“#1 way to spot a sketchy client: anyone who contacted you (or who you contacted) via Craigslist. Remember folks, if you want to make less than 12,000 a year get your gigs from CL which is a better place for buying used tshirts and getting raped than for getting freelance work.”
From the comments on this article 
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If you are trying to install the lovely Textpattern CMS on 1and1 hosting (you poor thing) then you’ll probably get the following error:
Error 500 - Internal server error An internal server error has occured! Please try again later.
Most hosts work with the default .htaccess file that comes with Textpattern 4.3, but 1and1 don’t for some reason. Easy fix though for a change – just uncomment the RewriteBase line after the ReWrite engine is turned on and make sure it’s right for your site. The following worked for me:
RewriteEngine On RewriteBase /
Pow – now Textpattern works on 1and1 hosting with clean URLs.
Nickikoni
I’ve got a bassbox in my boot, but because the BMW is quite well soundproofed I can’t hear it very well. It was making everything around the boot vibrate inside and outside, but not coming through into the cabin very well. After some research on TalkAudio and BMW forums it seemed that removing the metal plate spot welded over the ski hatch in the folding seat was the answer.
1. Cut the carpet off the back of the folding seat. You’ll feel a dip in the carpet all the way around the outline of the ski hatch. Cut the carpet off with a sharp knife. Remove the plastic trim from the edge of the folding seat to avoid destroying it.
Carpet removed ready to drill out welds
2. Some people say you can kick the panel out or smash it out with a hammer. I had no joy with those methods as the panel was very securely attached on my car! Punching the weld first with a centre punch or old drill bit stops the drill wandering all over and wrecking your seat. Drill out all the spot welds using a small drill bit first and then open the holes up with a larger bit. The top and bottom were particularly well attached so make sure all the welds are split before trying to smack it out.
Drilling out spot welds holding plate in place
3. Once all the spot welds are drilled, now you can prise and coax the panel out of the seat back with a screwdriver and big hammer. This took me a fair while, and the results were not neat!
The destroyed blanking plate!
4. It will need some cosmetic fettling to make it look nice and remove the sharp edges, but it got dark so I had to stop for the day. I ended up cutting off the flap of material that used to velcro to the panel over the hatch.
The finished hole - lines up nicely with the sub box port
Results are that the boot panels vibrate less and the bass comes straight into the car now. The sub box is on display, but all I have to do is flip up the armrest and it’s all hidden again. It would be easy enough to make a panel covered in acoustic carpet to cover the gap while letting the sound through, Next up is a better stereo (Alpine 9880-R) to increase the line out level and add iPod integration and sound deadening the boot to stop the number plate, bumper and toolkit vibrating!
I’m going to be 34 soon, and it’s got me thinking about what being grown up means to me. It’s easy to know when someone isn’t acting in a grown up way, but I found it much harder to get an idea of what that actually involves. It’s not age. It’s not how much stuff I have managed to acquire. It’s not having a kid, or getting a mortgage.
Traditionally, being grown up meant leaving the parental home, getting a job so you were financially independent, getting married and raising a family. Things have changed – jobs are no longer for life and marriage is less important to a lot of people. So what is left?
From an afternoon reading various websites (studiously avoiding Yahoo Answers…) I have the following shortlist as markers of what I consider to be a grown up:
Curiously, I am doing OK with this list but still don’t feel like I have grown up! I met some of Beth’s friend’s parents last week and they all seemed like grown ups to me as they are of the previous generation. So is it more of a personality difference than something everyone hopefully achieves at some point? My next door neighbour is married with a career, mortgage and grown children, yet he is still flippant and playful. Maybe I will never feel grown up…
Come on, you’re not fooling anyone. Using stock photos of gorgeous models wearing telephone headsets to decorate your technical support pages is just lazy and stupid. Who started this trend? Here’s your P45.
Why not show the actual tech support people (Like Rackspace do) and build some humanity into your business? People will respond better if they see who they are talking to instead of some identikit dollybird in a headset that has been used on tons of other boring corporate websites.
A new Textpattern site for Nottingham driving instructor Gavin Pinfold launched this week, hosted on our newly upgraded green web hosting server.
Most driving instructors seem to try and make their own sites which look awful, so we jazzed it up a bit with floating transparent graphics, pictures of his driving school car and some recently passed students ripping up their L plates 
Gavin’s a top bloke, so if you are looking to have a laugh while having great value driving lessons in nottingham, drop him a line.
I hate Cows, but heart Badgers.
I love coffee. I love the taste, I love coffee shops and the ritual of making it and I love the high that makes me feel like I am achieving more than I have ever achieved. And then I Crash And Burn.
Damn you coffee.
FCS Websites recently launched another of our heavily customised Zen Cart shops for a Nottingham business selling organic skincare, jewellery and baby products. The front end templates have been completely changed, social networking links and attractive icons added and the admin system has our Paramita theme applied to make it more pleasant to use.
We have had great feedback on the modified system and have recently added lightbox style popups for information links instead of standard pop up windows. With all these modifications made, Zen Cart is able to compete with commercial shopping cart systems in terms of usability and attractiveness – a far cry from the standard templates which came from the 1990s!
This is what makes our Zen Cart ecommerce sites a cut above the rest – customised templates, bespoke designs and a much more usable control panel. Contact FCS Websites to get a quote on a new or upgraded Zen Cart.
I was quite surprised to see the packaging on my new CD300-IIs that arrived today – the box is completely made of corrugated card!
Nice box – let’s just hope this pair last longer than the previous ones.
