I had a situation where I had to export a set of records from a MYSQL database on a live site into a copy database on a localhost site. After successfully making the export / import I found all the picture and url links on the WordPress posts broken. Closer inspection relieved that the import had replaced all the necessary double quotes around links, styles, etc had been replaced with backslashes.

If you’re in the same position there’s a quick remedy. the following myqsl statement will find and replace

copy it and change the italic parts to match your set up

UPDATE your table name SET your field name = replace(your field name, ‘\\’, ‘\”‘);

The Perseids Meteor Shower can be seen each year when up to 60 firework like streaks  are seen per hour in the Northern Hemisphere.  The event occurs mid July to Mid August with the most activity around the 13th of August.

I went out last night from Midnight until 1:30am and saw around15 meteors. I sat in a field with my Olympus OM-D camera mounted on a tripod pointing up at the sky in a south facing direction with a 9mm wide angle lens so it would capture a wide zone of sky.

I set the ISO to 800 and exposure to manual with a duration of 8seconds. I then took photos hoping that a meteor would appear during the exposure. The camera needed to process each frame to reduce noise between shots and that was also about 8 seconds.  I took around 300 photos and managed to capture two trails.

This was the best one

Perseids meteor

I got this error message using a name anchor tag when trying to validate a page in HTML5

The name attribute is obsolete. Consider putting an id attribute on the nearest container instead.

Here’s the code I had:

<a name=’anchor word’>

the solution is to replace name with id

<a id=’#anchor word’>

Quote ‘ in attribute name. Probable cause: Matching quote missing somewhere earlier.

I got the above error when validating a html5 page.

The problem was solved by changing

<meta charset=”UTF-8″ >

to add a closing backspace :

<meta charset=”UTF-8″ />

Hope that helps others with the same problems

Just latest health update

I posted a detailed piece a few years ago on Cholesterol and was happy to report my level had dropped from over  6 down to 3.5.  I had a blood test about four months ago that showed it had risen to over 5 so I’d gone back on the doctor’s radar. After a meeting with the doc I was changed from Simvastatin to Atorvastatin which is a stronger option. The latest blood test shows I’m down to 4.3.

HDL is at 1.04 and LDL is at 1.85

That puts me off concern but I’m still above where I should be – I need to become healthier but struggle doing gym style fitness as I find it so dull.

Anyone got any good ideas? I’m fair walker, get up hills a few times each month and I eat loads of nuts and fruit and less cheese / curries.

The band I’m in with David Burleson has produced a new track  – The Nightmare of Childhood

Sound of Flak have remixed River Song by Ally Rhodes

I’m currently setting up a home off  line web development environment and tried Xampp – I got stuck and the online help didn’t help…so I switched to WAMP and it’s going ok so far.

I’m going to use this post to add links that I find useful along the way

Creating multiple virtual hosts

This allows you to have several sites in the one location accessed from your WAMP server via Apache.  I read and followed several guides from blog posts that didn’t resolve the problem, before finding one that works.

I’ve started work on finalising a new album – title to be confirmed and here are excerpts from two tracks. The first provides experimentation unbalanced keys / notes to form random unsynchronised music. The second is a tranquil piece full of harmony