Pressing F5

Symfony v1.1 released

Ben Haines — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 11:10:45 +0000

The good people at http://www.symfony-project.org have released Symfony 1.1.

Presetcentral.com is using Symfony 1.0, but I suspect I’ll update the appropriate bits in due course to work with 1.1.

Good news all round :)

Leaving Paradise

Ben Haines — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 20:06:31 +0000

The time has come to bid farewell to Paradise. Lots of happy memories, meals and friends. Until next time.

Photos temporarily offline

Ben Haines — Sun, 18 May 2008 18:42:13 +0000

Seems Coppermine is proving too much for me to keep patched… as a consequence our server has suffered a series of injection attacks.

I’ll be taking the photos offline and will replace it by some other gallery system.

Police Cameras - BBC Video Footage of Crashes

Ben Haines — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 17:54:03 +0000

So let me get this right… in this BBC segment 6 clips of motorists speeding are shown, two of which end up in horrible crashes. According to the presenter this is because the motorists spotted the Police camera vehicle and “jammed on his breaks”.

BBC Video

Do I need to point out the obvious?

Download for Sony Vaio Zone full installation package

Ben Haines — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 22:48:15 +0000

Once again I find myself blogging about something I spent way too long having to hunt down. Listed below is the download for Sony’s Vaio Zone software. In particular this is for the full install of Vaio Zone, not just the upgrade. :)

Why is this such a big thing?! If, like me, you have been trying to find this download on the main Sony website you’ll know why. Its impossible to find! :)

Enjoy!

Sony Vaio Zone full install download (from Sony)

Credit goes to NotebookReview.com

How to run Zend Studio Neon (Beta) on Fedora 8 Linux

Ben Haines — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 20:15:55 +0000

Once again… hoping this will save somebody lots of time of hunting around. It seems there is a bug in Java that prevents the installer from launching.

It currently produces the following error message when launching the installer:

java: xcb_xlib.c:52: xcb_xlib_unlock: Assertion `c->xlib.lock’ failed

See this tutorial for details on how to resolve the problem:

http://kaviarovetoasty.com/blog/

Running fabForce DBDesigner4 in Linux Fedora 8

Ben Haines — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 12:16:51 +0000

I’m posting this hoping that is will save somebody several wasted hours of effort.

Do not use the original DBDesigner4 download available on the fabForce.net website. Instead download the dbdesigner-fork package from here:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/dbdesigner-fork/

Once you have unpacked it. Edit the bin/startdbd_using_kernel2.6 script and remove the assume kernel 2.4.1 text:

Original file contents: LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.4.1 LANG=en_US.ISO8859-1 LD_LIBRARY_PATH=./Linuxlib/ ./DBDesignerFork

Edited contents: LANG=en_US.ISO8859-1 LD_LIBRARY_PATH=./Linuxlib/ ./DBDesignerFork

Save it and run it. It should all work as expected on Linux Fedora 8 or indeed any other modern distribution like Ubuntu, etc.

Brands Hatch… before the crash that is!

Ben Haines — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 17:12:11 +0000

Some good memories of my bike still in one piece!

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Repairing the Kawasaki Z750

Ben Haines — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 22:01:17 +0000

The crash at Brands Hatch left me with a crumbled tank, bent clutch lever, smashed front cowl and headlight unit. Due to the gravel the engine also suffered some cosmetic damage, but I can’t do much about that.

I almost choked to death when receiving the quote from my Kawasaki dealer in Watford. Are you ready? … £1200 for a tank, headlight unit and cowl. I remember shouting “my bike is only worth £3000!” in disgust over the phone to the poor chap giving me the quote. I asked whether or not the bike’s unique colour of orange had anything to do with the extortionate quote. To my surprise Kawasaki charges the same no matter what the colour.

So this is what I’ve settled on:

Tank - ebay.co.uk bought for £70, however the colour is red
Headlight unit - Kawasaki
Headlight cowl - Kawasaki
Exhaust bracket - Kawasaki
Indicator - Kawasaki

Grand total: ~ £650

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Technorati Tags: Kawasaki, Z750

How to dispose of a bike battery and destroy a Gatso speed camera

Ben Haines — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 18:53:25 +0000

Truth is I don’t know the answer to either, however the two photos below should help us find the answers. ;)

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A Gatso speed camera I found burnt out on my way to Merton College (more on why I was going to College later)

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I took this photo at work. Our company has recently started recycling batteries. Somehow I don’t think the employee fully understood the service was only suppose to cover batteries used at work!

Technorati Tags: Gatso, speed camera, bike battery