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Well, just got back from new years celebrations. It turned out to be a good night. Now it’s time for some shut-eye.

Okay, that’s all I can manage to type.

And I wish for everyone to have a…

Happy New Year!

It’s been seven days since the tsunami hit shores around Southern Asia. Rescue crews are still searching for those missing and there are still thousands unaccounted for. The fear now is whether the relief can get to the affected areas before hunger, thirst and disease claims more lives.

Certain areas still remain inaccessible due to rain and flooding. Sightseers and private vehicles are also hampering relief efforts to affected areas. The scene throughout the region has been described as the epitome of human suffering on a scale never before seen.

If there’s anything good that has come from this, it’s the overwhelming response from around the world. People have dug deep to lend a helping hand to the tsunami victims. As a nation, Australians have made a huge (per capita) contribution, the largest donation effort in the country’s history.

The earthquake and tsunami was indiscriminate in it’s devastation. This could have happened to any region around the world.

If we can help, then we should lend a hand in anyway we can.

You can donate to the Red Cross here.

Donations can also be made through these organisations.

Check authenticity of the organisation before making any donations!

Before:

After:

Do animals have a sixth sense when it comes to impending disasters? According to this article, after the tsunami struck, it seemed that no wild life were killed.

I don’t know about earthquakes affecting animals, but my sister made a complaint about a huge ringing in one of her ears on the morning of the earthquake. I told her it was probably an ear infection. She insisted it wasn’t, and maybe it had something to do with the earthquake.

After having her ears examined by a doctor, the diagnosis was that her ears were fine. No ear infection. Weird.

I did a bit of searching and found this article (under “Quake: Many Heard it Coming!”). It’s not exactly very scientific, but it does make you wonder.

There is no conclusive evidence for this phenomenon, but then again, there’s still a lot we don’t understand.

Edit: There seems to be mounting scientific evidence that supports the notion that animals can hear earthquakes.

BTW sis, I believe you!

It all started this morning. I woke up early and had a bit of spare time on my hands before work. So what do I do? I decide to try a few new plugins that I thought would be useful for the site.

The first plugin I was going to try was up2date. It basically keeps all your plugins updated (provided of course they support the update feature). Anyway, after I clicked “Activate” everything went haywire. None of my pages would load properly and from what I could see, all the plugins I had were deactivated.

To cut a long story short, I finally figured out that all the plugin data in the database had been wiped somehow. Luckily, I had a backup from a few hours back.

By this time I had about ten minutes left to play with before I had to get ready for work. With minimal knowledge of SQL, I hopped into phpMyAdmin, deleted the offending data row, then cut and paste the data row from the backup onto MySQL command line under Unix. Then prayed.

I hit the reload button and… it worked! Phew…woot!

Moral of the story?

1. Always backup your data.
2. Do your research properly before diving in.
3. Make sure you have enough time on your hands!

On a different note, I’ve been wanting a simpler way of inserting images into my posts. I found that Image Browser (by Florian Jung) fits the bill quite nicely. It is not overly complicated to set up (just “Activate” plugin) or use.

I found the “Insert Image” link to be in an awkward place though (upper right corner of Admin>Write Post page). There were instructions on how to place it in a better position, but it involved messing with the Wordpress core files.

Being a purist, I decided to try to add an “Insert Image” button just by modifying the plugin only, so users need not fiddle with code to get it working properly (as a plugin should be ie. just plugin to use!).

I remembered Spelling Checker (by Brian “ColdForged” Dupuis had something similar to what I was after.

After reading through the relevant bits of code in Spelling Checker (which I couldn’t get to work at my site), I understood enough to modify Image Browser so it too could have it’s very own button in the Admin panel. It worked out nicely I thought. (BTW, I tried adding it to the quicktags panel, with no luck. Figured out how to add buttons to quicktags and main admin panels using just javascript and DOM!)

I tried contacting the author of Image Browser, but the email address at the site was a bogus one.

If you want to know about how it was done, don’t hesitate to contact me.

One more thing, if anyone knows much about the template_save action and how to get it working properly, I’d be glad to hear from you. I learn mostly from reading other’s code, so a code snippet showing how it is set up would be good. If I can get the template_save action to work in my KFC plugin, I will release it.

Okay, zzzzz time.

We’ve all seen and read a lot about the Boxing Day tsunami that devastated South Asia. Here is an interactive graphic that may help make the chain of events easier to understand.

The animated graphic to the right also shows the speed at which the tsunami spread across the Indian Ocean. I didn’t realise it spread so quickly! It is obvious that those who were closest to the earthquake had no chance at all.

An Idiot’s Guide to Tsunami Surfing

1. Locate suitable tsunami
2. Tsunami must be 40m high
3. Find one large crocodile
4. Hop on said large crocodile
5. Locate eyes on the large crocodile
6. Stick fingers firmly into large crocodile’s eye sockets
7. Important: Hold on for dear life!

This seems like a far-fetched scenario, but minus step 1, that was what happened to a German quarry manager in the 1880’s, after Krakatoa blew up. This article tells of the incredible story. Stranger things have happened.

I suppose when you are put in situation like that, maybe instinct takes over. So what if the closest thing resembling a surf board was a huge crocodile? When you are on top of a 40m wave there are limited choices available. As they say, necessity is the mother of invention.

I wonder how the croc allowed him to stay on top of it, with his fingers in it’s eye sockets, for the 3km ride. I guess only he (and the croc) will ever know the truth of how he survived the tsunami.

Update: Not only humans use improvised surfboards during floods…

KFC has finally been released! No more teasing .

Go to Download page to get it.

Plugin:

Khanh’s Fortune Cookie (KFC) Plugin version 20050113

Purpose:

This plugin will output a random quote much in the same way the ‘fortune’-cookie program does in Unix. The basic idea was that the user would get a random quote every time they logged into their account. This plugin is based on the same concept. Have a look at the top of every page for a live demo. Just refresh the page to see a new quote.

Instructions:

1. Unzip the archive, maintaining directory structure.
2. Upload contents of archive to “/wp-content/plugins/” (minus readme.txt).
3. Make sure correct read and write permissions are set for “/wp-content/plugins/kfc” (chmod 711 should work).
4. Activate plugin in “Admin->Plugins”.
5. Put “kfc_all();” in index.php where you want the quote to be displayed.

Additional quote files can be added to the “/wp-content/plugins/kfc”, or you can edit the supplied quote file (”kfc.txt”) to add your own quotes there.

See “Options->KFC” in the Admin panel for more.

To do:

1. Ability to choose which file(s) to draw quotes from.
2. Automate indexing.
3. More comprehensive help.

That’s it. Any bugs, suggestions or hellos, please contact me! Enjoy!

“If he had been out there a minute longer, I think someone would have shot him,” said Robynn Jaymes, a local of Salem, Virginia after a prank Ali G pulled.

Sasha Baron Cohen, also known as Ali G in the hit Da Ali G Show, was posing as his Kazakhstani journalist character, Borat, at a rodeo.

After convincing organisers he was doing a documentary about America, he told them he supported the war on terrorism and said: “I hope you kill every man, woman and child in Iraq, down to the lizards.”

“And may George W Bush drink the blood of every man, woman and child in Iraq.”

He then wanted to show his appreciation by singing the American anthem on stage. The crowd nearly lynched him. The version he sang ended with the words “your home is the grave”, after which he was booed by the crowd and escorted from the site by officials.

Funny, but I think he was pushing it, since I don’t think his audience found it too amusing.

Source: Ali G in da (dog) house