If your not a regular here I am doing a charity abseil next month. All money raised is going to a Baby Hospice. Heres The deal, Nosceres World gets an average of 70 new visitors a day, if everyone who comes here clicks the donation button over there on the right and donates just £1 or $1 or what ever your countries currency might be, by this time next week we will have raised £470 tax free for Zoes Place Baby hospice thats £2100 this time next month, you get where Im going here? It costs Zoes Place £80,000 a year to stay open and offer support to the children that go there. Just £1 and five minutes of your time is all I am asking. If your reading this via RSS feed or on my sister blog noscere.wordpress.com all you need to do is visit Nosceres Worldand click the donate button. Go on, you know deep down inside you want to.

James of http://nosceresworld.co.uk

A couple of days ago I made a post about how I was going to abseil off the Transporter bridge in Borough to raise money for Zoes Place. Im still going to do it. On sunday I posted off my registration papers along with a cheque for £10 to cover the fees. Today the sponsor pack was pushed through my door and was sat happily on my key board when I got home from work earlier tonight. After I got my coat off and made a cup of tea, talked with my wife and kids for a bit I opened the pack and read the covering letter. For your entertainment here is part of the letter:

“You will hear from me prior to the event with the time of your abseil; Your Santa suit will be available for collection from the hospice before the event or at the bridge on the day of the event”

The bit of the letter you have just read stopped me dead in my tracks, if its not enough to abseil off a bridge which might I point out has a clearance of 225 ft (69 m) I have to do it dressed like Santa?

As well as the covering letter I was sent I also received four or five sponsor forms along with some information on Zoes Place and how to set up a web donation, which as luck would have it brings my nicely to the blue widget on the top right of my page, the one that says “Just Donate” if you click on donate you will be ported as if by magic to my donation page were you can make a donation (hint hint), strangely enough a vary similar widget thing has appeared on the left side of my facebook page as well, the weird thing is if you click on donate that takes you to exactly the same place..

On Monday night I ordered a pair of sun glasses with a build in video camera on them. If they turn up on time (they better) I am planning to video my decent from the Transporter bridge, then you will see exactly what I saw as I came down, funky ay? Needless to say the video will be po [...]

James of http://nosceresworld.co.uk

K so I play World of Warcraft. Today I, as well as many others have received an email claiming to be sent by Blizzard entertainment. The Email reads this (infact this “is” the email I got):

“Greetings!
It has come to our attention that you are trying to sell/trade your personal World of Warcraft account(s).
As you may or may not be aware of, this conflicts with the EULA and Terms of Agreement.
If this proves to be true, your account can and will be disabled. It will be ongoing for further
investigation by Blizzard Entertainment’s employees.
If you wish to not get your account suspended you should immediately verify your account ownership.
If the information is deemed accurate, the investigation will be dropped.
This action is taken because we at Blizzard Entertainment take these sales
quite seriously. We need to confirm you are the original owner of the account.
This is easiest done by confirming your personal information along with concealed information about your
account.
You can confirm that you are the original owner of the account by replying to this email with:
Use the following template below to verify your account and information via email.
* First and Surname
* Date of birth
* Address
* Zip code
* Phone number
* Country
* Account e-mail
* Account name
* Account password
* Secret Question and Answer
-Or-
WoW CD-Key
Show * Please enter the correct information
[...]

James of http://nosceresworld.co.uk

I have heard that it is possible to merge Buddypress with Non WordPressmu themes. There is a post on a forum somewhere were someone has managed to do this. For me this is fantastic news, if it is possible and have desided to test this to see if it is possible. Over on the right side there is a link called “My WPMU Project” I will be using this site to figure out how to do it, this way my main blog site will not be effected untill I get it working and all tests have been done and not killed my blog. Then I will be moving it here.

James of http://nosceresworld.co.uk

First things first, those of you who follow me on twitter “SORRY” I was moving my posts about and forgot to turn off my auto tweet and accidentally spammed twitter with about 200 tweets in two minutes.. Oops.

Right, down to business. I have volunteered along with a few people I work with to do a sponsored abseil off the Middlesbrough Transporter bridge to help raise some needed funds for Zoë’s Place. ” Zoë’s Place is a home from home for babies who have life limiting or terminal illnesses, special and complex needs to varying degrees”. As they would say.

The company I work for does alot of fund raising for them from selling their greeting cards to dress down Fridays were we all pay £1 to not come to work in dress trousers and collar and tie as well as much more all of which goes to Zoë’s Place. Anyway you should click the link to read more.

For those of you who dont know, this is a picture of the Middlesbrough Transporter Bridge, which I will be launching or rather stepping off on Sunday the 6th of December. All I have to do, at the moment is send off the form with a cheque to cover the registration fees and then, once I get my sponsors pack I need to raise a minimum of £100. Easy, you say except for one slight problem, not the raising of the minimum donation but the fact that I am scared of heights and this is a big hight to abseil.

Of course I will keep everyone informed about how things are going. On the day I am planning to do a running commentary via twitter and of course there will be plenty pictures and maybe a video., probably of me squealing like a little pig as I come down the rope.

Anyway, watch this space, oh and if you happen to notice any paypal links popping up around Nosceres World Click it [...]

James of http://nosceresworld.co.uk

Its November 11th if you haven`t noticed. Today in many places its Rememberance day. Major hostilities of World War I were formally ended at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 when Germany signed the Armistice, today is the day we remember those who fell in that war as well as every war since then.

Given the current situation in the Middle east today is even more poignant as more and more of our troops are taken and more and more of us are feeling or have felt the effects of war in one way or another. I know I have.

I take you back about 20 years, I was a long haired kid on way to Germany with my little brother to meet our Mom who was based in Osnabruc with her new husband a sergeant in the 4th Royal Tank Regiment a Scotish regiment. While I was there I was taken to the naffi for a drink by my step father. If you can remember the old looking buildings you see in the old war movies, the naffi looked like one of them. Anyway I walked in feeling just a little bit nervous. Walked up to the bar with George my step dad and asked for a pint of scotch, which did give the bar tender a look of confusion until George explained “Excuse him, he`s English, Ge i`m a pint o` heavy”. I got my pint and followed George to a table to talk and get to know him as this was the first time I had met him. About an hour and many pints later the door behind me opened and in walked a man I could only describe as the size of three men but not an ounce of fat on him walked in. I remember the Barman did not even ask this man what he wanted, putting his pint and a short on the counter. After a while the man walked over to were George and myself were sitting and sat down next to me. George introduced be as Gina`s boy over from England, telling him I was ok, he then went on to introduce the man as “Thug [...]

James of http://nosceresworld.co.uk

Irony a Nosceres World definition:

Irony; When it takes you nearly two month of blood, sweat, tears and random temper tantrums to install WordPressmu and Buddypress, then when you finaly figure it all out you cause them to crash/delete your entire public_html folder by trying to change some of the scripting not once but three times.

Ironic: I can now install the above mentioned website thingies from beginning to end in about two minutes flat.

Forethought: Remembering that you know squat about CSS, PHP and SQL coding and scripting before you try to modify a file.

This time however is the last time (fingers crossed) that I will have to do this. Just in case though I have backed everything up so that if Sods Law strikes again, all I need to do is delete everything and replace it with my backup. At least thats the plan. (What is it in the saying “best laid plans of mice and men”)?

I still have a few things to do to get everything back to relative normality like get my posts back, which luckily I have on a small data stick which is sat safely in my pocket.. Just checked my pocket and its still there. I have a couple of posts which are over on my WordPress.com blog which I need to copy over and then Im all done. Funny thing is I had a feeling today was going to be one of those days.

The moral of this post is this; if you want to change something on your blog and when you get to the place were the change is to take place, you look at the page in front of you and your head is full of ???`s STOP! Go to Plugins> Add New and look for a plug in to do it for you, chances are that a boffin somewhere has made one just for you. If you dont find the plugin look for a theme or template which already has this change included. If you cant find a theme remember these words.

God grant me the serenity To accept the things I cannot change; Courage to change the things I can; And wisdom to know the difference.

Or as I would put [...]

James of http://nosceresworld.co.uk

If this is your first time here and your wondering were the post you were looking for has gone please click “here” and you will be taken to my backup site at WordPress.com. If your a regular here, dont ask. I have no idea what has happened but once again and for the last time I have had to reinstall WordPressmu and Buddypress. This time, for the moment I am not enabling user blogs. Not untill I know whats going on. You can still register here but for the moment no blogs, I am sorry about this but untill I know why I am having to reinstallmy blog all the time I dont want anyone elses blog to go.

James of http://nosceresworld.co.uk

Maybe its because Im running Buddypress now but for some reason I keep expecting people to register. Maybe I need to concentrate on what I do best and carry on writing random posts on absoluit garbage.

One thing I have noticed is that the default theme I am using at the moment seems kind of bland and well sterile. Im going to have to get some life into my posts. Unfortunately because Buddypress is still in its early stages there are not alot of themes out there, there are some but for what ever reason the ones I have found dont work or arnt what Im looking for, either that or I am installing them incorrectly. Most of the themes that are available for WordPressmu will work on my blog without a problem but if I use them I loose the buddy press options.

Im going to have a look later on to see if I can sort something out with this place so that I can have a half decent looking blog without loosing buddy press or its functions. Nothing to worry about, all Im going to do is copy the links that Buddypress is using at the moment and see if I can add them to a new blog roll on my new theme. If it works then we “should” have a half decent looking home page and still have the social structure of Buddypress. Fingers crossed…

James of http://nosceresworld.co.uk

And its all over for another year. No, you havn`t missed Christmas. Im talking about bon fire night. As with every year my dogs were scared stiff, lost all control of their bladders and tried as hard as they possibly could to squeeze into the smallest corner as far away as possible from the noise as they could get, only to have fireworks go off in a different garden so starting the process off all over again. Still its all done now. Im not going to complain because there is no point in it and I am not going to “slag” it off.

I have been told by a person I know that I am miserable because I dont like fire works or Christmas. If it was up to me the world would be black and white, because all I do is complain and “slag things off” on my website. I have to admit as well as being taken back a bit by this comment it did upset me. I never thought that my blog is full of complaining and me moaning about stuff. (If anyone makes a comment saying it is Im gonna delete it and complain).

James of http://nosceresworld.co.uk