Ok so, I am just posting this to tell you what I got for christmas. In the past week or so I got enough money to go out and buy a iMac. I had saved about 1700 dollars, and I got the extra 200 to get the 20 inch. I got that, and I got a tivo. Those are the two big things. So my iMac is a 20″ w/ iSight and front row. Also, I added a 512 meg stick to come to a total of a gig of ram. I have been playing around with front row, and oh my god it is absolutely brilliant. This is just a tip to all of the people who also have front row. It only looks in the movies or iTunes directories. So, if you want to have your videos on a seperate drive, you can’t really do that. That is where you are wrong. You can have the data on a seperate drive, and create an alias to the video in your movies folder. It will then show up in front row. What did you guys get for christmas? Go ahead and post!
Archive for Life
My Switch to DreamHost
Well As you probably noticed, I switched to a different hosting provider lately. Initially I have been hosted on a2hosting. I used them because of their php5 support. Back in December of last year, I knew php5 and wanted to use the new features in php5. Yet, it was quite new so there were only a few hosting companies that offered it. a2hosting was the best one I could find. So I signed up for a hosting and a domain. I realized that for 10 bucks a month only 300 megs of space was not very much. I made sure that I didn’t go over it, and generally I was fine. I loved that they used cPanel, and the site was down only once, that I know of. There servers were a tad slow, but acceptable. I would recommend them to anyone. As I said I didn’t like the small amount of space and bandwidth. So, I decided that when my time ran out, I would change hosters. I found Dreamhost. They had a very good 10 dollar plan. It came with 4.8 gigs of space and 120 gigs of bandwidth. Another really cool feature was that every week my space increased by 40 megs, and my bandwidth increased by a gig. Also there were unlimited MySQL databases, instead of my previous 3. The plan had php5 and everything I wanted so I decided to switch. I also wanted to move my domain from a2hosting. So, I have used godaddy previously, and I moved it there. That was a breeze to do.
So now I had bought 2 years of dreamhost service. I have to do the worst things possible, move EVERYTHING. The first thing I had to do was change the DNS records of the domain to point to the new dreamhost name servers. I did that monday night, knowing that it would take at least 12 hours for that to take effect. I woke up the next morning, seeing that my domain was pointing to an empty location. This was good. Thankfully, I had a two hour delay from snow that morning, so I went to work. My first mission was to export the three databases from my previous host. I had one for php-nuke, and two wordpress databases. So I went into phpMyAdmin and exported them all. I then uploaded them to the new host and went into shell, to import them. The two wordpress imports worked beautifully. The php-nuke one though had a single error. I looked at the export file, and for somereason one of the tables, was a import command. That was weird, so I just erased that and it imported fine. Now I had to upload everything. So I first downloaded every thing from my previous site and started the upload. I had to go to school then. I figured that the the site would finish uploading and then the site would be up and running. Of course, while uploading, either my ftp client (Kasablanca) crashed, or the ftp connection timed out and the upload didn’t finish. I had to stay late that night for school and didn’t get home and done with my homework before 11. I had to go to bed so it was going to be the next day. Wednesday morning and opened up a different ftp client (KBear) and uploaded. It finished by the time I got home, but when I went to the site, the front page news wasn’t there and errors were all over the place in the forums section and many other places. I couldn’t figure it out. So I finished my homework and went to bed. Thursday morning I thought maybe it was the import error that I got that might be causing these problems. So I went back and compared the dreamhost MySQL database to the a2hosting MySQL database. The dreamhost MySQL database had about 8 less table than the a2hosting database.I saw that the dreamhost database had all of the tables up to the phpnuke_sessions table. I re-imported the MySQL database to try and get those missing tables, but when I re-imported, I got that same error. This time I looked and saw it had to do with the phpnuke_sessions table.
Now, I have to figure out why phpnuke_sessions is not importing. So, I went and looked what was in it. It turned out that it was a malformed php import statement. It works wonderfully in php, but not in the export script. So I just told PHPMyAdmin to export just the tables after phpnuke_sessions. I then imported those into the new database, and everything worked perfectly. Just to make sure, I then manually moved the phpnuke_sesssions table to the new dreamhost MySQL database.
Mouseless Browsing Extension
I just found this great extension called Mouseless Browsing. When I go through NewsGator, I like to just sit back with my keyboard and go through the different articles. My only problem is that I would either have to click on each link, which meant not being able to sit back with my keyboard, or having to go through the tedious process of tabbing through to the link I want. That was quite a nusence. Thankfully though, I found a great extension that allows me to click on links without the mouse, or having to tab through to the link. What the Mouseless Browsing does is add a little number next to every single link. then if you want to click on that link, you just type in the number and press enter. Everything can be done through the number pad. This means that if you have a laptop without the number pad, this extension is not for you. Otherwise, it works flawelessly. If you want to use your mouse and have the little numbers go away, you can just press the decimal key and all of the numbers go away. Absolutly a wonderful extension. Go check it out!
Response to comments
It’s quite simple really. WordPress themes use raw PHP rather than the template tags used by other tools like Blogger and MT, and it simply isn’t safe to give unlimited and possibly inexperienced users the power to write and execute PHP on a free hosted service like this. So HTML customisation is out, unless some kind of templating engine replaces the raw PHP and I know the developers have never been keen on that idea.
Editing CSS does not have the same security issues involved, however discouraging people from personalising their blogs has the advantage of strengthening the wordpress brand because all WP.com blogs are instantly recognisable as such.
I guess in answer to your second problem, you could always try using the latest development version of WP on your self-hosted blog, very similar to wordpress.com but you have to be aware that it is not supported and could break at any time.
That was the first comment I got to my last post. I was unaware that the themeing system for the hosted wordpress was any different than the one in the self-hosted wordpress. I also understand that not allowing people to edit their templates streghtens the wordpress brand.
I thought you were liking Blogger? Now the switch, what is next for your blog as well as the podcast?
That was the second comment. I did kind of like blogger. The main reason I switched was that I had a very low trafficed blog, yet I got about 25 comment spams a day. You never saw them because I went through each one when they came in and deleted them. That was just because I was on the blogger system. Also, I just wanted to try out the new system. Last, I like Open Source. I also have used WordPress since version 1.0 and love it. As for what is next for the blog, nothing really. Just me posting here, I am going to ride out the fact that I can’t edit the template. As for the podcast, I am struggling to get them out. School is in full swing and time is extremly short. I am working my tail off to deal with school, life and my tech life. So, that is why I am looking for more content producers. I am sorry for this but I just need to find time, and it is getting harder and harder.
Thanks,
JoeÂ
WordPress needs work
I am really enjoying the wordpress service. I have loved wordpress since the beginning and it is joy to deal with. I have but two gripes which are really starting to get on my nerves. The first is with the hosted wordpress version that is on wordpress.com. I love the WYSIWYG editor, and many of the other AJAXy features that make it great. It is really bugging me that you can’t edit your templates. I mean in the self-hosted version of wordpress you can, and it is quite easy. Why have they stripped some of the features off of the self-hosted version of wordpress? I just don’t understand it.
 As long as you do some general cross-site scripting checks, what is the big risk? It is definatly not a problem of the fact that they haven’t created it yet because it is in the self-hosted version. The FAQ reply to this says that they haven’t found an easy way for you to edit the CSS and HTML. I am fine with that, but this is a beta version, put something out there that allows us people who can edit the css or html to do so, and when you find a better, sleeker way than roll that out and make it so that it is easier for the less-knowledgable. My last pet peeve about this is why did Robert Scoble get to edit his template? Yes, yes I realize that he get thousands of hits a day, but why is he the only person to edit their template. I would love to be able to edit my template.
Now, the second part of this rant is that since this template flaw annoyed me so much I was thinking of going back to my self-hosted wordpress, but than I realized it didn’t have the feature that I wanted the most, WYSIWYG editing. It is in the hosted version of wordpress, but not the self-hosted version. Why is that? I would love to switch over to self-hosted but I really love this WYSIWYG editor. In version 1.5.3 of wordpress, why can’t they add this editor? I have found no bugs, and find a delight to use.
So WordPress guys, what is your answe r. I love both your self-hosted and hosted products, except for those little things. Why can’t you fix them, I would really like to know. My email is at admin@rootsmart.com if you are wondering and I am waiting for an answer.
Clocks
Don’t forget to tunr back your clocks. If you are on a computer, I am pretty sure it will do it automaticlly, as for every other clock in your house, you probably have to do it manually.
Logitech Z-2300
Well, I just got a new set of speakers. Before these I had a very bad pair of speakers, that were $10 about 10 years ago. So, as you can see they were very bad 10 years ago, and probably are extremly bad now. I am slightly a audiophile, and I love music. Also, I play plenty of games, and I wanted some sort of bass. My last requirement was that it couldn’t be a 5.1 system. I don’t have close to enough desk space to have a 5.1 system. So, I found the Logitech Z-2300, and I am very impressed.
The first thing you notice when you first get the speaker is the massive subwoofer. The thing is huge, and if you don’t have a good amount of space under your desk, you will not be able to fit it there. Other than that, things are pretty normal. I set up the two speakers and the manual had a easy to follow diagram. It was just a bunch of plugging in and it was all set up. The coolest part of the entire system is the control module. it allows you to have the volume control, and the bass control in one easy thing. Also, it has the headphone jack built in
My main gripe with this system is the bass. These days bass seems to be everything. If you are a big rap person, then you will love this sub, but I am not. Yes, it is also wonderful for explosions and games, but when listening to anything but rap, it is a tad to much bass. I turn the bass down all the way and I can still feel it, that is bad. So, there needs to be a way to turn the bass down more.
-Joe
