Monthly Archives: December 2011

Dismantling Christmas and Happy New year

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Just a short note here saying that I’ll be rather busy over the next two days while my wife and I dismantle Christmas. And this year it isn’t just a matter of removing Christmas from the house and a small quilt shop, oh no indeed. This year it’s removing Christmas from a rather large store front that the quilt shop moved into last month. So although the removal process at the house remains the same, the removal process at the new store involves both of us, a couple of step ladders and a bit of a balancing act on both our parts and this takes time–especially the balancing act.

I’m also forgoing my main source of inspiration for posts this weekend–reading the news. I found myself feeling terribly depressed of late so I thought I’d give it a break and it seems to be working well–I feel much better about things already. So I’ll see you all in a few days unless of course I fail to balance correctly during the dismantling process and then I’ll see you as soon as I can stop taking  pain medications for the leg I broke falling off the step ladder.

Happy New Year then.

Watch TV–Stay Online–Watch TV–Stay Online–Watc…

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One of the most disturbing things for me about George Orwell’s 1984, either in book form or film, is the image of having most of an entire wall covered by a huge television and in the case of the world of 1984, a television you can’t turn off. And if that wasn’t bad enough, it watched you as well.

Orwell's 1984 wall TV

Lord, but that’s a bloody scary thought. And today I learned that LG is going to debut an 84 inch Television at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) next month. Complete with all it’s Smart TV, voice recognition, gestures and passive 3D capabilities.

Holy boob tube, Batman! That’s over 7 feet of television hanging on your…well..wall. Hell, I’d have to add an addition onto my living room just to fit the thing in there. But then again, why would I want to do that? Why would anyone in their right mind want a huge TV hanging on their wall?

Oh, wait. They already do. Just not 84 inches of it…

…not yet…

…but they will.

I wonder what Orwell would have added to his classic novel of a not-so-bright future if he had known about the Internet and the ever present World Wide Web as well as the television? What if he had been born later and his classic novel was titled “2014″ instead of 1984? A world of desktop PCs, laptops, notebooks, net books, tablets and smart phones not to mention 55, 72 and now 84 inch television screens? Would the people of his theorized version of 2014 be required not only to have their massive television turned on ’round the clock with no break but to always be online as well?

Think about it. Every type of personal computer, from desktops to smart phones would always have to be online. They would have cameras embedded in them so “they” could watch you and microphones so “they” could hear you and Geo-location devices built in so the “they” would always know where you are. They would always know because you were required to carry one of those portable devices with you at all times.

But they know you do anyway.

…watch TV–stay online–watch TV–stay online–watch TV…

Think about it. A whole wall of television, hooked to cable, hooked to satellite, hooked to the Internet. It has microphones and a camera and a computer. It probably knows the address of the home it’s installed in. After all, you probably bought it with a credit card–didn’t you? But it probably knows just because it’s programmed to know. How can you be sure?

Are you watching?

Long Meadow Farms Quilts | From shop to new store front

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My wife’s long time business, Long Meadow Farms Quilts, has moved from a small shop to a rather large store front. This was not a planned move in any way, shape or form in fact, we had just recently remodeled her old 400 square foot shop and were fully prepared to settle down for the next few years until such time she felt was ready to retire. Such plans as made by mice and men and all that.

Opportunity however, as is it’s wont, came along once more, pounded on the shop door and in 8 short days we had moved the entire shop (again) into a 2000 square foot store front located at one of the most highly trafficked retail areas in Newport, VT. To say the least, it’s one heck of a change. If you wish to see where we came from check out this post I wrote when we moved her business into the little shop on East Main St. This was her second location by the way, her first one being in another small shop located on east Main St. as well.

Now here’s a few pictures of the new location (click on each image to enlarge).

Long Meadow Farms QuiltsLong Meadow Farms QuiltsLong Meadow Farms QuiltsLong Meadow Farms QuiltsLong Meadow Farms QuiltsAnd with all the extra room she has now she was able to bring in some local artisans to add their Vermont made products also. And as always, all products sold in the store have to be made in Vermont–no exceptions. Made in Vermont only.

I like that. :D

This time however, we simply weren’t able to move the whole kit and kaboodle ourselves so many thanks to the friends and locals who helped us out along the way.

Whew! Such a change in such a short period of time. And now the adventure begins…

Fixing a few things | Caches and ads, oh my

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This old blog of mine has been around for quite awhile now. Nearly 6 years as of this coming February and over the years all sorts of fluff, cruft and nonsense have accumulated. Bits of code and database entries left from past plugins, themes, previous versions of WordPress, upgrades and updates that no longer serve a purpose but end up getting left behind nonetheless. These bits of fluff and matter kept accumulating until one day things started getting funky. And so it was with my old DYI WordPress powered blog.

First my venerable old caching plugin, WP Super Cache, stopped working then the Text Link Ads (TLA) plugin stopped showing ads anywhere but the Home page as well as other bits of weirdness popping up here and there. These irritating little problems turned out to completely the fault of Text Links Ads and their latest versions of their WordPress plugin. Turns out that the powers-that-be behind the TLA plugin decided not to allow showing ads site wide any longer (with no announcement of the fact, of course) and purposely disabled caching for all pages viewed by adding a “DONOTCACHE is defined” statement to the source of each page viewed (also without any announcement of any kind).

Nice.

I happened to find this out while I was troubleshooting my way through the back end of the blog equipped with hammer and screwdriver and packets of my favorite explosives. WP Super Cache has this lovely debugging mode which, when enabled, creates these horrendously long log files filled with all sorts of fancily structured information that one can happily spend hours sifting through–if left on long enough that is.  I only left the debugging mode enabled for a couple minutes but it was long enough to tell the tale.

Since I do make enough pocket change from TLA for the occasional doughnut and coffee every month and since I’ve never had a problem with TLA in the past, I decided to contact them about this situation. After several attempts they finally responded to one of my emails and informed me that they would consider adding an “Allow caching” option in the TLA plugins’ “Settings” page in order to solve my non-caching problem. Two days later I receive another email from them saying that the newest version (3.9.9) of the plugin now has that option included and I should try it out and let them know how it works.

Long story short, it worked like a charm. The ads show up in the sidebar and footer widget areas just like they used to and all pages are cached properly once more. But the ads were still only showing up on the Home page and not site wide just like the previous version of the plugin (3.9.8) The version prior to that (3.9.7) showed the ads site wide although it prevented page caching as well.

So I fired off another email to TLA explaining this new ‘old’ problem and they responded that the site wide function had indeed been removed since they felt that showing ads only on specific pages gives better results than showing site wide

Really? Considering that the plugin only allows showing ads between content on the Home page or via widgets/templates, I guess the only “specific page” I’m able to show ads on is the Home page unless I list specific posts/pages I wish to show the ads on or resort to using an old fashioned style script placed in the code of specific posts.

Considering I have well over 1000 posts on my beloved old site, manually inserting the TLA script is not a viable option. The folks at TLA did say in their reply to my message, that they would consider putting site wide showing of ads back into the plugin sometime in the future. Well, at least they’re talking with me and after all they did fix one of the problems. And I still like the buggers as well so patience is and all that.

So while I was troubleshooting all of the above I decided to remove as much of the fluff, cruft and nonsense that was left over from the nearly 6 years of pounding on my particular install of WordPress. I deactivated and removed every single plugin except for a very few and then cleaned out all related entries from my WordPress database. This included entries from themes I have long since stopped using. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead and all that.

When all was said and done (and seeing that the blog still existed despite my best efforts) I reinstalled most of the plugins I had previously removed and slowly activated them one by one, thoroughly shielding myself from any random explosions should they occur. Thankfully none did.

So did it work? Well, if you happen to stop by and the blog is still here then I can safely say that it did. However, if you happen to stop by and suddenly drop into hole in cyberspace then I’m afraid it may not have. Please let me know either way–if you can. If you do drop into a hole in cyberspace where the blog once existed please leave the name and email address of your next of kin and I’ll do my best to alert them of your untimely (and certainly unbelievable) demise. And my deepest apologies to you as well.

Onward…

 

Dinner comes to call.

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I was awoken this morning by a rather excited woman who was making some rather extravagant gestures, mouthing silent words (I don’t sleep with my hearing aids in you see) and holding up her hands with all ten fingers pointing straight up which she opened and closed at least twice, possibly three times and then rushed back out of the bedroom.

Considering this rather excited woman was my wife and that she’s really not in the habit of acting this way on a regular basis, I thought it might be a good idea to drag my rear end out of bed and investigate.

I should also point out that she gets up much earlier than I do. Like O’Dark-thirty in the morning.

It turns out that dinner had come calling this morning in the form of nearly 30 (29 to be exact) good-sized wild turkeys who were busy milling about our yard and gardens scratching up  all sorts of good things to eat. It hasn’t snowed here at all to speak of and the temps have been well above freezing the entire fall. So the ground isn’t frozen at all in fact, the grass is green and lush and, sadly enough, looks in need of mowing (Mowing in December? In Vermont? On the Canadian border?). So there was plenty of fodder for these early morning visitors.

Now is the time when anyone reading this post of mine is thinking; “So where are the pictures already? You did take pictures, right?”

Well, in all truthfulness…I did.

I stumbled bleary eyed up to my computer desk, grabbed my old digital point and shoot and staggered back down to the kitchen while attempting to shove the batteries into the bottom of the camera at the same time. It’s amazing the cats survived at all what with me stepping on them 3 or 4 times each in the process.

Out onto the deck I went and then rushed right back in to put on a robe and rushed right back out again. No one was looking thank heavens. The sight has been known to drive those with weaker constitutions to the nearest trauma center.  I scanned around and spotted the flock moving out towards our woodshed, all lined up in two abreast precision when suddenly they did an amazingly synchronized ‘about face’ and marched themselves back into the side yard. It seems that while I was giving the neighborhood a free show, my wife had hightailed out the other side of the house and down the side of the garage and woodshed in hopes she could herd this fleeing flock back into camera range. A act of valor that succeeded wonderfully.

So I took about 8 to 10 pictures in all but since the morning was dark gray with the cloud ceiling at about 100 feet or so it seemed (plus the camera is rather old) I only got 4 pictures I actually liked. And these I’ll be glad to share.

Wild Vermont Turkeys

Turkeys in the grass, alas!

 

Wild turkeys in Vermont

Turkeys marching towards my wife (wife is hidden)

 

Wild turkeys of Vermont

Turkeys running away from my wife (wife still hidden)

 

Wild turkeys of Vermont

And the final pose.

By now I’m sure some of your might be asking yourselves, “Well? Did he shoot some dinner or not?” I’m sorry to say the answer is a resounding no. Somehow the mental picture of alternately scalding and plucking one of these rather large birds on this particularly raw, wet December day just didn’t seem all that appealing to me. So the rifle stayed in the corner and I came back into the house, all my shooting done with a camera.

So, I wonder what’s going to show up in the yard tomorrow morning?