I recently needed to force a PDF to download using Apache. The default behaviour for most browsers is to try to open the PDF inside the browser itself. This is fine for a small PDF or for powerful machines - but a large PDF on even a modest machine can often lock the browser up. This needed fixing!

After 20 minutes of perusing the Apache documents, I happened across the FilesMatch option which takes Regular Expressions. Regular Expressions are cool things which pattern match; you give it a rather complicated (yet logical) pattern and it matches it for you. Initially I used something like this...

I've been working on it for a few days now, but its finally released. Social Statistics is being used on this site and can be found on any page on an enabled site in a block. It provides pluggable statistics for (currently) 3 major Social Networking websites; Del.icio.us, Digg and Ma.gnolia. It currently boasts caching of statistics for a configurable amount of time, AHAH retrieval of statistics which are not cached (thus not slowing down page loads) and an API to make the project extendible to anybody who cares to add a Social Network to the mixture!

The core module consists, mostly, of a few menu callbacks and an API. This API allows the user to enable any number of enabled modules to add their contribution to the block. The 3 enabled sites all have an XML based API, but each does things slightly differently - hence my choice in using them as examples of the module as a whole.

You can find this module over in the Drupal Projects section.

I've just released a new game - its a VERY simple adaptation of the classic, pong, but it has a twist in the form of tennis. You must rally the ball back and forth - the ball gaining speed slightly on every return. Players win points (and serve) by knocking the ball past their opponent, either through a cunning move or by making them lose out in a game of reactions.

Checkout the game here - Pongis - Where Pong Meets Tennis

This morning I decided to watch the Lullabot Drupal 4.7.x to 5.x Conversion Tutorial. Thing is - my work PC doesn't have sound plus it's not ideal to watch a video and work on the same screen - not enough screen real estate.

About the screensaver

This started out as my entry for the Fireworks Challenge and I decided to build upon it to make a screensaver of it. Its pretty simple - no sounds (sounds in screensavers annoy me!), a city made of white boxes and brightly coloured fireworks

The challenge was actually back in June 2006 and its only recently, with fireworks going off outside, that I've decided to finish it!

After trying on and off for days to find an easy way to use RRD to keep an eye on server load (found in places like the top and uptime commands or in the /proc/loadavg file), I found this. Its fantastic!

If anyone has ever used webmin then its quite likely they'll have got bored with the default theme very quickly.

About the game…

This is a game that started out as a personal challenge - "How hard is it to make a random maze?!"

About the game

This is a game I started over a year ago and never really got around to finishing. Well now I decided to actually try to finish a game! With the help of The Game Creators forum (a special thanks to "Freddix" for compiling The Ultimate Shader Pack AND creating the eXtends plugin for Dark Basic Professional) I have managed to not only improve the games efficiency but I have also given it quite a bit more eye candy too!