Kevin Whitworth / Jacurutu

Martin, Steve and Ally came up to celebrate the start of 2009 with us. Unfortunately, Jenny had to work, but the rest of us went to find geocaches located on Lewis and Harris, which kept us out of trouble for a couple of days, even though we had to put up with Ally's pink, flowery wellies!

Unfortunately, there are no firework pictures this year - although there was a pretty good display in Stornoway, we couldn't be bothered to trek in (and back again) to see it. We did catch it from the house, but I was never sure how long it would go on for, so didn't bother grabbing the camera. I must try harder next year.

Anyway, the photo albums are here, and as ever, the best of the pics are on my flickr account in this set. (For Steve, Ally and Martin, the pics at the end are from a walk we did at Hushinish the day after you headed home.)

Great news - octopush is being played in the Western Isles! There is a junior session running at the Harris Sports Centre (Ionad Spòrs Eilean na Hearadh) in Tarbert on Friday evenings. Cameron Morrison, from the sports centre, set this up last year, and has done a fantastic job getting it up and running. The sessions were taking a break over the Christmas Holidays, and I'm not sure when they restart, but I'm sure if you call the sports centre on 01859 502944 they'll be able to tell you.

When I get my act together, I'm going to see if we can't build on Cameron's work and get something up and running here on Lewis as well - both for juniors and for adults. If anyone is interested in playing (or just finding out more), post a comment on this entry and I'll get in touch.

PS Almost forgot to mention, I've also met some of the people from the dive club in Stornoway, and they've been known to play occasionally too!

Once again, my site's been playing up. All the links within the site were giving HTTP 404 errors. This has happened before, because I use the FancyURLs option within Nucleus, which makes the URLs of each article more search engine friendly, but less web server friendly. Last time this broke was when the .htaccess file had been replaced by persons unknown who had compromised the site. However, looking into it, the .htaccess file was there and contained the right content. This files contains instructions for the webserver to URLs like "/item/223", and pass them to the the Nucleus PHP scripts to handle. Unfortunately, it looks like my hosting provider made some changes to their implementation of PHP and Apache, and the standard instructions for making FancyURLs work are no longer compatible. The old .htaccess file had directives along the lines of:

<FilesMatch "^item$">
    ForceType application/x-httpd-php
</FilesMatch> 

After much digging around and experimenting, I have a solution. Instead of using the Apache ForceType directive, the Apache SetHandler directive works instead. So now the above should be changed to:

<FilesMatch "^item$">
    SetHandler php-script
</FilesMatch>

I'm not going to pretend I understand all the intricacies of this, but the notice I got from my hosting provider about the PHP changes gave some clues. They've switched from the PHP Apache module to a CGI-based installation of PHP. There was a hint that to make PHP work, you need to use the AddHandler directive, so a bit more digging around suggested that switching from ForceType to SetHandler would probably have the same effect under the new installation, and hey presto, it worked! Fingers crossed, everything is back to normal - sorry for any disruption in service.

So, if you're having problems with FancyURLs not working in Nucleus CMS, then try the above - obviously you'll need to make the change for each entry in the .htaccess file (and for each .htaccess file if you're running blogs in multiple directories). Good luck!

I wanted to know when new accounts were being created on my blog software (Nucleus), and when people were logging in to it. As this wasn't available in the core Nucleus functionality, I've written a plugin, called NP_Paranoia, to do this. Very roughly, it sends an email when a new account is created, when an account is deleted, when a successful login occurs, and when a failed login occurs. Each of these can be turned on and off as required, and they can also be recorded along with the requesting IP address in the Action Log.

Let me know if you use it and it's any use, and if there's any other features you would like, I might be able to accomodate them as well.

Well, at long last we've arrived and are back online. For those of you who don't know, Jenny accepted a job offer up in Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis, so I quit my job at Orange, and a couple of weeks ago we packed up everything, had it loaded into the back of a lorry, and drove up overnight to arrive on Lewis a couple of weeks back. We're mostly unpacked, Jenny's started and is enjoying her new job, and I've finally got broadband back up and running. I'm sure there's loads of stuff still to do, but we're mostly there.

I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do. I suspect the job opportunities in the Western Isles are rather more limited than they were back in Yorkshire, but there's a few possibilities around, including a complete change of career. I'm off to see the job centre tomorrow, so I'll see what they have to suggest.

Right, that's it for now. Guess I better go look for work...

Last Saturday (14 June 2008) was the inaugural Octopush North East (ONE) Cup tournament in Newcastle, with teams from York, Durham and Newcastle. Due to circumstances, both the York and Newcastle teams pooled together to field single teams in the cup, unlike in the league where York played an A and B team (in no particular order of merit), and Jesmond and Byker were competing separately. With only 3 teams, and a full 2-hour pool session, matches were played 15 minutes each way. Getting our excuses in early, we (York) only managed to get a squad of 6 players to the tournament, so we found it hard going with no substitutes.

Up first was York against Newcastle. This started quite well for York, but the tiredness soon came into play, along with the fact that we've only played once since before Easter due to loss of our pool (again, lining our excuses up...). Despite York's best efforts, Newcastle romped ahead to a decisive first victory.

The second match, to give York a bit of time to recover, was Durham versus Newcastle. A closer match, but still Newcastle came through as victors.

The final game was York versus Durham. The first half went Durham's way, but by the second half, despite the fatigue, York started coming together as a team again, and were slowly dragging themselves back into the game. However, Durham got their second wind in the last minutes of the game, and managed to hold York off to win 10-7.

Undisputed champions were therefore Newcastle, with Durham taking second place and York third. Congratulations to Newcastle, well done to everyone who played, and a big "thank you" to everyone involved in organising it (Jamie and Gareth, I suspect) for making it a fantastic event - hopefully to be repeated next year!

Good news at last. This Saturday, 14 June, sees octopush returning to York. It's been a bad year all told for the university club, loosing pool time at the start of the academic year due to maintenance, and there's only been one session now since before Easter. But, at last, we've got pool time from 16.30 to 17.30 at Yearsley Swimming Pool.

Even better news: we're now starting up a junior club as well to cater for under 16s. Although we've had a couple of under 16s come along to play with us, I suspect it's quite daunting being 12 and faced with the uni team bearing down on you (Ali excepted, of course!). The junior session is on at the same time, 16.30 to 17.30, also at Yearsley - it's a 50 yard pool, so the uni club has the deep end and the juniors the shallow end. More details at the York Octopush website.

Finally, it's the ONE Cup this Saturday up in Newcastle. I've no more details than that, but I'm sure York will avenge some of their earlier defeats to bring the inaugural cup to Yorkshire!

After much talking about it, we're finally making progress on getting a juniors (under 16s) octopush/underwater hockey club up and running in York. We're working closely with the university team and York council to get everything in place so we can start on June 14 (2008).

Many of the details are still to be confirmed, but I've just about got the basics of a website up and running at www.yorkoctopush.org.uk. We're also looking for adult members too, so that once the university breaks up for the summer, we'll still be able to keep playing, so if you're interested, please get in contact.

Meanwhile, keep your eyes peeled here or on the above website for further information!

Despite the enthusiasm of my last post, we still don't have a regular pool session for octopush training in York. This is being worked on, and I hope there will be news soon. In the mean time, if anyone knows of another club or team that wants to share the Yearsley pool with us (it's 50 yards, and the octopush club needs the deepend only), preferably on a Saturday or Sunday evening, then please let me know!

Until then, watch this space!

PS We got our mascot, Ferdinand the Duck, back from Durham this afternoon. So we thought we'd better let them beat us in the match that followed...

Unfortunately, York University Octopush Club lost it's pool at the end of the spring term. However, now everyone is back for the summer, they've sorted out a new pool and new training times.

Training is now on Saturday evenings at Yearsley Swimming Pool. The times may change slightly over the next few weeks, but the first session is tomorrow (Saturday 10 May 2008) 17.00 to 18.00. Meet at the pool just before 17.00, or at the Information Centre/Market Square at the University of York campus at 16.15.

Hopefully this information, and the times of future sessions, will be posted on the club's website and/or on their Facebook group.

Fingers crossed, this term should see the ONE League tournament, and possibly a friendly match against Durham (we need to win the duck back...). There are also plans afoot to set up a youth club/team, and perhaps more, so watch this space!