Full Moon

The moon at it's fullest. Taken using a basic consumer telescope the pitted surface of our moon is clearly visible including the fallout surrounding larger craters.

There are small, bright points of light visible in some places. These are due to asteroid and debris impacts creating glass which then reflects the suns light.

AutoAuth Plugin

(updated )

AutoAuth is a plugin designed to display a form button alongside retrieved credentials so
that a user can click a single button to login to the specified system.

It uses POST data, so only currently works with systems that use a webform for login, and
won't work with any system requiring a unique form token to be specified (such as Joomla!)

Full documentation available at

https://www.bentasker.co.uk/documentation/phpcredlocker/plugins/167-autoauth

Linux For Business People

(updated )

Linux for Business People is intended to introduce Linux to those involved in selecting systems for businesses to use. It is not, per se, aimed at IT staff instead at the decision makers above them.

The first section of the book provides practical experience of using Linux based systems, whilst the final half examines the experiences of companies already using Linux.

The two sections of the book have been kept completely distinct (i.e. you need not read the practical section to understand the Business Case sections), and are (hopefully) written in a way that will be understandable to even the most tech-illiterate of mangers.

Also available on Amazon Kindle.

2021: You can access the book here.

 

 

A Linux SysAdmins Guide to Mischief

(updated )

This book is designed to give Sysadmins some entertainment in the form of winding users up (in a non-destructive manner). The book contains tricks ranging from puerile to annoying, all designed for those administering Linux workstations to play on those using Linux workstations!

All are achievable remotely, allowing the Sysadmin to sit back and listen for the sounds of frustration safely out of range of flying staplers. Intended as an exercise in humour, it should provide Sysadmins with some entertainment. Don't expect it to beat a Friday afternoon read of Bootnotes and Odd's n Sod's though!

It's a pretty short book, hence the low price.

 

2021: You can access the book here.

Joomshopping OBRSS plugin

(updated )

JoomShopping for ObRSS is a plugin for the latest versions of ObRSS allowing you to create an RSS feed containing product information.

 

The documentation details use and configuration of the plugin, however the basic feature list is as follows

  • Filter by one or more categories
  • Filter by one or more manufacturers
  • Filter by one or more Labels (e.g. 'New')
  • Display short or long description
  • Display (or hide) Price, SKU, Manufacturer
  • Include a button linking straight to the product
  • Include an Add-to-Cart button

This product is no longer under active development (or support), however, as of May 2017, you can now download the plugin from Github

mod_BGithubfeed


Mod_BGithub is a simple module allowing you to embed commit details in a Joomla! site. It uses the GitHub API to retrieve repository information including commits and issues. It can also retrieve user information and display a (very) basic user profile, including a list of the user's public repositories.

The module supports both Joomla! 2.5 and Joomla 3.x and allows for filtering of all displayed information.

There are three pre-configured styles: Chromed, Light and Dark. The latter two are very simple but provide a good starting point for those who want to style the module themselves.

This module is available for free on Github, however the free version comes with no support. Purchase includes 12 months support

The full feature list is below, (configuration options are detailed in the documentation

General

  • All layouts can be loaded individually, or all-in-one
  • 3 Preconfigured CSS styles
  • Limit displayed entries
  • Customisable date display format

 

Commits

  • Display of a commit authors Gravatar
  • Link back to the commit and the code tree
  • Link back to Commit author's profile
  • Displays the commit comment

 

Issues

  • Overview of issue displayed in a tooltip
  • Issue label (bug/enhancement etc displayed)
  • Link back to author's GitHub profile
  • Filtering by issue status (Can display all issues, open issue or closed issues)
  • Issue status displayed in front-end

 

User

  • Display user's Gravatar
  • Link back to user's blog
  • Display a link of the users repositories (including the primary language)
  • Exclude Repos by name

 

Mod_BTwitter

NOTE: V2 includes an update to implement support for V1.1 of the Twitter API

 


Mod_BTwitter is, by design, an incredibly simple Twitter feed module - Designed for Joomla 2.5 and Joomla 3.x The idea is that it contains sufficient to display tweets on a Joomla based site, without adversely affecting page load speed or insisting on lot's of un-necessary chrome. The three key aims when creating this module were to create a module that

  • Doesn't slow page loads
  • Doesn't contain un-necessary chrome
  • Displayed a users timeline, linking to all URLs, mentions and hashtags

The documentation contains a far better description of what can be configured, however as a brief summary, mod_BTwitter supports

  • Light and Dark Styles
  • Use (or expansion) of t.co URLs
  • Customisable date formats
  • Display of Profile Pic (can be disabled)
  • Direct link to Status Update
  • Display of a 'follow' button
  • Multi-lingual support (partially implemented, no back-end support at this time)
  • Support for caching

This module allows you to display your Twitter feed anywhere on your site, as inline HTML (although the follow button does require an iframe) allowing Search Engines to include that information when they crawl your site.