The Creative Genius Collective

I have just seen something I thought the BBC would never get round to. Not just allowing but actually promoting the embedding of some of their online content within other sites. As an example the following about motion sensitive PC’s. Now if I need to illustrate a tech news item with some BBC content I don’t have to risk the wrath of the copyright layers by snarfing their content.

Damn wordpress, cannot embed the flash player from BBC, you will just have to go find it the link to the motion sensitive PC, or the flash embed code to insert.

Here is a great list of Blog indexes worth posting your feed to, I am about to post this blog and the growseethis/blog, with added comments on ease of submission : -

Looking for more readers and traffic?

If you haven’t already done so, submitting your blog to these other index and
directory sites will help drive more visitors to your site. (Links go directly
to submission pages and open in new browser windows.)

• The Truth Laid Bear

  • Needs account to submit entry, has nice status code scriptlet

• Technorati

• Technorati (ping)

• Popdex

• Daypop

• Blo.gs

• Blogdex

• Blogwise

• Globe
  of Blogs

• Eatonweb

• Blog
  Search Engine

• Bloogz

• BlogExplosion

• Blogarama

• Blog Universe

• Blog Z

• BlogStreet

• BlogPulse

• Boing Boing

• Blog Catalog

• Delicious

• Diarist

• Findory

• Ping O Matic

Down at UofT today in DrupalCamp. For the uninitiated Drupal is a great open source CMS with some of the best user base and the ultimate in customise-ability.

Yesteray I sat in on some great talks describing such things as:

• Using the CCK, Views and Panels as site construction toolkit
• Getting started with AJAX in Drupal 5.x
• Performance tuning and optimization of high traffic Drupal sites

Today My intention is to go to the following:

• Introduction to module development
• Building an event site in an hour
• For developers: Implementing Views into your custom module
• Debugging Techniques Swap Meet
• Speed Geek - (Speed presentations) - Present YOUR work or ideas!

With some of these sessions I will be recording audio and later screencasting the slides and audio for sharing.

Been adding Beth’s new podcast to the indexes using the list at, podcasting news.

presently submitting the mp4 feed only as others may change, here are my latest additions: -

• http://www.podcastalley.com/ - Site was down
• odeo.com - ?? Could not figure out how to add a feed
• http://www.ipodder.org/ - ??? What happened here, looks like a style drought.
• http://www.podcastpickle.com/casts/add/index2.php - Done
• http://www.digitalpodcast.com./ - Done
• http://www.podcastdirectory.com/ - Done
• Podcast.net - Audio Only feeds, will look back later
• ipodderx.net - expired domain
• iTunes - done already
• podcasts.yahoo.com - too easy but done

Powered by ScribeFire.

Yesterday I finally got sick and tired of Blogger and my old site ‘the flat earth disprover’, after upgrading my blog as suggested I found I had lost most of the scripting and my widgets on the site. Luckily I had backed up my template, but after several hours of trying to re-insert the codes I gave up and went for a walk in Blog-space.

Arriving here after a short walk I was blown away by the ease of use of the wordpress UI, though a little feature poor for my liking it will do for now. I have also decided to open this blog to my whole collective to make a home for us to store our random thoughts.

So I trolled over to godaddy.com to see if I could host my domain onto wordpress, not possible. But the redirection tool was so quick and easy that in a matter of a minute or less I had my new domain creativegeniuscollective.com pointing seamlessly at the new blog.

So all I have to do now is get the rest of the team’s accounts’ up and active and we will be shiny.

Just discovered Podcamp Toronto a great thing to do on the February 23-25 Weekend and it perfectly coincides with one of my current projects. That of assisting Beth in creating an online presence for her including a Blog, Podcast, business website etc.

If anyone is interested the details can be found at:

Just saw the following Blog post, that sayes exactly what I have been thinking for the last few days.

Podcasting Tricks - Podcasting How-To Site

More than that, I’ve been working on answers to all these questions. More later….

Here is a salutary tail;

I was working on a clients website and had finished all that was on the to-do list. So like the good little coder that I try to be I though I should do some simple penetration tests to make sure the site was secure.

Well after a bit of research I came across a doosy, under the title of SQL-Injection. What happens is this; Your trolling through a website and it asks you to provide a username and password to interact. Be that look at something or even administer the site.

Instead of guessing or phishing for a username you just type:[ ' OR 1=1 /*], and as if by magic the site lets you in and identifies you as whoever is the first member in the database (usually the administrator). Not to put is too mildly a but of a shock.

Why this works is that the back end query looks something like:[ SELECT id FROM accounts WHERE username = '{supplied username}' AND password = '{supplied password}' ]. Now the code above when placed in either username or password changes it to the following:
[ SELECT id FROM accounts WHERE username = '' OR 1=1 /* AND password ='' ]
Which if you read MySQL, means find me all the records where 1=1 (logically always true) and Ohh, ignore the bit after the /* as its a comment.

Well needless to say, I was all over that one and made several changes to the back end database and code to prevent that one from biting us in the future.

Have just spent a frustrating few days. Firstly getting to grips with the numerous bugs in iTunes 7, (2 days) FAILED! Then getting to grips with downgrading to the previous version.

You will all no doubt know the numerous bugs in the new version of iTunes (version 7), here are the ones that bugged me to distraction.

1. Used to be able in V6 to update my ipod with my contact list and calendar from Outlook, easy. Version 7 just throws errors with no explanation.
2. Used to be able to easily switch between program parts while sync-ing, this now causes the program to crash.
3. Had no problems playing any suitable Video blog files in iTunes. Now if hardware acceleration turned on this smushes up the display and with it turned off, no full screen and cannot stop playback.
4. etc
5. etc

Well after spending some time downgrading, finding I could no longer access my library and having to upgrade again; here is how I finally managed to downgrade successfully.

1. While running version 7, export your library file as XML (file menu Export).
2. Uninstall iTunes 7 and Quicktime 7.
3. Install from a backup of the previous versions install file (WHAT YOU DIDN’T KEEP IT) No worries, I can be persuaded to put up a link to a copy, just drop me a comment.
4. Import the library XML file
5. Re-subscribe to your podcasts with the subscribe buttons that appear
6. NOTE: Video podcast may not be included, you will have to re-subscribe to them manually, though the already downloaded episodes will be in Videos.

that’s all for now, I have some fawning to do over a disgruntled ipod.

Here is a strange set of circumstances…

I listen to and watch a few podcasts, one of my favorites is Labrats, fronted by Andy Walker and Sean Caruthers out of Toronto. Well is came to pass that I had added Andy’s blog to my Bloglines list and what should appear but a call-for-help for compiling show notes for one of his other projects.

This is something I can do in my spare time, so I replied. After a short while I got a mail from Andy apologizing that he had filled the vacancy, but also asking what other skills I had. Well to cut a long story short I’m now gainfully occupying my time with coding projects for the team.

Seems they needed someone with PHP, MySQL, HTML etc coding skills to implement several projects. Firstly a podcast download tracker for the Labrats Feed, which is now up, running and producing reams of stats. Secondly finishing off the construction of a new front end / back end CMS system for the Cyberwalker site, to go live by October 1st, which I am plowing into right now.

So it looks like I will have something else to occupy my time while I overwinter in Toronto. Oh Yes! I’m still going to Toronto for the winter, its part of the master plan…