Monthly Archives: January 2008

Switched from Akismet to Defensio

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Ah, the weirdness never ends does it. After troubleshooting a very weird problem for a friend of mine on her WordPress install I came back to my fine running install only to find strange unexplained SQL errors in my error log. On top of that I seemed to have spam comments entered into the error log as well. The site was running fine and switching user agents showed up nothing but my site so where did those errors/spamments come from in my error log?

Well, considering that the only anti comment spam plugin I run is the and that I also had recently switched to the (second) latest version (the first one had a bug in it), I finally decided to switch to for the next week or so in order to see if this eliminated the errors. Especially those discomforting spam comment entries. What the heck was that about anyway?

Now since Defensio has to "learn" the ways of my blog before it hits any decent accuracy your comments, my wonderful readers, might mistakenly be marked as spam whereby I must go in and restore said comments and whip Defensio for making a mistake (that’ll teach it!). So please be patient whilst I teach the new dog some old tricks and if for some reason your comment not showing up immediately after you post it really pisses you off then feel free to let me know about it via my contact form. Just try not to call me too many names in the process. :P

Popular Science Now Using Drupal

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Popular Science onlineOne of the old standards that I have kept loyally by my side over the years is magazine. From the days of the old Wordless Workshop to today’s version it’s always been an old favorite of mine. So imagine my surprise when I banged into the Popular Science website to find the whole thing had apparently been out for a major makeover with the end result looking like a highly polished blog–which is exactly what it was.

was their choice of platform in this case and that’s just fine for more and more of the mainstream website’s are switching over to CMS/blogging platforms either partially or completely which just means that the servers that have been serving up static web pages for over a decade now are finally going to have to be beefed up to run these new dynamic website’s which will hopefully become the norm for all hosting type services. And that’s good for all us blogger’s in general. Personally I appreciate the easy interface and navigation that these types of platforms offer over the old static sites which could very often be confusing to find your way around.

To be honest about it I think Drupal is the right choice for the online version of Popular Science. Like , Drupal has a style all it’s own no matter what theme you may layer over it and the shiny, modulated look seems to fit the style of the magazine for the most part (although they are calling this first version a beta and more work needs to be done).

So here’s to another mainstream site going to the blogs. More power to ‘em I say.

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No More Geriatrics in the White House

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I have decided (just last night) that for the benefit and good of all people of the United States of America, we must no longer allow those who would qualify as senior citizens to be elected as Commander-in-Chief. No longer shall we allow those officials who qualify as candidates for Social Security,   and senior citizen discounts to be placed at the helm of our great nation. I just don’t believe that we need someone in the oval office that feels the need to take a nap every time 3:00 PM rolls around.

Now I’m not bashing those of advanced middle age, I’m rapidly headed that way myself, I’ve just had it up to here with having my country guided by old men who end up having prostrate surgery and heart palpations while they’re supposed to be focusing on national and world affairs that’s all. It’s a high stress, thankless, lousy job and I want someone on watch that can take that kind of pressure all day long, be ready to party after the workday is over and be able hit the floor at 5:00 AM the next morning ready for another day in the trenches. Is this too much to ask? It’s for their own good and ours as well for heavens sake.

I suppose we’ll have to let the current election slide since trying to stop the thing now would be like trying to stop Mars from looking red but we need to set some guidelines here for these future Presidential candidates in order to insure that a President elect doesn’t see his or her eightieth birthday while still in office. Here are a few suggestions:

  • No Presidential candidate, if elected, can be older than 60 years of age when sworn into office. That’s it. 60 is the limit…period!
  • Exceptions to the above are allowed only if the President drops dead while still in office and the Vice-President’s an old fogey or if a Presidential candidate is from Vermont (this will probably never happen since Vermonter’s have enough common sense not to want the job in the first place. With all respects to ).
  • Every official that decides they want to run for President must undergo a complete and thorough health examination including CAT scans, a full MRI, a Stress Test (must complete at least the 4th level) and have a PH test of their sweat done. Oh yeah, a rectal exam for all the male candidates is also required. No prostrate problems allowed.
  • They must also successfully pass a standard 28 day survival course (slightly modified for those over the age of 50…but not much).
  • All Presidential candidates must agree to chop their own wood while at Camp David.

Other factors must be considered as well if we’re going to improve things here:

  • Any potential Presidential candidate taking any sort of anti-depressant is automatically disqualified. No depressed Presidents allowed.
  • Any potential Presidential candidate who is even remotely tied to Big Oil in any way shape or form is also automatically disqualified. Can’t have any more of our Commander-in-Chiefs putting their own interests ahead of our nation’s any longer.
  • Any Presidential candidate has to prove that they know what it means to work for a living. Any candidate who was "born to money" is automatically disqualified.
  • All candidates must know how to play horseshoes. Backyard rules!
  • No potential candidate can run for President if they are less than 40 years of age. Sorry, if you’re still in your 30′s you probably still believe you can actually make a difference. We need a President who can carry forward, not reinvent the wheel.

I could go on of course but it’s time for lunch and I simply can’t think straight on an empty stomach. The point here is if we have to have a President than we should have a President who at least has the stamina, endurance and constant presence of mind to get the job done and I think the points stated above, if followed correctly, will increase the chances of actually getting one.

And that’s my opinion, thank you for listening.

And Now for Something Completely Different

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Welcome to my new theme or lack thereof. A rather minimalist approach if you will which I’m sure some folks will have to get used to. So why did I change? Good question and I’ll attempt to shed some light on the subject.

First of all you might wonder where I obtained such a "unique" looking theme in the first place? Enter the theme from , makers of the rather famous Sandbox theme upon which many other 2 and 3 column themes are based. However I wanted your basic 2 column theme and this was it.

Blog.txt is a theme for WordPress designed to impact your content in the most minimal way: using whitespace as a major design element, guiding the reader to the content.

Now I’m not saying that my content is all that wonderful but I finally realized that writing is what I love to do irregardless of what people might think of it’s quality and that’s what I wish for folks who stop by to see and not be distracted by fancy theme elements or functions. For better or worse as the case may be. Besides, I’m rather like this theme–different, minimal but very complicated behind the scenes. :roll:

The really strange thing about this is that rather than just stumbling across this minimalist type theme offered by Plaintxt.org it was actually one of the first themes I considered using when I first took this blog to it’s own custom install from WordPress.com but of course I had to try the more standard type themes that had lots of styling and such to add to look of the site before I finally wised up. The problem I always ran into was that no matter what theme I tried…it just wasn’t "me" if you know what I mean.  My writing is what I am, which explains why I can never seem to settle on one subject or even a header image for that matter, and not the theme itself. So here it is like it or not. A theme that I’m finally comfortable with.

There’s a few adjustments that I need to make here and there to make and a couple of oddities like anything in italics looking like this and and a word that’s supposed to be bold looking like that (all caps instead of lower case as it was typed) but that’s just minor stuff that I’ll be able to work out eventually.

Update: See that? I emailed the author and he came back with a fix within an hour. Not bad at all.

Bottom line? I like the the looks and feel of it. It’s me all over, just use your imagination to fill in the styles and colors, the rest I’ll take care of. :D

Themes and widgets. Playing for the day.

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As always I’m fooling around with themes again. I’m also taking the opportunity to re-setup all my widgets which my current theme, K2, has replaced with it’s own Sidebar Modules and I would like to have the widgets setup the same way and saved just in case I move away from K2. Always good to have a backup you know.

So don’t mind the "plain Jane" type theme that may keep popping up now and then as I’m always thinking about going absolutely minimal in a world full of colorfully themed blogs. But then again…I’m strange different

Boomers living through the Technology Boom. Could we do without?

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of the put up a rather thought provoking post about how she’s outlived a lot of computer technology and since we’re both around the same age, I had to sit and ponder about this for a bit. Then I left a rather long comment (who me?) that reflected these pondering’s of mine which I’ll post here as well…

I remember my grandfather taking me to where he worked setting type into a Linotype machine. I was only 4 or 5 at the time but I was fascinated with machines from day one (almost) and the memory is still clear as a bell. I swear I remember thinking what a lousy way of doing things that was.

Funny how it seems I think the same thing about how I used to do things when I first started out in computers (1977). I’ve had experience with card punchers and readers, paper tape readers and writers, magnetic tape drives, early hard drives where the disk spins in an open air drawer with hydraulically actuated heads, hard drives with stacked, 2 foot wide platters spun by synchro motors the size of industrial furnace blower motors and still I think what a lousy way of doing things that was.

Displays embedded in contact lenses, micro computers on a chip connected to your brain, computer tables where the entire surface is a touch screen yet you can eat off of it, our grown children/grandchildren telling their friends that their parents actually had to drive their car…

Whatever is in store for us as far as the world of computers, electronics, the WWW and the Internet that it rides within I hope I never grow too old to keep up with it.

Then I got to pondering some more. I wondered how many folks between the ages of say 45 to 60 feel the same way? That we’re actually the only generation that grew up into adulthood well before any type of "Personal Computer" was ever thought of yet lived through the advent and subsequent evolution of said computer and associated electronics to where the majority of us couldn’t envision a life without them. I think I can now understand what it must have felt like for the folks that spent half their lives using a horse and buggy and the other half of their lives using a car with the possible exception that most of those folks could always go back to using the horse and buggy when the car broke down now couldn’t they? Perhaps we don’t even have that advantage?

Make sure you read Rhea’s post and take a good look back at what you knew before and then think about what life might be like if we suddenly had to do without our current "technology". Here’s a few points to ponder:

Could you go back to:

  • Using the library for your research projects.
  • Trusting to newspapers, radio and television for all your news.
  • Using the postal service and the telephone for all your communication.
  • Applying for anything by obtaining and filling out a paper form.
  • Using paper, word of mouth, inter-office mail and postal mail to run your business.
  • Having to do all your merchandise ordering from an old style paper catalogue.
  • Having hospitals, government agencies, etc having to do things the "old fashioned way".

Kind of a scary proposition isn’t it? And I know all too well that I wouldn’t like it one bit. What about you?

Automattic’s Doing Something Right.

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, and the crew at should be giving out lessons to the world’s major businesses in how to succeed since it seems while everyone else is going down the tubes and contemplating doom and gloom, Automattic and it’s various endeavors are developing like mad, sipping at funds, gaining $29.5 million in financing (yeah, that’s what I said) and bringing the on as another investor. Not too shabby for a company that owes it’s beginning to a young fellow fooling around with code in his bedroom.

Looks like , , , and are going to be around for good long time yet. I love it. Now here’s hoping they keep their heads screwed on straight.

Disclaimer: This information has probably been posted on various sites hundreds of times already…So this is one more. Can’t help it if I like these folks now can I?

Crap! I’m Sick!

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First of all I’m sick. That’s right; burning throat, runny nose, tissue burned lips and I just know it’s thinking of heading down to the lungs just to see what kind of trouble it can get into. And I’m sure it will. Laurie’s been sick with this all week so I have a good idea of what I’m in for.

Strange as it might seem with all posts I’ve written about my service type disabilities (I tried not too complain to much–really), I rarely get sick like in cough, hack, spew, die type of nonsense but when I do it takes me right to the floor. But since I don’t really cater to lying on the floor all that much (I’m rather thin and the floor digs into my bones) I keep stumbling around the house mostly looking for one of those rectangular cardboard boxes with a printed design on the sides that might have a tissue or two in it. Usually I find one, if not I use one of the cats. Man, they just hate that!

Meanwhile the weather is calling for more of those "Non-Accumulating Snow Showers" that typically leave 4 to 6 inches of "Non-Accumulating Snow" on the ground which usually means that I head outside into the cold and run the snow blower around but not this time ladies and gentlemen. No sir! I have a young and healthy (almost) son-in-law that can do take care of all things snowy this time. I bet I don’t even have to ask him. I like that.

So it’s echinacea, orange juice (burns like crazy going down) and the occasional aspirin and hunkering down for 7 to 10 days of misery. Good thing I have this blog to complain about it, huh?