Open Source Computing and GIS in the UK

I finally got around to a bit of a site re-design last night- it’s a fairly straightforward modification of the original light theme, and sorts out a few issues I’d been having with custom php and text widgets. Actually, I should confess that I’m a complete loser when it comes to the design part of web-design, so I got my web-designer hubby to help with it. Thanks Barry!

Those of you that tend to visit only through your rss reader won’t, of course, be able to see any difference, so if you fancy popping around for a look at the new design, come on in, I’ll put the kettle on.

I also got the site running a little more quickly by disabling a bunch of plugins that I’m not really using. In the process I disabled geopress, which was a shame, but I hadn’t really been using it and it certainly had an adverse affect on the speed of the site.

I’m still very keen to investigate geotagging and georss, but I haven’t yet found the solution that works for me. What I want is something a bit simpler than geopress- I don’t necessarily want the map, just the coordinates embedded in every post, with a default set to my home location and an option to add new coordinates if I’m posting from somewhere else. More tinkering required I think…

Archaeology magazine (courtesy of my new colleague Joseph) has an article on archaeological evidence for the first ever historically recorded zombie attack, in Hierakonpolis in Eygpt, 3000BC. The article explains that:

n 1892, a British dig at Hierakonpolis unearthed a nondescript tomb containing a partially decomposed body, whose brain had been infected with the virus (Solanum) that turns people into zombies. In addition, thousands of scratch marks adorned every surface of the tomb, as if the corpse had tried to claw its way out!

Not only that, it goes on to demonstrate how archaeologists can defend themselves from zombie attacks with only the tools of their trade- trowel and shovel. As the article concludes:

This may seem absurd, but you won’t think its funny when you are feasting on the corpses of your friends and fellow researchers, in fact, you won’t be thinking at all…

I thought I’d see what all the fuss is about with feedburner, so those of you that subscribe to my direct feed rather than through Planet Geospatial or Online Archaeology might like to re-subscribe to the feedburner feed instead. I understand from the feedburner pixies that simply clicking on the “subscribe” link will take you to the new feed, or you could just click here…

Cheers!

For all you linux n00bs out there just getting into compiling and installing programmes, this is really handy when your compilation fails and you’ve just watched reams of text scroll past with no chance to read what it says.  Basically it records the I/O of a command line session into a log file for later perusal.

Before entering your command in the terminal, type:

script yourscript.log

At the end of the session, press:

ctrl-d

To dump the output to the above-named file. Then you can read it with nano or the text editor of your choice.