wee doors banging

upgrading to codeigniter 1.7.0

John Girvin — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 23:20:35 +0000

The good folk over at EllisLab released a new version of their CodeIgniter open source PHP web application framework a few weeks ago, and I’ve now upgraded the site to use this new version. This is a significant release for CodeIgniter and, despite the usual excellent version upgrade guide that EllisLab supply, I ran into a few problems...

johngirvin.com launched

John Girvin — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 16:00:15 +0000

I've finally found the time and motivation to get around to doing one of those seemingly little but actually important tasks that I'd been putting off since forever: build and launch a "professional" site about myself, career and experience.

distributed.net OGR-25 complete!

John Girvin — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 01:32:04 +0000

X-ray crystallographers, radio astronomers and fans of distributed computing efforts alike - rejoice! distributed.net has successfully completed it's long running "OGR-25" project to harness the spare capacity of thousands of computers around the world to exhaustively determine the optimal 25-mark Golomb Ruler.

opening truecrypt containers on double click

John Girvin — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 12:10:21 +0000

TrueCrypt describes itself as "free open-source disk encryption software for Windows Vista/XP, Mac OS X, and Linux". One of it's (many) abilities is to create virtual encrypted disks within normal files and access them as if it were real disks. However, as installed, TrueCrypt doesn't provide an easy way to open these containers. You must first start the TrueCrypt GUI, then browse to the container file and finally enter the password. This tutorial shows, on Windows XP, how to automate a few steps and have the password dialog automatically appear when you double click a TrueCrypt container.

a liability on the roads

John Girvin — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 17:00:38 +0000

I've been doing a lot of cycle commuting lately, managing the 18 mile round trip to work and back more or less three times a week in spite of the Northern Ireland weather. By far the most common hazard I've run in to (if you'll excuse the phrase) is the humble pedestrian. This week, I experienced two shining examples of seemingly suicidal pedestrian behaviour and they have prompted this post.

magic fly whdload 1.00 released

John Girvin — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 22:17:39 +0000

I’ve released a new WHDLoad patch for Electronic Arts’ 3D space exploration and puzzler, Magic Fly. The patch fixes the usual collection of keyboard, blitter and access fault problems and properly removes the manual protection. Only the original commercial release is supported. Other “cracked” ADF versions may work but have not been tested and are not [...]

warlock’s quest whdload 1.00 released

John Girvin — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 23:27:42 +0000

I’ve released a new WHDLoad patch for ERE Informatique’s wizardy arcade adventure, Warlock’s Quest. The patch fixes the usual collection of keyboard, blitter and access fault problems, removes the copy protection and, for registered WHDLoad users only, adds trainer options. Two versions are supported, the original commercial release and the Super Quintet compilation release. Other “cracked” [...]

diamondback ascent 1992-2008 RIP

John Girvin — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 14:10:00 +0000

It was with great sadness today that I bade farewell to an old buddy, my Diamondback Ascent mountain bike that'd I'd had since 1992...

time out in belfast city hall grounds

John Girvin — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 09:47:34 +0000

I had a bit of spare time in Belfast city centre recently, and, lacking anything better to do, took the chance to grab a coffee (and a tasty snack, I have to admit) and sit awhile in the grounds of the City Hall. As I kicked back and watched the world go by, it struck me what a great resource the little green haven I was sitting in is to both the people of Belfast and to visitors to the city.

from serendipity to wordpress

John Girvin — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 21:58:07 +0000

Continuing my efforts to avoid doing any real work on my various projects and faff about tweaking things for no good reason, I've now migrated this blog to be Powered By WordPress. There was no compelling reason to move away from the previous platform (Serendipity), I was just curious about WordPress as it's one of the most popular blogging platforms around today. First impressions are good...