artiss.blog

Blog

  • WordPress Plugin Bug Tracking

    For a while I’ve been wanting to improve the bug (and enhancements) tracking for my WordPress plugins. Right now I rely noting down my ideas and any suggestions that people have made and looking at that whenever I’m working on a plugin.

    Now, though, I’ve installed MantisBT – a free PHP based bug tracking system. I’ve installed it on domain, configured it up and I’m in the process of adding content – my Simple Social Bookmarks is the guinea pig.

    Anyone can view it, but I wanted tighter integration with this site. Plugins exist to do this but they rely on using a SOAP interface – my host doesn’t have this installed, so I can’t use it. Instead I’ve written my own code that directly accesses the MySQL database – and very well it works too. On the bottom of the plugin pages on this site are two new sections – Known Bugs and Planned Enhancements. Under each are listed any entries from the MantisBT database relevant to that category, as well as a link to the roadmap.

    Before you go looking for this, it isn’t yet visible, as it’s part of the site revamp that I’m working on.

    Right now, I don’t intend to release this as a plugin, but if there’s enough interest I may do.

  • The problem with flashy valve caps

    Last year, after a service at my local dealership, I noticed that a couple of the valve caps from my car were missing. Sadly, my local car parts shop didn’t have any replacements, so I took (as is often the case) to eBay.

    There I found some flashy hexagonal metal caps for only a couple of pounds. They weren’t chrome but still looked nice.

    Sadly, a winter of snow, wet, cold and lots of road salt has meant that they corroded into place. I’d tried some WD50, but the valves were turning as I tried to unscrew the caps. The last thing I wanted was to tear one of the valves.

    A trip today, however, to Kwik Fit in Long Eaton sorted that though – they managed to get 3 off and 4th required the wheel to be taken off, tyre deflated and the valve replaced. It took 10 minutes and they didn’t charge me.

    They also fitted some replacement, black plastic caps. Which don’t corrode into place.

    Lesson learnt.

  • Problems watching Blu-Ray movies on a PC

    My shiny new Dell Zino HD has a Blu-Ray player and HDMI output. My monitor is an old (but good!) 17″ ViewSonic with a DVI input, so I connect the two with an HDMI to DVI cable.

    All good.

    Or so I thought, until I tried to play my first Blu-Ray movie. The software – Cyberlink PowerDVD DX – would start playing the disk before stopping with the following…

    The error has been linked, by some users, as a potential issue with the Cyberlink software. However, I downloaded a trial of a rival product and got an equivalent error.

    Cyberlink also have available a free piece of software that will analyse your hardware and report on any issues that could prevent you from viewing Blu-Ray movies. My results were…


    The problem here is that a DRM named HDCP is being used to prevent digtial copying between devices. This means that both pieces of equipment must have HDCP and it looks like my aged monitor doesn’t (I can’t evidence that it does anyway).

    I’ve been thinking for a while of getting a new monitor, and this just spurns me on to do so. If/when I do, I’ll let you know how I get on getting a Blu-ray film working!

  • CSI and David Artiss

    My name is not unique but it is quite rare. Personally, I’m only aware of one other David Artiss. None-the-less, a few years ago it came as quite a surprise to me to hear my name being used in an episode of CSI (an episode titled “Random Acts of Violence – season 3, episode 13). Or was it – maybe it sounded like my name? However, an online script showed that it was, even down to the exact spelling.

    (more…)

  • Editing a Flash Video

    I’ve had a recent need to edit a downloaded Flash video (.FLV extension). However, my usual editor of choice, PowerDirector, wouldn’t import a file in this format. And, it would appear, editing choices for Flash videos are few and far between.

    First of, I used the online video editor, JayCut. It imported and converted the video. However, it had two problems – first, if it’s a large video you have to preview it first before you can edit it. Second, the conversion process had put the video and audio out of sync. I therefore abandoned using JayCut.

    Next, I came across an Adobe Air application named RichFLV. Installation is quick and easy. Unfortunately, when importing the video it hung on “99% analysed”. It was still consuming CPU cycles, so I left it. Over 2 hours later, I gave up. Looking at comments on the applications website it would appear that others have had this issue.

    Lastly, I came to Moyea FLV Editor Lite, a downloadable application. Because it’s the free version it’s restricted but for the use I wanted to put it to, it was fine. It installed easily and worked quickly. There’s an option to output as a Flash video or Shockwave – the latter gives you the HTML code to embed the result into a website.

    I’d loved to have hosted it myself, but I use a fair proportion of my available bandwidth just hosting this site each month as it is.  As I don’t wish to use my own bandwidth I simply saved it as a flash video and uploaded the file to YouTube – again a conversion took place, but the result is excellent.