Mr Mist’s Blog

I don’t often do posts about me on here, but for this I should make an exception. Baby Niamh was born to us last Saturday 8/8/09 at 5:58 am. She was 7lb 10. We’ve had her for a week now. She is currently sleeping whilst we wait for her grandparents to arrive.

So here I present one of the first photos of baby Niamh.

Niamh on the first day

WordPress 2.8.3 has been released as a security-related recommended upgrade. The changes fix some loopholes that allowed direct access to a few WordPress include files. Everyone is advised to upgrade their copies as soon as. (Remember with newer versions you can generally use the auto-upgrade functionality especially if your host uses PHP5.)

There seems to be growing evidence that the XSS vunerability in versions of WordPress before 2.8.2 is now being exploited for real in the wild. The manifestation seems to be that, after recieving a maliciously-crafted comment, affected blogs display a login panel

Title: Authentication Required
Text: The server (yourserver) at Magic requires a username and password

It would appear at the moment as though the malicious content can be removed by replacing wp-includes with a fresh copy from the WordPress source for your version. But if I were you I wouldn’t take that chance. I’d upgrade to 2.8.2 now. Otherwise you can’t really be sure that the hack hasn’t stolen any credentials, or caused other changes.

Retired F1 legend Michael Schumacher looks set to return to behind the wheel of a Ferrari F1 car for the European Grand Prix as a stand-in for the injured Felipe Massa, who was knocked unconcious by a spring in Hungarian Grand Prix qualifying.

Schumacher will now undergo a preparation exercise (though no F1 car practice) to be ready for Valencia in a few weeks’ time. His return, I think, is likely to increase Button’s chances of taking the championship this season, as another contender for race wins will take points away from Vettel and Webber’s potential totals.

More nannying today as we are told that Iced coffees are bad. Some of them apparently contain over five hundred calories. Arrgh! Of course they contain a lot of calories, they’re a rich, sweet, treat. How is this news? The charity behind the figures is telling us that we should avoid the sweet, sugary flavours and instead go for the skimmed, unsweetened (and, presumably, less enjoyable) versions instead. Sigh. How about letting people enjoy themselves and, ooo, go on, live a little. Have a sweetened coffee without feeling guilty about it.