Just a quick note to mention that I’m testing passing the feeds from this site through FeedBurner, partly to get an idea of how the feed is being used and partly because it’s my job to know about all these internet technology thingies.

Anyway, if anyone has any issues with the feed please let me know.

As an addition to my Networked Virtual Hosting Party on Mac OS X article, comments in the How To Setup Development Domains On OS X article on The Apple Blog pointed to something I’d not tried before; using NetInfo Manager to add hosts to local hosts file.

An official Apple article; How to Add Hosts to Local Hosts File clearly outlines the steps. It’s a little confusing as the instructions for Mac OS X 10.2 or later are to edit the /private/etc/hosts file (the same file as /etc/hosts) directly. However, I just tried using NetInfo Manager to add a host on one of the machines on our network and it worked fine despite it running OS X 10.4.8.

A minor detail to mention is I that the niload command was more like this for me:

sudo niload hosts . < /etc/hosts

Really there is not a huge difference between editing the /etc/hosts file directly or using NetInfo Manager and I’m not convinced the latter really makes it that much easier. Either way, it’s useful to know about alternatives.

Lying in the dark, lit only by the glare of my MacBook I suddenly had one of those “Woah!!”, shoot-out-of-skin experiences, as, flicking through Cal Evans PHP Community Playing Cards, I suddenly came face-to-face with this one.

It seems these cards were an actual 3D freebie at the [Zend/PHP Conference and Expo](](http://zendcon.com/ “Zend/PHP Conference and Expo”) which means that I was there in an odd, fakey kind of way.

Apparently only those at the conference or featured on the cards got a copy so …erm, let’s just say I was playing blackjack for M&M’s with the kids the other day and it would have been great to see the proud look on their little faces every time the seven of diamonds was pulled out …ahem, cough, hint…