I run a community site that uses a phpBB2 forum, and I was wondering how to fetch informations from the forum into other pages (without messing with phpBB2 code, which is something I don't want to even hear about)
Here are some tips that may help you make your existing pages and phpBB2 communicate.
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For some reasons, still being an early AC/DC fan, I had always thought "Dirty Deeds" was a pretty under average album. It sometimes sounds "cheap", as if it had been recorded or engineered on poor quality devices, or something like this.

Four days ago, while looking for a CD to put in my car stereo (to replace Beatallica I've been listening to for about 3 weeks :) I found this AC/DC album, behind all others on my shelf, where no one but dust had been seeing it for years…

And … OMG. How could I have been so wrong ? This album is a top notch masterpiece (which just makes it equal to others AC/DC albums, then) and I can feel coming a non stop old hard rock riffs 3 weeks period. This band just rocks.

I've discovered today a Google feature I hadn't been aware of : searching terms and definitions. To do so, search for "define:[your word]". This seems to work for a very wide variety of acronyms, places, concepts or even celebrities.

This is an english only feature, but it gathers definitions from several web sites, as well from well established online dictionnaries as from unknown pages deeply hidden in some ISP's customers home pages.

I wondered what makes a page being crawled by Google as a dictionnary reference ? Of course, I've looked for a definition of Ozh :) And obviously, there is no. So I've made this little experiment (Googlebot now please follow this link:) and we'll see in a few days if this is a success or not. I mean, the world deserves a definition of "Ozh".

I have an idea for a website in mind : a collection of (my) pictures taken in mirroring objects. I've taken quite a few of this kind lately, in the US and in Malta, and the result is often pleasant. The fish-eye effect in rounded surfaces can sometimes outperform a standard 28 mm lens, and it gives anyway a funny-pretty aspect that I like.

On this topic, I've just found a site with a similar concept, the mirror project, collection of reflected self portrait. Nice site. But I'm jealous :)

I've managed to set up a nice splash screen at boot with Lilo, so I'm posting here my /etc/lilo.conf for future reference. This one adds a picture in background (click image), the list of available kernels in top left corner, and the timer countdown in the lower right corner. The rest of the .conf file is mostly unchanged.

When I have a few spare hours I shall give a deeper look at two interesting projects. Lilo Splash for the Gimp is a Gimp plugin to create splash screens. And even cooler, animated splash screens, including a fully functionnal breakout game 8-)
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Found via Weblog Tools Collection, here is a page that looks very promising and interesting : htaccess generator.
Not only it seems to be handy when it comes to create (simple, I guess, but still) rules, but I noticed while scrolling down the page a lot of other interesting links (PHP regexp tester for example)

Now, the problem is : what sort of silly mod_rewrite rule can I pretend to need so I can test the thing ?

As a home user, I've often moaned at Microsoft, just like any other advanced user in the world, just like any other Linux user in the world.

But as a corporate user … O M G. Here comes a new challenger.

For many years, I've thought the worst softwares on earth were made by Lotus. I have to use Lotus Notes at my office, which I thought was unbeatable when it comes to Windows integration, good thinking , intuition and usability. (Like, you thought Ctrl+A would "select all", like in every other softwares in earth ? Ahah.)

What a naive fool I've been. I hadn't discovered the wonders of SAP yet. So, now that I have, let me hope its programmers all die a slow and painful death. And their families. In the next seven generations.

Finally, I've made up my mind concerning a photo gallery to install here…

I've tried, either on a demo site or installing myself, about a dozen script ranging from 15 Kb to 5 Mb, and my final three were :

• Pictorialis : written from the WordPress engine, blogware I'm using here, I thought it would be easy to integrate into my site. Unfortunately, for some reason that I cannot explain it wouldn't run here :) (let's not blame it, to say the least the Apache config here is really special)
• Gallery : *the* big script, I'm using it on several sites and galleries. I dig its countless features such as thumbnail creation and modification within a java applet, but I pretty much hate its html code mayhem : numerous template files, html code often "hard coded" in php files, intricated tables everywhere. Awesome for an "out of the box" use, pain in the *** to fully customize its layout.
• Coppermine Photo Gallery : less features, and by default a "forum" like layout a la phpBB that I didn't like, but after testing quite convincing and very easy to customize. One template file, one .css file, and you control almost everything in the layout.

So I've chosen Coppermine, which I'm getting visually integrated into my site. Pictures real soon now :)

A few interesting stats & facts, from Technorati's CEO, found in the paper version of Network Computing :

• Technorati tracks 2.4 million blogs.
• 45% of bloggers haven't posted in three months.
• 200,000 new blogs are created daily.

Obviously, everyone wants to give the blog trend a try, and most don't find it enough interesting or too much time-consuming. I'm not surprised so much are not updated within 3 months (and can be considered as dead), but the figure of 200K a day amazes me a bit :)

So here am I, back from my one month holidays. It's been of course too short, but extremely enjoyable and long enough to make me forget my PIN to get back in my office :) (ID card and secret code stuff to go to work)
I had some very good dives in Malta with a cool scuba diving club, and we have visited some (all, to be honest) very interesting places. The only bad thing about my holidays is that one of my still camera memory cards screwed up, so I've lost about 80 pictures :/

To do list from now :
– think about next holidays !
– make up my mind about a good photo gallery to implement here, tried a few but none is perfect
– then post my pics from my trips to USA and Malta :)
– code a bit : wordpress plugin to be able to post code in news items, add a side blog about current readings, add a "notepad" or something similar to the admin interface (to manage a todo list for example :)
– and get asap my Quake skillz back !