Josh (the blog)

I’ve delivered simple, clear and easy-to-use services for 20 years, for startups, scaleups and government. I write about the nerdy bits here.


@joahua

base10solutions redesign launch

We’ve just made the finishing touches and uploaded our new website — and logo, general branding and the rest of it — to a spot where the world can see it.

base10solutions new logo

We are, justifiably, rather excited about it all — go take a look over at base10solutions.com.au!

Yes indeed, two website launches in 24 hours! Exciting times!

Content portage

I’m finally getting around to moving posts and miscellaneous other junk across from my old weblog, powered by my own junky PHP thing, to this current WordPress installation. There are two reasons for this — firstly, I’d been meaning to do it for ages, but hadn’t been bothered to, and secondly, I’m soon upgrading this to WordPress 1.5 (so I can use my own much talked about DashLite, amongst other things! ;) Yeah, I’m enjoying my 5 minutes of fame…), which means this is as good a time as any to do something about it.

Additionally, there’s just been a server overhaul, which puts everyone in the mood to play and generally break things as a side result of the creative process — oh, yeah, and I’m kinda sorta on holidays, between exams (well, you know, studying hard — but I need something to keep me sane!). Kudos to Dale for his help with porting the articles… working on the comments still, but it’ll get there (probably, assuming I don’t just give up in disgust!).

Something of a more creative nature to come, maybe, once the move to 1.5 happens… it makes that sort of thing easier.

Exam preparation

Snippets of conversation from MSN.

Regarding Minesweeper:

Ben: best time for expert is something like 183
Josh: i dont know if i’ve ever beat it, actually
Josh: hehe
Josh: well
Josh: im sure i have a few times
Josh: but i never pay any attention to how LONG
Josh: coz its always a distraction
Josh: not an extreme sport
Josh: …or something
Ben: hey minesweeper SO is a sport

Regarding Telstra’s crappy DNS:

Ben: use iinets:P
Josh: yeah i was, but that was just as slow… something about something? i dont know, it still DOWNLOADS fast, just takes ages to RESOLVE anything :/
Ben: sucks to be you trying to resolve?
Josh: hehe, guess so :p
Josh: but that’s okay
Josh: because it’s the journey, not the resolution, which matters
Josh: ;)
Ben: so exactly how many hops is it between your modem and the telstra DNS? explain the language forms and features (in binary) used and how they effect the responder (your home computer) as it goes about its trip.

What has the Board of Studies done to us?

DashLite 1.0 – An alternative “Dashboard” for WordPress 1.5

This website still isn’t running 1.5, but I’ve got two others in the works which are, and, to be perfectly honest, neither of them need the Dashboard, because they’re going to be maintained either in part or entirely by people who couldn’t care less what WordPress was, so long as it works. With this in mind, the whole “Dashboard” RSS syndication of every-website-under-the-sun-relevant-to-WordPress thing is probably a bit much, especially seeing as it increases load times whilst offering no apparent benefits… so I’ve hacked together a far simpler page for use in its place, which I feel is far more along the lines of the KISS principle (click image for full view):

A screenshot of DashLite.

The source for DashLite is available as a PHPS file, which is good for viewing the source, but not for saving directly (because it’s got HTML markup in it to make it look pretty, and will simply break things). You can also download just the plain text source, which you should save as “index.php”.

To install, simply overwrite the file wp-admin/index.php in your blog directory — you may want to backup the original index.php first, as I accept no responsibility for any problems that may arise as a result of the installation of this!

Unlike most content on this website, this is released under the GPL (as is WordPress itself), so go crazy with it…

p.s. the version number is just for kicks — I don’t think it’s highly likely that it’ll change in the near future, but just in case I think of other things to add, or bugs do exist (odd though THAT would be, considering the complexity of the page), or WordPress function names, etc. change, the option to increment it is there…

Update: Oh, yeah — if you use it, it’d be nice if you could send a trackback or drop me a line (I would have completely forgotten to say this, but for Steve‘s comment). Enjoy!

Another Update: Version 1.1 is now out. It’s more of a usability patch than a bug patch, but all the same, it’s there if anyone wants it.

An awesome sunset over UNSW

Sunset illuminated clouds over UNSW
Clearer view of clouds