Another issue recently, with a different site.

The host supplier had moved the site to a new server and apparently this has “Suhosin” installed. This is an advanced protection system for PHP installations. It was designed to protect servers and users from known and unknown flaws in PHP applications and the PHP core.

It can also kill your WordPress dashboard (and the rest!).

I could authenticate successfully and get the WordPress banner menu showing above the site, but if I tried to get to the dashboard or any other part of WordPress administration, I was being redirected to the 404 Error page.

The site continued to work fine, I was just unable to change it in any way as I could not get to the dashboard.

A quick chat session with the host supplier and they disabled Suhosin. Now all is back to normal.

A web site that I jointly administer suddenly started to fail when trying to add images to pages/posts.

We’d not altered anything nor installed any new plugins, but this was disconcerting as Christmas was approaching and that’s a busy time for us.

It turns out the issue was caused by our host provider changing their security and WordPress was (to use their words) “violating mod_security settings”. Thankfully, they added an exclusion for us and things are up and running again (no lasting harm done).

So, if WordPress starts saying something like “Page not found” (404 error) when you attempt to publish a page or post, check with your hosting provider and see if they can change settings for you.

There’s also a WordPress support thread here on the issue:

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/cannot-create-posts-with-images-404-error-postphp

I needed an MP3 player, didn’t want to buy an expensive iPod and someone recommended I look at the SanDisk Sansa Fuze. I’m glad I did.

The SanDisk Sansa Fuze with SD card for size comparison

It. Just. Works. The list of great things about it are:

• It plays just about any audio file you wish to copy onto it (MP3, WMA, secure WMA, Ogg Vorbis, and FLAC).
• It sounds great and the battery lasts for ages.
• It plays just about any MPEG4 format movie file.
• Has expandable memory with a microSDHC memory card slot.
• FM radio (not used that much to be honest).
• Voice recorder (not used that much either).
• Has EQ settings, including allowing custom settings.
• Photo/image viewer (small screen, so of limited use – use your phone instead).
• Metal back and sides (apparently made of LiquidMetal) with a piano-gloss plastic front.
• Has a good solid weighty feel to it without being heavy.
• It appears as two drives when connected to the PC (internal/external memory) so no iTunes needed.
• It supports Audible books (used these – they’re great).

Rather than bore you with a full review, read the excellent AnythingButIpod.com review which will give you all you need to know.

Want an MP3 player that will last but don’t want to pay a premium price, then this will be money well spent. A simple (not included) jack-to-jack cable lets me plug into separate speakers if I want to.

Enough said. Here’s a photo of the unit with its blue ring of wonder:

The Blue Ring of Wonder!

Via: Medical Billing And Coding

I came across this blog post from Mali Korsten on the perfect recipe for poaching an egg:

Poached eggs have been my nemesis for the extent of my cooking career (I use the term “career” loosely, in the way that one might describe wearing clothes, or any other necessary daily activity). Without one of those special cheat-pans, my eggs just dissolve into a stringy mass of albumin floating in a sea of frothy salt-water, the yolk sitting isolated at the bottom of the pan, long-since detached from its white partner. Yesterday, all that changed.

http://themalikwhey.wordpress.com/2011/03/18/how-to-poach-an-egg/

I tried the recipe this morning and can tell you, it works! Evidence below:

Straight from the pan

Just how I like it

Apart from being able to make great eggs, Mali is also a musician. Her album is here and is well worth a listen: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/malikorsten

Finally, a quote from C S Lewis which mentions a poached egg:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. – Mere Christianity, pages 40-41.

 

After working in Sydney this week I got some free time before my flight in the evening.

Prior to my arrival in Australia, they’d had about two weeks of rain (some quite heavy I believe). When I arrived, the weather took a turn for the better and the sun came out – unfortunately I was working between 8am and 5pm so was not able to enjoy it.

On my last day in Sydney, I had some hours to myself – but the weather has returned to rain, and some of it torrential – there was even a “water tornado” just a few miles away. So with a few hours to spend, I resorted to trudging around the shops with my back pack, looking like a soaked vagrant. Granted, this gave me time to buy gifts for the family, but it wasn’t the day I was looking forward to. I had been hoping to get out and take some photographs of the famous Sydney landmarks.

Thankfully, I’d brought the Canon D10 with me so had no problems using that in the rain:

They’re baaaack!

Now all the UK airports are open airline operators are rushing to get things back to normal, which means the beautifully clear skies of the last six days have been vandalised to:

Communication from Air Chief Marshal Seagull,

This is a great day.

Over many long years we have been struggling against the humans and their aircraft filling our airspace and at last our efforts have paid off. Yesterday, at 1200 hours, the humans admitted defeat and grounded all planes over the United Kingdom.

Long may this continue now that we have, at last, regained our air superiority and are again masters of the sky!

ACM Seagull

When we were having our new kitchen designed we found very few places on the Internet where we could see an oak kitchen with dark worktop and a black sink. So I’ve decided to post my photos here, in case it helps other make a decision.

We are very pleased with our choice of a Franke Mythos Fragranite Graphite MGT 651-100 (click images for larger view):

Oak kitchen with black Franke sink

Close up of black Franke sink

The whole kitchen

It is said that if the universe is infinite, then there must be an infinite number of universes; each one different from the other. If that’s true, then somewhere there’s a universe where earphones never become tangled when removed from your pocket.

It’s clearly not this universe!

Although man has achieved many incredible and varied feats, the humble earphone taunts him daily with more incredible and inventive ways of transforming itself from ‘carefully coiled’ to ‘jumbled mass’ within milliseconds.

Recently I came across this article that suggested using a simple vinyl name badge clip to hold the earphones and so I tried it out (minus the metal clip which just got in the way). I have to say that the result has been surprisingly successful.

So far this week I’ve no longer had to undergo a hideous ‘Disentanglement puzzle‘ before listening to music or watching a video on my Sansa Fuze.

It’s like living in another universe.

I’m looking forward to Avatar, James Cameron‘s latest feature film since Titanic and which débuts on the 17th December.

I’m particularly interested to see how special effects and motion capture have moved on since ‘Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within‘ and Gollum in Lord of the Rings. Will this be the start of a new season in cinema once the new effects become available to other film makers? Who else can afford the costs involved?

I’m also interested to see if the story matches the incredible cinematics. From what I’ve read so far, it’s a tale of adoption, redemption and salvation, mingled with violence and love.

If you use the NextGEN plugin and want to have a border (or frame) around it, I have found that the following code seems to work well:

<div style=”border: 12px solid black; width: 600px; height: 450px;”>[ slideshow id=2 ]</div>

(Note: In the example above I have put an extra space after the opening and before the closing square brackets to stop NextGEN from actually showing the slideshow in this post)

To get this to work for me, I also have the Slideshow settings in NextGEN set to 600 x 450 and ‘Stretch Image’ set to False.

We have had Dyson AirBlade hand dryers installed at work recently.

I had only use an AirBlade once before at the Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station on the Lizard peninsula and was impressed with its effectiveness.

They’re a very noisy hand dryer, but as you tend to only use it for around 10 seconds it’s not too bad. One thing I don’t like about it is that there is nowhere for the water from your hands to go except onto the floor (it falls to the base of the dryer then down either side). After an hour or so, the floor under the dryer has developed a small puddle.

However, they are effective and you always feel like your hands are very clean and dry when you’re finished.

This is the set up in Lansdowne’s media room.

Video Inputs

We have three composite video feeds into the video mixer (via their own B/W monitors): 2 x camera feeds (we use Sony DCR-VX2000E and DSR-PD170P cams) and 1 x DP feed (data projection feed as used in the church to project song words and videos).

Video Mixer

The video mixer (Edirol V-4) is used to transition between the various inputs. We’re only using three out of the possible four, so have some room for growth.

Subtitle Overlay

The overlay device (CorioGen Eclipse) takes a S-Video feed from the Edirol V-4 and returns this directly to a DVD Recorder that is used to master DVDs of the whole service and create an RF feed to relay audio and video of the service to various locations around the premises. In addition, it also outputs a composite feed that is the main video input into the AV Distribution box (see below).

A PC running SongPro is used to generate the required subtitles (connected to the CorioGen via VGA).

AV Distribution

Audio/Video distribution is handled by a Kramer VM-10AN that takes a composite video and line-level stereo input and provides 10 outputs. This is used to distribute AV to the main recording equipment, overflow lounge projector and the live webcast PC.

Audio Inputs

We have three main audio inputs: 1 x PA desk feed (from the AUX out of the main mixer desk in the church), 2 x congregation mics (fitted under the main balconies, one on each side). These pass through an audio mixing desk and via a simple distribution box to the various audio recording devices.

CD Recorder

We record live via a CD recorder and create a single disc containing the morning and evening services (message only). These are copied via a 1 x master, 3 x copies CD duplicator.

Tape Recorders

In addition to the CD, we also record two cassette tapes of the message. These are used to create multiple copies as required via the two 1 x master, 3 x copies tape copiers.

One tape deck is used to create an audio feed for the webcast PC (via the “headphones” output) to the PC’s MIC input. We may change this to take an audio feed from the Kramer AV distribution box.

Webcast PC

The webcast PC takes the audio feed from Tape Deck #3, the video feed from the Kramer AV distribution box, via a simple SCART (ugh!) video switch that allows us to choose between the church feed and a “Graphics” PC that shows a slideshow prior to the start of the service. This PC is also used to show the credits at the end of each service. Ideally, we’d like to have a better video mix between the Graphics PC and the AV church feed. We use a simple VGA to Composite Video converter for the Graphics PC input into the video switch.

Questions/Comments?

Please leave your questions/comments via the form below.

Every podcast needs an RSS feed that describes the podcast and its ‘enclosures’ (audio or video files). The feed is actually just a simple file in XML format, but this can be quite difficult to edit and set up and will require someone with specialist knowledge or a software tool to do this easily.

Thankfully, there is an easier way to create a feed.

Most blogging systems provide RSS (or Atom) feeds of their posts so that people can ‘subscribe’ and get the latest posts each time the author makes a new entry. Happily, this works for podcasts too. What you’ll need to make this work for you is:

• Online storeage for your audio (MP3) or video (MP4) files.
• A blog – either your own hosted blog, or an online version like Blogger.com.

Online storage is the main hurdle to overcome. You will probably have 1GB or so “webspace” provided by your ISP, or you can purchase a hosting package that gives you a specified amout of storage for your domain. What you need is an address on the Internet that lets you upload your MP3 files and subsequently download them using nothing more than a simple http:// link. For example, one of our sermons has the following address:

http://www.lansdownebaptistchurch.org.uk/podcast/090419p.mp3

This is stored on our hosted webspace that is related to our domain “lansdownebaptistchurch.org.uk”. How much storage you have, and how large your individual files are will dictate how many podcast episodes you can keep in your feed. Typically, we keep around one year’s worth of messages.

The blog step is much easier to overcome and is as simple as setting up a blog with, for example, Blogger.com. This will be the method that you will use to create the details for each episode of the podcast. Lansdowne uses this blog for their audio podcast: http://lansdownepodcast.blogspot.com

As you can see, each entry consists of simply a title and some content that links to the MP3 file. This is all that is needed to create the RSS feed for the podcast (see the footer at the very end of the Blog page for the RSS feed link).

iTunes will accept the feed URL of the blog as a valid feed and within hours of registering with iTunes your podcast will be live.

You may wish to consider using http://feedburner.google.com which you can use to provide statistics for your feeds. In this case, you give Feedburner your Blogger RSS feed address, and publish the Feedburner address to your listeners (and iTunes).

As usual, any questions, please use the comments below.

Each service at Lansdowne, we record the following:

• The audio of the message on cassette tape x 2 (for disaster recovery)
• The message on CD via an audio CD recorder
• The whole service video (and audio) on DVD via a DVD recorder
• The whole service video (and audio) on Super VHS tape (for disaster recovery)

We used to rip the CD as the main audio source, and if you’re interested in producing just an audio podcast this would be a simple way to get your audio into an MP3 or WAV file on your computer. An aside: I’m a PC user, so all the details here relate to Windows applications. If you’d rather use an Apple Mac, then you’ll probably already know of an alternative application for your system.

The best tool I’ve found for ripping CDs is AudioGrabber, a free download. To encode to MP3 format you will also need to download the Lame DLL which is further down the ‘download’ page.

We have two podcasts at Lansdowne: one audio and one video; so as we need to prepare the video for web use anyway, I have recently started to take my audio from the DVDs. I will explain the process I use for ripping the DVD and encoding it for web use, extracting the audio, enhancing it slightly and then encoding that to MP3. If it sounds quite a lot, it’s not really, once you’re used to it.

Ripping the DVD

I use Nero Recode to select the start/end point of the sermon and rip the DVD to a 220MB MP4 file (we use Vimeo.com to host our videos for free). Nero Recode is not free software, but neither is it very expensive. At the time of writing, the complete Nero suite of software is only £49.99. I have tried other, open source or free, programs but have found that a) they’re very slow, b) the MP4 file is not good enough quality, c) you can’t select a start/end point before you rip.

If anyone reading this knows of an open source program that has these features, I’m all ears – let me know in the comments below please.

Extracting the audio

Next, I use a tool called “Free Audio Converter” from www.x2xsoft.com which converts the MP4 into WAV format. I could go directly to MP3, but I want to increase the volume a little first.

Enhancing the audio

Using another free tool (Audacity) I read the WAV file, select all of it, and then use the Amplify effect to increase the volume to a higher level. Audio from the DVD always seems to be a little too quiet. Accepting the default values of the amplify effect seems to be just right. I save the WAV file (Export to WAV) rather than save as MP3, because I prefer to use AudioGrabber for making MP3s.

Creating the MP3

Lastly, using AudioGrabber, I convert the WAV into MP3 format (File menu, Convert to MP3). The settings I use are 64bit, mono, normal – these work perfectly for the spoken voice with almost no compression artifacts and usually produces a file around 16MB in size, which is easy on web storage and takes almost no time to download for your listeners.

Conclusion

That’s enough for now. If anyone knows of a simpler workflow with less software, I’d love to hear from you in the comments. I’ll cover preparing the RSS feed, uploading the MP3 files and making your feed live in the next article.

The setup for webcasting Lansdowne’s Sunday services is very simple.

We take a composite signal from the main DVD recorder and feed this via a switch box to the PCs TV capture card (which has a composite video input).Also attached to the switch box is another PC that we use to show a slideshow of introduction images before we switch to the live feed. We use a VGA to Composite converter on the second PC to create the composite video feed that we need for the switch box.

We also take an input from the audio recording system. This is a simple headphone output from one of the tape decks to the microphone input on the PC. The system is balanced to the correct level to achieve the desired input.

So, three inputs are available, 1) the video feed from the DVD recorder, 2) the PC screen from the second PC – showing a slideshow and 3) the audio from the tape/CD recording system. See this post for a diagram of the whole audio/video set up.

We use Adobe Flash Media Encoder (v2.5) to provide a feed into Justin.tv, sending 25 fps video at 400 bps and MP3 audio at 47 bps. This seems to be the maximum we can achieve at the moment with the uplink from our ISP, without causing too many jumps in the output. We use Adobe Flash Media Encoder v2.5 to provide a feed to livestream.com, sending 25fps video encoded at 250 bps with MP3 audio at 64 bps. This is the maximum we can use with our internet feed and to stay within the 500 bps limit imposed on free accounts.

We use the embedded player on our website (http://www.lbconline.co.uk) and can monitor the feed directly from Justin.tv livestream.com, including any chat.

This setup has the benefit of being low cost (Justin.tv livestream.com is free, but does carry adverts), but sufficient to provide a service for those shut in, unable to attend the services, or who have no bible believing church in their locality.

A simpler setup, which can be used almost anywhere, is to attach a webcam & microphone to the PC and use Justin.tv livestream.com’s standard ‘Broadcast’ option to show a live event. This will be poorer quality, but can produce quite acceptable results.

If you have any questions, please send me comments below.

I am involved in webcasting the live services each weekend from my church: Lansdowne Baptist Church, Bournemouth, England.

The good news is that you can do most of this for free, assuming you have the necessary internet connection and hardware. There should be no ongoing costs.

We have a two camera setup, data feed and live subtitling for song words and captions. Typically, each Sunday, there will be a team of between six or seven people involved.

I plan to share our experiences here periodically and hopefully receive ideas from those who read this blog, via comments.

We started webcasting using Justin.tv as our streaming provider. Their adverts were a bit intrusive and often betting related, so we looked elsewhere and found Livestream.com, their embedded player is very configurable.

Both providers have free accounts that show small ads at the bottom of the screen. These can be closed easily and a ‘pro’ option is available from Mogulus which has no ads.

[Edit - 14/04/10]
We have recently moved from Justin.tv to Livestream.com and have found this setup to produce the best quality so far. Good frame rates and quality.

My next post will cover our hardware setup for the webcast.