thursday, July 31, 2008

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.

Tuesday, July 01, 2008

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.

Saturday, June 14, 2008

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

Saturday, May 03, 2008

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

Sunday, April 13, 2008

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

Saturday, April 12, 2008

The church has left the building...

Whilst typing up this weeks church notice sheet I found the page for Pentecost Festival :: 9th – 11th May 2008.

About two thirds of the way down the page I found a line that has a major resonance with what I understand church to be. "The church has left the building..."
The church is the worldwide collection of Christians, some of whom happen to use buildings to worship God. Hopefully more people will be able to get hold of this and move away from the idea that the church is the physical structure that is used.

Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Owl learning to fly (and beyond)

One of the side effects of my wife being into scrapbooking and crafts is that I have joined ukscrappers just so that I can log in and show off her work to people.
Whilst on there I sometimes dip into the help forum to se if my limited knowledge can be of use.

From a signature in a question I found this blog
Owl learning to fly
and from thence to

FaithScrappers UK
which looks interesting - although I think they may be rather short sighted in thinking that only women would be interested in their retreats.

Friday, February 15, 2008

One of my wife's crafting images



My wife is very good at crafting. However she has tried blogging an entry from flickr but it seems to crop the image on her blog, although the preview is intact.
I am trying to blog the same picture using a different method, the tools built into the flock web browser, to see what happens

Edit: just to clarify - I have to add height="100%" width="100%" to the img tag to get it to display properly


Blogged with Flock

Over the hedge and across the pond

My wife has succumbed to being "pushed" (not by me) into setting up a blog.

Over the hedge and across the pond

Have fun reading it :)