essays in idleness - rant.mivox | stuff & nonsense

Jesus H. F*ing Christ

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 17:30:58 -0800

So yeah, I've heard of the "digg effect" ... kind of like slashdot for non-tech blogs. But until a combined traffic attack from digg and reddit at the same time brought f-ckingc-nts' database server to its knees on Friday (dammit Wordpress, can't you think of a more efficient way to serve pages?!), I didn't quite appreciate the magnitude of the impact.

nifty no-nofollow stuff for wordpress

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 18:34:18 -0800

So yeah ... still mostly being a geek lately. So here's more new wingdings for WordPress, oh-so-ironically written up on my Drupal site. heh

There is the "feature not a bug" in WordPress to automatically nofollow any link left in your comments. This is not only silly, as it does little-to-nothing to discourage spammers (that's what Akismet is for), it's a bit of an insult to those of us who actually maintain and monitor our blogs.

I'm perfectly well capable of disabling or deleting questionable links in the posts that make it past Akismet, thank-you-very-much. My regular visitors are also intelligent, responsible people, who only leave links that are genuinely relevant to my site content ... which is exactly the kind of site that should benefit from being linked to.

So, I've fixed it. While there are plenty of plugins for WordPress that automatically "dofollow" all of your comment (and commenter name) links, Lucia's Linky Love does more than that.

More cool web shit - DIY OpenID

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 17:35:17 -0800

So, while screwing around with Twitterfeed, and grousing about having to sign-in to a totally unrelated website to use the OpenID login system, I found this:

phpMyID: phpMyID lets you create your own single-user OpenID server on your own webserver. It even includes an htaccess file for creating the correct headers if your host runs PHP as cgi (like Dreamhost does).

Coolness. I now have two custom OpenIDs: id.mivox.com and id.fckingcnts.com.

twitter, twitter, tweeter, twit

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 15:04:04 -0800

I am indeed still around ... and posting regularly over on f*cking c*nts. And I've also joined this rather annoyingly addictive service called Twitter. I don't know exactly why, but I like it.

Smoking: An Ode to Human Stupidity

Thu, 15 Nov 2007 17:08:29 -0800

Ah cigarettes. Just today I walked into my old supplier's shop and inquired as to the availability of American Spirit cigarettes by the carton (not seeing any on the shelves). The nice lady at the counter led me over to a cabinet where they were hidden, the store not having permission to sell them at a carton discount, and I grabbed a box and headed to the counter. Where I proceeded to cough up SIXTY-FIVE DOLLARS for the coveted 10 packs of slow death. Fucking hell. I thought they were expensive three years ago at $47!

So yes. Another chapter in my personal love/hate affair with cigarettes has begun. Started at 12, quit at 14, started again at 16, quit for a few months at 18 ... quit for about three years at 26 or 27, started yet again at 29, quit once more at 30, and now, just started again at the really-ought-to-fucking-know-better age of 33. Yea verily the grip of stupidity is a strong one.

I console myself with the fact that I smoke additive-free cigarettes ... that's 300-odd fewer burning substances filling my lungs with their noxious fumes than most folks get. And once you get used to 'clean' tobacco, those major-label brands really taste like nothing so much as burning chemical factories, even after three years on the wagon. (... why in the fuck does it cost more to buy cigarettes with less in them? A perennial question that applies equally to organic food ...)

so yes ... keeping busy, indeed

Thu, 15 Nov 2007 00:06:09 -0800

I have been neglecting my poor "home" blog yet again ... more new projects starting up! Got a nice little Q&A blog up and running over at Things You Can't Ask Mom at the moment. This one promises to be a lot of fun ...

truth

Fri, 02 Nov 2007 01:31:29 -0700

The truth can't hurt you, it's just like the dark ...
It scares you witless,
but in time you see things clear and stark.

— Elvis Costello, I Want You

WordPress, Statistics and Plugins, Oh My!

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 21:17:39 -0700

So yes, the new site is running on WordPress, which I'd had some experience with in the past, but never so far as actually getting serious about trying to promote a site built with it. Because I am mostly lazy, and mostly a hobbyist, and mostly couldn't be bothered. But for some reason my little f-ckingc-nts.com project has really fired my imagination, and suddenly I'm a total stats whore. Which kinda sucks with a default WordPress install ... For one thing, WordPress itself, being a blogging platform and not a full-featured hosting package, has no built-in stats functions to speak of. For another thing, the vast majority of WordPress bloggers seem entirely more interested in the fun-and-easy aspects of blogging, and so most of what you find when you look for a stats plugin are cute little sidebar widgets that publically list your top 10 most popular posts, and other mostly-useless features for my purposes.

However, I've found two really excellent 'built-in' WordPress visitor statistic plugins, as well as one that pulls external stats from Feedburner and Google Analytics into your WordPress dashboard:

the problem with an iTunes-driven entertainment center ...

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 01:50:39 -0700

... is that you'll make a "favorites" playlist. And then you'll be playing it at bedtime. And then you'll end up staying up too late, because you keep looking at the playlist, thinking "ooh, just a couple more songs before that one ... I'll wait 'till then to switch it off." As though it were a radio station that might not play your favorite song again for weeks.

Or maybe it's just me.

obsessive geek

Sat, 27 Oct 2007 22:31:12 -0700

Quite some time ago, I made a half-hearted pass at the world of social bookmarking ... but frankly, I never really bothered figuring it all out. And it sort of fizzled, just like any new thing does if you don't bother with it.

Apparently the time just wasn't right, because I have now gone and spent all freaking day puttering around on my truly pathetic dial-up internet connection, figuring all these things out, and putting links where they need to be, and making sure everyone can find my RSS links, and generally putting my link whoring house in order. Why, I'm not exactly sure yet ... but I get the feeling it all has potential somehow.

Wish me luck! *puts on space helmet, waves, and steps into airlock*

Important Announcement for My 5 Readers!

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 00:19:40 -0700

You can tell it's important, because I capitalized the title! ;-)

I took advantage of the new, free vanity URL feature over at feedburner.com, and the http://feeds.feedburner.com/mivox feed (through which you breathlessly follow my every post here) will soon be deactivated in favor of this fabulous new feed address: http://feeds.mivox.com/rant-rss

i've got a new blog ... nsfw & etc.

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 18:21:38 -0700

If you've ever gotten the feeling here that I may not *really* be saying what I think ... suspected that maybe I'm censoring myself out of some concern about potentially offending people ... well, you may be right. And I may have done something about it ... like maybe starting a new site over at f-ckingc-nts.com, to give myself a bit of room to really carry on.

If you're easily offended by profanity or social taboos, please don't bother clicking that link.

linguistic faux-pas of the day

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 15:46:03 -0700

One of the default plugins on a new WordPress blog install:

WP-FLV 0.2 This plugin eases insertion of Jeroen Wijerings FLV Video Player By Roel Meurders

I hope that was intentional, because the phrase "eases insertion of ..." should really never be used outside a medical or sexual context. Especially not near the word "plugin".

how-to: basic headless Mac Mini entertainment center

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 21:40:52 -0700

If you want a full, DIY Mac-head-tech-whore DVR entertainment system, and you happen to have a Mac Mini, a G4 tower, and a few hundred dollars or more to spend on electronic accessories, by all means run along and check out Engadget's deluxe DVR system breakdown ... I, on the other hand, mostly just wanted something to act as a glorified combo MP3 server/DVD/MPEG player.

I was starting with a Kenwood component stereo tuner and receiver set that are probably as old as I am (over 30, in case you were wondering ... my stereo does not have a remote control), a pair of Cerwin-Vega speakers, and an external hard drive with a load of MP3s and video files on it. I wanted an excuse to buy a Mac Mini, figured it would make a great entertainment system, and wanted to control the whole thing from my MacBook Pro laptop.

Hell, I don't even have a monitor to use for watching movies yet, but the audio system is set up, and I am sitting on the other side of the room running it wirelessly as I write this. Good enough for me. Then a friend asked me to document the whole jury-rigged mess so she could do the same. So here I goes ...

On the subject of accents ...

Sun, 21 Oct 2007 15:21:13 -0700

Why in the hell does the GEICO insurance company's gecko mascot speak with a cockney accent?! Thames cruise narrator/guides, sure. It's charming. Little street urchins in film adaptations of Dickens novels, but of course. But an insurance company mascot? An American insurance company mascot?