GravityForms WordPress Plugin file upload broken and fix with licensing

Posted by Benjamin Close on June 3, 2015 under Computers | Read the First Comment

This article talks about the wordpress plugin gravityforms and how the fileupload mysteriously may break when a license expires. I was working for a company a little while back which made heavy use of wordpress. They company used gravity forms for a number of different submission. They had a licensed version of gravity forms which [..more..]

Ben’s guide to making your site show up in Google

Posted by Benjamin Close on April 30, 2012 under Computers, Money | 6 Comments to Read

SEO Money Tree

This article gives an overview of how you could increase your search ranking in Google. First a little background.. A while back I visited a Nursery that grew Advanced Trees in South Australia, after talking to the owner for a little while we got on the topic of website and how he was trying to [..more..]

The InTransit Filesystem

Posted by Benjamin Close on March 21, 2012 under Computers | Read the First Comment

A Long time ago I was watching a story about data and one fact that rang in my mind was how much data was in transit at anyone point in time. A classic way to think about this is a transatlantic fibre cable. Even at the speed of light, the amount of data that is [..more..]

How to use FreeBSD, VirtualBox and USB2.0 Devices

Posted by Benjamin Close on March 1, 2012 under FreeBSD | 3 Comments to Read

This page explains how to use a USB2.0 device in VirtualBox with a FreeBSD 8+ as a hostOS Recently I got around to converting my last Linux box over to FreeBSD. The change over for almost everything was smooth except for one thing. A windows virtual machine. I have a number of applications which sadly [..more..]

Fixing a hole in a Brigg & Stratton Engine Crankcase

Posted by Benjamin Close on September 21, 2011 under Country Living, Repairs | 9 Comments to Read

This article details a method I used to fix a large hole in the crankcase of a 8hp Briggs & Stratton Vertical Engine. First a little background: When we first bought our property we quickly realised we would need either a tractor or a ride on lawn mower. Whilst I would have loved a tractor, [..more..]

Top Tips for Moving House

Posted by Benjamin Close on August 29, 2011 under Country Living, Life | Read the First Comment

Moving House

We’re now well and truly settled into our new home, but moving into a different house – even one which isn’t newly built – can often be a little tricky. With this in mind, here are just a few top tips which can help ‘move day’ to go as smoothly as possible. If you have [..more..]

libdc1394_video_set_mode doesn’t change the mode – A solution!

Posted by Benjamin Close on May 6, 2011 under OpenSource, Programming | Be the First to Comment

This article details a reason libdc1394_video_set_mode/libdc1394_video_set_framerate  may not work. Whilst working on an application that makes use of a 1394a/firewire camera I found a strange bug/feature with libdc1394. The problem was dc1394 was being used to the mode of the camera to 800×600 resolution. However, when querying the frame size after dequeuing the frame, the [..more..]

OpenGL glTexSubImage2D very slow – a solution!

Posted by Benjamin Close on under Programming | Read the First Comment

This article describes a possible reason glTexSubImage2D may be slow. Recently I was working on a piece of code that updated a texture with a camera frame. The application was using the fixed function (non shaders) pipeline of OpenGL. Whilst I didn’t notice it at first, I soon found that the camera image was very [..more..]

Making a rich shortcrust pastry – Ideal for Quiche, pie, etc

Posted by Benjamin Close on February 21, 2011 under Cooking | Be the First to Comment

Rich Short Crust Pastry

A little while ago I was making a quiche and found I had no shortcrust pastry left. Rather than ducking out to the local shop and buying some I decided to make some. Searching through the recipie books I had I found a the following recipie (per Breville Inspirations book) Recipie: 180g butter chopped 2 [..more..]