So I started to do a little snooping. I discovered many of my PHP files had a large string of characters at the start of every file. I also notice server not found errors in my log. I googled the error and server and discovered that this is a known WordPress virus. The solution was to eradicate it from every PHP file. I did, it was present in several dozen files including some plugins. But, things were no better, maybe worse! Now, my admin pages were all OK, editing worked, etc. But my blog’s pages came up empty, nata, nothing. No code at all in the pages. I spent some time on the WP forums and had some things to try but none worked.

I finally did a complete removal of my entire wordpress directory – except my wp-config and my uploads directory in wp-content. I did a manual reinstall of WP 2.9.1 and logged in. Same thing, no blog pages. Frustrated I went back to WP forums but found nothing helpful. Then I had an idea, I went to the Themes admin page and changed my theme to the Classic 1.5 theme. Reloaded, and voila, everything worked fine! I reinstalled my favorite theme – Vesper – and plugins and all is good on the EclecticGuy blog again. What a pain that was though. I changed all my passwords and admin login just to be safe.

Did anyone figure out what that drawing above is? It’s the common cold virus!

Testing complete so I REMOVED the embedded Wave.

So, now that I’ve update four of our Macs (Family Pack) with Snow Leopard and used it for a few days, what do I think? Well, there is very little change in the user interface. That’s a good thing, I hate relearning new UIs. The real power of Snow Leopard is under the covers – full 64 bit support and a completely re-written Finder (that is, of course, 64 bit). Almost all of the Apple apps are now 64 bit too (Mail, Safari, iCal, and iChat). Snow Leopard’s “Grand Central Dispatch” is an enabling technology for software developers to write better multi-processor applications more easily. OpenCL taps in to graphics processors to use for more than just graphics. Very cool, I can hardly wait to see what developers do with it! Snow Leopard comes with QuickTime X also. It includes a new Player, really improved internet video streaming, and built in audio and video capture!

So far, Snow Leopard has been noticeably faster and completely transparent – meaning I have not run in to any problems with any of the apps I run – Photoshop CS3, ViaCAD, the iWork suite, Lightroom 2, TextMate, etc. The new XCode is also really solid.

Well, I just had to get the new iPhone 3G S. I’ve been an iPhone fanatic since the original came out 2 years ago. Last year, I upgraded to a 16 GB 3G and loved it. The GPS feature has been great. Well, when I heard that the 3G S has a 3 megapixel camera AND a video camera, along with a real compass, I just had to have one. In addition, the 3G S is supposed to be 2X faster than the 3G.

I normally do not pre-order things but this time I did. AT&T promised overnight delivery shipped the day before the official release date. Today is the day! The phone arrived this morning and 30 minutes later, I had transferred all of my “stuff” and was on the net. That was very easy. Now that I’ve had the phone for a few hours I can say, “Wow!”. It really is faster than my 3G. Everything loads so much faster – email, web pages, apps start up faster.

The new features in OS 3 are also nice – I had updated to it on Wednesday when it became available. First there is sideways text entry in Mail, Notes, and Messages – the keyboard flips to the landscape orientation when you rotate the phone. Nice feature, makes typing even easier. Then there is Copy, Cut & Paste! The real thing! The UI is very well done – not an easy task for a handheld device with a touchscreen.

That stuff is nice but get this – Voice Control! It can dial phone numbers, look up names in Address Book, and play music music by saying the artist’s name, a playlist, and even control the songs playing – and it can tell you what song is playing. And, it works amazingly well! The voice dialing alone is worth its weight in electrons! Then we have Compass – it basically turns your $299 iPhone in to a $20 compass. But it is pretty and it works really well. It can tell you exactly which way you are facing. Goggle Maps is compass aware too, when you tap the location icon a 2nd time, Google Maps rotates as you move around! I can’t even tell you how cool this is!

Ok, but it keeps getting better! There is a new Spotlight application built in to search for things on the phone. You get to it by flicking left from the main page. If you look at the little page icons at the bottom of the home pages, the one on the far left is the Spotlight magnifying glass icon. Nicely done! And there is now a built in Voice Memo application that records audio and then lets you share it or email it. I make audio notes to myself all the time in QuickVoice but I’ll try the new Apple recorder.

There are a number of other enhancements too – Stocks has a new graphing mode, updates to Calendar, Find my iPhone shows you where your phone is and Wipe lets you wipe it clean – all from MobileMe. There is also built-in support for the Nike iPod sensor. Internet Tethering and MMS  are built in to OS 3 but not supported by AT&T yet. MMS is promised for late summer, tethering is not mentioned by AT&T.

And now we get to the new camera and video camera! The camera is MUCH better than the original. At 3 megapixels, it is actually usable and it has a new autofocus feature with a really cool manual focus feature. Simply touch an object on the camera preview and iPhone focuses on that object! Including exposure and white balance. This is a very neat feature, I won’t be surprised if some digital camera companies steal this idea – it’s that good! Video is also very usable. 30FPS VGA recording when the phone is held horizontally (wide screen mode). And, it has built-in video editing! How cool is that! The editor is a simple “clip” editor but it is simple to use and nicely implemented. Video can be shared or emailed right from the Camera application too. The camera is much faster too, so you can capture sequences of photos.

The iPhone 3G S is a winner! Not revolutionary but a great evolution from the original iPhone and iPhone 3G!

These canons can shoot a full size potato 100s of feet – we fire them out on to the frozen lake. This year, we shot a few at night and I caught them on video on my little Pentax W60 camera at 30fps. There was literally no light so the video (and photos) are grainy but the effect is interesting and capturing the blast in the canon was VERY interesting. Here is the sequence of 4 frames right at the time of launch:

(you can see the full size photos here)

In this sequence you can clearly see the initial ignition, then the blast up the barrel, and finally, the blast expelling the potato out of the canon. Keep in mind that the canon is made of thick, white PVC pipe! Since the camera shoots 30 frames/second and the blast occurs over 2-3 frames, the entire event is taking about 1/10 of a second!

Here is the video from which these stills were captured:

My goal is to have this idea implemented in the next week or so, then we’ll have a complete – but simple – Shrugh prototype.

To check out the new demo. go to the Shrugh home page and click the create a shrugh link at the bottom of the page (or click the link I just typed!). Either way, check out the demo and please leave your comments/feedback at the end!