After looking in all the nooks and crannies, I found a few useful sites:

For reviews, statistics and comparisons of tyres, I found three useful sites:
TyreReview (http://www.tyrereviews.co.uk/Tyre/Goodyear/DuraGrip.htm)
Tyres-Online (http://www.tyres-online.co.uk/tyretest/goodyear.asp#1)
BlackCircles (http://www.blackcircles.com/order/tyres/search)

And a couple of reputable-looking brokers:
etyres (quote for GoodYear DuraGrips: £161.80 inc VAT)
TyreFitDirect (quote for GoodYear DuraGrips: £152.82 inc VAT)

I decided to give etyres a go. Unfortunately, given the less popular dimensions of my tyre (185/55/R14/80H), etyres could only promise me fitting with a two-week lead time, as they'd have to order the tyres I wanted specially (I was after GoodYear DuraGrips). As I had a flat tyre, was running on the spare and had to drive down the motorway the day afterwards, I wussed out and went to my local Kwik Fit - where they knocked about £60 off a pair of Michelin Energy Savers, which I was happy with.

Including fitting and balance, two tyres came to £180, which isn't amazing... but isn't bad for a walk-up price with half an hour's notice, and was nowhere near as bad as I thought it would cost. Certainly it would've been nice to pay less, but when you have no other options, what do you do? To their credit, I didn't have to wait long and my tyres were fitted quickly, so no complaints there. Apparently Kwik Fit also do rotating promotions on various kinds of tyres; when I went in, they (ironically) had a sliding discount promotion on GoodYears for February. Sod's law though, they didn't have the DuraGrips in my tyre size! so I plumped for Michelins (they did have cheaper tyres, but I wanted some premium rubber this time around after a few recent close shaves in rush hour traffic).

The moral of the story? If you need tyres fitting really quickly, don't solely rely on the online brokers and on-site mechanic companies being able to supply your tyres at very short notice. However, if you want to save some money, you can haggle with your local garage... or plan ahead and book with an online broker (like etyres or TyreFitDirect), get your tyres changed at your home or workplace and save a few bob. Don't let my bad experience put you off - I'm also keen to know if you've used any online tyre services, so if you've had good or bad experiences (including etyres or TyreFitDirect) then please leave a comment.

Once again, corporate email policy results in signatures longer than the emails (and this time, with the mailserver tacking another copy on to each reply). (Linebreaks added for legibility)

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How a boxfresh Ronin should look...

I recently went out in some brand new trainers (a pair of Etnies Ronin skate shoes, which are black and white suede/synthetic material mixture with a white trim round the sole). Unsurprisingly, it rained on Saturday evening, and when I came back my shoes were DESTROYED.

Unfortunately, mine weren't quite caked, but were fairly smattered in nasty looking mud. But what to do? Well, after some careful research (and even more careful testing), here's some tips for cleaning these kinds of skate shoes.

Shoes like the Ronins aren't all suede - they have what Etnies describe as an "action leather upper" combined with synthetic, woven sections (for example, the material around the E motif on the side of the shoe is a different fabric). However, in my case, the whole lot was just smothered with nasty, gunky mud.

So, what to do? Well, first thing's first - DON'T TRY TO CLEAN THE SHOES WHILST THEY'RE STILL WET! All you'll do is rub the dirt right into the fibres, ruining them pretty much forever (or until you get them professionally cleaned which could cost a lot). Resisting the temptation to grab the scrubbing brush, put them in a warm place overnight and let the mud dry completely.

Before you start to remove the mud, you'll need a couple of things:

• A suede brush (they come in all shapes and sizes; a photo of one here - I bought mine from Timpson's)
• A suede eraser/cleaning block (or a soft white pencil eraser like a Staedtler if you can't find a suede eraser - again, I got one from my local Timpson's)
• A small dish/bucket/container, into which you'll put a mix of warm tap water and a small amount of bleach or clear vinegar (not brown malt vinegar!)
  • Optionally, something like the soapbar-shaped Vanish stain remover bar (which I used)
• A small plastic-bristled scrubbing brush and/or J-cloth/dishcloth (I just used a J-cloth)
• Some paper tissues / absorbent towels or cloths
• Some spray-on suede/leather/nubuck protector (Kiwi and Punch make this stuff, along with loads of shoe shops' own brands - I ended up finding some in Asda)

Start by using the suede brush to rub off most of the heavy soiling - you'll be surprised, as long as you brush with the nap of the fibre, just how much comes off once the mud's dried. The suede is also more resilient than you'd think - of course, having coloured or very light suede/nubuck shoes will affect the end result slightly as you may have some more permanent discolouration, but my black shoes looked almost spotless after this first brushing.

I ended up starting off gently, then slowly increasing pressure and speed as I got most of the mud off. To continue, I used the suede eraser - it's quite hard and crumbles easily, taking the dirt with it, so I used that to crack off the more stubborn mud flakes and remove some of the smaller stains and marks.

I grabbed the Vanish stain remover bar (it looks like a bar of soap, but you can rub it onto problem stains), daubing it where necessary for the more heavily soiled areas - of which there were, fortunately, not many. Once that was done, I got some water/bleach mixture onto the J-cloth and used it to thoroughly wash the shoes' outer fabric - NOT completely soaking the shoes or utterly drenching the fabric as that's really bad for it. Being methodical is the key here, and then take the time to then go round the shoes with the paper towels and dab off the excess liquid. Repeat for the other shoe, then leave to dry overnight.

Once completely dry, give your shoes a good spray treatment with the protector - this will help to stop moisture ingress and keep your suede/nubuck/leather looking newer for longer! If you have coloured material be sure to test on a discreet area first, juuuuust in case it adversely affects the dye of the material). Some protectors state that the colour of your shoes may darken slightly after application - sometimes it's just unavoidable, but it's for the best in the long run. After the shoes have dried, use the suede brush to bring up the pile of the fibre again to restore some of its natural look. Finally, enjoy your newly-restored shoes again - without having to resort to professional shoe cleaning services!

However if you do need professional suede/nubuck cleaning, a professional shoemakers like James Taylor and Son in London look like a promising place to begin your search. (Watch their VideoJug feature on cleaning suede shoes - recommended viewing for all suede shoe owners regardless)

So, at all costs:

• avoid washing your shoes straight away, avoid putting your shoes in the washing machine (AWFUL for both the shoes and the washing machine)
• avoid using suede/nubuck cleaner as some people report that it actually spoils the fabric completely
• don't leave your shoes wet after cleaning them yourself and
• don't forget to BUY A MORE APPROPRIATE PAIR OF SHOES FOR MUDDY WEATHER!

I learnt that the hard way so you don't have to (fortunately my shoes are as good as new now). Given all this snowy weather we're having, the amount of mud/snow/grit you'll be getting on your shoes is certainly not good for brand new suede or nubuck, so it pays to protect your footwear before you head out the door

Fortunately, the MacRumors Guides site had a page with some protips to help eject stuck CDs/DVDs - including a nice drutil command which solved the problem nicely. Once again, the Mac Users community saves the day

As it turns out, it's as simple as three mouseclicks. In order to disable Safe Mode and open_basedir you need to log into the DA control panel as the admin (NOT the reseller user). From there, there's a menu option called "PHP SafeMode Configuration" in the Extra Features section - you can set the defaults for new sites, plus selectively enable/disable PHP Safe Mode and open_basedir restrictions for existing sites in a couple of mouseclicks.

This feature's been present since at least 1.33.7; I'm currently adminning a server running 1.34.4 and the menu option is definitely still there. Hopefully this saves some fellow webmasters some hassle messing around with custom php.ini or VirtualHost containers

I spent ages looking for the My Stuff menu, but just couldn't find it (in case you're wondering where it is, this Logik IR100 info site has detailed info, with a photo of the screen). I'd already registered the receiver on reciva.com (following the blessedly simple instructions), and added a test stream to the My Streams facility on the web site, but it wasn't showing on the unit.

Having added (and saved) the custom stream on the Reciva portal, it turns out that if you've already downloaded a station list and not powered the unit off for a reasonable amount of time, it still caches the old data. To force the unit to redownload complete listings - including the new 'My Streams' entry/entries, the simplest way to do it is to turn the unit off on the front panel then power off the unit at the wall socket. Wait a few seconds, power it back up, then turn it back on. The next time it downloads the station listings, bam! there's 'My Stuff' in the root of the unit's main menu. Navigate into there, navigate into 'My Streams' and listen away.

Such an obvious thing once you realise how to do it (you'd think Logik would've put an option in the menu to force a manual download of the full station listings for scenarios such as this).

How do they send you convincingly-written letters? Well, they just poll the public whois information for your domain names (which includes expiry date, full address and full name). So, be mindful also that whatever information you provided during registration will be available for the whole world to see! You may consider anonymising some of the data, or going through a third party anonymous registrar service (which will cost extra on top of the domain registration fees - GoDaddy currently charge $20 for two years).

The Domain Registry of America is one of the older scam organisations making money off the backs of unsuspecting Internet users, but sadly their 'business' persists. UK-Cheapest has published an article detailing the DROA and their various other companies (with similar names) - read and avoid if you get a letter through the post from them!

Also, a handful of quick tips which I found useful when I was first beginning to learn the ways of the Fruit:

• If you want to eject your CD/DVD from your Mac's drive without booting into an OS, just press and hold the left mousekey when booting up.
• If you want to display the boot selection screen (to choose between OSX, Windows or an external drive / Install DVD) press and hold Alt during boot until the menu's displayed.
• If you want to change your default OS for dualbooting, use the Boot Camp Assistant applet (found in the Control Panel in Windows, and similarly in the OSX Options). In Windows, you can also quickly reboot into OSX by clicking on the Assistant system tray and choosing "reboot into Mac OS X".

Next, something I found VERY useful: you can change your keyboard layout back to the regular Windows layout!

Lots more info after the jump...

If you're a touch-typist (like me), Boot Camp installs two keyboard layouts in Windows. UK English keyboards have a slightly different configuration - @ symbol is over by the Return key and not on the Number 2 key - inverted commas (") are there instead. The backslash is also over by the left Shift key, not by the Return key (on regular keyboards, the Hash/Pound symbol is usually on the key where Apple chose to put their backslash).

To revert back to the regular British English keyboard layout, it's actually childishly simple. As I set Windows up as English (United Kingdom), the Boot Camp Assistant installed "United Kingdom (Apple)" alongside - and it also set it as default. However, as I explained, to my muscle memory inverted commas (") are Shift-2 and the @ symbol is Shift-" (as shown on the MacBook keyboard), etc...

Having multiple locales and keyboard layouts installed makes Windows display the Language bar in the system tray. Using it, you can temporarily switch between the two layouts. To permanently set the standard British English layout, go into the Control Panel, open up Regional and Language Options, go to the Languages tab and then choose "English (United Kingdom) - United Kingdom". Hit Apply and OK, and you're done. Thank you Apple for not overwriting the default keyboard layout!

One insanely useful Windows feature which Macs still lack: you can open ANY program's main menus by using the appropriate hotkey (apart from programs designed with a nonstandard GUI - 99.9% of all apps have a standardised set of menus up top). For example, if you have a program open, pressing Ctrl+F will open the File menu. Not sure what the key combo is? Just open the menu, and every option with a shortcut key available will display it underlined. (So to close Firefox for example, you can go Alt-F -> X). If you hold down Alt, usually the "hotkey" to open each menu will gain a little underline to indicate what to press.

You can get ridiculously fast at navigating your way through menus once you learn your shortcut keys! It's one of the features I miss the most in OSX; I know you can open menus by clicking with the mouse, but that's not the point if you're a keyboard warrior like me (I hate using a mouse, it's such a slow way of interfacing with a computer.)

And while I'm at it, here's some generic Windows shortcuts for everyone to enjoy - mostly learnt through trial-and-error:
(For those not quite familiar with the lingo, Apple key is also known as 'Command', Alt is also known as 'Option')

• Command+D: minimise / maximise all open windows, aka "Show Desktop".
• Command+R: open Run box.
• Alt+Spacebar: opens the foremost application window's context menu (useful if you need to resize/move/close a window and your mouse batteries have died!) Once the menu's open, just press the key for the underlined letter to select which option you want.
• Alt+F4: close current application/window.
• Ctrl+Escape: open Start menu (handy if you're using an old USB keyboard which doesn't have a Windows key on it).
• Ctrl-Alt-Delete: show Task Manager (useful to kill errant programs).
  • On a MacBook Pro keyboard, which doesn't have its own Delete key, you have to press Ctrl-Alt-Fn-Backspace (doesn't matter in which order they're pressed; make an impressive t-t-t-tap sound whilst doing it! Impress your friends and loved ones!)
• Alt-Tab: like on a Mac, this opens the Alt-Tab menu, which you can use to "tab" through application windows. If you want to back out from changing windows, just hit Escape before letting go of the Alt key. 
  • Windows XP lets you tab through *all* of your application windows, not just each open application - this can greatly increase your productivity if you're working with lots of open windows in Photoshop, for example (instead of only being able to quickly select the Photoshop window and still having to mouse over to the appropriate image window).
• In Vista, Command-Tab brings up the Aero interface equivalent of Alt-Tab called "Flip 3D" - a shameless Exposé ripoff which gives you realtime previews of your open app windows. I never use it, but some Vista users swear by it.
• Fn-'strange key next to right Shift key': enable/disable Insert functionality (Insert lets you replace text as you type, if you put the pointer/caret at the front of a line of text... Don't forget you've left it on if you're typing something in your word processor!)
• Ctrl+A: select all text in current active window. (OSX equivalent: Command+A)
• Shift+Ctrl+arrowkey: select entire word in that direction. (OSX equivalent: Shift+Command+arrowkey)
• Ctrl+arrowkey: jump left/right by an entire word. (OSX equivalent: Alt+arrowkey)
• Take screenshot of entire screen and save to clipboard: Fn-Shift-F11.
• Take screenshot of active window and save to clipboard: Fn-Alt-Shift-F11.
  • You'll need to paste the image into Paint or your image editor of choice - Windows doesn't save screenshots to files. If you're looking for a nifty free imageviewer, try IrfanView.
• Enable/disable Number Lock: Fn-F6.
• Alt GR (aka Right Alt Key, which only British English keyboards have): Alt+Ctrl+key (so for é = Alt+Ctrl+e. Essential for accents!)
• In web browsers: Ctrl+T to open new tab, Ctrl+W to close tab. (OSX equivalents: Apple+T, Apple+W respectively)
• Command-F / F3 key: open Search facility.
• For Terminal/commandline users... The Pipe symbol (¦): Ctrl+Alt+(key-next-to-1) (has a plus/minus and Section symbol on it)
• Tilde symbol (~): Shift+(MBP-backslash-key) (next to the Return key, middle row)
• Fn+Backspace (Delete): Send selected file(s) to Recycle Bin.
• Shift+Fn+Backspace (Shift+Delete): Permanently delete selected file(s), bypassing the Recycle Bin. No Purgatory for you!
• Hold down Shift and click the left mousebutton (or use up/down/left/right arrowkeys) to select a range of files/icons anywhere (Windows Explorer, Outlook, a web page etc.)
• Hold down Ctrl and click the left mousebutton (or use up/down/left/right arrowkeys) to selectively choose files/icons anywhere (Windows Explorer, Outlook, a web page etc.)
  • You can use the spacebar as you would use the left mousebutton. Give it a try: in a list of emails or desktop icons, hold Ctrl. Hit Space, and the file is selected. Press the up/down arrowkey and the selector moves up/down one; skip past a few and hit Spacebar again and those two files are selected. Holding Shift after making your first selection with select every consecutive file automatically. Magic!

Phew, that list just keeps on growing and growing...

If you have "Use All F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys" enabled in Boot Camp Assistant, you can still use the Mac shortcuts - just hold down the Fn key and press your desired shortcut key. If it fails to work even after you've enabled the option, Boot Camp may need to be reinstalled - just pop your Mac OS X install disc back in, and rerun the Boot Camp Drivers installer. Reboot, and it should reappear again.

Apple have also published a pretty-much-full list of the various shortcuts for MBP-Windows users in their Boot Camp knowledgebase.

Happy powerworking!

As a result, the FeedSmith URL - http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/help/wordpress_quickstart - became VERY highly ranked in Google. Type in FeedBurner FeedSmith and you'll see what I mean.

However, this old URL was changed permanently when Google completed the transition from the service's original feedburner.com domain to google.com. Bizarrely, for a company whose core offering is a search engine, nobody at FeedBurner remembered to check that the listed URL to the FeedSmith plugin was still valid. (It's not.) Bizarrely, even the plugin's original author's site still lists (as of July the 28th, 2009) the wrong URL!

I spent a fair while looking for FeedSmith, and then (after finding it once hosted by somebody else on their site) I stumbled across a poorly-linked mention of FeedSmith via Google's AdSense For Feeds blog. Can you see the link to the plugin on the blog?

No, neither could I at first. But after swearing blind that I'd seen a mention of a WordPress plugin, I did another scour through - and bam, there's the FeedSmith plugin link, nestled in an article called "Redirecting your feed to maximize revenue potential".

Clicking through to the Google Answers thread, I was almost put off the scent - the article's titled "Creating your WordPress Feed (self-hosted WordPress)", which has nothing to do with FeedSmith. However, the updated (and correct) direct link to the FeedBurner FeedSmith plugin is right at the top of the Installation instructions.

The functional direct link (as of July 2009) is http://feedburner.google.com/fb/static/feedburner_feedsmith_plugin_2.3.zip . I've had occasional problems with WordPress 2.8.x (so far, up to 2.8.2) being intermittently unable to automatically install the plugin from an upload of the zip file (apparently the file doesn't 'have any valid headers') - I think it could be because the plugin's nested in one too many folders. Either way, extracting the single .php file and uploading into wp-content/plugins works a treat. Just activate it in your Plugins section and add in the appropriate URLs, and you're done.

Suggestion to anybody from FeedBurner / Google if they're reading: add a 302 Redirect to the old URL! It shouldn't be too hard, you pretty much Own The Internet. You still own feedburner.com so this shouldn't be too hard (if you can't manage to sort it out on your own, my consultancy services are very reasonably-priced) - there's nothing worse than poor SEO, and forgetfulness is no excuse for disregarding the entire point of a Uniform Resource Location. I'm seriously disappointed in you. That's a Bad google. BAD Google.

Anyway, hopefully this will become a well-spidered article on all the search engines, and people will once again be able to find the correct URL and install the FeedSmith plugin on their own sites. (To the Internet: you can thank me later!)

To email me, see a potted history of this site or view a list of my other active web sites, surf over to the About page. Feel free to send me a message, I'm always curious to see who's paying my sites a visit.

Until next time...