When lodging a support ticket, it’s always nice to be informed of contact options should you need to follow up on an issue:
If you have any further queries please contact the on or via email to @company.com quoting your assigned incident number.
Confused why you're here? My name used to be Ben Balbo. I'm now Ben Dechrau (/bɛn dex-raɪ/).
Archive for the 'Work Life' Category
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BarCamp Melbourne 2.0 planning is now well under way, and the event is slated to run on the 1st and 2nd of March 2008. The first BarCamp Melbourne had 10 participants, which isn’t bad considering the venue was over 2 hours from Melbourne! This time, we’re looking for a venue in, or very close to, the centre of Melbourne, and hope to get 50 to 100 participants.
Described as “an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from attendees”, anyone is welcome to come along for free. Everyone is asked to participate by giving a presentation or leading a discussion, essentially forcing the sharing of ideas and knowledge. You might like to check out the BarCamp web site for more general information. Wikipedia’s entry on BarCamp might also be of interest.
I’ll post more updates as things progress, but in the meanwhile, sign up as a participant if you’d like to come along, spread the word about BarCamp Melbourne 2.0, and if you want to, or know someone that wants to sponsor this event, please check out or point them to the sponsorship page.
I just heard about VideoJug – yet another online video hosting service. I though nothing of it at first, but had a look anyway.
Not only do they accept user contributed films, they also produce their own, and say that every video they make available is vetted or produced, respectively, to ensure the highest quality and value. It looks like a combination of Wikipedia and YouTube (or Google Video).
Todays homepage highlights videos that help you give up smoking, live a greener life or improve your dating, while the most viewed films has a heavy bent on running small businesses. No sign of teenagers singing along to their favourite music or creating a video letter in response to someone’s cry for attention!
Drilling down and looking at one of these videos shows a really neat addition to the user experience: tables of contents. Each video has the ability to give the users way points in the film. Watching the movie on “Small Business and Pricing”? Why not skip right to the point where the presenter covers the definition of a price margin?
I haven’t had an in-depth look at this yet, but first impressions are pretty good. While I prefer to get access to text (most of my research is done with google and wikipedia), I imagine there will be numerous occasions were video is better. I’m not sure I’d like a video tutorial on configuring a new application, but my clients would probably appreciate a video tutorial to help them set up their email client.
The call for papers is now officially out for the Open Source Developers’ Conference 2007. This year is the first non-Melbourne year, with the event being managed by a new organisational committee in Brisbane!
So add the 26th – 29th of November to your diaries, and get your papers submitted by the 30th of June, and I’ll see you in Brisbane in 6 months!
I’m configuring WordPress to work with an external authentication system and need to automatically log in a user and create a new user in WordPress if none exists. The user’s details are available to WordPress in environment variables.
To do this, I’m using three plugins:
- Angsuman’s Authenticated WordPress Plugin, which forces users to the login page if they’re not logged in,
- Daniel Westermann-Clark’s HTTP Authentication WordPress Plugin, which automatically logs people in if the REMOTE_USER environment variable is set and creates the user if they don’t exist,
- My Environment Profile WordPress Plugin, which automatically updates a user’s profile when they are created based on values stored in environment variables.
Firstly, I’d like to thank Daniel for accepting (with changes) my patch to facilitate the creation of non-existent users, an option that can be disabled if you don’t want this feature.
The first two plugins solved nearly all of my issues, with the exception of using environment variables to fill in the user data on user creation, and in true open source fashion, these three distinct plugins now do a job particularly well, and can be used in conjunction with or separately from each other.
[Update 6th August] I’ve now had approval from the powers that be, and this plugin is now available for your enjoyment.
