I was offline all these days because I was a) studying; b) my Net connection was down for the past few days because of the incessant rains in Delhi courtesy mckennasallweatherhaulage.com.

I saw a funny thing in yesterday’s Hindustan Times - they’ve started some new series on ‘women stories’ or something, and this particular bit in the side column had me ROFL. They’d given a few ’sites for women’, and below that, they wrote this (titled as ‘Tip of the Week’):

Never logged on to the Internet? Still wondering what the Web is all about? Come on, it’s really easy. On your computer, look out for the blue ‘e’ icon. Click in the space next to the word ‘address’. Here, type www.yahoo.com or www.google.com - you get it, right?

And below that, inviting entries to some supposed ‘quiz question’:

What is a search engine?

People accuse me of cackling like a hyena throughout the day ‘without any reason’ - but stuff like the ones above always provide me solid rebuttals to that (starts ROFL). I just don’t get what’s their point is with the astonishing ‘tip of the week’ - girls are dumb and can’t even start a browser? I certainly don’t think so. So maybe it was a simple pointer for n00bs. If it was, then these were a pathetic set of instructions. “Look for the blue ‘e’”. Oh please, gimme a break. And if our woman subject in question has never launched a browser, ‘looking out for its icon’ certainly won’t start the browser.

The ‘quiz question’ is even more funnier. HT expects that women around Delhi would be eagerly waiting for next week’s issue for the answer. Really, HT should stop trying to insult their readers’ intelligence. I must admit that I haven’t come across many (any?) girl geeks, but that doesn’t mean they don’t know how to use technology in their daily life.

OK, an explanation on what went wrong with my WordPress installation yesterday night. First I’d like to apologize to fellow contributors of this blog for the inconvenience caused to them by a password reset which had to be done, since I had to do a clean install of WordPress.

I’ve been using WordPress version 2.6 till now, and recently (on August 15th), WordPress 2.6.1 was released which incorporates a few bug fixes. It’s not an ‘important’ update, but I still decided to go ahead with it. Now for the update itself, I could have done it manually - which is the general way to do it. However, GoDaddy (my hosting provider) does not allow SSH connections for shared hosting accounts like mine, so untarring and overwriting with the new files isn’t an option. The other route would have been to take the new install file, and overwrite using the GoDaddy web interface. Rather than doing all that, I generally use the WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin - which does exactly that. WP-AU is recommended by the WordPress Codex itself; in fact, functionality similar to WP-AU is scheduled to be incorporated into the WordPress 2.7 core by default.

I began my upgrade around yesterday night, and WP-AU reported that the upgrade had gone smoothly. I didn’t find anything amiss either. Soon, problems started cropping up. WordPress kept on logging me out of my account every few minutes, and kept asking me to log back in. Even more strangely, at certain times during login it kept on giving an ‘Incorrect username’ error - when the username was most certainly correct (stored in my Firefox profile). I thought it could be a browser cache / cookie issue, so I cleared those - still the problems persisted. I tried using Opera 9.50 instead of Firefox 3, and still the same thing. I even changed configuration files to force a cookie reset, but that didn’t work either. I disabled the Google Gears add-on for my blog, thinking that it might be causing the problem because it was pulling old files from its cache, but that didn’t work either. Heck, I couldn’t even see any posts on my site when I was logged in! Others who weren’t logged, could, but for me, it said I didn’t have enough permissions to view the post.

That’s not the only thing which was going wrong. It wasn’t allowing me to publish posts either, giving a ‘You do not have the permission to do that’ error. I checked the users page, and I was listed as an Administrator. I logged on to the WordPress IRC channel then, and discussed this issue with the helpful folk there. I overwrote the existing WordPress files manually with a fresh copy of v2.6.1 - still the problem persisted. Clearly, it was my database which had gone kaput - something which I feared from the beginning when the problem cropped up. I restored to a pre-2.6.1 database backup which I had, and ran upgrade.php again to update the tables. You guessed it right, that didn’t work either.

So I clearly had a problem with my user permissions. I elevated all existing members to administrator privileges, as a backup option in case I got locked out, and then created another admin account for myself. That new admin account also ran into similar problems soon. I tried to ‘reset’ my previous username’s permissions by downgrading its privileges, and then elevating it again to admin using my new account. Nope, that didn’t work either. During all this, I kept on getting logged out every few minutes.

I had no option other than doing a clean install. I exported my current items as a WordPress eXtended RSS (WXR) files, and deleted my current install and database. I created a new database, did a clean install of WP 2.6.1, and then imported my data in using the XML file I’d exported earlier. Long night. So I’m back online now, re-uploading images using a backup I had taking earlier, and activating the old plugins I was using earlier one-by-one. Hopefully, I’ve a more stable WordPress install now.

As to what went wrong, I can only guess. Obviously, WP Automatic Upgrade screwed something up during the upgrade process. That’s a lesson to be learned - NEVER use WP-AU, manual upgrades might take longer, but it’s definitely safer.

Things just get better everyday. While trying to upgrade my WordPress install from version 2.6 to 2.6.1, my database somehow got corrupted. I’ve got the basic stuff restored now, rest might take a bit more time. Especially restoring all plugin-related items and images.

Having an 8 year old in the family is a wonderful thing, his innocence never fails to bring a smile to my face and Christmas for him is Santa Claus, no matter how much I want to tell him and explain to him the truth. I will always respect the fact that for him this lie is perfect, for as children, we are very vulnerable and a grandfatherly figure does ease tensions. So I decided to do something special for him before he grows up and faces a cruel world. Now I am penniless so buying him a gift is out of question so I decided to show him NORAD’s (North American Aerospace Defense Command) tracking of santa on a trip around the globe, a heart warming tradition it started in 1955 when a store accidentally put CONADs (Continental Air Defense) director of Operations number on an advertisement encouraging children to call santa now the officer on duty didn’t find it hilarious and ordered his staff to give the location of santa to every child who called , this started the tradition which was later continued by NORAD and now they even offer it in 3D on google earth!

It’s a pity he had to go home and couldn’t enjoy it if any of you out there has an 8 year old in your home or heart go ,here.

Here’s NORADs description of their program:
”
Detecting Santa all starts with the NORAD radar system called the North Warning System. This powerful radar system has 47 installations strung across the northern border of North America. NORAD makes a point of checking the radar closely for indications of Santa Claus leaving the North Pole on Christmas Eve.
The moment our radar tells us that Santa has lifted off, we use our second mode of detection, the same satellites that we use in providing warning of possible missile launches aimed at North America. These satellites are located in a geo-synchronous orbit (that’s a cool phrase meaning that the satellite is always fixed over the same spot on the Earth) at 22,300 miles above the Earth. The satellites have infrared sensors, meaning they can detect heat. When a rocket or missile is launched, a tremendous amount of heat is produced - enough for the satellites to detect. Rudolph’s nose gives off an infrared signature similar to a missile launch. The satellites can detect Rudolph’s bright red nose with practically no problem. With so many years of experience, NORAD has become good at tracking aircraft entering North America, detecting worldwide missile launches and tracking the progress of Santa, thanks to Rudolph.
The third detection system we use is the Santa Cam. We began using it in 1998 - the year we put our Santa Tracking program on the Internet. NORAD Santa Cams are ultra-cool high-tech high-speed digital cameras that are pre-positioned at many places around the world. NORAD only uses these cameras once a year - Christmas Eve. The cameras capture images of Santa and the Reindeer as they make their journey around the world. We immediately download the images on to our web site for people around the world to see. Santa Cams produce both video and still images.
The fourth detection system we use is the NORAD jet fighter. Canadian NORAD fighter pilots, flying the CF-18, take off out of Newfoundland to intercept and welcome Santa to North America. Then at numerous locations in Canada other CF-18 fighter pilots escort Santa. While in the United States, American NORAD fighter pilots in either the F-15 or F-16 get the thrill of flying with Santa and the famous Reindeer Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, Blitzen and Rudolph. About a dozen NORAD fighters in Canada and the United States are equipped with Santa Cams.
”

Merry Christmas to all of you who have made my life worth living and a happy new year in advance, enjoy yourself and give yourself a treat from my side (don’t ask me to pay for it though, I can’t currently afford to do so).