Graphics card issues

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So two weeks ago I was playing Duke Nukem Forever when my PC crashed – ever since I’ve been unable to boot past the Windows loading screen.

After various testing, and eventually getting fed up and passing it over to my mate, I’ve found that the graphics card seems to have fried itself. Although it can load in safe mode it seems that running on “all cylinders” just isn’t possible.

Looking around on the net there seems to be a pattern of some nVidia graphics cards burning out when running the 275.33 build (the latest) drivers. The next step is to RMA it to get a replacement.

Unfortunately this is holding up the next release of ThinkTwit which is nearly done. It’s quite a big code change and so warrants a new minor release. Hopefully in by the end of August it will be complete, just before I head off to Tunisia for a holiday with my girlfriend :)

Better WordPress reCAPTCHA

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I’ve added the Better WordPress reCAPTCHA plugin to the blog in order to reduce the amount of spam accounts that are created by bots. Even though Akismet seems to do a good job of filtering the spam, I’ve still gotta delete it and also the users associated with them – it seems to be a good plugin!

I knew I wanted to add a CAPTCHA plugin but I wasn’t sure which to add – this one had a few very high votes so I thought I’d check it out and as it integrates with Akismet I thought I’d give it a go. It’s actually quite clever as it checks Akismet to see if it is spam before prompting for a CAPTCHA, which means it should actually inconvenience people a lot less than others. It also allows you to automatically display comments if the user has previously had comments approved and it’s quite flexible around styling.

If you have any issues with it, or even if you just like it, please let me know.

ThinkTwit Update 1.1.7

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I’ve just posted a new update to ThinkTwit – I found numerous small bugs including:

  • Cache not saving with the widgetid so all widget instantiations were sharing the same cache
  • Previous cache size determined all future cache size i.e. it could not resize if limit was changed or there were few tweets last time but more this time
  • Tweets from other users were output if they were previously allowed but now no longer
  • Other minor issues

These have now all been fixed and I can’t find any other issues with caching. This means I can get on with the roadmap of people’s requests. Please feel free to let me know of any issues you find!

ThinkTwit Update 1.1.6

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So I recently noticed that although my last update included caching, there were some times in which the cache would not be accessed correctly – specifically, when updating from Twitter it was overwriting the cache rather than updating it and then displaying the cache. This wouldn’t be a problem if the live update was full of tweets, but if it had only one it would overwrite the cache with only 1 tweet.

Additionally, have split the Live option in to “Live (uncached)” and “Live (cached)”. The former will not use the cache at all and will always go straight to Twitter (meaning if Twitter is down it will not display anything) and the latter will always check for updates from Twitter (rather than waiting x since last update to check it) and then store the updates in the cache before displaying cached tweets.

I’ve updated the ThinkTwit page on my blog with the roadmap as during this update I’ve realised a few other minor bugs. I’ll get on to these in the coming weeks.

ThinkTwit Update 1.1.5

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So it’s been slightly over a year and due to various problems with my PC (an incredibly difficult issue to resolve as I had issues with more than one part) and lack of time I’ve been unable to complete the work that I started after the last update.

Anyway, I’ve finally found time and am happy to announce version 1.1.5 – it includes caching of tweets to the local WordPress database and the implementation of shortcodes. Please check the readme for more details.

I have also updated the roadmap – I will do my best to keep ThinkTwit up-to-date in the future.

IIS 7 Permissions

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I’m new to IIS 7 (7.5 to be specific) and have just been struggling with an issue which I’d like to share the solution to – IIS 7.5 no longer uses the IUSR_machine_name account to apply write (or other) permissions to a directory. Instead you have to use IUSR.

However, if you try resolving this (with Check Names) it will try to give you something else – instead you need to open Object Types (when the Select Users or Groups window is open) and select Service Accounts, and then go to Locations and select the local computer name.

You can then apply the correct permissions and away you go. I was installing eFront when I came across this particular issue.

Scan to FTP on Dell 3115cn

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It’s been a while since I’ve blogged, and since I created this primarily for making a record of obscure problems that will hopefully help others I thought I’d just post one I experience today:

I’ve been trying today to setup scanning to a network location on our Dell 3115cn multi-functional printer. We already have an FTP location that is setup for another photocopier so I was able to utilise this. The eventual settings used were:

Name: [the name of this address e.g. Share, Scan or anything else appropriate]
Server Address: [the IP address or name of the server, if you have trouble with name use IP]
Server Port Number: [21 for FTP, change if you have altered your FTP port on the server]
Login Name: [anonymous, or if you have setup users then the username]
Enable Password: [unticked if anonymous, otherwise ticked]
Login Password: [blank if above is unticked, otherwise the relevant password]
Server Path: [the path to the location excluding the address e.g. / for root, or /files/scans to access "scans" folder within "files" folder residing in root]

And that’s it. Quite simple when you know how but as Dell provide awful documentation and no help on their site it can take some trial and error to get to this point.