Link-o-rama

I’ve had a folder full of text files containing links to interesting stuff for months now, and I’m just not going to have time to write full blog posts about all of them. So here are a few of them, with some quick thoughts from me.

1) theundersigned.net/2006/06/why-business-blogs-are-important/
It’s pretty much all there in one page. Print it and leave it on your bosses desk.

2) redcouch.typepad.com/weblog/2006/04/too_much_good_s.html
If you’re going to get into this business, you’d better make sure you really are unique – or streets ahead of any competitors.

3) escapefromcubiclenation.com/get_a_life_blog/2006/05/all_the_worlds_.html
When things are getting you down, it could always be worse. At least you still have your trousers on. (You do, don’t you?)

4) redcouch.typepad.com/weblog/2006/04/individual_vs_t.html
Team blogs can be good, but they aren’t always the answer.

5) domscripting.com/blog/display/69
A great little solution to a simple problem.

6) marketposition.com/blog/archives/2006/07/seo_in_a_nutshe.html
Does what it says on the tin: search engine optimisation in a nutshell.

Wireless Networking on a HP/Compaq nx9005 Laptop under Ubuntu Linux…

There, if that isn’t a quality chat-up line I don’t know what is.

Yes, it’s true. I’m writing this from within Firefox on my little laptop using Ubuntu connected up to my wireless network. Hurrah, this is a red letter day for me, and it’s all thanks to my very good friend who came round and wrestled with the Linux beasties (without the aid of a safety net) until they whimpered for mercy.

So now I have wireless networking. All thanks to a dash of ndiswrapper and some Windows drivers, and then disabling the default bcm43xx kernel drivers using “blacklist bcm43xx” in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist. Simple, eh?

Extending BBCode…

Shabby man exits shack

This week I have been mostly rewriting bulletin board software.

Man enters shack

And earlier today it occured to me that in addition to the usual gamut of BBCode tags ([b], [u], [i], [strike], [url] etc) there were actually quite a few other things I could do with adding to my list of BBCode tags.

For instance, one of the things I do regularly on this very blog is refer to Wikipedia article, so a quick way to accomplish that might be good.

So, how about [w]Peaceville[/w] which would give you Peaceville, or [w=Cleckheaton]the Luddite area[/w] which would give you the Luddite area.

But that’s not all. There are lots of other website it may be useful to provide easy links to:

Dictionary.com: [d]code[/d] = code

Thesaurus.com: [d]cheesy[/d] = cheesy

Google: [g=pies]find tasty pies[/g] = find tasty pies

I’ll leave the development of the regular expressions to make this codes work as an excercise for the reader :0)