vali petcu

I updated some of my blogs to wordpress 2.9 and when i was trying to upload any pictures. I tried different solutions, including the one with the .htaccess and SecFilterEngine and nothing. While replacing stuff in .htaccess i noticed i had the php_flag display_errors set to off. I turned on and the error I got was this:

Call to undefined function ctype_digit() in /wp-admin/includes/file.php

After more digging, I came up with a solution of my own. Here it is. In file.php replace this line:

if ( isset( $file['error'] ) && !ctype_digit( $file['error'] ) && $file['error'] )

with this one:

if ( isset( $file['error'] ) && !is_numeric( $file['error'] ) && $file['error'] )

It worked!

More on the debate debacle. People think i mind that my position as a top blogger is questioned. I do not. It’s natural for every 6 year old to try to outrun his father. So is the blogosphere. What? He is on top? I can take him, easily!

And after years and years, none of them ever get to the point of even showing in my rear-view mirror. And then the real attack begins. His ideas and blog posts are stupid because…he is a Capricorn. This is considered an argument nowadays by people who want to be on top. Logic or something that resembles judgement is not to be considered.

From Fake Steve Jobs. My favorite part is:

…what the fuck has gone wrong with our country? Used to be, we were innovators. We were leaders. We were builders. We were engineers. We were the best and brightest. We were the kind of guys who, if they were running the biggest mobile network in the U.S., would say it’s not enough to be the biggest, we also want to be the best, and once they got to be the best, they’d say, How can we get even better? What can we do to be the best in the whole fucking world? What can we do that would blow people’s fucking minds? They wouldn’t have sat around wondering about ways to fuck over people who loved their product. But then something happened. Guys like you took over the phone company and all you cared about was milking profit and paying off assholes in Congress to fuck over anyone who came along with a better idea, because even though it might be great for consumers it would  mean you and your lazy pals would have to get off your asses and start working again in order to keep up.

Bogdan Gavrila, well known stain on Romanian internet, had a problem a few months ago. While he was the dark force behind the World Blogging Forum, none of the respected bloggers from his native country gave him and WBF any love. Some of them questioned the line up, which was inexistent at the time of the announcement, other asked why the Liberal Party gave the money and to whom, others alerted the authorities for misuse of the official Communication Ministry logo on the site, as such permission was not given (he promptly remove the logo and now denies ever using it).

All water under the bridge. After the WBF ended, Bogdan Gavrila went on the attack. On everyone. As a part of his attack was the assumption that the bloggers that were present (from Romania, as observers, as Romania did not have a representative at WBF, because, again, every respected one refused to participate) were young lions, already hitting hard the old and established bloggers (the ones that turned him down), who were just about to go down.

I had a tear in my eye. Honest. A few days later after his high hopes declaration of war, one of the young bloggers was caught posting on his blog translated news from American sites.

The whole story is here, in Romanian.

Failed again, Mr. Gavrila. I know this will not slow you down, because a person who already lost everything (money, reputation, business, friends and credibility) has no choice but to fight his dirty fight, along his ashamed crew.

I was on the toilet, reading one of the few magazines i still buy on a regular basis. And realized why people are buying fewer and fewer newspapers.

The web did not kill the press. Press killed itself. It was a combination of lack of professional journalism and news overload. Almost all of Romanian economic press (except maybe ZF and Capital) is done by students, who lack the language and the understanding of economy. I don’t buy a a newspaper to read articles written by people more stupid than me, i do it because i want to be informed by people stupider than i am, but with more information.

The news are boring. 99% of the news are not to be cared about. I don’t care about mining accidents in China or snowing in Beirut. I really don’t. But this magazine news are all over now. I know, AP and Reuters are making money with their “news of the world” feed, and the video footage is cheaper than putting a 3 men crew to drive somewhere to get the news.

There is no investigation. I miss the good old investigation journalism. You know, running with a camera in your hands and 2 guys after you, because you took a picture you shouldn’t. I guess journalists got used to Google and the phone and forgot how it was in the old days.

There is no opinion. I used to love editorials. Smart people just putting it down. Now there are so many of them that is hard to find a good one. The old ones got lost on the way. They tried to do journalism and business and money and there was no time left for saying something that matter.