I have just upgraded the wordpress installation behind the site in preparation for a completely new look and feel to the blog. I have just upgraded to WordPress 2.8.2 from… wait for it… 2.0.1!

Lots will now be thinking, WTF, who cares? The geeks amongst you will be shocked at how and why I had not upgraded sooner. The difference between the two versions is quite large so I expected the upgrade to cause a few issues.

Nope, it all went ahead without a problem. I backed up the old files (just in case )), then backed up the database behind the site (double just in case) and then went on my merry way upgrading.

Well done WordPress.org, the old system was great but the new system is superb.

Right, back to coding up a dating website I am developing at squarechilli website and graphic design Derby and Nottingham.

Here’s what I mean

Thisis a div which consists of a background image for the blue background, a paragraph for the text and an image of a heart to finish. Ideally I do not want the extra few pixels at the bottom showing my backgroudn through.

<div class=’testimonial’>
<p>“Thank you so much for your help. I met Bob through the site after less than a month, and we are still together and happy all these months on. Thanks Motorway dating ”
<br /><br />
<strong>Katie x</strong>
</p>
<img alt=’Motorway dating testimonial’ src=’images/testimonial_bottom.gif’ width=’178′ height=’76′ />
</div>

You would think that adding margin: 0px; padding: 0px will sort the problem but nope, nadda.

I tried googling but couldn`t find anything on the subject apart from suggestions of zero margins and paddings despite many people coming across this very annoying problem.

So I put the good old thinking cap on and remembered this nifty little piece of css

vertical-align: text-bottom;

Hurray! Place this onto your image css

.testimonial img {vertical-align: text-bottom;}

and voila, no extra space beneath your image. Just to prove it here is what my testimonial looks like now

Hope this helps.

The story is that of losing a pet, someone (yes I use the word someone for a pet) whome shared your life, been through highs and lows, stayed with you and showed you unconditional love throughout your time with them.

The author is Bruce Fogle, a vet who recently lost his six-year-old female golden retriever. It is great to read someone who expresses the same feelings I feel towards my dog. Some people think I am silly and stupid for how I treat my best friend, I say read this and if you don`t share the relationship with your dog Bruce had with his and I have with Molly, then I pity you but hope that one day you will also share this unique and truely amazing relationship with your pet.

Here is the article on The Independent website.

See if you can find her, click the image for a larger version.

This image was taken in Shipley Country Park on my mobile phone so the quality aint great but good enough for this game. I have plenty more Where’s Molly type images, if this proves popular I shall upload a few more.

Many months ago I (and many of my friends along with thousands of others) signed a petition to prevent the manufacture and sale of electric shock dog collars. Now I don`t think any sane human being would need any explanation as to why I signed the petition.

Yesterday we received a response from the Prime Minister, here is his response…

“The Government recognises that many people are concerned about electric shock collar training devices and their potential for misuse, particularly collars operated by remote hand-held controls. It is equally aware there are others who are convinced that they have a place in training animals where other methods have failed and the alternative might be worse – possibly destruction of the animal in some rare cases…

…There are no plans at present to ban the sale and use of any electronic training aids for animals, including the ‘electric shock collars’. For many years the Protection of Animals Act 1911 made it an offence to cause unnecessary suffering to a domestic or captive animal. However, the Government is not aware of any prosecutions under the 1911 Act in relation to the use or misuse of electronic training collars…

…While we are aware of a number of scientific studies on electric shock collars, Defra considers that to date those studies published in this area are not sufficiently robust and that the evidence base needs to be built on before consideration can be given to either banning or regulating their use. The government is not prepared to do this unless there is clear evidence that these devices in themselves are harmful to welfare.”

The response in full can be found here.

I very rarely swear, but on this occasion; YOU FUCKING IDIOTS! Well done government for recognising that an electric shock dog collar may be misused, however until you have proof that they are misused you won`t do anything about it. And on their comment that there is no proof that electric shock dog collars are harmful, you bunch of friggin morons! Of course anything that sends an electric shock through a neck or a dog or any creature is going to be fucking painful!

The government rarely makes sensible decisions, there are many people who would like to train the MP’s into making correct decisions, may I suggest an electric shock neck tie?

This one is a personal project, readers of this blog may notice that I am obsessed with dogs and spend almost all of my spare time walking in the countryside with my dog Molly. So why not have a fun website project on the go?

I came up with a basic design and whipped up the home page over the weekend, there is going to be a hell of a lot of dog related content on there and the obligatory forums. I am hoping to build dog health information, training and of course dog rescue resources.

Take a look at where I am at the moment, the website link is http://www.playfetch.co.uk.

Every spare moment I have (apart from walking Molly) I will throw into the website, in the meantime if you can think of any content you would like to see post a comment.

I trawled the Firefox website and Googled galore for an answer to this but found bob all, so this afternoon fed up of having to manually goto google.co.uk for my searches, I thought I would have a dig around.

I found the solution!

Ok, if anyone else has this problem (probably not seeing as there is nothing on the web about it at the moment!), just follow these steps to enlightenment;

1. Browse to C:\program files\mozilla firefox\searchplugins
2. Open “google.xml” in a text editor such as notepad or wordpad
3. Look for any references of http://www.google.com/
4. Change/edit the “www.google.com” to your locale which for me is “www.google.co.uk”
5. Save it and close
6. Restart Firefox and test the search bar

Your result should now be from google.co.uk. By the time you read this the bug may have been fixed in the next update but hey, I tried )

I did mess around with the wireless settings however, I changed the password to something memorable and changed the name from sky12345 (or whatever it was). A few port forwarding changes later and that was my config done.

So, what is it like?

Well performing a www.speedtest.net download and upload speed test Sky told me I should get around 4MB from my line, it averages around 1.5mb with an upload of 400kb.

I have noticed that at times webpages take a while to serve, I will keep an eye on this and maybe contact Sky customer services if things don`t improve over the next week or so. But so far, no major problems, all seems ok. *touching wood*

The website stats I was looked at was for my web design and development company squarechilli. I receive lots of hits from search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN as I appear highly on search engines for certain popular keywords.

So what do my website stats tell me?

Well, the most popular search term is web design nottingham. Type this into Google and I am at the time of writing the fifth website to appear. Next popular keywords are web development nottingham and web design derby.

So what use is this? Well, now I know what people are typing into search engines I can optimise my website further to appear even higher if they type web design nottingham. Also, I would expect people to search for website design nottingham but this in`t driving much traffic to my website. I wonder why? A Google on website design nottingham brings squarechilli up seventh so the ranking is ok. Maybe people just don`t search using the word website, they prefer to use web.

All of this information is useful to show us what our users are doing. The next time I search engine optimise my website I shall focus on the word web design other than website design for example.

So get going and look at your stats, your website will thank you for it.

When I signed up I was the only Tiscali user in my area and out of the 1MB I was paying for a test o speedtest.net showed I was getting around the 990kb mark. What was even better was that the upload speed was approaching 300kb! Obviously being a web developer I upload stuff all the time so upload speed is important to me.

Then things went downhill, the service began to dip and p2p became non existent, although I hardly ever used it.

As a Sky TV customer I knew Sky had branched into the broadband market but I am never an early adopter in technology. I wait for all the niggles to be ironed out before I jump on a bandwagon, so I waited with Sky.

At only £5 a month for 8MB speeds I finally decided to go for it, I trawled the web for customers experience with Sky broadband but found very little. I phoned up Tiscali for my MAC code which they duly provided, then called Sky.

Not a great experience so far, I had to hold for 20 minutes before I spoke to anyone. If I heard the automated lady tell me one more time I was in a queue I was going to get the phone and ram it…

Anyway, I got through and the person on the phone spoke English (wow) and was suprisingly knowledgable. Everything was done over the phone and I was told to await delivery of my free wireless router. A dodgy one I expected…

Today it came in a shiny Sky branded bo. To my suprise it was the same wireless router as I already have, a Netgear 834GT. This is a superb router, my current one is located in the far end bedroom and I am writing this post in my back garden, so it’s range is pretty impressive.

So far I am happy, yes it took a while to get through to someone on the phone but the guy on the other end knew his stuff and my router came promptly and is a good spec. I am due to be activated on Friday 10th August, I’ll let you know how it goes…