Spy Journal 3.0 Filtering the web for you

Just when we had nearly finished the last round of security upgrades Drupal releases a new set of upgrades for 5 and 6 sites. Fortunately we have this process down pretty well now so it looks like aManda is going to be busy for a while performing upgrades.

One really cool module we have found for version 5 sites is the Update Status Module. This feature is included in Drupal 6 core, but had ben missing from Drupal 5. Now we can be notified whenever contributed modules are upgraded and go and replace them.

One of the main reason for the security patches is the chance for users of the BLOGAPI feature to upload malicious files. This includes users of Live Writer and other applications that take advantage of this feature. This fortunately is not too much of an issue because site administrators should only be providing this feature to users they trust anyway.

Came back the same way I went. What took 2 hours 20 minutes to go, took 2 hours 17 minutes to come back - thats consistent driving!

Now I am home I have a massive amount of work to do. While I was away I could get into my server and process emails, manage files and other bits and pieces but my laptop does not have the same development environment for coding, making it impractical to try and work on some of the jobs I have to do. Only having 2 screens in the motel made it hard also when I’m used to working on 4.

So today its diving into the code work and getting the piled up jobs out of the way and done. First some paperwork associated with being away, a strong coffee to help with that and then code code code!

Oh and we just got word yesterday on a massive database contract we tendered for in February against Oracle – we won it! So that will kick off in a couple of weeks and I need to be clear of other work. Anybody know of any Excel and VBA developers in Brisbane looking for work? Email me or use the contact form in the menu bar.

I am in Toowoomba now. I am currently in a motel room (pictures below) using very fast ADSL2 Internet service provided free by the motel via wireless network.

I got here the fun way.

When I wrote my motorbike off a couple of years ago I waited for some time before replacing it and eventually replaced it with the Suzuki Swift Sport. Since then I have done 18000 km but no real good driving – just city and highway work. Today I got the opportunity to really go driving with it.

The videos are on YouTube. They are all filmed on public roads using a camera held in my hand while driving and holding the wheel. So the image quality and stability is sacrificed for safety. Additionally I didn’t push the car beyond the speed limit. However the roads are so twisty that was not necessary to obtain some great footage.

Sunday afternoon I went mountain biking. This had been planned for 2 weeks with 3 other mates – however they all piked on me – one at the last minute the girl! No matter I went by myself. I went to reconnoitre an old cycling haunt that I hadn’t been to for about 3 or 4 years to see if the tracks were still all rideable. The area I went to was the glasshouse mountains lookout. See the map below.

The track starts at the top pf the hill where there is a lookout. Going along a dirt road there are plenty of little tracks on the side of the road to ride on for a bit more fun. Finding the right down hill was tricky. There were several and I went down 2 wrong ones before finding the right one. From there I zigzagged through the bottom of the valley and then up onto the next ridge, Going down into the next valley again was fun and very technical. Lots of opportunities for air but I was very careful not to get too much as the other side of the bumps was always unpredictable. Motor bikes have been chewing these tracks up though they are not allowed in the state forest.. From here it was a long hard slog back to the top of the hill and the road from where it was just a hard fast ride back to the starting point.

The boys missed out!