I came across this problem after a trip to Italy when Chrome decided that it would continue to use http://www.google.it as the default localised version of Google for searches I entered in the address bar. No matter what I did with settings in the Options dialog, I couldn’t stop Chrome giving me results in Italian, with Italian options, menu items, and so on. From the investigations I did about this problem it became clear that this is a fairly common problem, but there was no obvious fix. So, I was left to my own devices to sort it out – and thankfully I did

It turns out this setting is stored in one of the files that Chrome uses – Local State – which is stored in either the Local Settings folder (for Windows XP) or the AppData folder (for Windows Vista and Windows 7) for your user account. The Local State file is just a text file with data stored in XML format, and you can safely edit this file to change the setting.

The Local Settings and AppData folders are hidden by default, so you will need to change the Folder Options to allow hidden files and folders to be displayed. In Windows XP this is available from the Tools | Folder Options menu in Windows Explorer, in Windows 7 it’s available from the Organise | Folders and search options menu in Windows Explorer.

Tools | Folder Options (Windows XP)

Organise | Folders and search options (Windows 7)

In the Folder Options dialog select the View tab and enable the option to show hidden files, folders, and drives. Click OK to save the setting.

Folder Options (Windows XP)

Folder Options (Windows 7)

Once you have made this change you should be able to navigate to the relevant folder where you will see the Local State file.

In Windows XP the file is located in:

C:\Documents and Settings\<your user name>\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data\

In Windows Vista and Windows 7 it’s located in:

C:\Users\<your user name>\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\

Note: you need to make sure that Chrome is closed down fully before making any changes to the Local State file to ensure that Chrome doesn’t overwrite your changes.

You need to open the Local State file in a text editor like Notepad to edit the XML data that stores the settings. Since the file has no extension, you should be prompted by Windows to select the correct program to use to open the file. You can select Notepad from the list of programs presented.

Open With... Dialog (Windows XP)

Open With... Dialog (Windows 7)

Before:

   ...

   "browser": {
      "hung_plugin_detect_freq": 2000,
      "last_known_google_url": "http://www.google.it/",
      "last_prompted_google_url": "http://www.google.it/",
      "last_redirect_origin": "",
      "plugin_message_response_timeout": 30000,
      "window_placement": {
         "bottom": 570,
         "left": 0,
         "maximized": true,
         "right": 800,
         "top": 0,
         "work_area_bottom": 870,
         "work_area_left": 0,
         "work_area_right": 1440,
         "work_area_top": 0
      },

   ...

After:

   ...

   "browser": {
      "hung_plugin_detect_freq": 2000,
      "last_known_google_url": "http://www.google.ie/",
      "last_prompted_google_url": "http://www.google.ie/",
      "last_redirect_origin": "",
      "plugin_message_response_timeout": 30000,
      "window_placement": {
         "bottom": 570,
         "left": 0,
         "maximized": true,
         "right": 800,
         "top": 0,
         "work_area_bottom": 870,
         "work_area_left": 0,
         "work_area_right": 1440,
         "work_area_top": 0
      },

   ...

You can change this setting to use whichever local version of Google you want (or just http://www.google.com if you prefer). Save the file and close Notepad.

Now when you search from the address bar in Chrome it will use the version of Google that you want

The only thing that went wrong with the upgrade was my mistake with upgrading the Fresh From plugin so I lost all the old tweets that it had imported. They should upgrade it so that it asks you if you want to keep them. I did a bit of tidying up on the user registrations too – all spammers with no comments at all, so I deleted them and switched off registration. You can now comment without registering – though noone really wants to anyway based on how things have gone so far

I ended up tweaking the code of the plugin a little to remove the “Fresh from Twitter:” prefix to all the post headings, and I also increased the number of words extracted from the tweet to make the post title from 3 to 6. I found that if I kept the setting on that shows the profile picture it was messing up my page format since it was adding a <br clear=”both” /> tag which pushed the post metadata and other posts below the end of my sidebar Switching the option off leaves the posts with just a small Twitter icon which I actually prefer the look of, and doesn’t mess up the flow of the page.

So, on with the microblogging!

I suppose the one thing that would improve this is to include an automatic backup step, which could be optional. It probably wouldn’t be that hard, and would probably be sufficient for 90% of WordPress users – it would certainly do the trick for me

One of the changes brought about by the addition of widget support is the RSS feeds in the sidebar. These are originally sourced from Google Reader which can republish them as Atom feeds. However the MagpieRSS feed reading code built into WordPress can’t deal with the fact that the news item source data in the feed also includes title and link elements, so it ends up combining these with the title and link elements for the actual entry, messing up the feed entries in the sidebar. I came across a workaround in the WordPress support forum – pass the feeds through Feedburner and use the Convert Format Burner option to turn it into an RSS 2.0 feed. The RSS parser in WordPress deals with those feeds fine, and I’m using the KB Advanced RSS Widget to take a little more control over how the feed is displayed compared to the standard RSS widget.

As for WordPress 2.7, I really like the new Dashboard, and especially the features for installing plugins directly instead of having to upload them manually. I think I’ll have to look at upgrading My Halo News.com and Our Adventures too now

I’m hoping that this might mark the start of more regular blogging, as there’s lots to say – just maybe not enough time to say it. Let’s see how long it takes till the next post!

I deleted the links, looked around to make sure nothing else was wrong, and then proceeded to follow the suggestion in the email and begin the process to upgrade to WordPress 2.5. As usual with WordPress it went very well, and I didn’t have to change anything – at least as far as I can tell so far I’m going to upgrade my other WordPress sites, but I’m not expecting it to go as smoothly on My Halo News.com – mainly due to the tweaks I’ve done to the sitemap generator and the number of posts. We’ll just have to see.

Life has been busy recently, so I have been neglecting the blog here, but hopefully I’ll get back into the swing of it soon.

Oh, and many thanks to Anonymous Security Specialist … whoever you are!

Now, New Scientist magazine has published a special issue about Climate Change, and it addresses many of the myths surrounding global warming. The key points are available in a series of articles on the New Scientist web site. They present a balanced view of the arguments, and I think they successfully challenge the points raised in the documentary. What I took away from it is that while the Sun does indeed act as the main source of heat for the planet, human-generated CO₂ is the best candidate for the recent trend of increasing temperatures. It is also clear that there is a large degree of uncertainty around the role of clouds in the global climate. However despite the uncertainty the majority of scientists working in this field are convinced that human-caused global warming is real, and we need to act sooner rather than later.