Ruth Stalker-Firth

I set up a second wordpress installation in a directory named /jasmine so that Neil and I could blog about our daughter Jasmine who has chronic renal failure. However, because I fiddled with the .htaccess this technical blog kept serving up Error 404 pages instead of the blogs I have written.

There are ways of running two wordpress blogs with one installation, but if you decide to run two completely separate installations of wordpress like I have then you will need to make sure you have two .htaccess files. One in each directory. So, in the home directory my .htaccess (or the relevant lines) looks like this:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

And, in the /jasmine directory the .htaccess file looks like this:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /jasmine/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /jasmine/index.php [L]

Another Apple marketing frenzy has led to the UK bracing itself for the launch of the iPhone tomorrow. The Carphone Warehouse is expecting large queues and Scotland Yard are warning customers to hide their new handsets so that they don’t get mugged.

Aside from the excitment there are criticisms. The main ones centre on the iPhone’s choice of network: O2. O2’s coverage isn’t great, apparently even in the Apple store on Regent Street. And unlocked iPhones that early adopters are already using, thanks to Ebay, won’t be able to download new software without damaging them. Vendor lock-in experts Apple are as bad as Microsoft with their need to dictate to customers how their products should be used, which ultimately is a big problem when you talk about the iPhone’s user experience and usability. (more…)

Like every self-respecting human-computer interaction (HCI) lecturer, I introduce task analysis or the technique of analysing how people perform a task or job, to my students a couple of weeks into a given course. Each time I am aware that I fail to get excited about task analysis and so give it a bad press. (more…)

Last week, Uriah Rennie let Newcastle player James Milner’s goal stand even after his teammate Scott Parker had been flagged off-side and had jumped out of the way of the ball and (too late) West Ham goalkeeper Roy Carroll’s view. West Ham had been two goals up since the first five minutes of the game and possibly onto their first away win of the season. Instead, they left St James Park with only one point for their efforts. (more…)

Normally, I have violent fantasies about the things I would like to say when on the telephone with the Inland Revenue. Yesterday I didn’t say a word when interacting with them as I filed my self-assessment online. (more…)