BBC NEWS | Entertainment | ‘Flies’ reality show due to start

That’s not going to end badly at all.

Nope.

Definitely not.

Right. Last one for tonight I think.

I’ve managed to fix the Facebook badge. I ‘m assuming it was Wordpress blocking aspects of the javascript. By using one of Facebook’s image badges instead of the javascript one everything seems ok now.

And I’ve also added a new plugin which allows image enlargement on the fly. Instead of my usual method of using an HTML tag to point to the fullsize image, I can use an AJAX plugin instead. That way clicking on the image will re-render the blog post on the fly to show a larger version. Its quite neat, although won’t work properly on images larger than my basic page size. Give it a shot on the Green Lantern images a few posts down.

Fortunately I kept the old version of the blog kicking about, so I quickly moved it back to being the active version, restored the title (sans backslash), and then returned the blog to the latest version.

Sorted.   I imagine when Wordpress 2.2.4 comes out, it’ll fix it.

Heh, apparently I spoke too soon regarding the upgrade.  There seems to be a bug in the newest version of Wordpress, and saving the Options page when you’ve got an apostrophy in your title adds an escape character to the title.   A minor issue, but an annoying one.

Well, got home tonight and spent sometime getting everything in the blog current again. All seems well, so fingers crossed. Although there’s always that moment of “God, I hope I don’t break everything”. So far, it seems fine though. Although for some reason my permalink structure always breaks, and has to be changed, then reset before it all kicks in again. Weird.

Now to see if I can fix that Facebook redirect problem…

Hmmm. I noticed a week or so ago that my Facebook badge (as seen in the sidebar) seems to be broken. The javascript in the textbox widget is definitely correct, but for some reason, instead of linking to my Facebook profile, the links are being changed to point at whatever your current URL in my blog is. I’ve been Googling to try and find a fix, but so far no luck.

For my benefit, I’ve just installed the My Dashboard plugin. Which means the admin dashboard is now themed like iGoogle, and has various widgets that can be freely added, removed or re-ordered through the power of AJAX. Granted I don’t use that page an awful lot, but being able to pull in various other Wordpress RSS news feeds is quite handy for keeping up-to-date with anything cool I might want to pick up (or just the latest security fixes).

Check it out here.

Well, the new Green Lantern solicits are up at the usual resources (I tend to head to http://www.newsarama.com).

Green Lantern has the first part of the Alpha Lanterns story. I must admit, while I suspect it’ll involve (to some degree) the Ion/Space Whale retcon that I’m not a huge fan of, the premise sounds interesting. The Guardians being up to something dodgy usually makes for good reading in the GL titles, and what I’m really interested to see is how Ganthet’s previous dealings with the Earth GLs will affect things. He’s been kicked out by the other Guardians, but they’re probably not banking on his strong ties to both Kyle and Hal. I imagine in a pinch, Kyle especially will feel more loyalty to him than the rest of the Guardians.

It looks like a civil war is brewing on Oa, and with the Sinestro Corps still out there, its a fair bet that the galaxy’s going to end up in a fair mess before things get sorted.

Green Lantern Corps also has the reunion of Guy and Ice. I must admit, I’ve missed the JLI issues that dealt with their relationship, but its still nice to see the Corps title addressing more of the character’s backstories. These personal moments will be a nice contrast to the epic blowout that we’re in the middle of just now.

Its a nice pair of covers that month, although I’m hoping the final version of the GLC cover turns up soon. Kyle’s suit needs a bit of tweaking as he’s just got a standard domino mask and no ring (granted his costume’s missing the “ribs” on the arms and has the wrong style logo as well, but they’re minor things). Not to mention the Moose-coloured version will undoubtedly be prettier

Well, I bought The Ship yesterday, largely because it was cheap and looked like fun.

Gah! Why didn’t I notice it needed Steam for installation??? I’d have saved myself so much grief.

Steam’s one of these anti-piracy systems I file straight under “penalises legal owners”, right next to CD copy protection systems (I’ve had my run in with their tech support people before when my copy of Neverwinter Nights didn’t work on my DVD drive).

I don’t see why I should need to have a net connection to register a game I’ve legally bought with a company database, just to play it. Not to mention getting stuck with yet another application sitting in my system tray, using up resources just to check for patches for a couple of games. I can do that myself thanks.

So, annoyingly, my copy of The Ship didn’t come with a CD Key. Granted, this is more the publisher’s fault than Steam’s, but it started me off ranting anyway. The end result being that my brand new, legally bought game is now a rather fetching coaster. If I’d downloaded an illegal copy, I bet I’d have been sitting playing it last night.

I’ve emailed tech support, but I’m just going to go and swap it at the shop for another copy as I’ve not heard back from them.

Following up on the issue raised the other day:

» Microsoft responds to stealth update issue | Hardware 2.0 | ZDNet.com

Windows Update itself having to update is understandable, but if you’ve switched off the other updates, it should have the decency to check first.

Okay, this is just wrong, and a dangerous precedent. If I’ve specifically told software that its not to contact the mothership, I expect it to not then go and do just that.

Microsoft is fiddling with system files without permission | ZDNet.com

and

Confirmation of Stealth Windows Update