I have not posted to the blog for a couple of weeks, but I have not been idle.

I have been making many small and useful improvements to the orionrobots site. First - I have created two tikiwiki mods which are now distributed on the articles section. They are all installable tiki mods, and I still have some work to do on a third item before its distributed.

The first is a technorati plugin, which allows tikiwiki users to create technorati tags inside their wiki.

The second is a Googlebar module which allows other tikiwiki sites to host google ads as a module like I do.

The third (which will be uploaded shortly) is a googlebar plugin for wikipages, which allows placement of googlebars in content.

I use googlebar ads as they are highly context sensitive, and quite often give useful links to relevant companies. You will note that I do not have any big top banners or big flash based ads, and I have (so far) managed to avoid the evils of certain ringtone ads.

I have also discovered the wiki draw feature, which uses JGraphPad to put editable drawings in the wiki, and have been converting some of the diagrams on the site to that format. I spent a bit of time today updating the version 3 JGraphPad shipped with tikiwiki to a newer version 5.4.0. The latest is 5.6, but since I cannot find a signed version, I will stick to 5.4. I did spend a bit of time looking into signing one myself - maybe later.

Dorkbot

I also attended another dorkbotlondon meeting - it is quite an interesting group of techies, hackers and electronic artists, although a bit of a mixed bag. This time I found out about Holy Shallot - an associative database of cooking ingredients.

Lego deal at Argos

I just wanted to alert any Lego builders in the Uk, that there is now an excellent deal on a huge bucket of bricks at Argos at the moment. £19.99 for 1500 pieces - all basic bricks and slopes, is fantastic, and it comes in stackable sturdy box - which is excellent for storing Lego. I went and bought one as soon as I could.

DIY

I have also been doing a lot of house related DIY, self assembly furniture and such. I was able to use my skill to add sidelamp and charger socket functionality to our overbed fitment - but I think I have done enough for now.