When you try to access the site you get a site down for maintenance message, come back in a few minutes, but it never clears! Don’t Panic, thats OK as you know the admin and user sections are independent….. you can login there ……..but it still shows the maintenance message. Now Panic!

OK stop panicking and go open up an ftp client and login to your site. Look in the directory where WordPress is hosted- the top level directory of the wordpress installation. Look for a file called .maintenance and delete it.

Now refresh the site in your browser, all should now be well, and you should be able to login again. I recommend you either redo the plugin update correctly this time or if in doubt, do the update manually, usually just a case of uploading the new plugin files over ftp.

Hope this helps

Here is the mail I received:

(If you are not in charge of this please transfer this email to your President or appropriate person, thanks)

Dear President,

We are the department of Asian Domain registration service in china, have something to confirm with you. We formally received an application on March 28, 2012. One company which self-styled “Sherl Industrial Co. Ltd” were applying to register “xxxxxxxxxxxxxx” as Network Brand and following domain names:

 xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.asia xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.cn  xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.com.cn  xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.com.tw  xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.hk  xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.in  xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.net.cn  xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.org.cn xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.tw

After our initial checking, we found the name were similar to your company’s, so we need to check with you whether your company has authorized that company to register these names. If you authorized this, we will finish the registration at once. If you did not authorize, please let us know within 7 workdays, so that we will handle this issue better. Out of the time limit we will unconditionally finish the registration for “Sherl Industrial Co. Ltd”.

Best Regards,                                     Avery Yang

Registration Dept.

Tel: +862885915586  ||  Fax: +862885912116

Address:8/F XiYu building No,52 JinDun Road,QingYang District,Chengdu City,China.

I also found this useful post which mentions a number of the domains involved in this racket and you can see the ever so slightly varying format of the emails.

Feel free to fire it in your e-trash!

Subjects are legion and quite what the motivation is to launch these things I am not always sure but God do they do the rounds and people blindly repost. “DON’T CHANGE THIS SETTING IN FACEBOOK IT WILL STEAL ALL YOUR INFORMATION AND INFECT YOUR PC!”, “John suffered horrific injuries in a bike accident, in this his hour of need pray for him and repost on your facebook status”. And you know people blindly do, accepting the word because a “friend” told them. And so they propogate the garbage….

The one about the bike accident, and the wording here is not correct but the idea is, had been going round for 6 years in various ways ( not solely in facebook as far as I can tell). Its so old there is no one who can tell you if it ever started as a genuine post or was ever simply contrived. But in short the rule is- unless you 100% know for yourself that something is genuine and factual, you would do better to simply delete the request to repost as a waste of bandwidth.

In truth its too late there are too many of the gullible out there and these things have gained traction.

How to spot this stuff:

• Always mistrust anything thats asks to be reposted!
• Anything that says you will catch a virus from changing a setting on a Social Networking site- why worry- you have Anti Virus right?
• you won’t catch a virus- more like someone wants you to retain some setting thats actually benefitting them by way of seeing what your up to on fB than locking it down
• If you are worried, set all your settings in fB to the most Private and then undo the ones you decide are safe.
• If you are worried about your posts being seen on the wider web, DO NOT POST THEM ON FACEBOOK!!!!! There are no secrets on the web.
• When you get a repost request, take some of the key text- no more than 10 words, but something key to the post and paste it into Google. You will be surprised how much has been written on many of these posts.
• Subscribe to the HOAX-SLAYER list on Facebook. This guy really knows his stuff, I beleive he is a fB employee and posts on all the crap going round.
• This list is not definitive.
• and remember just because you got it from a friend does not mean its true!

Be safe.

The calls are made on the premise that your pc is generating some sort of error which has been picked up on the internet either by the IP carriers generally or your isp. They point you to your pc event log and point out these “errors”. if you have a pc and look in your event log you will always see errors in there and while not ideal , in general they are in no way indicative of serious problems or internet detectable issues.

They then get you to download remote access software and login to do their mischief on your pc. At best they point you to a number of bogus issues on your PC which they then charge you some sort of mtce contract to resolve/maintain. I have heard though that they can  install some sort of malware with which they can effectively format your disk if you don’t pay up or co operate. This allegation is unverified by me.

The phone numbers they present are bogus ( the calls originate in Asia- most likely India) Also you will find they present themselves with very European names like “Claire Smith”, “Roger Jones” but have a very distinct Indian accent- the names are obviously bogus.

If they call- tell them you don’t have a pc or better still hang up.

On no account allow them to access your PC, install software or give them Credit Card details. If you have given over access or details I strongly urge you to change passwords on all sites you use (especially those with financial liabilities- online banking, PayPal, stockbrokers, gambling, or e- retailers that retain payment info like Amazon or Google). When changing passwords use something unique on each site and at least 8 characters including one non alpha numeric wherever possible like a “@” or ! character.

If you need more advice on setting secure passwords, get in touch.

They sell a lot of other field and game sports equipment too!

But it never fails to really, really, really, annoy me how ripped off we are here in the UK.

I know there are countless posts on this around the web especially among UK based designer/developers but we just get totally, totally ripped off on price.

The CS5 upgrade package is priced on the US Adobe website at $599.

It does not take a genius to work out that at current exchange rates this equates to £377.

Now add on 17.5%  ( I am assuming the US price includes no Sales tax) , so this works out at a retail price approx £443 at current  VAT (Nov2010).

SO why is it costing £559.30? Thats a full £116 more than in the US. I hear the pathetic excuses that they need to regionalise a release, regionalise what- the manual you don’t get? The help file – Ok so I can expect colour to be spelled properly not “color”, I fekkin gbet I can’t! All the help is web based (another thing that grates- what if you are not on the web – say on a laptop in a hotel or on a train and need the help info?). I have never found their support to be great- pretty well all web based, hard to get a real person and instant support. Things like Spry are supported by the “Spry Community” ie. lets get our users to support themselves!

Add to this the US currently has a 10% discount offer running right now- what do we get offered- “free shipping”. Well FFS, I can get free shipping ANY DAY OF THE WEEK from places like Amazon so why does a company like Adobe (a huge firm not a lot smaller than Microsoft and Apple) even charge us shipping, never mind feel the need to offer it free as a special offer.

Add further to this, that they could deliver the software over the web, but charge you £14 more for the privilege? Eh? what the fek is that about!? E delivery should be cheaper- it is in nearly every case I have ever encountered!

So are they gonna get my money? Not right now, cutting off my nose to spite my face- maybe in the face of the impending VAT rise , but I need to look into how I can get delivery to the US then ship it in myself, I am not desperate. I know their are delivery address websites that will handle this type of transaction but they are not that cheap for a transaction like this.

I will keep my eye on the main e retailers and maybe grab a mis priced bargain or something, I watch and wait. SORT THIS ADOBE!

The site replaces a previous version which did not fully reflect the products and services PCS offer. We have worked closely with them to provide a better site which describes more fully the services in power generation to  power generating companies, generator firms and big service critical industries like telecommunications and datacentres inthe financial sector. They also work offshore both on fixed installations and ships, especially inthe Oil Sector.

The new website descibes a number of projects they have worked on globally as well as explaining information about the solutions and field services they offer using integrated control systems and components from companies like ComAp and GAC.

In building their site we used php, and some AJAX and jQuery components to provide a pleasing and simple design.

We hope the website is a success for PCS and look forward to working with them again in the future.

It was probably inadvertantly installed by my client by clicking on one of thos warning boxes that splash up in some browser windows warning you you have an infected machine- the box looks very like a windows error but its actually not.

An article in PC Pro recently was saying this type of malware is serviced by Russian Mafia types as a way to effectively extort sums from web users by installing their dodgy AV software which then watches their internet history recoding Credit card numbers etc and relaying to the ” mother ship”.

The PC was installed with F Secure 2010 AV but the damage was done probably byt he client authorising the install unwittingly. F Secure could detect the system modification attempt by a service effectively a random string name. But it could not detect the virus it seemed nor stop its troublesome attempts to scare the user.

It did a number of bad things.

1) It kept warning that it had detected an intrusion attempt- funny as when I had the machine it was not even connected to the internet- worth a test if you ever see such a warning- disconnect and see if it persists. I always disconnect any infected machines when I am awar eof them and recommend you do too.

2)It kept flagging up spurious process crashes.

3) It disabled access to services.msc- the control panel services applet and taskmgr.exe (so you could neither id or disable it by conventional means)

4) Once you opened a IE8 browser window it went mental – constant alerts resulting in many red shields inthe system tray, and sometimes a Windows AV type window saying AntiSpyware Soft – click to purchase and enable- to sort tht eproblem. of course you would be mental to. It also sent the web browser to dodgy websites like p*rno.com and vi*gra.com (and probably others) Heightening the fear factor or the client!

5) I did a bit research onthe web (as you do and the best info i found was on www.spywareremove.com) It gae free, manual removal instructions which were spot on and worked a treat. I would say – you need to use Safe Mode to do the steps listed and be happy inthe registry. I found a couple of key s that differed from their instructions but they were easy to spot and I put it down to the variable behaviour of the malware)

6) With the files deleted its back t normal, but I have installed Google Chrome on the machine as its less susceptible to some of the aspects of such malware.

Becco: 355 West 46th Street. This is an Italian restaurant on the edge of the theatre district near Times Square. It is listed in the guide I have as a very cheap restaurant without wine and reasonable with. Its a very nice contemporary Italian restaurant and obviously popular as the place was packed out when we visited. The secret to a cheap dinner is to have the Chefs Pasta selection of the day. A starter- in our case we had the Caesar Salad, followed by three pasta dishes served by the waiters from huge big platters of freshly made dishes, and they come round again and again so you can have as much as you like.

We had, Penne in a tomato sauce, which was very nice and fresh tasting, a tagliatelle with a meat sauce- I would hesistate to call it Bolognese but not unlike this, it was OK any my favourite which was spinach and ricotta ravioli. I actually don’t like spiniach but this was wonderful. I think it came to about $30 a head, with water plus a tip on top- and I would very much recommend it. I had a brief look at the wine list, and am not much of a wine drinker but it struck me a expensive but if I am told it isn’t then I would not argue- I know nothing about wine really. Some bottles were several $100 each! Beer too looked a bit pricey too by my standards- I usually like a nice Peroni in an italian restaurant but the beers were al (from memory ) around $10 to $15 a bottle and not types I was familiar with- so I gave it a miss. Service was excellent- Highly recommended.

5 Napkin Burger: 630 9th Avenue and 45th Street. This is an “American eatery” which specialises in their trademark “5 Napkin Burger”.  They have other things on the menu too but this seems to be the favourite amongst the diners at the other tables and was what  had. Absolutely first rate, one of the nicest burgers I have had and this was borne out by the packed tables,and the wait of The restaurant looks to be a converted butcher shop so the squeamish maybe would not want to look up at the meat hooks on rails hanging from the dimly lit ceiling!15 minutes you had for a table.

Again reasonably priced, they do steaks and stuff- my wife and son had this, and they were a bit fatty, but the burger is the reason to visit and I thought it was good.  I don’t understand what the significance of the name is though! Around $20-$30 a head, recommended.

Pizza!

While In New York we went on a Pizza Tour with Scotts Pizza Tours. This is a very well regarded tour of “original” pizza establishments, deli’s and other places all bound up in the story of New York Pizza.  I would highly recommend this tour as a way to spend a few entertaining hours in areas of the city you might otherwise miss. Loads of stories and info you never needed to know about pizza. You will never look at a pizza the same way ever again! On our particular tour we visited for a “slice” these three places:

Lombardi’s : (32 Spring Street) the oldest pizzeria in NYC. Very traditional oven cooked pizzas, we never visited here for a mean – just a slice on Scotts tour but I would definitely go back. My Wife’s favourite. Uses Fresh Mozarrella which we seen made on the tour.

Joes Pizzas (7  Carmine Street) : This has a sit in area but is more of a take away type establishment and the pizza was nice. Very crispy based pizza.

John’s of Bleeker Street: Highly recommended, out of the three my son and I liked this best. We went back their on our last evening in NY and it was queued out down the street. It only sells pizza though really, so the queue moves fairly quickly- we queued about 25 minutes but once in the pizza was excellent, large and cheap! Very authentic and very recommended.

This area generally looks good for eating out- lots of nice looking restaurants away from the tourist traps.

Maxies Deli : (Times Square): Now I have to say first that I have seen some poor reviews of this place  on the web but we just sort of stumbled into it on our first day in NY. Some places say its a bit of a tourist trap- maybe it is- it was not obvious to me but to be honest we enjoyed it- all the portions were enormous and frankly not the sort of things I would normally eat for breakfast but it was fun and we had no complaints. A bit pricey but to be honest eat breakfast here and your not going to eat until night time. I had croissant with Bacon and cheese and the biggest croissant I have ever seen arrived along with I reckon a whole half pound block of cheese melted over the top! It easily feeds two.

A glass of fresh orange seemed like most of a carton of Tropicana!

We enjoyed it- our breakfast came to about $50 (ulp!) but your on holiday and we never left hungry- we only went twice- on our first day and our last morning before the flight home (it kept us goig 24 hours).

They say leave the best until last and this was by far our favourite:

Frankie and Johnnies Steakhouse (West 45th Street): I was told about this place by a work colleague before we went and kept our eyes open for it. Its a little tricky to spot as the restaurant is up stairs but the entrance is quite small and looks like a bar from outside. The restaurant is ery small and cosy, it has a “Speak Easy” type mood and the waiters all wear black jackets and bow ties. (Its not a “formal” restaurant though so no worries about dressing up to go). The menu is not long – its a steakhouse and I was recommended by my friend to have the porterhouse steak for 2. My son had a sirloin. I have never in my whole life had a steak this size and the taste was simply out of this world. The best I have ever had. We had a few side orders, onios, brocolli and potatoes but had I ate the steak alone I would have been satisfied – the flavour was amazing. I cannot speak highly enough of this place. The waiter was very friendly and chatted away for ages- a New Yorker of Greek beginnings, and as we paid he brought us out a huge slice of new York Cheesecake and three forks saying “this is New York you cannot leave with out a slice of cheesecake”!

The dinner was not cheap- in total with service charge (included in bill) it was $205 but I would have to go back if I am ever fortunate enough to visit New York again.

Places to avoid: We were not in many places we would not recommend but a few that were not great:

TGI Fridays in Times Square: My son wanted to go here- we go to TGI’s here as a treat- its marketted as a trendy American eatery here whereas in the US its more like a glorified MacDonalds in my opinion. It wasn’t actually “bad” but nothing to rave about and probably would not go back- some of the staff were quite “off hand” as is the way with some New Yorkers I found.

Applebees 42nd Street. This was right next to our hotel and we went in one morning just for a change- very strong coffee (Cawfee!) and juice was freshly poured out of a cheap carton I suspect! Cheap and free wifi which was sort of the reason we went in! There was another Applebees in Time Square around 46th or 47th Street that was more of a diner/sports bar and we went in here a few times for a drink to rest our weary legs,  in the lounge bar area- think they call it the club bar, as it was somewhere we could go with our son in tow and in fairness it was OK and we even had a steak sandwich here one night and I have to say I enjoyed it! I think this place is maybe a chain but its not one I am familiar with.

Nonetheless- I am always fast to comment on airlines and how crap they are, especially Ryanair (Dick Turpin airways)  and Squeezyjet (cattle flights). However I am recently just back from a trip to New York and we went with KLM. I have flown with them before but the service was sort of non descript and anonymous if I am honest- I went to Warsaw that time via Schipol. It was OK  nothing good especially nothing bad. This trip was the first time I had a chance to experience their long haul service. We went Edinburgh, Amsterdam- JFK (737 then 777, outbound) and the reverse back, (747, Airbus, back). I have to say I was impressed. The Amsterdam, JFK was especially good, service was excellent, entertainment on board just made the hours vanish- they have these seat back videos but you can watch any film when it suits you so its not like a running schedule. Food was fine for an airline meal, you could have all the drink you wanted and we even had ice cream about 3/4 the way through. The flight crew were helpful and friendly and all in all it was the best long haul I have done.

The return was Ok too, it was about an hour shorter in length (the old east/west v west/east thing) and I had no complaints. Being a 747 it was a bit noisier back in Cattle class- but thats just the way 747s are, – had the same in BA‘s in the past.

Would definitely use them again, OK it was a bit of a longer journey than the direct Continental flights out of Edinburgh but hey- it was about £500 cheaper too (we booked via Expedia) and in my book the travelling day ia a dead loss anyway by the time you arrive, get through immigration, get bags and in to your hotel.